"Fad" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... It's a society fad now to have what are called 'slumming parties,' and of course I've been asked to help. It makes my blood tingle when I hear them talk over the 'fun' as they call it. They get detectives to protect them, and then ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... you once again," he shouted vehemently, helping himself to another portion of chicken. "Love is nothing but this sauce, you can eat the chicken just as well without it; sauce is nothing but an invention, a freak and a modern fad!" ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... with saddle between them, upon a suitable frame, the pedals propelling the rear wheel through a chain and sprocket gearing. An old invention, that of inflated or pneumatic tires of rubber, coupled with more hygienic saddles, gave great impetus to cycling sport. The fad dwindled, but the bicycle remained in general use as a convenience and even ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... the little bits of black sticking-plaster with which ladies used to adorn their faces. According to Addison ('Spectator', No. 81), ladies even went so far in this fad as to patch on one side of the face or the other, according to ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... accorded that right in matters of government; nor does mankind accord it, without a prolonged struggle, even in religious doctrine and ordinary life. Every revolt is tested as by fire, and we do not otherwise know the temper of the rebels or the value of their purpose. Is it a trick? Is it a fad? Is it a plot for contemptible ends? Is it a riot—a moment's effervescence—or a revolution glowing from volcanic depths? We only know by the tests of ridicule, suffering, and death. In his "Ode to France," written in 1797, ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... the trial until after dinner. It must be ready by this time, I think," said Mr. Fenwick, as he led the way back to the house. It was magnificently furnished, for the inventor was a man of wealth, and only took up aeroplaning as a "fad." An excellent dinner was served, and then the three returned once more to the shed ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... addition, he must, upon the smallest pretext, draw his sword, must fight constantly, and especially with adversaries better armed and larger in force; the love of woman was for such men only. Adventure was the fad: it is said of one seigneur that he took pleasure in going every night to a certain corner and, from pure malice, striking with his sword the first person who chanced that way; this unique pastime he continued until ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... of news is that of the letter purporting to be addressed by Prester John to the Emperor Manuel, which circulated through Europe about 1165. "How great was the popularity and diffusion of this letter," writes Sir Henry Yule, "may be judged in some degree from the fad that Zarncke in his treatise on Prester John gives a list of close on 100 mss. of it Of these there are eight in the British Museum, ten at Vienna, thirteen in the great Paris Library, and fifteen at Munich. There are also several ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville
... had launched into abuse of what she called the latest masculine fad—prison reform, to wit—and a heated discussion between her and Polyhistor had ensued, in the midst of which she had happened to glance behind her, to find that very notable person who is the subject of this narrative vouchsafing a silent attention ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... a fad. Astor sorted and sifted his buyers, as he had his skins. He himself dressed in a suit of fur and thus proved his ability as an advertiser. He picked his men and charged all the traffic would bear. He took orders, on sample, from the nobility ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... concluded, he gravely poured her out a cup of tea, with sugar and milk, but no cream, as he observed; and then he peeped into the teapot, and proceeded to fill it up from the great urn which was bubbling and boiling in front of him. He always made tea in his own house; it was a fad of his, and the more people he had to make it for the better pleased he was. A servant was stationed at his elbow, whose duty it was to place the cups as his master filled them on a silver salver held by another servant, who took them to offer to the visitors who were seated about the ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... notorious fondness for cats was a fad which he shared with Paul de Koch, the novelist, who, at one time, kept as many as thirty cats in his house. Many descriptions of them are to be found scattered through his novels. His chief favorite, Fromentin, ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... fine fresh colour where none existed. When iron is the chief colouring matter, rock-salt assumes a beautiful clear red tint; in other cases it is emerald green or pale blue. As a rule, salt is prepared from it for table by a regular process; but it has become a fad of late with a few people to put crystals of native rock-salt on their tables; and they decidedly look very pretty, and have a certain distinctive flavour of their own that is ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... got a new fad—crazy to mount the hunt on white horses. I've old Sol here, and Jack has a pair of handy white ones for the two whips, but where to get a white mount for Jack stumps us. Jogged over to see if you could help ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... spendthrifts who paid fourpence for their chairs, when the music could be perfectly well heard without charge outside. It was, in fact, heard there by a large audience of bicyclers of both sexes, who stood by their wheels in numbers unknown in New York since the fad of bicycling began to pass several years ago. The lamps shed a pleasant light upon the crowd, after the long afterglow of the sunset had passed and the first stars began to pierce the clear heavens. But there ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... And we haven't met since that day at Ashley Church when I put my foot in it,—or rather on your pet protege's, the Indian's: you remember Major Atherly's tomb? And to think that all the while we didn't know that you were a public man and a great political reformer, and had a fad like this. Why, we'd have got up meetings for you, and my father would have presided,—he's always fond of doing these things,—and we'd have passed resolutions, and given you subscriptions, and Bibles, and flannel ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... death-rate low?" Said Binks of Hezabad. "Well, drains, and sewage-outfalls are "My own peculiar fad. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... our rapidly increasing tent-colony enjoyed a fad of his or her own. There was a little brown woman like the shrivelled inside of an old walnut, who believed that you should imbibe no fluid other than that found in the eating of fruits ... when she wanted a drink she never went to the pitcher, bucket, or well ... instead she sucked oranges or ate ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... old man?" said Roger. "Want something to read in bed?" He turned on the light in that alcove. Everything appeared normal. Then he noticed a book that projected an inch or so beyond the even line of bindings. It was a fad of Roger's to keep all his books in a flat row on the shelves, and almost every evening at closing time he used to run his palm along the backs of the volumes to level any irregularities left by careless browsers. He put out a hand to push the book ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... much. Perhaps they'll also send me a lump of sugar and a walnut; it's—it's a little fad ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... exaggeration," protested her informant. "I had it from Mrs. Gybbon-Smythe who never misstates anything. It was she who first told me of this engagement, and she considered that Nick was positively throwing himself away. A mere chivalrous fad she called it, and declared that it would simply ruin his prospects. For it is well known that married officers are almost invariably passed over by the powers that be. And he is regarded as so promising too. Really I am almost inclined to agree with her. Just a little more tea, dear, ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... little interval, she went on, more firmly, but with the voice of despair. "That's the pity of it. That's what makes us women nowadays turn to something else—to some other man, or to some work, some fad, some hobby, some folly, some madness—anything to fill the void in our hearts that our husbands forget to fill, because their whole attention is concentrated on business.... But I'm not going to be that wife, I ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... get the evidence samples were submitted to a London analyst, and they were invariably condemned. One of the Councillors suggested sending, with a number of well samples, a sample of the new supply "for a fad." The samples were numbered, but had no other distinguishing mark, and in due course the usual condemnations were received, including that of ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... had not jumped. That lesson, at any rate—a childish, inept, inane, insane one at best—is not set forth in the Dutchman. The only other possible one is that self-sacrifice is a worthy and beautiful thing in itself. In itself, I say, for Senta's self-sacrifice is purely a fad: she knows nothing of Vanderdecken save a rumour shaped into a primitive ballad. Such self-sacrifice is not worthy, not beautiful; but, on the contrary, a very ugly and detestable form of lunacy. In truth, not only is there no lesson in the Dutchman, but the whole idea is so absurd that ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... of the steel crowd. We've a saying that there are millionaires, and then multi-millionaires, and then Pittsburg millionaires. Anyhow, the two of them spend all their income in entertaining. It's Robbie's fad to play the perfect host—he likes to have lots of people round him. He does put up good times—only he's so very important about it, and he has so many ideas of what is proper! I guess most of his set would rather go to Mrs. Jack Warden's any day; I'd be there ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... only going to say that you do yourself no good by all those confoundedly unconventional ideas of yours. If you had your chance to-morrow, it's my belief you'd throw it away by insisting on some fantastic fad or other." ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... of these useful timepieces, for at every step at Groote Schuur a fresh solemn-faced Dutch clock ticks gravely away, to remind one how time is passing. Rhodes collected a very fine library, but he had a curious fad for typewritten copies of his favourite books, which fill an entire bookcase in the library. Rhodes paid an immense price for the splendid set of seventeenth-century Brussels tapestries in the dining-room, illustrating the "Discovery of Africa," and ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... subject about which at the time I was feeling somewhat sore. "Needs must when the Devil drives;" but as matters were, Dan and I could well have afforded domestic assistance. It rankled in my mind that to fit in with the foolish fad of old Deleglise, I the future Dickens, Thackeray and George Eliot, Kean, Macready and Phelps rolled into one, should be compelled to the performance of menial duties. On this morning of all others, ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... the fad of building air-castles. It is hard to laugh down this species of architecture—the erection of atmospheric mansions. Every one has it, in a way, but with me it had broken out in a very virulent form. It makes one feel mean, indeed, to arouse from ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... him. He was not what would be called in America a rich man, but he had made money enough to travel, to allow himself any reasonable relaxation, to cultivate a taste for art, music, literature or the drama, to indulge in any harmless fad, such as collecting etchings, china or bric-a-brac, or even to permit himself the luxury of horses. In the place of all these he found himself, at nearly sixty years of age, forced again into the sordid ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... Hill you go the more children you see. They are everywhere, and of all sizes and ages, in such reckless profusion that you no longer wonder if the world is to be depopulated through the coming of the fad of Eugenics. The Italian mother has but two thoughts—her God and her children, and it is to care for her children that she has brought from her native land the knowledge of cookery, and of those things that help to put life ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... Kirkpatrick is about the sanest I have heard. They rant and froth, contradict themselves and one another, wander from the point and never get anywhere....That would give me hope if it were not for the fact that poor California is a magnet for the cranks of every fad as well as for the riff-raff and derelicts....My other hope is that even they—that is to say the least unbalanced of them—will come in time to realize that ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... very pre-occupied; perhaps engaged to some girl whose parents objected; rather mysterious, quand meme; she had heard some one say this Mr. David Williams was a cousin or something of Vivie Warren ... what if he were in love with Vivie and she had gone away because she had some fad or other about not wanting to marry? Well! All this could be looked into some other time, if it were worth bothering about at all. Or could Williams be spoony on Honoria? After her money? He was much younger—evidently—but young men adored ripe women, and ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... more than another upon which Martha Foote prided herself it was the Senate Hotel bed coverings. Creamy, spotless, downy, they were her especial fad. "Brocade chairs, and pink lamps, and gold snake-work are all well and good," she was wont to say, "and so are American Beauties in the lobby and white gloves on the elevator boys. But it's the blankets on the beds ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... not particularly fond of it; but it's a fad of hers. She likes to wear it on state occasions. I have often wondered if it is really the Nana Sahib's ruby, as her uncle claimed. Driver, the Savoy, and remember it ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... ago carp ponds were quite a fad among farmers of the Central West. Americans have been slow to adopt the German ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... Mathieu became acquainted with the terrible break-up of the other's home. The very rooms of the house in the Avenue d'Antin, particularly the once sumptuous "cabinet," spoke of neglect and abandonment. The desire to cut a figure in society, and to carry the "fad" of the moment to extremes, ever possessed Seguin; and thus he had for a while renounced his pretended artistic tastes for certain new forms of sport—the motor-car craze, and so forth. But his only real passion was ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... of insanity, for normal people have many interests. These people are the cranks. They can talk volumes about their favorite topic, often of no importance. It may be some peculiar religion or ethics; or that Bacon wrote the plays of Shakespeare; or some health fad, or ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... and watermelon crops, a few long-shot winners at the New Orleans race-track, and the brilliant banquets given by the Indiana and Kansas citizens who compose the North Carolina Society have made the South rather a "fad" in Manhattan. Your manicure will lisp softly that your left forefinger reminds her so much of a gentleman's in Richmond, Va. Oh, certainly; but many a lady has to work ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... "Alida's fad," as they called it, would not last long; but under Agnes Mayne's wise supervision it became an unfailing source of pleasure to the girl. Winter slipped into spring, and the crocuses gave way to the summer roses, and still her interest grew daily. She even begged not to be ...
— Cicely and Other Stories • Annie Fellows Johnston
... will be asked, will not a fifty times millionaire give employment to as many men as will 500 men with $100,000 each. No. Not even if madam and himself are at home from toadying up and down through Europe in search of a princeling. (Stop this fad of the spoiled darlings of fortune and you stop a leak through which over $1,000,000,000 of American money has already disappeared. We will sustain this with facts in its proper place.) One million dollars divided among ten men will do ten times more good than ...
— Confiscation, An Outline • William Greenwood
... eunuchs' made a very reasonable objection. He had been appointed to see after the health of the lads, and had ample means at his disposal; and if they lost their health in this chase after what he could only think a superstitious fad, the despot whom he served would think nothing of making him answer with his head. His fear gives a striking side-light as to the conditions of service in such a court, where no man's head was firm between his shoulders. Why should the prince of the eunuchs have supposed that the diet ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... that old cuss?" went on Gouverneur, who, being of the true blue blood himself, had a fad of making game of the whole race of ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... shaking his head. "M' poor fam'ly! Thish'll be awful blow to m' fam'ly, Recky. They all like so mush to see me sober—always—'s their fad, Recky. Don't blame 'em, Recky, 's natural to 'em. Some peop' born that way. M' ...
— A Good Samaritan • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... "Of course, the skipper's fad soon got known for'ard. But I didn't think much about it, till one day I seed old Dan'l Dennis sitting on a locker reading. Every now and then he'd shut the book, an' look up, closing 'is eyes, an' moving his lips like a hen drinking, an' then look ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... cut in. "The tickler is the newest fad for increasing worker efficiency. Once, I read somewheres, it was salt tablets. They had salt-tablet dispensers everywhere, even in air-conditioned offices where there wasn't a moist armpit twice a year and the ...
— The Creature from Cleveland Depths • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... said Dixon, evasively. "Only that Dunster fellow is not to my mind, and I think he potters the master sadly with his fid- fad ways." ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... actually going to let thirty-five thousand a year slip through your fingers, just to pursue a fad?" ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the headpiece. "Put it on," he said, and I sat staring at the screen of the psychomat. I suppose everyone is familiar with the Horsten psychomat; it was as much a fad a few years ago as the ouija board a century back. Yet it isn't just a toy; sometimes, much as the ouija board, it's a real aid to memory. A maze of vague and colored shadows is caused to drift slowly ...
— The Worlds of If • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... the deeps of an emotion, the emotion of compassion for misfortune, as such. This is really a very important point. Collectivism is not an intellectual fad, even if erroneous, but a passionate protest and aspiration: it arises as a secret of the heart, a dream of the injured feeling, long before it shapes itself as a definite propaganda at all. The intellectual philosophies ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... "It's a fad of my uncle's," Gerald replied. "Since his accident he amuses himself in all sorts ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... robbed of your rightful fame, Clinging to Truth in a truthless land in the name of the ancient Name; Generous, courteous, gentle, patient under the yoke, Decent (hemmed in a harem land ye were ever a one-wife folk); Royal and brave and ancient—haply an hour has struck When the new fad-fangled peoples shall weary of raking muck, And turning from coward counsels and loathing the parish lies, In shame and sackcloth offer up the only sacrifice. Then thou who hast been neglected, who hast ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... is sometimes dismissed contemptuously as a pacifist fad or an unattainable ideal of universal brotherhood, it is as well to set the matter in its true light. It is true that the inventor of Esperanto, Dr. Zamenhof, of Warsaw, is an idealist in the best sense of the word, and that his language was directly inspired by his ardent wish to remove ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... toward country living, now so far flung as to be a characteristic of American life, is not just a fad. It has been a slow steady growth and has behind it a tradition of a century and more. When our larger commercial centers first began to change from villages to compact urban communities, there were those who found even these miniature cities far too congested. ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... all atheists. For at bottom, atheism is either a fad or a trade or a fatuity. And whether the one or the other, it is a sham more pernicious than the worst. To the young mind, it is a shibboleth of cheap culture; to the shrewd and calculating mind, to such orators as Khalid heard, it is a trade most remunerative; ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... to the little group of friends who now approached and joined them. "Captain Forsythe is trying to persuade me it is a legitimate part of our slumming plan to take in murder trials, uncle," she said lightly, addressing the foremost of the new-comers. "Just because it's a fad of his! Speaking of this acquaintance or friend of yours, Mr. Steele,—you are something of a criminologist, too, are you not, ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... mademoiselle. The Mont was turned into a show—to see it or any part of it, everyone had to pay toll. On the great fete-days, when St. Michel wore his crown, the gold ran like water into the monks' treasury. It was still then a fashionable religious fad to have a mass said for one's dead, out here among the clouds and the sea. Well, try to imagine fifty masses all dumped on the altar together; that is, one mass would be scrambled through, no names would be mentioned, no one save le bon Dieu himself knew ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... visit them. And when I happened to mention, for something to say, that the Archdeacon had an eccentric cousin in America who was afraid of hotels and even of visiting at their house because of a fad about burglars, she offered to give him the better of her two spare rooms whenever he came to England. I never thought he'd accept, but he did, only he would insist ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... "They use it to darken their eyebrows—women, I mean. From what I understand, it comes and goes in popularity. Right now, it is ultra-popular. A new, uh, fad originating in Italy, ...
— Expediter • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... not care to return to the old," she said. "There are plenty of women to do Beatrice and Viola and Lady Macbeth. I am modern. I believe in the modern and I believe in America. I don't care to start a fad for Ibsen or Shaw. I would like to develop ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... were another pair, whom Ransom, unacquainted with certain chapters of Verena's history, perceived without surprise to be Mrs. Burrage and her insinuating son. Apparently their interest in Miss Tarrant was more than a momentary fad, since—like himself—they had made the journey from New York to hear her. There were other figures, unknown to our young man, here and there, in the semicircle; but several places were still empty (one of which was of course reserved for Olive), and it occurred to ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... wrong side of fifty. His grizzly beard, grown comparatively long, his closely-trimmed mustachios, and his head-cloth, worn like a turban, made me take him at first sight for a Moslem. He has a cunning eye, which does not belie his reputation. His fad is to take money and to do no work for it; he now wants us to pay for the clearing of an uncleared path. The villagers fear him on account of certain fetish-practices which, in plain English, mean poison; and he keeps up their awe by everywhere displaying ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... prate of plates and prints And "quick developers" before, In spite of not unfrequent hints That these in time become a bore; But then this photographic craze Seemed little but a foolish fad, While now its very latest phase Appears to me ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 20, 1892 • Various
... me," he commented, "it certainly sounds to me like you've got the right dope on this party. But listen, Mr. Green, how do you figure in this here party's fad for getting himself manicured as a part of the lay-out—I can see it ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... mentis gratissimus error [Lat.]; fool's paradise. [causes of misjudgment. 2] esprit de corps, party spirit, partisanship, clannishness, prestige. [causes of misjudgment. 3] bias, bigotry, warp, twist; hobby, fad, quirk, crotchet, partiality, infatuation, blind side, mote in the eye. [causes of misjudgment. 4] one-sided views, one-track mind, partial views, narrow views, confined views, superficial views, one- sided ideas, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... not have been a miserable one, for the Malletts made it a charming festival with inspired ideas for gifts and a delightful party on Christmas Day, when Caroline was allowed to appear. She refused to say that she was better; she had never been ill; it was a mere fad of the doctor and her sisters; she supposed they were tired of her and wanted a little peace. However, she continued to absorb large quantities of strengthening food, beef tea, meat jelly and heady ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... a great "fad," and while not quite so popular, are pretty enough to deserve mention. A table is too often confused in its arrangement of color on account of its changes of courses. This can be entirely done away with by adopting some simple color scheme. A luncheon, or tea, is easier to serve in this ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... the fair. The experiment, radical at best, has failed more than once. The style of this essay is slightly wanting in ease and continuity, yet possesses the elements of force. "The Traitor", by Agnes E. Fairfield, is a short story of artistic development but questionable sentiment. The present fad of peace-preaching should not be allowed to influence a writer of sense into glorifying a socialistic, unpatriotic fanatic who refuses to uphold the institutions that his fathers before him created with their toil, blood, and sacrifice. It is ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... narrowed all the rest of Germany. There is a spirit of diseased egoism, which at last makes all things spin upon one pin-point in the brain. It is a spirit expressed more often in the slangs than in the tongues of men. The English call it a fad. I do not know what the Italians call it; the ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton
... having made themselves familiar with the matter, there is a common and, I think, a widespread impression among people generally that Unitarianism is a new-fangled notion, a modern fad, a belief held only by a few, who are one side of the main currents of religious ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... English labourers will never drink oatmeal-water unless they are paid to do it. If they are paid extra beer-money and oatmeal water is made for them gratis, some will, of course, imbibe it, especially if they see that thereby they may obtain little favours from their employer by yielding to his fad. By drinking the crotchet perhaps they may get a present now and then-food for themselves, cast-off clothes for their families, and so on. For it is a remarkable feature of human natural history, the desire to proselytise. ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... yet, the scholarly output of the high schools, and equip them for leadership in society, and the point is clear. It is a new problem but coming to be a very real one. Going to college is getting to be the fashion—almost a fad in some places. We all know that a goodly number of students, boys and girls alike, enter the universities, East and West, every year who have no characteristics of leadership, who are not fitted for real university work, either in academic equipment, maturity of judgment, point of view, ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... half-past eight, Monsieur Gerardy arrived. All through the winter amateur plays had been in great favor, and Gerardy had become, in a sense, a fad. He was in great demand. Consequently, he gave himself airs. His method was that of severity; he posed as a task-master, relentless, never pleased, hustling the amateur actors about without ceremony, scolding and brow-beating. He was ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... "None of your business." She went up to the new selectors' floor, and found the plan running as smoothly as if it had been part of the plant's system for years. The elevator whisked her up to the top floor, where she met the plant's latest practical fad, the new textile chemist—a charming youth, disguised in bone-rimmed glasses, who did the honors of his little laboratory with all the manner of a Harvard host. This was the fusing oven for silks. Here was the drying oven. This delicate scale ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... He is worried in business, and kept on the keen jump all the year round. Then he has a vacation, say for a couple of weeks or a month, in summer, and he goes off into the woods with his fishing kit, or canoeing outfit, or his amateur photographic set, or whatever the tools of his particular fad may be. He goes to a book-store and buys up a lot of paper-covered novels. There is no use of buying an expensive book, because he would spoil it before he gets back, and he would be sure to leave it in some shanty. So he takes those paper-covered ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... neither read nor write, and for the life of him could not see what good came of it. He had always got on well without it, and when the school was first started he and many others shook their heads gravely over it, and regarded it as a fad of the parson's. Still, as it only affected children too young to be useful in the boats, they offered no active opposition, and in time the school had come to be regarded as chiefly a place where the youngsters were kept ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... her living," Doris said, calmly, though her heart beat quicker. "These fad things are often successes, financially, and ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... the Homer Young Company's sewing machine the demand and supply for women's comfort was again called out in the combined dressing table and sewing machine, a good invention for flats, the fad of the day, that was designed ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... would only give up their Irish fad—and bring in a bill to make it penal for any parson to hold any office in a public school or university or to presume to teach outside the pulpit—they ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... appearance of careless gayety. She entered her room, drew back the curtains to admit the light, deftly touched her hair at the mirror, and sat down in a rocking chair. She took up a book, an American fad built upon a London failure, and was aimlessly turning the leaves when ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... intermingle, however, with the greatest friendliness; and among these "Prince" Gregoriev was effusively received. It was less than a month before he was given to understand that, though a fine dilettantism in any of the arts is a charming fad, a professional career for a Prince with a fortune like his was not to be seriously considered for one moment. To the surprise even of Piotr, this attitude amused rather than angered Ivan; and, his summer's work polished and sent away, he smiled in his sleeve and ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... the professor had given me no assistance at all. He would not be interested in my cases, and would not enter the empty room in his house in Chelsea where we had had so many discussions. It was a fad of his that he could think more clearly in this room, which had only three chairs and an old writing table in it, yet perhaps I ought not to call it a fad, remembering the results of some of ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... has come to stay. It has nothing to do with superstition at all. It's part of Advanced Thought — quite scientific, you know, while Spiritualism was just a fad. ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... performance, however, for a new fad took possession of her the very next day. She memorised the role of Lady Macbeth, built a stage in the ballroom at the top of the house, and, locking herself in, rehearsed the part, for three days uninterruptedly, dressed ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... and Miss Foster went on with the business of weighing themselves. That was in line with the latest fad. It was always something or other, and physical culture was in the air at this time with every other girl in Gloucester, so far as I could see—either Indian-club swinging or dumb-bell drilling, long walks, and things of that kind, and telling how much better they felt after ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... apples everywhere Will doubtless make up half the fare On Elsie's future menu pad, As they are Elsie's greatest fad. So if you'd keep that fact in mind In shower presents—'twould be kind; Send it to me the day before And come on Saturday ...
— Entertaining Made Easy • Emily Rose Burt
... said on the recent fashion—not to say fad—of suppressing in the printed play the traditional list of "Dramatis Personae." Bjoernson, in some of his later plays, was, so far as I am aware, the first of the moderns to adopt this plan. I do not know whether his example has influenced ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... when they visit Paris, and they'd been talking of running over next day with Lord Robert West, to look at a wonderful new motor car for sale there—one that a Rajah had ordered to be made for him, but died before it was finished. Lady Mountstuart always has one new fad every six months at least, and her latest is to drive a motor car herself. Lord Robert is a great expert—can make a motor, I believe, or take it to pieces and put it together again; and he'd been insisting for days that she would be able to drive this Rajah car. She'd promised, that if not too ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... have followed any counsel even if he had been so misguided as to offer it; they did not come to hear him "preach" in the full sense of the word,—they came to hear him "say things,"- -witty observations on the particular fad of the hour—sharp polemics on the political situation—or what was still more charming, neat remarks in the style of Rochefoucauld or Montaigne, which covered and found excuses for vice while seemingly condemning viciousness. There is nothing perhaps so satisfactory to persons ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... restaurant business. If they did, they would probably be engaged in it instead of in their different trades. All experiments along this line of which we have heard have failed. The so-called "democratic idea," purely a fad, ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... I should have been able to get them out again?" said Cuthbert, with all the lightness to which she objected. "Don't you think that I could have pacified the schoolmistress? There is one thing that I must explain. My fancy for teaching was a fad, undertaken for its own sake, which led me accidentally at first to Mrs. Smith's school. I did not know that your sisters were there until I had made my ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... smoking-room. I have no books, therefore I need no library; I indulge in no chemical pursuits, therefore I need no laboratory; my music-room is the forest in summer and the chimney in winter, while my studio, according to the latest aesthetic fad—I think that is the ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... presses were founded to prove the superiority of the esoteric few; new criticism—new because honest and intelligent—was launched; everything suddenly became fin-de-siecle in the passing catchword of the day borrowed from Paris; every fad of the Continent was adopted; but no matter what it might be, the incident, or work, or publication that roused any interest at all was the signal for the clash of arms, for the row and the rush. Everybody had to be in revolt, ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... got an elegant pair of scissors for mother, marked down because of a flaw in the steel, but she's near-sighted, and she don't want to use 'em anyway—it's just to feel she has another pair. Scissors is mother's fad—sort of born in her, I guess, for my mother's mother was a kind of dressmaker. She didn't have robes and mantucks over her door, you know,—she was too swell for that,—she went out by the day! And this is a real bronze ...
— Her Own Way - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... of samplers has become rather a fad in these days, and as they are almost exclusively of New England origin, it gives an opportunity of acquaintance with the little Puritan girl which is not without its charm. As most of their samplers were signed with their ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... fad of his," the priest went on smilingly, "and I have fallen in with it for the sake of a quiet life; so that when we do have company—that is to say, once in a blue moon—we display no manners ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... reading matter, from the table in your dentist's waiting room, first broke into the paradise of the society column by way of this resort. For a woman with money and the press-agent type of mind it is not a difficult thing to accomplish. One must think of sensational things to do—invent a new fad in dress, or send one's dog riding each day in a special wheel chair, or bring down one's own private dancing instructor or golf instructor at $5,000 for the season. Above all, one must be nice to the correspondents of newspapers. ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... stenographers or clerks or housekeepers. They come to the settlements, where they receive a good salary and keep their social position, which they feel they could not do if they worked. You see it's rather a fad to be a social settlement worker, and most of the women couldn't make their living to save their soul at work that really took trained brains or ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... however, appealed to the public, and became a sort of fashionable fad. It was commended, and after Parliament had voted ten thousand pounds toward it, it was everywhere accepted as the correct thing. The charter was given in June, 1732, and a suitable design was not wanting for the corporation ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... Fashion says, "The latest fad is the wearing of large daggers in the hair, which renders a lady quite dangerous ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... malignant ulcers, and that many strong men who escape dying there return as wrecks to their own countries. It is also true that the natives of the Solomons are a wild lot, with a hearty appetite for human flesh and a fad for collecting human heads. Their highest instinct of sportsmanship is to catch a man with his back turned and to smite him a cunning blow with a tomahawk that severs the spinal column at the base of the brain. It is equally true that on some islands, such as Malaita, the profit and loss ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... She's got a taste of it and she'll thirst for more. And, for all that unsophistication, she is a clever kid. She'll get Height into a costume play before luncheon is over and that'll go a long way to cinch a hit for 'The Purple Slipper.' He's made a fad of not playing costume, and all the women in New York will flock to see him in velvet and lace. She bargained that fish Corbett out of four hundred dollars in the preliminary costume deal, and if anybody has to send her home it will have to be ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... flag to the principle of economic independence. You're looking for a girl who will marry for a living. There are lots of them. Pretty, attractive girls, too. Your difficulty is, you want that sort. You really believe all girls are that sort at heart, and you think my independence a fad—something I shall get ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... "because we couldn't most of us collect enough crests to fill a book. Post-marks were much easier. We used to arrange them according to the different counties they were in. Miss Harper encouraged that fad; she said it ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... which Jonson and Shakespeare figured, on opposite sides, but if allusions in Jonson's play the "Poetaster" have been properly interpreted, their friendly relations were not deeply disturbed. The trouble began in the first place by the London of 1600 suddenly rushing into a fad for the company of boy players, recruited chiefly from the choristers of the Chapel Royal, and known as the "Children of the Chapel." They had been acting at the new theater in Blackfriars since 1597, and their vogue became so great as actually to threaten Shakespeare's company ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... use your common-sense. That fad about locking the gates is a pure and simple whim on the mother's part. Of course we'll humor it, but not to the extent of waking up old Tester. Come, Kitty, you shall give the old man any amount ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... boldness and freedom. There is no consenting estimate of this poet. {547} Many think that his so-called poems are not poems at all, but simply a bad variety of prose; that there is nothing to him beyond a combination of affectation and indecency; and that the Whitman culte is a passing "fad" of a few literary men, and especially of a number of English critics like Rossetti, Swinburne, Buchanan, etc., who, being determined to have something unmistakably American—that is, different from any thing else—in writings from this side of the water before ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... close and sinking coyly down over her ear. He was only a man folk, he was in the way, incapable of understanding this problem of fashion, and Mother almost slapped him one evening for suggesting that it "wouldn't make such a gosh-awful lot of difference if she didn't find some new fad to ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... our mirth. Warrior, person, and fellow—no more: We must knight our dogs to get any lower. Brave Knights Kennelers then shall be, Noble Knights of the Golden Flea, Knights of the Order of St. Steboy, Knights of St. Gorge and Sir Knights Jawy. God speed the day when this knighting fad Shall go to the dogs and the ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... Legislature of an incorrigible city Mr. Ames spoke two languages. If he had mastered twenty he never could have equalled Lapointe, who in my recollection of a long conversation some years ago could genially and grandly boast that the fad for reforming the City of Montreal would never make much headway so long as he remained boss of the French section in Council. Lapointe was Montreal's Tammany. He held Montreal under his patronage and executive thumb before ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... first of all, a state of mind almost approaching panic in regard to it; and, second, a preference for it as a diagnosis, as so much more distingue than such plebeian names as "colic," "indigestion," "enteritis," or the plain old Saxon "belly-ache," which has reached almost the proportions of a fad. It is certain that nowadays physicians have almost as frequently to refuse to operate on those who are clamoring for the distinction, as to urge a needed operation upon those unwilling ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... bear this! I wish some one would give me L150,000 to carry out my pet fad. I'd bear it, and go on bearing it, quite gallantly, ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... her small, cold hand on Kelley's wrist. "Don't mind my daughter. She's got this new fad of speaking her mind. She's a good daughter—even if ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... possessed with a passionate desire to learn the game of ping-pong. When all the world was playing table-tennis eight or ten years ago, King viewed the game with disgust. He thought it utterly childish, uninteresting, and admirably illustrative of all the idiotic qualities that go to make up a fad. But for the last six months, King said, he frequently wakes at night and sits up in bed and yearns with all his soul for a ping-pong set. He was, of course, ashamed to speak to others about it. But if he could find ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... from the Chicago Chronicle of 1897, yellowed and framed and recounting in sonorous phrases ("pulchritudinous epidermis" is featured frequently) that the society folk of Chicago have taken up tattooing as a fad, following the lead of New York's Four Hundred, who followed the lead of London's most aristocratic circles; and that Prof. Al Herman, known from Madagascar to Sandy Hook as "Dutch," was the leading artist of the tattoo needle ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... the ship was fit for any eye to light on, like a conscious beauty going forth conquering and to conquer. I doubt the crew grumbled and d——d a little under their breath, for the process was tedious; yet it was not only a fad, but necessary, and the deck-officer who habitually neglected it might possibly rise to an emergency, but was scarcely otherwise worth his salt. In my humble judgment, he had better ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... took a strong fancy to each other, and met and talked a great deal. As I just said now, spiritualism was a fad at that time, and Powers was pregnant with marvels which he had either seen or heard of, and which he was always ready to attempt to explain on philosophical grounds. My father would listen to it all, and both believe it and not believe it. He felt, I suppose, that Powers ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... should be no marriage between his son and Grace? "Of course they'll be married," said Mrs Grantly. "It's all very well for you to say that, my dear; but the whole family are so queer that there is no knowing what the girl may do. She may take up some other fad now, and refuse him point blank." "She has never taken up any fad," said Mrs Grantly, who now mounted almost to wrath in defence of her future daughter-in-law, "and you are wrong to say that she has. ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... the younger man. "I know all about the free swindles. This isn't one of them. It's just a fad of mine." ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... with the assumption that what they call the "silver craze" is a mere fad, temporary and local; that the advocates of bimetallism are confined chiefly to the United States, and to the western part of it, and that, if they are thoroughly defeated at the November election, the discussion will ...
— If Not Silver, What? • John W. Bookwalter
... that, too." Fixing his black-rimmed glasses more firmly on his big and bulging nose, Mr. Garrott looked at me closely. "In my country slumming has become a fad with a—a certain type of restless women who have to make their living, I suppose. But I wouldn't fancy ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... about Thoreau, and the passage in THE WEEK, is perhaps a fad, but it is sincere and stable. I am still of the same mind five years later; did you observe that I had said 'modern' authors? and will you observe again that this passage touches the very joint of our division? It is one that appeals to me, deals with that part of life that I think ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... don't think you're quite alive to what it is that is growing up about you. Flippancy is out of place. I abominate flippancy." ("Well, dash it, it's my house!" Sabre thought.) "This Garden Home is not a speculation. It's not a fad. It's not a joke. What is it? You're thinking it's a damned nuisance. You're right. ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... indeed an unfurnished home. Good books are the fad now. They are everywhere in evidence in the up-to-date colored home. They are exhibited almost as hand-painted china was. In every inventory or collection one finds a Bible, a ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... dash of culture, caught the public fancy at once. The "Tatler" was the theme in every coffeehouse, and in the drawing-rooms, as well. Those who understood it laughed and passed it along to others who pretended they understood, and so it became the fad. Then the anonymity lent the charm of mystery—who could it be who was into all the secrets, and knew the world ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... destination, and seven months were passed in the gay capital. The Parisians received the show with as much enthusiasm as did the Londoners, and in Paris as well as in the English metropolis everything American became a fad during the stay of the "Wild West." Even American books were read—a crucial test of faddism; and American curios were displayed in all the shops. Relics from American plain and mountain—buffalo-robes, bearskins, buckskin suits embroidered with porcupine quills, Indian blankets, woven mats, ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... at the end of my pencil and waited, but nothing happened. Pretty soon my mind began to wander off on other things, decidedly unghostly and material things, such as my wife's shopping and how on earth I was going to cure her of her alarming tendency to take every new fad that came along and work it to death. But I realized that would never get me any place, so I went back ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... on a bright Sabbath afternoon in mid-autumn when Miss Janet Cragiemuir left her home in K Street and set out leisurely upon her walk to Bethany Church, where she revelled in her latest fad. She had recently taken a class in the Chinese Sunday-school. The good work began at three o'clock, and as it was nearly that hour, groups of Chinamen stood out on the sidewalk chattering as only Celestials can. They greeted Miss ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... year or so half the police of the metropolis were scarce sufficient to protect the House from one clamorous aspect of the new problem. The members went about Westminster with an odd, new sense of being beset. A good proportion of us kept up the pretence that the Vote for Women was an isolated fad, and the agitation an epidemic madness that would presently pass. But it was manifest to any one who sought more than comfort in the matter that the streams of women and sympathisers and money forthcoming marked far deeper and wider things than an idle fancy for the franchise. The existing ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... miller, "you want to coot my boat to pieces for some new fad o' yourn. Nay, lad, ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... noticed it," replied "his ludship." "Not so abroad, by no means, my man. In fact, on the home lines in Lunnon, it is quite the thing, you know, for the quality to make a fad of locomotive parties, and the accommodations for their comfort are quite superior to this, ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman |
