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More "Whim" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... North. The following day they walked into the Hudson's Bay Post to apprize the white man of their errand, so that there might be no suspicion of their blood-guiltiness, not knowing that by a strange whim of fortune Kalleligak and Anatalik were already there and were seated in one room while they were ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... she did not tease Tom in the least, but deliberately bewildered him with her arts and coquetry—which set Elizabeth to wondering what her motive could be—but perhaps she had none at all, and was only obeying the whim of the moment. ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... and there was a growing vivacity and sparkle to him. "That is my quality—a power to charm, a power to achieve, a power to triumph. Well, I choose now to win you again for myself. It is my whim. To rekindle a love which one has lost is a test of any man's power, n'est-ce pas? You are fond of me. I see it. Am I not right, ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... hard-hearted tyrants. They despise the weak and demand that everything be just so. Nothing suits them except what they do. Unless you eulogize whatever they say or do, unless you adapt yourself to their slightest whim, they become angry with you. They are that way because, as St. Paul says, they "think themselves to be something," they think they know all ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... slave, he might have become a very unyielding or a very heedless despot. Making him her slave, she kept him at the very height of bliss. This king of railways and purchaser of statesmen, this man who made or wrecked the fortunes of others by his whim, was absolutely governed by a ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... organized aristocracy had its revenge—it had its will of me, after all. There came to me, as there had to my mother, an imperial order. In punishment for my fancies and vagaries, I was condemned to marry a certain nobleman. That was the whim of the new emperor, Ferdinand, the degenerate. He took the throne when I was but sixteen years of age. He chose for me a degenerate mate from his own ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... mothers there are who reason thus—"Oh, the child will grow out of this folly. 'Tis a mere whim—a youthful fancy, not worthy of respect,"—forgetting or shutting their eyes to the fact, that, light though the whim or fancy may be in their eyes, it has positive weight to those who cherish it, and the thwarting of ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... was nothing but the whim of a moment. But its pessimism cut deeper than he imagined: and Olivier, with his subtle perception, felt it intuitively. Beneath the Mooch of their acquaintance there was another different Mooch, who was in many ways exactly the opposite. His apparent nature was the result ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... filled the post than the earliest of them all, the kindly and judicious MARK LEMON? Had not he and clever HENRY MAYHEW, and Mr. Printer LAST, and EBENEZER LANDELLS, my earliest engraver, foregathered first with me in furtherance of the 'new work of wit and whim,' embellished with cuts and caricatures, to ...
— Punch, Volume 101, Jubilee Issue, July 18, 1891 • Various
... help making a study of that singular man. He appeared to me the marked type of a class which ought to exist somewhere but which was unknown to me. One could never tell whether his outbursts were the despair of a man sick of life, or the whim of a spoiled child. ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... demon encased within the hood obeyed his slightest whim. She glanced at the square, ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... she said, "is oddity. For instance, I do not mix up affections with politics; let us talk politics,—business, if you will,—the rest can come later. However, it is not really oddity nor a whim that forbids me to mingle ill-assorted colors and put together things that have no affinity, and compels me to avoid discords; it is my natural instinct as an artist. We women have politics of ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... preferred for the afternoon, reserving the more elaborate satin pumps for evening wear. Long white silk or kid gloves and a light-colored afternoon wrap complete the correct dress for the afternoon dance. The hat, of course, depends on Fashion's whim at ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... be laid by the Romans at his door, since he wasted the lives of men alike for public service and for private whim, as when he decided to expel the hunting spectacles from the city. Consequently some persons attempted to carry them on in the country outside and perished in the ruins of their theatres, which had been loosely ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... southward and flows in a meandering course as far as Angouleme, receiving on the way the waters of the Tardouere (Tardoire), and with it almost completely inclosing a considerable tract of land. At Angouleme, the old whim regaining supremacy, the Charente again bends suddenly westward, and finally empties into the ocean below Rochefort, through a narrow arm of the sea known as the Pertuis d'Antioche. The tract of country included between the river and the shores of the Bay of Biscay, comprising a large ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... about him of decent birth, decent education and upbringing, but such signs were blurred and almost obliterated by the habits which had degraded him. He would have been dead or in prison or the poorhouse years ago if Carmen had not chosen to rescue him, more through a whim than from genuine charity. Her mother's people had been English, and somehow she had not cared to see an Englishman thrown to the dogs in this country which was not hers nor his. In days when her word was law for the infatuated and brutal man whose death anniversary it now was, ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... baths to-day that Caesar escorted the lady home. Unfortunately old Quintus Lutatius had come back from his villa in Campania, in a whim of jealousy. He was not expected for three days. There was a fine tumult. The old fool called for his sword and his slaves, cursed his wife, and swore that he would cut ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... not to recognize that fact. Just listen! You want me to let you go, you say. Well, I will let you go—for one small consideration on your part. You've never paid that debt of yours. You will pay it now—in full, freely, both arms round my neck. Come, I've a right to ask that much. It's just a whim that ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... going to appeal to her, since Grace will not. 'Tis she who holds the balance in her hands—not he. While she's got the will to lead him astray he will follow—poor, unpractical, lofty-notioned dreamer—and how long she'll do it depends upon her whim. Did ye ever hear anything about her character before she came ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... finer feelings. Partly through the workings of a softened heart, and partly to make what was then all the rage, a scene or sensation, she resolved instantly to get her admitted to the presence of the Duke—nay, to present her herself. She was well known to be a favorite, and whatever whim of hers took place, no matter how extravagant, was sure to meet his hearty concurrence. She desired Ellen to rise and follow her; and the poor creature's eyes streamed with tears as she invoked a fervent ...
— Ellen Duncan; And The Proctor's Daughter - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... ready on time, and the dinner-hour, instead of being a fixed time beneath her sway, seemed to become a variable point, according to the lady's whim. In the observance of the breakfast-hour she was equally erratic, and on several trying occasions Brinley was on the verge of the dilemma of either failing to keep an appointment in town or going without his morning meal. Sometimes the coffee would come to the table a thin, amber ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... sit for portraits seem to lean toward portraits in which they can recognise their own features when they have commissioned an artist to paint them. A man will insist upon even the most brilliant artist painting him in trousers, for instance, instead of in petticoats, however the artist-whim may direct otherwise; and a woman is likely to insist that the artist who paints her portrait shall maintain some recognised shade of brown or blue or gray when he paints her eye, instead of indulging ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... is spoiled to death! She fancies herself an invalid, lies around, does nothing but read Charlotte Braeme and Bertha M. Clay—has every foolish whim gratified, and, in fact, I don't see how ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... a little, pursy, pompous, passionate semicircular somebody, with a red nose, a thick scull, (sic) a long purse, and a strong sense of his own consequence. With the best heart in the world, he contrived, through a predominant whim of contradiction, to earn for himself, among those who only knew him superficially, the character of a curmudgeon. Like many excellent people, he seemed possessed with a spirit of tantalization, which might easily, at a casual glance, have been mistaken for malevolence. To every ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... his promises. Now if he is able to promise you this also, that to him will come the victory in the war, no one could deny that the course you are taking is to your advantage. For it is great folly not to gratify every whim of him who is to become master. But if this outcome lies in uncertainty, and no man in the world is competent to guarantee the decision of fortune, consider what sort of misfortunes your haste is seeking to attain. For if the Goths overcome their adversaries in ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... insipid. In avoiding the fashion of his day Mr. Watts seems to me to have slipped into an abstraction. The mere leaving out every accent that marks a dress as belonging to a particular epoch does not save it from going out of fashion. It is in the execution that the great artists annihilated the whim of temporary taste, and made the hoops of old time beautiful, however slim the season's fashions. To be of all time the artist must begin by being of his own time; and if he would find the eternal type he must seek ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... matter of course, by properly educated feeling. Hili-li is a kingdom, but its people must, from what I can learn, have as pure and perfect a constitutional liberty as it is possible for mankind to enjoy—not liberty as the accident of a royal whim, but such a perfect liberty as the people of England are approaching, and in which by another century they will be able to indulge themselves. They claim that as liberty does not mean license, so government of self by feeling and not by reason need not mean license—and never will mean license when ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... said carelessly, "you manage so cleverly that I am beginning to trust implicitly to your guidance and knowledge. But there is one thing that puzzles me. It must be more than a whim which makes you think that Herr Renwick will follow ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... anything about his past, nor even about his present life, nor from what source he derived his fortune,—obviously a large one, inasmuch as he was able to gratify his every whim and lived in the greatest luxury whenever he visited America,—nor where he resided when at home, nor where was the port from which his schooner hailed, and none would have ventured to question him upon any of these points so little ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... pigeons, white, and blue-grey, with a lovely mingling and interplay of metallic lustres on their feathery throats, but with none of that almost grotesque obtrusion of over-driven individuality of kind, in which the graciousness of common beauty is now sacrificed to the whim of the fashion the vulgar fancier initiates, picked up the crumbs under the windows of lady Margaret's nursery, or flew hither and thither among the roofs with ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... certain Mrs. Cotton, who had largely contributed to whitewashing and otherwise ornamenting the church, had taken it into her head that the soul of a favourite daughter had passed into a robin. The Dean and Chapter indulged her in the whim, and she was allowed to keep a kind of aviary in her private seat. 'Just by the high altar is a small pew hung with green damask, with curtains of the same, and a small corner cupboard painted, carved, and gilt, for birds in one corner.'[889] In Ripon Cathedral, ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... to be understood that a child must have everything that it desires and every whim and wish to receive special recognition by the parents. Children can soon be made to understand the necessity of obedience, and punishment can easily be brought about by teaching them self-denial. Deny them the use ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... would not go well with the idea of a holy palmer. COCOA, PHOENIX, and ARECA, one after the other, went in at his eyes and through his head; none of them pleased him. His wife, however, who in her smiling way had fallen in with his whim, helped him out of his difficulty. She was the daughter of nonconformist parents in Lancashire, and had been encouraged when a child to read a certain old-fashioned book called The Pilgrim's Progress, which her husband had never seen. He did not read it now, but accepting ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... 'it's both seemlier and cheaper,' he used to say: 'it's provident management'! He never relinquished this fatal idea to the end of his days; indeed, it was his ruin. But, then, what entertainment it gave him! He never denied himself the satisfaction of a single whim. Among other freaks, he once began building, after his own fancy, so immense a family coach that, in spite of the united efforts of the peasants' horses, drawn together from the whole village, as well as their owners, it came to grief ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... times as strong as Tete Rouge. Henry's face was roughened by winds and storms; Tete Rouge's was bloated by sherry cobblers and brandy toddy. Henry talked of Indians and buffalo; Tete Rouge of theaters and oyster cellars. Henry had led a life of hardship and privation; Tete Rouge never had a whim which he would not gratify at the first moment he was able. Henry moreover was the most disinterested man I ever saw; while Tete Rouge, though equally good-natured in his way, cared for nobody but himself. Yet we would not have lost him on any account; he admirably served ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... at the elasticity of my character. "Well, in the first place, I don't think my ideal would speak like that," said she. "He would be a harder, sterner man, not so ready to adapt himself to a silly girl's whim. But, above all, he must be a man who could do, who could act, who could look Death in the face and have no fear of him, a man of great deeds and strange experiences. It is never a man that I should love, but always the glories he ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... focus point of all this natural glory, is scarcely a mile long, and narrow. It may be vivid blue and steel-blue and milky-blue, and half a dozen shades of green and pink all within twice as many minutes, according to the whim of the breeze, the changing atmosphere, and the clouding of the sun. Often it suggests nothing so much as a pool of dull-green paint. Or it may present a reversed image of mountains, glaciers, and sky in their own coloring. Or at sunset it may turn lemon or purple ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... and really took pleasure in the tiresome business. She assured Beauclerc it was not the least trouble, and he thought she looked beautiful when she said so. Whosoever of the male kind, young, and of ardent, not to say impatient, spirit, has ever been aided and abetted in a sudden whim, assisted, forwarded, above all, sympathised with, through all the changes and chances of a reigning fancy, may possibly conceive how charming, and more charming every hour, perhaps minute, Helen became in Beauclerc's ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... begins to do its disastrous work. Edward, who has always indulged himself in every whim and has no other standard of conduct, falls madly in love with the charming Ottilie, who has a passion for making herself useful and serving everybody. She adapts herself to Edward, fails to see what a shabby specimen of a man he really is, humors his whims, and worships ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... wakes at the even chime, The appetite long past its prime. The supper-room at the Club looks dim. What shall I "peck" for an epicure's whim? Roe, Bloater's Roe! That's the brief repast To tickle the palate, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 23, 1892 • Various
... a sudden whim of Klaas Verlaan's to make his ward a child of Keizersgracht; but it brought him in more ducats than he cared to ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... which I did not break, the memory of her wrongs brought the crimson to her cheeks and the anger to her eyes. Suddenly she burst forth passionately: "The King is the King! What is a subject's will to clash with his? What weighs a woman's heart against his whim? Little cared he that my hand held back, grew cold at the touch of that other hand in which he would have put it. What matter if my will was against that marriage? It was but the will of a girl, and must be broken. All my world was with the King; I, who stood alone, was ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... against the persons of the drama. On the other hand, they show themselves insensible to all genuine illusion, that is, of entering vividly into the spirit of the fable: for them Ralph, however heroically and chivalrously he may conduct himself, is always Ralph their apprentice; and in the whim of the moment they take upon them to demand scenes which are quite inconsistent with the plan of the piece that has been commenced. In short, the views and demands with which poets are often oppressed by a prosaical ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... She treated them all with a gaiety that made her face a fascinating study while she talked, and pointed them, as it were, with all the little poises and expressions and reserves which are commonly a feminine result of considerable social training. Kendal, entering into her whim, inwardly compared her with an acknowledged successful girl of the season with whom he had sat out two dances the night before in Eaton Square, to the successful girl's disadvantage. Finding something lacking in that, ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... form of a three-leaved clover and neatly sewed on with a waxed thread. The bat is like that used in baseball but lighter and shorter. The corners are usually three in number, with a home- base, making four, but this varies according to the whim of the players or the locality where the game is played. Ordinarily with three corners the distances are about the same as between the bases in baseball. In place of home-base there is a rectangle marked on the ground where the striker ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... with the great, With whom the whim doth always run, That Heaven all creatures doth create For their behoof beneath the sun— Count they four feet, or two, or none. If one should dare the fact dispute, He's straight set down a stupid brute. Now, grant it so,—such lords among, What should be done, or said, or sung? ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... mercy to any one just then, for you and your pestilent, meddlesome crew fought like fiends, and cost me several good men that I could ill spare. Your gratitude, therefore," and I thought I detected an echo of something very like scorn in his voice, "is due solely to my boy Pedro, whose whim of saving you I did not even then care to thwart. But enough of this; you are my guest, and may, if you will, become my friend. I hope your accommodation is ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... there is a great deal about the sulky boy that merits pity rather than blame, there is much that deserves merciless censure. Why should one boy, by a whim of selfish resentment, mar the pleasure, not only of those with whom he has his quarrel, but with every one else he comes in contact with? "One dead fly," the proverb says, "makes the apothecary's ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... baggage on to somebody and soundly boxed the corporal's ears, calling him a "gloop." Instantly the corporal felt that "here was a man he could really understand," and from that moment became a devoted adherent, studying our slightest whim, and at intervals humbly laying walnuts ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... the noblest energies of song; Catch the rib-shaking laugh, or from his eye Dash silently the tear of sympathy. Happy old man!—with feelings such as these The seasons all can charm, and trifles please; And hence a sudden thought, a new-born whim, Would shake his cup of pleasure to the brim, Turn scoffs and doubts and obstacles aside, And instant action ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield
... care to make a passage into my winter camp, although it was only a whim, after all, to make a concealed entrance, seeing that no one ever passes this way except wolves and foxes, whose noses render the use of their eyes ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... home jes' long enough To take the whim 'At he'd like to go back in the calvery— And the old man jes' wrapped up in him! Jim 'lowed 'at he'd had sich luck afore, Guessed he'd tackle her three years more. And the old man give him a colt he'd raised, And follered him over to Camp Ben Wade, And laid around fer a week er so, Watchin' ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... from some strange whim had desired me to copy the Duke's portrait upon glass, and thinking possibly that I might break the slip, had given me two of precisely the same size. On one of these I was impelled to paint for myself the miniature of this adorable child in the court costume ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... servants. What Mr. Crosby had done to England, or England to him, I can't say, but he never went near his native country. For years and years he had lived abroad—not in any settled place of residence: they would travel about, and remain a year or two in one place, a year or two in another, as the whim suited them. A respectable, portly man, of quiet and gentlemanly manners, looking as little like one who need be afraid of the laws of his own land as can be. Neither is it said or insinuated that he was afraid of them. A ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... fellow who had carried him in his arms and hundreds of times made him welcome in that wonderland, his workshop, where he was always ready to leave off lucrative work to fashion him eel-spear or leaping-pole, or to satisfy any other whim that was on the surface—that this old friend was being menaced by a great savage of a stranger nearly as big as himself, and backed by a roaring excited crowd who seemed ready ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... continually breaking his night's rest for prayer, and devotional exercise of undue length; "weeping one moment, then smiling in joy the next;" meandering about, capricious, melodious, weak, at the will of devout whim mainly! However, that does not concern us. [Many LIVES of the Saint. See, in particular, Libellus de Dictis Quatuor Ancillarum, &c.—(that is, Report of the evidence got from Elizabeth's Four Maids, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... population, more wealthy than noble, discarded all earnestness amidst the giddy bustle and witty brilliance of their daily life, and oscillated between the grandest boldness of enterprise and elevation of spirit on the one hand, and a shameful frivolity and childish whim on the other. It may not be out of place, in connection with a crisis wherein the existence or destruction of nations of noble gifts and ancient renown was at stake, to mention that Plato, who came to Tarentum some sixty years before this time, according to his own statement saw ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the weapons he used, more important than microscope or alcohol-receiver to other investigators, was a whim which grew on him by indulgence, yet appeared in gravest statement, namely, of extolling his own town and neighborhood as the most favored centre for natural observation. He remarked that the Flora of Massachusetts embraced almost all the important plants of America,—most of ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... acknowledge," said he proudly. "Therefore, pray drop that subject, for it is a disagreeable one. I am a being of a very peculiar temper, for, though I have servants and subjects more than I can number, yet, to gratify a certain whim, I have left them, and retired to this city, and, for all the society it contains, you see I have attached myself only to you. This is a secret, and I tell you only in friendship, therefore pray let it remain one, and say not another word ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... mother, Marie de Medici, had among her attendants a woman called Hammon, to whom, having once had occasion to speak, she had taken a fancy, and given a post near her person. In consequence of this whim, Hammon came to be regarded as a person of some importance in the queen's household. Hammon was a native of Loudun, and had passed the greater part of her youth there with her own people, who belonged to the lower classes. ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... "It's just a whim," broke in Curtis, who did not feel like explaining at the moment that he was choosing a quiet old inn in a side street because he had been born there! Nevertheless, his words held that ring of decision, of finality in ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... only my whim," he said; and, after a moment's hesitation: "It was on account of a discovery I made some little time ago, whilst I was hunting up pedigrees for the new county history. I am Parson Tringham, the antiquary, of Stagfoot Lane. Don't you really know, Durbeyfield, that you are the lineal representative ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... whim, when the Baron was out of hearing, the Bailie used sometimes gently to rally Mr. Rubrick, upbraiding him with the nicety of his scruples. Indeed, it must be owned, that he himself, though at heart a keen partisan of the exiled family, had kept pretty fair with ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... an old-fashioned house, the door of which was approached by a broad flight of stone steps of a semi-circular form. The brass knocker was an object of much interest to me, in those days; for the whim of the maker had led him to give it the shape of an elephant's head, the trunk of the animal ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... Union Square recently with a beggar who studied me, because it appeared to be my whim to help him with a coin. Back of his temples was a great story—sumptuous drama and throbbing with the first importance of life. He did not tell me that story, and I could not draw it from him. Rather he told me the story that he fancied I would want. There was a whine in it. ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... afford nothing remarkable in their dances, which they now chiefly take from other countries. The dance of dwarfs with which the Czar Peter the Great, solemnized the nuptials of his niece to the Duke of Courland, was, probably rather a particular whim of his own, than ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... night, and with the dreams and fancies of the night. Would he, then, confess to himself that which he would confess to no other? Or was it merely some passing whim—some slight underchord of sentiment struck amidst the careless joy of a young man's holiday—that had led him up into the silent region of trees and moonlight? The scene around him was romantic enough, but he certainly had not the ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... the shrug madame had conveyed to the man and the assembled household generally, her own great scorn of us, and of our plans. What a whim this, of driving, forsooth, to the Mont! Dieu sait—French people were not given to any such follies; they were serious-minded, always, in matters of travel. To travel at all, was no light thing; one made one's will and took an honest and tearful farewell of one's family, ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... Melodies and the Tribes, to boot,[71] Braham is to assist—or hath assisted—but will do no more good than a second physician. I merely interfered to oblige a whim of K.'s, and all I have got by it was 'a speech' and ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... nothing preposterous about it, or that would seem like a man making himself too much of a fool, and so degrading her in consenting. I can make her comparatively rich, as you know, and I would indulge her every whim. There is the idea, bluntly put. It would set right something in my mind that has been wrong for forty years. After my death she would have plenty of freedom and plenty ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... chance of its being traced to me." Then he sat looking for a time at the embers reflectively. "'T is folly to want her," he said finally, as he rose and began the removal of his coat, "now that ye need not her money; but she's enough to tempt any man with blood in his veins, and I can afford the whim. Keep that blood in check, however, till ye have her fast; and do not frighten her as ye have done. To think of Lord Clowes, cool enough to match any man, losing his head over a whiffling bit of woman-flesh! ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... some Mozart, Just as the whim bites.—For my part, I do not care a farthing candle For either of them, or for Handel. Cannot a man live free and easy Without admiring Pergolesi? Or through the earth with comfort go, That never heard of Doctor Blow? I hardly have; ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... man will understand me when I say I was glad to hear this. Hitherto the girl's whim and the murder appeared to me two events connected only by the accident of occurrence on the same day. Now there was but ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... art is often only a whim. People wondered why they had ever bought those dark, shadowy things made by that Leyden artist, What's-his-name! One man utilized the frames which contained "Rembrandts" by putting other canvases right over ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... resuscitated, and old family nags were made back-sore with the wearing of them, and their youthful spirits revived by new beginners sliding about on their rounded sides. My whims were sneered at, and then followed. Of course I was driven from whim to whim, to keep them busy, and to preserve my originality, and at last I became eccentric for eccentricity's sake. All this prepared the way for my Nemesis. But as yet my wild oats were green and flourishing in the ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... far more about the past than the present or the future. My father was dead. My only brother was also gone, and the property had passed into other hands. I had no fixed place of abode, but went from one spot to another, as the whim seized me—sometimes remaining months, sometimes removing next day, but generally choosing retired villages about ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... not wisdom but a whim of mine which causes me to be graciously minded!" she cried. "Think you that Liane is ...
— Priestess of the Flame • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... is led into different countries (whose peculiarities are described), and falls into the society of wits, sharpers, courtiers, and harlots. Occasionally lavish, he is essentially mean; with a dash of humor, he is contemptibly revengeful; and, though generous minded when the whim jumps with his wishes, he is thoroughly selfish. His treatment of Strap is revolting to a generous mind. Strap lends him money in his necessity, but the heartless Roderick wastes the loan, treats Strap as a mere servant, fleeces ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... reminiscent of the country youth who had emerged from the law school a short time before, in store clothes and creaking boots. A front lock that has been assiduously urged to stand up for many years, is not inclined to sit down at the first whim of its owner. It has reached an age of independence, and is inclined to insist ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... girls had great energy and resolution, and the subject of our sketch was not disposed to undertake an enterprise and then abandon it. She had trials of other kinds, to bear. The surgeons afforded her few or no facilities for her work; and evidently expected that her whim of nursing would soon be given over. Then came the general order for the removal of volunteer nurses from the hospitals; this she evaded by enrolling herself as nurse, and drawing army pay, which she distributed to the men. For nearly a year ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... to flop and twist and turn Whenever 'tis our whim. Yet social etiquette we learn Because we're in ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum
... a supercilious smile. "You desire to see none but your equals, say you? If I were to indulge in a similar whim, I should have to seek companionship in the crypts of the Capuchins. [Footnote: The emperor's own words. Ramshorn's "Life of Joseph II."] But for my part I hold all men as my equals, and my noble subjects will be obliged to follow my example. I shall certainly not close any of the ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... being wooed. Ever since the Western powers' hope of speedy decisive blows on the part of Russia have shriveled up, they would like to lure the Japanese Army, two to four hundred thousand men, to the Continent. What was scoffed at as a whim of Pinchon and Clemenceau now is unveiled as a yearning of those at the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... fascinating than that magic city of Az-Zahra, the wonder of its age, of which now not a stone remains? It was made to satisfy the whim of a concubine by a Sultan whose flamboyant passion moved him to displace mountains for the sake of his beloved; and the memory thereof is lost so completely that even its situation till lately was uncertain. Az-Zahra the Fairest said ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... his plans. He had no heart, perversity had killed his courage. It exasperated him beyond all measure to recall what little things his luck had hinged upon, what straws had turned his feet. A moment of pique with Lois, a broken piece of steel, a match, a momentary whim when Guth offered him payment. It was well that he did not know what part had been played by his quarrel with Harkness, that wet muk-luk, that vicious lead ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... necessity is as great an advance upon the view that transformed natural occurrences into miraculous events. Miracles, according to the Bible, most clearly exemplify God's omnipotence; for omnipotence in the popular mind consists in nothing so much as in the ability to satisfy any purpose or whim no matter how transitory it is, or how incompatible with what has been antecedently desired or done. Miracles may be extraordinary occurrences with reference to the order of Nature, but they are, with reference to God, commonplace ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... and hastened to bring the balm: "Reggie Forcus might have millions where he will have thousands—and the more he had the less likely would he be to affect any of us. He has been here this afternoon, and if he remembers he may come again. But that is simply the whim of an idle young man who at the moment can think of ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... "It was a whim, I think. Just a desire to see a few foreign countries before he settled down to live the ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sweep of his hat. A hot spurt of rage flared across Drennen's brain; this was no accidental meeting. Garcia had seen them leave the Settlement and had followed. Then the burning wrath changed quickly to hard, cold, watchful anger. Through a mere whim of the little gods of chance he had seen another face in the thicket or young elms not twenty paces from Ygerne's log, a face with hard, malevolent eyes, peaked at the bottom with a coppery Vandyck beard. If Ramon Garcia had seen, certainly Sefton ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... schools of thought relating to amendment of the Constitution. One need not be committed to the belief that amendment is weakening the fundamental law, or that excessive amendment is essential to meet every ephemeral whim. We ought to amend to meet the demands of the people when sanctioned ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... probably chanced on him in this period, finding him bereft of an adviser, and ready to be swayed by whatever whim should come. Perhaps he was attracted by the barber's hardihood, perhaps the absurdity of his inspiration had some fascination for him, perhaps he merely saw that the thing was new and, feeling jaded, let the barber have ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... darling!" he said. "This is like you. I took this up as a whim as well as a stubborn belief; but somehow that poor little ignorant fellow, with his rough ways, seems to be rousing warmer feelings towards him, and, please God, we'll make a man of him of whom we ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... when it is noted that Donatello was to receive six golden florins for his work. They are profile heads carved in relief upon triangular pieces of marble, which fill two congested architectural corners. They look like the result of a whim, and at first sight one would think they were ordered late in the history of the door to supplement or replace something unsatisfactory. But this is not the case. Half corbel and half decoration, they are curious things: one ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... comedy; it is much too serious in its purport, too searching in its character-delineation and too thoughtful in its wit, to be treated as a mere farce. Its title—not, perhaps, a very happy one—is explained in this saying of one of the characters: "Marry for whim and leave the rest to the divorce court—that's the New York idea of marriage." And again: "The modern American marriage is like a wire fence—the woman's the wire—the posts are the husbands. One—two—three! And if you cast your eye over the future, you can count ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell
... publicity would spell ruin and starvation. She had got herself into an appalling mess. Being caught—there you were. But that this evil-reputationed swell should actually have been awakened by some whim to notice and follow her up was "past her," as she would have ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... barbarous method, which need not receive more than passing mention. This is simply to register documents in the memory without taking written notes. This method has been used. Historians endowed with excellent memories, and lazy to boot, have indulged this whim, with the result that their quotations and references are mostly inexact. The human memory is a delicate piece of registering apparatus, but it is so little an instrument of precision that such presumption ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... the pages of the best comedies, we are almost transported to another world, and escape from this dull age to one that was all life, and whim, and mirth, and humour. The curtain rises, and a gayer scene presents itself, as on the canvas of Watteau. We are admitted behind the scenes like spectators at court, on a levee or birthday; but it is the court, the gala-day of wit and pleasure, of gallantry and Charles II.! What ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... will, of course, succeed Christian love as the human creed. Friendship, as we know it, will largely cease to exist. Friends will be those who can be cowed into truculence or bought. There will be no truth, justice, equity, in our meaning. Only the will or whim of the Emperor. His State Church, with its worship of Him, will grow as ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... friend as he passed her towards the opposing bank. The old man lay with his eyes closed. As soon as he knew that he was dying he had closed his eyes, that the dead orbs might not stare into the faces of the living. It had been a whim of his for years. He would leave the house decent when his lease was up. And the will kept pressing down the lids which it would soon have no ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... he was traveling through a country of which he found many details familiar. Now and then a little vista caught his view and held him for long minutes while he seemed to be comparing its reality with pictures of it stored within his memory; again he paused when he discovered that some whim of tramping mountaineers or roaming cattle, some landslide born of winter frosts; some blockade of trees storm-felled, had changed the course of an old path. Always, in a case like this, he investigated carefully before he definitely started on ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... command or forbid should be very few at first, but inexorable. We should be careful not to forbid where we cannot follow a untrusty child, or what we can not prevent. Our own will should be a rock and not a wave. Our requirements should be uniform, with no whim, mood, or periodicity of any sort about them. If we alternate from caresses to severity, are fields and capricious instead of commanding by a fixed and settled plan, if we only now and then take the child in hand, so he does not know precisely what to expect, we really require the child ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... Application to the authorities would have been useless: the fugitive had done no wrong, broken no law; and the vast machinery of the imperial police-system was not to be set in motion by the passionate whim of a boy. Months grew into years; but neither Kimika, nor the little sister in Kyoto, nor any one of the thousands who had known and admired the beautiful dancer, ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... thereby excluded from it. The repression of night-poaching was not a matter that interested him either in principle or practice. He would just as soon that the keeper had not reminded him of his offer to share his watch—the whim that had once seized him to do so had died away; but having once promised his company, he was not one to break his word. So ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... while the scorching sun danced through the van's open sides and the mosquito-flies bit their damnedest. But nowadays one travels in luxury and sleeping-berths, with ever-ready nurses eager to wait upon every whim. ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... dark-haired Helen. Master Hiero, his round, snub-nosed face red with fussy emotion, gives the bride away; while Salome, dressed in white and looking very pretty and lady-like, does service as bridesmaid,—such is her mistress's whim. She seems in even better spirits than the pale bride, and her black eyes scarcely wander from the minister's ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... the thing we call a man. The encysted child developed until it reached years of virility, until those later Oxford days in which Hogg encountered it; then, bursting at once from its cyst and the university, it swam into a world not illegitimately perplexed by such a whim of the gods. It was, of course, only the completeness and duration of this seclusion—lasting from the gate of boyhood to the threshold of youth—which was peculiar to Shelley. Most poets, probably, like most saints, are prepared for their mission by an initial segregation, ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... the corridor had just struck twelve, in a leisurely, rhythmic, decorous manner. It was the habit of that tall old narrow-cased clock to accelerate or retard, after its own sweet taste and whim, the uniform and monotonous series of hours that encircle our life until it wraps it and leaves it, like an infant in its crib, in the ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... Catch the rib-shaking laugh, or from his eye Dash silently the tear of sympathy. Happy old man!—with feelings such as these The seasons all can charm, and trifles please; And hence a sudden thought, a new-born whim, Would shake his cup of pleasure to the brim, Turn scoffs and doubts and obstacles aside, And instant action follow like ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield
... was pledged for the time to tell him nothing, and she told him nothing. The princess looked curiously at her, for Liana exactly resembled the princess's younger sister, the philanthropic Idoine, who devoted herself to the idyllic happiness of her peasantry in the Arcadian village that it was her whim to rule. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... since you don't like the other word—doesn't do anything for the people!" one of the professors objected. "It leaves all the social services to the whim of the ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... one idea—that Gloria was being selfish, that she was always being selfish and would continue to be unless here and now he asserted himself as her master. This was the occasion of all occasions, since for a whim she had deprived him of a pleasure. His determination solidified, approached momentarily a dull and ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... seems, comparatively speaking, to have just begun. Its oscillations are self adjusted, and science prophesies for humanity an illimitable career on this earthly theatre. The swift melting of the elements and restoration of chaos is a mere heathen whim or a poetic figment. It ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... anything about her education. I didn't know she had one," said Jarvis, "but this whim of hers, in marrying me, is very trying to ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... pose. You believe in it no more than any one else. Aren't you tired of that sort of game? Of playing with us all as if we were so many children? Well, if you're not, I am. I tell you, Ydo, I've had enough of it. You threw me over yesterday, for no reason under the sun. Just caprice, whim—you can't whistle me back and throw me over to-morrow. This question's going to be decided here and now for ever. Will you marry ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... make of you," she said, as I turned. "Will you do it for me—setting it down just as a whim, if you like, and ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... whose sway Is potent over land and sea. The heavens above us own me; nay, The shades below acknowledge me. I know not fear, I have my will, Whate'er my whim or fancy be; For me there's no impossible, I order, bind, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... receive six golden florins for his work. They are profile heads carved in relief upon triangular pieces of marble, which fill two congested architectural corners. They look like the result of a whim, and at first sight one would think they were ordered late in the history of the door to supplement or replace something unsatisfactory. But this is not the case. Half corbel and half decoration, they are curious things: ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... yourself to the Villa Romani when you please—your enjoyment of the lady's surprise and rapture will be the more keen for having been slightly delayed. Trusting you will not refuse to gratify an old man's whim, ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... such a gentleman as the world hadn't seen—minus money. So he determined to launch me. He said I should lead the life of such a gentleman as the world had not yet seen—on that simple condition, which appeared to me childish, a senile whim; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... name as if disbelieving her own ears. There was never any knowing what whim Thyra might take, but ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... may choose to inflict. They suffer all that can be inflicted by wanton caprice, by grasping avarice, by brutal lust, by malignant spite, and by insane anger. Their happiness is the sport of every whim, and the prey of every passion that may, occasionally, or habitually, infest the master's bosom. If we could calculate the amount of wo endured by ill-treated slaves, it would overwhelm every compassionate heart—it would move even the obdurate to sympathy. There is also a vast ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... recommended by the bourgeoisie, are really his road to happiness? No one. He knows that he has something to-day, and that it does not depend upon himself whether he shall have something to-morrow. He knows that every breeze that blows, every whim of his employer, every bad turn of trade may hurl him back into the fierce whirlpool from which he has temporarily saved himself, and in which it is hard and often impossible to keep his head above water. He knows that, though he may have the ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... you think you don't," I said, brushing aside such an absurdity with a wave of my hand. "Nonsense! After four years, you can not tell me that you have suddenly discovered that you never cared for me. I can not give you up for some absurd whim." ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... how slight an influence will sometimes thwart an important measure in passage at the legislature. A mere whisper of some whim, a little prejudice against another, perhaps may put it all aside. How little attention is given to merit! This is true even of Hon. Senators. To one of these I spoke about his vote within ten minutes after he had given it, and he replied,—"I don't know, I am sure, how I ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... were sonorous and melancholy. Occasionally they were fantastic and cheerful. Clearly they reflected the thoughts which possessed him, but whether the music aided those thoughts, or whether the playing was simply the result of a whim or fancy was more than I could determine. I might have rebelled against these exasperating solos had it not been that he usually terminated them by playing in quick succession a whole series of my favourite airs ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... critics agreed that he had written a most unusual book; but then, the critics did not really count—they had no way of making their verdict effective. What determined success or failure was the department-store public. It would take a whim for a certain novel; and when a novel had once begun to sell, it would be advertised and pushed to the front, and everything else would give way before it, quite regardless of what the critic's had said. A book-review appeared only once, but an advertisement ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... those anxious days and nights at the intake, when the safety of the success of the whole King's Basin project hung on the whim of an uncertain river, but he did not explain to Barbara nor did he tell her that a vacation would have made ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... in adding variety to its cuisine, either by the audacious invention of new dishes or the felicitous combination of old ones—either by discovering new sources of food or new methods of preparing it. It was a curious incident in the late history of the city that what had been a fashionable whim became a hard necessity—that after Saint-Hilaire and the hippophagists had struggled to introduce horseflesh as regular provender, the siege of Paris made horseflesh a prized rarity. But the zest resulting from the enforced diet ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... surrendered, he was hung on the same pretext, after the most summary trial. If the number of prisoners became inconveniently large, they were shot, or else whipped and let go, apparently according to the whim of the officer in command. Women were seized, stripped half naked, and thrown among the vulgar soldiery to be scourged. The estimate is that five hundred and fifty were hung by order of drum-head ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... not very long that I have learned to disbelieve in that story altogether. I fancy it was an odd whim of my poor father's, and that our ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... him with sharp words, for this was a scheme after his own heart. "What, Thor!" he said. "Would you lose your hammer and keep Asgard in danger for so small a whim. Look, now: if you go not, Thrym with his giants will come in a mighty army and drive us from Asgard; then he will indeed make Freia his bride, and, moreover, he will have you for his slave under the power ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... breaking his night's rest for prayer, and devotional exercise of undue length; "weeping one moment, then smiling in joy the next;" meandering about, capricious, melodious, weak, at the will of devout whim mainly! However, that does not concern us. [Many LIVES of the Saint. See, in particular, Libellus de Dictis Quatuor Ancillarum, &c.—(that is, Report of the evidence got from Elizabeth's Four Maids, by an Official Person, Devil's-Advocate or whatever he was, missioned by the Pope to question ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... deeds without thought. Industries were organised and launched, men employed and thrown out of employment, towns wrecked by the destruction of an industry and other towns made by the building of other industries. At a whim of his a thousand men began building a city on an Indiana sand hill, and at a wave of his hand another thousand men of an Indiana town sold their homes, with the chicken houses in the back-yards and vines trained by the kitchen ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... a heinous offence, and had been convicted thereof, and sentenced to the lash? Not at all! She was brought by her master to be whipped by the common executioner, without trial, judge, or jury, just at his beck or nod, for some real or supposed offence, or to gratify his own whim or malice. And he may bring her day after day, without cause assigned, and inflict any number of lashes he pleases, short of twenty-five, provided only he pays the fee. Or if he choose, he may have a private whipping-board on his own premises, and ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... and, bursting into tears, exclaimed her child was dead, and this was no other than an impostor whom they had brought to defraud her sorrow. Trunnion was confounded at this unaccountable passion, which had no other foundation than caprice and whim; and Gamaliel himself was so disconcerted and unsettled in his own belief, which began to waver, that he knew not how to behave towards the boy, whom his godfather immediately carried back to the garrison, swearing all the way that ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... a nap," the other suggested, raising one of the frosted goblets. "Here's to the gratification of your merest whim, sir!" ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... physician, 'it is only a whim of mine, and every one must be allowed some whims: but ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... London, 1823, 4to, edited for the veteran of ninety-two by Mr. Babbage[469] at twenty-nine. This excellent volume contains James Gregory, Des Cartes, Halley, Barrow, and the optical writings of Huyghens, the Principia of the undulatory theory. It also contains, by the sort of whim in which such men as Maseres, myself, and some others are apt to indulge, a reprint of "The great new Art of weighing Vanity,"[470] by M. Patrick Mathers, Arch-Bedel to the University of St. Andrews, Glasgow, 1672. Professor Sinclair,[471] of Glasgow, a good man at ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... a sentry. When he had received the password he stood back and let us pass. Alone, in that bleak and exposed position in front of the trenches, always in full view as he paced back and forward, carbine on shoulder, with not even a tree trunk or a hedge for shelter, the first to go at the whim of some German sniper or at any indication of an attack, he was a pathetic, almost a tragic, figure. He looked very young too. I stopped and asked him in a whisper ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the precocity with a kind of worship that proved, as it was bound to prove, disastrous. It seems to have been Henry Fox's deliberate belief that the best way to bring up a spirited, gifted, headstrong child was to gratify every wish, surrender to every whim, and pander to every passion that ebullient youth could feel. The anecdotes of the day teem with tales of the fantastic homage that Fox paid to the desires and moods of his imperious infant. He made ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... it as the whim takes me,—now take it on my lap, now touch it with my lips, now keep it by my side on ...
— Fruit-Gathering • Rabindranath Tagore
... replied the little girl. "Mother has often said she conna weel spare Alizon. An mayhap Mistress Nutter may knoa, that she con be very obstinate when she tays a whim ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... own characters, at the end. But Leopold is a man, not a romantic girl, as you are. He has always had a reputation for pride and austerity, for being just before he would let himself be generous; and it may be that to one of his nature, a wild whim ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... last demand of Art is that it shall give us the artist's best. Art is the mintage of the soul. All the whim, foible, and rank personality are blown away on the winds of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... a whole benchful accounted for at one swoop." Still Jemmy did not reply. The sunbeam drifting between the benches before him fell on a little patch of earth—a patch collected by one of the slaves whose comrades, humouring his whim, had brought him a handful or two in their pockets whenever they returned from shore. Upon this patch of earth were sunk the prints of a pair of feet, far apart; and between these footprints glimmered two lines of green, with two other lines ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... into a beautiful room, which aunt Madge had arranged for them with two beds, to suit a whim of Dotty's. ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)
... a hundred warriors of Ulster in the first onslaught with the sword. He met Conall Cernach. "Too great is this rage," said Conall, "upon people and kindred because of the whim of a wanton." "What would ye have me do, ye warriors?" asked Fergus. "Smite the hills crosswise and the bushes around," ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... hundred years before Mr. Ellison's coming of age, there had died, in a remote province, one Mr. Seabright Ellison. This gentleman had amassed a princely fortune, and, having no immediate connections, conceived the whim of suffering his wealth to accumulate for a century after his decease. Minutely and sagaciously directing the various modes of investment, he bequeathed the aggregate amount to the nearest of blood, bearing the name of Ellison, who should be alive at the end of the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... past I have been rambling over the country, but I am now confined with some lingering complaints, originating, as I take it, in the stomach. To divert my spirits a little in this miserable fog of ennui, I have taken a whim to give you a history of myself. My name has made some little noise in this country; you have done me the honour to interest yourself very warmly in my behalf; and I think a faithful account of ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... person of her wealth and position needed to make, he reasoned; what did it matter how she looked and talked at home where, after all, the only person she could hope to please was herself? He held aloof, drawn from his aloofness occasionally by her whim to indulge herself in what she regarded as proofs of his love. Her pouting, her whimpering, her abject but meaningless self-depreciation, her tears, were potent, not for the flattering reason she assigned, ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... the only man who was struck by the skipper's whim. There were mutterings on the deck below, and Dick, who had come from the conning-tower, was bold enough ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... prose, have a charming effect on the ear. They come as dulcet surprises and mostly recur in highly-wrought situations, or they are used to convey a vivid sense of something exquisite in nature or art. Their introduction seems due to whim or caprice, but really it arises from a profound study of the situation, as if the Tale-teller felt suddenly compelled to break ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... stone; he felt that his high hopes were on a more precarious footing than ever. If she had the whim, Barbara would go abroad, far beyond the reach ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... years hence this practice of the English, if the clergy and the physicians will but give them leave to do it; or possibly our countrymen may introduce inoculation three months hence in France out of mere whim, in case the English ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... should declare her intention the next morning of driving her pony buggy to Santa Inez to anticipate the stage-coach and fetch Mary Rogers from the station. Mrs. Peyton, as usual, supported the young lady's whim and opposed her ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... he wished to conceal it from public curiosity,—but, which is the most extraordinary, he is not quite sure that he had any motive for it at all, which his memory can trace. The whole of this is a period of a year and a half; and here is a man who keeps his account upon principles of whim and vagary. One would imagine he was guessing at some motive of a stranger. Why he came to take bonds for money not due to him, and why he enters some and not others,—he knows nothing of these things: he begs them not to ask about it, because it will be of no use. "You foolish Court of Directors ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... and Mrs. Mosby—Aunt Loraine—joined the group, giving him a momentary withering glance. She was an inexorable woman, an inch taller than Uncle Buzz, who stood five feet three, but she matched him whim for whim in her attire. Her hair looked black in the graying light; in reality it was splotched and streaked with a chestnut red, colour not so ill as misapplied. Her dress rustled as she swept ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... bed; continually breaking his night's rest for prayer and devotional exercises of undue length, 'weeping one moment, then smiling in joy the next'; meandering about, capricious, melodious, weak, at the will of devout whim mainly; went to live at Marburg after her husband's death, and soon died there in a most melodiously pious sort" ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... and after paying the full price for it, she finds that she is to lose it, for no reason of which she can feel the cogency. She has sacrificed her whole life to it, and her husband will not sacrifice to it a whim, a freak, an eccentricity; something not recognised or allowed for by the world, and which the world will agree with her in thinking a folly, if it thinks no worse! The dilemma is hardest upon that ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... I to him; of passports We never had the whim. Strong ones I believe it would need To recall, to our side of the limit, Subjects of Pluto King of the Dead: But, from the Germanic Empire Into the gallant and cynical abode Of Messieurs your pretty Frenchmen,—A ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... information communicated to my father by this Mr. Herries, and the admonitory letter of the young lady, bear upon each other; and that, were you here, you might learn something from one or other, or from both, that; might throw light on your birth and parentage. You will not, surely, prefer an idle whim to the prospect which is ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... farewell for e'er! these flames nought can subdue— The Aqueduct of Sylla gleams, a bridge o'er hellish brew. 'Tis Nero's whim! how good to see Rome brought the lowest down; Yet, Queen of all the earth, give thanks for such a ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... with Bossuet's controversial writings, and was speedily converted by them to the Roman Catholic faith. The apostasy of a gentleman-commoner would of course be for a time the chief subject of conversation in the common room of Magdalene. His whim about Arabic learning would naturally be mentioned, and would give occasion to some jokes about the probability of his turning Mussulman. If such jokes were made, Johnson, who frequently visited Oxford, was very likely to hear of them.' Though Gibbon's Autobiography ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... door. There were no signs of a struggle in the garden, nor had there been the slightest noise to attract the attention of the waiting maid. It was not impossible, after all, that she had slipped away of her own accord, possessed of a sudden whim or impulse. ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... To gratify her daughter's whim, the widow Pillbody finally consented to move into a boarding house, though she did it in the firm belief that the good luck which the young lady had fallen upon would be of brief duration, and they would be glad to come back ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preached, as the counteraction of the doctrine of love, when that pules and whines. I shun father and mother and wife and brother when my genius calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim. I hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explanation. Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude company. Then again, do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... and capitals, index hands and other typographic symbols, were scattered about with remarkable profusion, to give additional force and notoriety to the editorial remarks which were found on every page, according as the whim and inspiration of the editor dictated. The establishment of the paper was undoubtedly a bold attempt at a time when the province was but sparsely settled, and the circulation necessarily limited ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot
... she. "You are free to stop whenever the whim strikes you; I must do exactly as you bid. What do ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... or derived the invention from a source of instruction common to both. But this seems not to be the case, with regard to those customs to which no general principle of human nature has given birth, and which have their establishment solely from the endless varieties of local whim and national fashion. Of this latter kind, those customs obviously are, that belong both to the North and to the South Pacific Islands, from which we would infer, that they were originally one nation; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... Grace good-bye, I left. I had four pounds six, and with it I went down to an old aunt's of mine in Cornwall. After three days there I met some miners, had a night with them, which ended by their initiating me into their clan. Next morning, thinking it over, my better self asserted itself, and the whim took me ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... strongest point of the dilemma. He was to be ruined—utterly ruined; a pauper, a beggar, if Camilla did not save him. The master of his fate demanded his daughter's hand. Habitually subservient to even a whim of her parents, this intelligence, the entreaty, the command with which it was accompanied, overwhelmed her. She answered but by tears; and Mr. Beaufort, assured of her submission, left her, to consider of the tone of the letter he himself should write to Mr. Spencer. He had sat down to this ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... returns again to the charge, and determines to carry out his tyrannical whim by the following order of the Council:—"The Council threaten the Lord Mayor and aldermen with imprisonment, if they do not forthwith enforce the king's command that all shops should be shut up in Cheapside and Lombard Street that were not goldsmiths' shops." ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... assemble without hostile intentions, it should be so imperative to keep the trickling rill of talk running, I find it impossible to imagine. It is a vestige of the old barbaric times, when men murdered at sight for a mere whim; when it was good form to take off your sword in the antechamber, and give your friend your dagger-hand, to show him it was no business visit. Similarly, you keep up this babblement to show your mind has no sinister concentration, not necessarily because you have anything to say, but ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... there were causes for the Minnesota massacres, by the Sioux, in 1862-'3, quite apart from the aboriginal cruelty and ferocity of the Indian nature. We all know that the carnal Indian man is a bad enough fellow at the best, and capable of dreadful crimes and misdemeanors, if only to gratify his whim or the caprice of the moment. And when he is bent upon satiating his revenge for some real or imaginary wrong, I would back him in the horrible ingenuity of his devices for torture, in the unrelenting malice ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... is desirable that she should enjoy, or rather profit by, his instructions; also it is high time she should become thoroughly convinced of the necessity of controlling that violent temper of hers. She needs to be taught submission to lawful authority too; and indulging her in this whim would, in my judgment, be likely to have the very opposite effect. What do you say, ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... while single, than she will be when married. Her father, I fear, will leave her too much to herself, and in that case I scarce know what may become of her; she has neither judgment nor principle to direct her choice, and therefore, in all probability, the same whim which one day will guide it, will the next lead ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... officially spoke slightingly of them at times, why he walked in some days, flung down a manuscript, and said: "Here's a rotten story." Yet it must be that he found pleasure in playing the whole scale, in hopping from the G-string to the E-, in surprising his public each day with a new whim or a recently discovered broken image. I suspect, anyhow, that he delighted in making his editor stare and fumble in the ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... your stage manners!" he exclaimed. "You are here at my pleasure. It was no whim, my carrying you off. After you left I went to the manor, where I tried to forget you. But nights of revelry—why should I not confess it?—could not efface your memory." His voice unconsciously sank to unreserved ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... one day or other, to Walter safe at home: though such a home we never thought of. If you don't object to our old whim, Sir, let us devote this first glass to Walter ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... consciousness of youth in some fashion that shall be through our modern mechanisms as effective as were the old "Fraternities" of primitive life, and as are still the outworn but persistent forms of military discipline, that idea of subordination of private whim to public well-being which lies at the base of all true and ordered social advance. The Children's Courts are a response to the effort of society to give each child a fair chance in life. There are needed, also, devices of education and of compulsory social service and social obedience which ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... Some complacently united to humor their host's whim, as they called it, and others, immediately recognizing its utility and decency, took notes with a view to modifying ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various
... compromise; distrusting alike the logical habit of the French to push out premises into conclusions at all hazards; and the German habit of system-building. The Englishman has no system, he has his whim, and is careless of consistency. It is quite possible for him to have an aesthetic liking for the Middle Ages, without wishing to restore them as an actual state of society. It is hard for an Englishman to understand to what degree a literary man, like Schiller, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... stabbing.—Then I went and played pools at picquet with Lady Masham and Mrs. Hill; won ten shillings, gave a crown to the box, and came home. I met at my lodgings a letter from Joe, with a bit annexed from Ppt. What Joe asks is entirely out of my way, and I take it for a foolish whim in him. Besides, I know not who is to give a patent: if the Duke of Ormond, I would speak to him; and if it come in my head I will mention it to Ned Southwell. They have no patents that I know of for such things here, but good security is all; and to think that I ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... what Jean Jacques meant to do; but if a man wants to keep a tight hand on money he should not carry it about in his pocket in cold, hard cash. It was a foolish whim of Jean Jacques that he must have the eight thousand dollars in cash—in hundred-dollar bills—and not in the form of a cheque; but there was something childlike in him. When, as he thought, he had saved himself from complete ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... him on a holiday, Which is with Paddy still a jolly day; When mass is ended, and his load of sins Confess'd, and Mother Church hath from her binns Dealt forth a bonus of imputed merit, Then is Pat's time for fancy, whim, and spirit! To jest, to sing, to caper fair and free, And dance as light as ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... delivered up the harbour to your enemies. Lastly, he was most undisguisedly a tyrant, who made not free men only, but free fellow-citizens his slaves; who put to death, or drove into exile, or robbed of their wealth and property, not malefactors, note you, but the mere victims of his whim and fancy; and these were ever the better folk. Once again restored by the help of your sworn foes and antagonists, the Athenians, to his native town of Sicyon, the first thing he did was to take up arms against the governor from Thebes; but, finding himself powerless to drive him from the acropolis, ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... unmarried for life. He may have been foolish: but I prefer his behaviour to that of a man who treats his father with contumely and ingratitude even while he is living upon him. We hear much of Shelley's unselfishness, but it does not appear that he ever denied himself the indulgence of a whim. The "Ode to the West Wind," the "Ode Written in Dejection near Naples," and "The Skylark" are unsurpassed and unsurpassable; but I can hardly pardon a man for cruelty and turpitude merely because he produces ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... subsequently learned often resulted in a bad caddie service—and an open brook along whose dashing descent a constant stream of shandygaff went merrily bubbling onward to an in-door sea upon which Jupiter exercised his yacht when sailing was the thing to suit his immediate whim. ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... lover what she had done and take the consequences, believing in her power over him to come scatheless out of the adventure. In those days, when human life was so cheap, she might have asked for the death of almost any one, and her whim would have been gratified by a lover who had not hesitated to put to death his own son at her dictation. But with Ibrahim it was another matter; he was the familiar of the Sultan, his alter ego in fact, It says much for the ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... "I have a whim," he said, dreamily, "that I would like to satisfy. It would be a trifle to you: will you grant it?—for the sake of some old happy ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... swayed him hither and thither on the caprice or impulse of the moment, his intentions toward Innocent were not very clear even to himself. When he had begun his "amour" with her he had meant it to go just as far as should satisfy his own whim and desire,—but as he came to know her better, he put a check on himself and hesitated as one may hesitate before pulling up a rose-bush from its happy growing place and flinging it out on the dust-heap to die. She was so ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... the Atherlys, and an infinite pity and sense of duty towards his own race. He had devoted himself and his increasing wealth to this one object; it seemed to him at times almost providential that his position as a legislator, which he had accepted as a whim or fancy, should have ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... shadowy of all footholds, that of the whim of a populace, had already given way under him. His enemies knew it, and were exulting in their triumph. He knew it himself, and stood up, calmly defiant, ready for any event, if only he succeeded in snatching her ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... a moment. If he said no, and went away out of the city wherever his listless and changeful whim called him, he knew how it would be with her; he knew what her life would be as surely as he knew the peach would come out of the peach-flower rosy on the wall there: life in the little hut; among the neighbors; sleepy and safe and soulless;—if he ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... have noted you of late," continued my father, "and I have observed that your old studies are grown distasteful to you; and I have talked with Roland, and I see that your desire is deeper than a boy's mere whim. And then I have asked myself what prospect I can hold out at home to induce you to be contented here, and I see none; and therefore I should say to you, 'Go thy ways, and God shield ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... assailed her. She had cut him deeply, hurt his amour propre and left him scowling in Arcadian resentment. Would the lesson last? Or must she seek further means to convince him of her indifference? Why had she provoked him? A whim—the dormant devil in her—to whom her better self must now pay in ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... near the governmental headquarters; but out a bit there's nothing, Monsieur—not the ghost of a road at all. We get along as best we can over hill and dale, over dwarf palms and mastic-trees. Ne'er a fixed change of horses, the stopping being at the whim of the guard, now at one farm, ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... quite as a whim of the old admiral's, the changing of Charles Holland's name to Bell; but, as Charles himself said when the subject was broached to him,—"I am so well content to be called whatever those to whom I ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... assured herself that it was just a whim of Mr. Orme's, a passing fancy and caprice which would soon be satisfied, and that he would tire of it after a few days, perhaps hours. Of course, she was wrong to humour the whim; but it had been hard to refuse him, hard to seem churlish and obstinate after he had been so kind on the night ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... knew also that the falcon was renowned as the finest bird throughout the countryside, as well as being the joy and pride of his master's heart. But the boy was fretful and restless, and, fearing to thwart his whim lest his life should depend on it, the poor mother promised to go and ask for the falcon on ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman
... it has actually contributed towards very considerably lowering from time to time the rate of interest in all the foreign money-markets; but when this amount is compared with Freeland finances, the investment of it abroad is seen to be simply an insignificant and harmless whim. This large sum brings in, at the present rate of interest—you will understand that Freeland savers invest merely in the very best European or American bonds—about thirty-four millions sterling; that is, not quite ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... shameful bargain, thus to submit to a pirate's whim, but the wretched ship's company hailed it as a glad surprise. They had stood in the shadow of death and this was a respite and a chance of salvation. Captain Wellsby was heart-sick with humiliation but it was ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... roadside where it makes a great turn to enter the village from the south. There is a wide border to the road at this point, clear of underbrush, where the forest edges it, and there are here, at the whim of some one, or by chance, two great flat stones, one lying upon the other, but not fitting by a hand's thickness by reason of the ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... continued, "upon the occasion of your last visit to me, you were greatly taken with the charms and graces of my only daughter, Thuvia. You saw how I adored her, and later you learned that, inspired by some unfathomable whim, she had taken the last, long, voluntary pilgrimage upon the cold bosom of the mysterious ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... upon this scene as he grew older as the mere expression of a whim of dissolution, but it had made so deep an impression upon him at the time that insensibly the words sank into his plastic mind creating a superstition that refused to yield to reason. The ruby was Helene's birthstone and she was passionately fond of it. She had begged and coaxed to wear this ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... three sledges belonging to my party are sufficiently interesting to be set out at length below. Most of the items were included in the impedimenta of all our parties, but slight variations were necessary to meet particular stances or to satisfy the whim of ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... say to the children that this person is not a gentleman, and thus destroy his influence? or shall I pass it over in silence, and thus leave them to draw the natural inference that all I have said on the subject is only a woman's whim?" ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... the giddiness of being a land-owner for the first time, or perhaps it was the abject wretchedness of the only hotel in town that inspired the whim which seized me during my solitary dinner. I had spent one night here, and did not welcome the prospect of a second. A return to New York was not practicable, because I had arranged to meet several contractors and an architect at the farm, next morning, to discuss ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... adventuress, and finally a murderess, all may be good art, but of a very bad kind. Laura is a sort of American Becky Sharp; but there is retributive justice in Becky's fate, whereas Laura's doom is warranted only by the author's whim. As for her end, whatever the virtuous public of that day might have done, a present-day audience would not have pelted her from the stage, destroyed her future, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... your diamonds as a seal of peace. I can't let you have the Pine Street lot—I want it for a different purpose; but I will give you three acres on the edge of town, near the depot, for your asylum whim. It is a better location ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... floor with it. There the extinguished wicks had ignited the draperies, which had fallen across the stricken man's face and body. The clothes, torso, and legs, had been charred beyond recognition but the face, by some peculiar whim of fate, had ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... the Widow Sprigg needed no urging to drink her favorite beverage, which, like many another countrywoman,—more's the pity!—she kept steeping on the stove all day long. But now, for an instant, she looked doubtfully upon the cup; then, as a sudden whim seized her, caught it up eagerly and again ascended the stairs to Moses' bedroom. He lay motionless, his leg kept taut by a ball and chain and his poor body encased in plaster, but he could use his arms and eyes, the one thrown restlessly here and there and the ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... childhood shown a singularity of conduct as regarded her table furniture, which she would have of no other material than copper. She carried this fancy to such an extent that even the knives and forks were of copper. People laughed at her, and tried to reason her out of her whim, but in vain. She was in her element as soon as attention was directed to her fancy and arguments against it were addressed to her. She liked nothing better than to be afforded a full opportunity to discuss with any one the manifold advantages ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... of the Spanish noblemen of the period. Thus, he was unduly arrogant and autocratic towards his comrades of inferior rank, flinging Villagran into prison on his first arrival in the country as the result of little beyond a whim. On the other hand, it must be admitted that Mendoza spared no endeavours to conciliate and treat with ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... my darling!" he said. "This is like you. I took this up as a whim as well as a stubborn belief; but somehow that poor little ignorant fellow, with his rough ways, seems to be rousing warmer feelings towards him, and, please God, we'll make a man of him of whom ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... My dear Melesinda, press me no more for the disclosure of that, which in the face of day so soon must be revealed. Call it whim, humor, caprice, in me. Suppose, I have sworn an oath, never, till the ceremony of our marriage is over, to disclose ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... rarely left his palace, and bothered little about affairs outside, and Zaphnath must have been at the bottom of an edict which was shortly issued. Nothing that I remember in Kem better illustrated the absolute power of the Pharaoh and the unrestrained enforcement of his merest whim. The edict referred to the scarcity of bread and the multitude of foreigners who were flocking to the city to secure it, and provided (ostensibly for the good of the Kemish people) that no man in the city ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... the grassy level beneath a tree. He rather regretted now the impulse which had made him ship his bag and blanket roll from the last town, and undertake this solitary hike. He had merely humored a whim to walk through orchards and green fields in a leisurely fashion, to be a careless trudger for a day. True, he was saving carfare, but he observed dryly that he was expending many dollars' worth of energy—to say nothing of shoe leather. The pleasure of ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... year 1245, for his tardiness in joining the King's army in Wales, he was succeeded by the false-hearted Geoffrey de Mountmorres, who held the office till 1247. During the next twenty-five years, about half as many Justices were placed and displaced, according to the whim of the successive favourites at the English Court. In 1252, Prince Edward, afterwards Edward I., was appointed with the title of Lord Lieutenant, but never came over. Nor is there in the series of rulers we have numbered, with, perhaps, two exceptions, any who have rendered their ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... Till thought is wearied out, and dreams grow dim. What bitter chance, what woe beyond belief Could keep his lady's heart so hid from him? Or was her love indeed but light and brief, A passing thought, a moment's dreamy whim? Aye there it stings, the woe that never sleeps: Poor Nino leans upon his ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... filled them with wine. "It is true," he said, "that it is not my intention to become a petitioner for the pardon of a rebel to his serene and German Majesty the King; true also that I like the fragrance of the lily. I have my fancies. Say that I am a man of whim, and that, living in a lonely house set in a Sahara of tobacco fields, it is my whim to desire the acquaintance of the only gentleman within some miles of me. Say that my fancy hath been caught by a picture drawn for me a week agone; that, being ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... did they not lick his blood? .. Come hither to me —hither, hither, said Peleg, with a significance in his eye that almost startled me. Look ye, lad; never say that on board the Pequod. Never say it anywhere. Captain Ahab did not name himself. 'Twas a foolish, ignorant whim of his crazy, widowed mother, who died when he was only a twelvemonth old. And yet the old squaw Tistig, at Gayhead, said that the name would somehow prove prophetic. And, perhaps, other fools like her may tell thee the same. I wish to warn thee. It's a lie. I know ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... writes well," I answered, as if it were nothing but a whim that led me to pursue the subject. "And good clerks are scarce. What was ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... clever brush has caught so perfectly each whim of nature in field and forest, and called from hiding the furtive furred and feathered folk, who come and go like shadows ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... as guide and companion to snowshoe with her out into the white forests where her traps were set. For the young Indian loved her dumbly, without any hope of reward, in much the same way that some of her rough soldiers must have loved Joan of Arc. Jessie was a mistress whose least whim he felt it a duty to obey. He had worshiped her ever since he had seen her, a little eager warm-hearted child, playing in his mother's wigwam. She was as much beyond his reach as the North Star. Yet her swift tender smile was for him just as it was ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... without the slightest ill-feeling toward his benefactors. Indeed, he was deeply repentant, deeply apologetic. He ruefully announced that it would never be in his power to repay them for all they had done for him, but, resorting to a sudden whim, declared that he would make them his heirs if they didn't mind being used as a means to convey his final word of defiance to the children who had cast him off. Not that he would ever have a dollar to leave to them, but for the satisfaction it would give him to cut ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... were hungry at this period for more money and felt themselves martyrized by the whim of an ill-natured old man who had arbitrarily made them wait to be wholly happy. They talked perpetually about what they should do with themselves "after" the great event,—the sort of touring-car they should buy, the kind of establishment ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... silly whim of a dying man, Mercer. But I want to be humored in it. And I'm sensitive—like yourself. I don't want Cardigan to know. There's an old Indian named Mooie, who lives in a shack just beyond the sawmill. ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... revel with open purse. Their honeymoon was more full of occupation and less of rapture and sweet isolated intimacy than Dick could have wished, but it was much to watch the color come and go on her cheek in her moments of excitement, to fulfil every capricious whim of her who had been starved in her feminine hunger of caprice, to punctuate the rush of life by celestial moments when she rested a tired but bewildering head against his shoulder and listened silently with drooping lids to all he had to ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... no offence at her having thus put him off. He believes it to have been but a whim of his sweetheart—the caprice of a woman, who has been so much nattered and admired. He knows, that, like the Anne Hathaway of Shakespeare, Helen Armstrong "hath a way" of her own. For she is a girl of no ordinary character, but one of spirit, free ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... anybody else's pleasure to his own whim or amusement,—for he was intrinsically the most selfish of men,—Captain Armytage had hitherto contrived never to succeed in any undertaking. He considered himself the victim of unprecedented ill-fortune, forgetting that he had himself been his own evil genius. His son could hardly be otherwise ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... his level brows together, and for a moment lined the serene beauty of his forehead. He gazed at her with a steady, puzzled look, and at last a faint, half-quizzical smile relaxed his lips. What could this strange idea, this whim be, so unlike all Eastern maiden's usual fancies? He had not yet solved the riddle, nor found the clue! he would do so, but in the meantime she must be left her freedom. In all noble natures power brings with it a terrible ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... too well, to believe that I shall be frightened out of free, or even caustic remark, by any critique of the papers, or by any dignified frown of the literary coteries of the city.... This LORGNETTE of mine will range very much as my whim directs. In morals, it will aim to be correct; in religion, to be respectful; in literature, modest; in the arts, attentive; in fashion, observing; in society, free; in narrative, to be honest; in advice, to be sound; in satire, to be hearty; ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... implicitly obeyed; but it was not Fouche's police. Fouche saw the absurdity of interfering with trifles. I recollect that immediately after the creation of the Legion of Honour, it being summer, the young men of Paris indulged in the whim of wearing a carnation in a button-hole, which at a distance had rather a deceptive effect. Bonaparte took this very seriously. He sent for Fouche, and desired him to arrest those who presumed thus to turn the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... to be tolerated in an habitual Humour, Whim, or Particularity of Behaviour, by any who do not wait upon him for Bread. Next to the peevish Fellow is the Snarler. This Gentleman deals mightily in what we call the Irony, and as those sort of People exert themselves ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... children's minds were molded before she gave them birth, and that it depended upon the state of mind she was in herself during those nine months, as to what kind of soul her child would be born possessing. It may have been merely a whim on her part, but she held tenaciously to her belief, acted in accordance with it, and no one could dissuade her from it. Robert was her child of song, her sunny offspring, stung into revolt against ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... courteous during the first months after his arrival in India, began now to show symptoms of a haughty and overbearing spirit. He had adopted, for reasons which the reader may conjecture, but which appeared to be mere whim, at Fort St. George, the name of Tresham, in addition to that by which he had hitherto been distinguished, and in this he presisted with an obstinacy, which belonged more to the pride than the craft of his character. ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... at a whim," I said sharply, "and get on with your tale. . . . If you interrupt again, Jimmy, I'll strangle you, or attempt to. You may have observed that I'm ready to ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... vessels. One thoroughly capable of judging told me that he doubted whether there was any admiral in our service who knew more about every American ship of any importance than does the Kaiser. It has been said that his devotion to the German navy is a whim. That view can hardly command respect among those who have noted his labor for years upon its development, and his utterances regarding its connection with the future of his empire. As a simple ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... to Odo's lips. At the same instant the Columbine turned about and swept him a deep curtsey, to the delight of the audience, who had no notion of what was going forward, but were in the humour to clap any whim of their favourite's; then she turned and darted off the stage, and the curtain fell on a tumult ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... surveillance. At my request my brother had promised not to engage any nurse who had been in attendance at the hospital. The difficulty of procuring any other led him to disregard my request, which at the time he held simply as a whim. But he did not disregard it entirely, for the nurse selected had merely acted as a substitute on one occasion, and then only for about an hour. That was long enough, though, for my ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... not," the doctor answered. "And yet treat it as a whim of mine and answer my question. ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... were constantly out, chasing the vessels along shore, and Jack usually asked to be employed on this service; indeed, although so short a time afloat, he was, from his age and strength, one of the most effective midshipmen, and to be trusted, provided a whim did not come into his head; but hitherto Jack had always been under orders, and had always acquitted himself ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... merely a whim, but it is more than that," replied Carrados. "It is, well, partly vanity, partly ennui, partly"—certainly there was something more nearly tragic in his voice than comic ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... exultation: Little right has he to sing Through whose heart in such an hour 295 Beats no march of conscious power, Sweeps no tumult of elation! 'Tis no Man we celebrate, By his country's victories great, A hero half, and half the whim of Fate, 300 But the pith and marrow of a Nation Drawing force from all her men, Highest, humblest, weakest, all,— Pulsing it again through them, Till the basest can no longer cower, 305 Feeling his soul spring up divinely tall, Touched but in passing by her mantle-hem. Come back, then, ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... be more fascinating than that magic city of Az-Zahra, the wonder of its age, of which now not a stone remains? It was made to satisfy the whim of a concubine by a Sultan whose flamboyant passion moved him to displace mountains for the sake of his beloved; and the memory thereof is lost so completely that even its situation till lately was uncertain. ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... had just struck twelve, in a leisurely, rhythmic, decorous manner. It was the habit of that tall old narrow-cased clock to accelerate or retard, after its own sweet taste and whim, the uniform and monotonous series of hours that encircle our life until it wraps it and leaves it, like an infant in its crib, in ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... on some definite course of action. If he wished to follow up his success of the previous spring he must refuse no more orders: he must not let Mrs. Van Orley slip away from him. He knew there were competitors enough ready to profit by his hesitations, and since his success was the result of a whim, a whim might undo it. With a sudden gesture of decision he caught up his hat and left ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... was all chance. The decision of Superintendent Jason. The leadership of this gang. His success in capturing the man, when the time came. In a moment his whole life seemed to have become a plaything to be tossed about at the whim of chance. ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... you; but I never until now knew you were so GOOD. No, stop! Yes, I DID know it. Do you remember once in San Francisco, when I found you with Sta in your lap in the drawing-room? I knew it then. You tried to make me think it was a whim—the fancy of a bored and worried woman. But I knew better. And I knew what you were thinking then. ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... from it. The repression of night-poaching was not a matter that interested him either in principle or practice. He would just as soon that the keeper had not reminded him of his offer to share his watch—the whim that had once seized him to do so had died away; but having once promised his company, he was not one to break his word. So here ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... Africa, and the Savages in Greenland; and that the Negroes on the coast of Senegal would not touch fish till it was rotten; strong presumptions in favour of what is generally called stink, as those nations are in a state of nature, undebauched by luxury, unseduced by whim and caprice: that he had reason to believe the stercoraceous flavour, condemned by prejudice as a stink, was, in fact, most agreeable to the organs of smelling; for, that every person who pretended to nauseate the smell of another's ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... all right, as far as I can see," expostulated Bandy-legs, in reality unwilling to keep up that violent exertion just to please some silly whim on the part of the fisherman, who, like as not, would give them the laugh after they came up puffing and blowing ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... happen. For the two lines that met and fused into one have an analogue. Doesn't the story of that fusion suggest something to you, Dave Hanson? Don't you see it, the male principle of rule and the female principle of whim; they join, and the egg is fertile! Two universes join, and the result is a nucleus world surrounded by a shell, like an egg. We're a universe egg. And when an egg hatches, you don't try ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... with the strong Soar to the noblest energies of song; Catch the rib-shaking laugh, or from his eye Dash silently the tear of sympathy. Happy old man!—with feelings such as these The seasons all can charm, and trifles please; And hence a sudden thought, a new-born whim, Would shake his cup of pleasure to the brim, Turn scoffs and doubts and obstacles aside, And instant action follow ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield
... his way into one of those fits of uncontrollable fury that had always held his mother in obedience to his slightest whim since the days when he used to lie on the floor and scream himself black in the face and hold his breath till she gave in; and the poor woman, wrought to the highest pitch of excitement already by the tragic events of the evening, ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... day, Was waddling from her pond away: "What other race can boast," she cried, "The many gifts to ours allied? Earth—water—air—are all for us. When I am tired of walking thus, I fly, if so I take the whim, Or if it pleases me I swim." A cunning Serpent overheard The boasting of the clumsy bird, And, with contempt and scorn inflamed, Came hissing up, and thus exclaimed: "It strikes me, ma'am, there's small occasion For your just uttered proclamation; ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... Lun appeared with matchless art and whim, He gave the power of speech to every limb; Though masked and mute conveyed his quick intent, And told in frolic's gestures all ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... beside, And the Jessamy Bride, With the rest of the crew. The Reynoldses too, Little Comedy's face, And the Captain in Lace— Tell each other to rue Your Devonshire crew, For sending so late To one of my state. But 'tis Reynolds's way From wisdom to stray, And Angelica's whim To befrolic like him; But alas! your good worships, how could they be wiser, When both have been spoil'd in ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... rather than the suggestions of the intriguers about him. The adroit De Rosny thus softly insinuated to the flattered monarch that the designs of France were the fresh emanations of his own royal intellect. It was the whim of James to imagine himself extremely like Henry of Bourbon in character, and he affected to take the wittiest, bravest, most adventurous, and most adroit knight-errant that ever won and wore a crown as ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the news; would send round an icy little note requesting that she fail to appear—and behind her back they would all laugh and know that Marjorie had made a fool of her; that her chance at beauty had been sacrificed to the jealous whim of a selfish girl. She sat down suddenly before the mirror, biting the inside of ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... up the gun which it was his whim to carry. "I'll go talk ginseng and maple sugar to Colonel Churchill for a bit, and then I'll go back to the Eagle. As soon as you are on the Three-Notched Road again I'll come to see ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... value him Precisely at his proper rate, A creature of caprice and whim, Unstable, weak, importunate. [96] His thoughts are set on paltry gain — You only tell me what I see — I know him selfish, cold and vain; But, oh! he's all the ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle
... untimely death of Pollux, used to have the carriage and horses got ready, and the place laid at table, as though the dead were going to drive and eat. To him came Demonax, saying that he brought a message from Pollux. Herodes, delighted with the idea that Demonax was humouring his whim like other people, asked what it was that Pollux required of him. 'He cannot think why you are so long coming ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... wager, but only a strong expression of opinion. The rose will win. It does not look so now. To all appearances, this is the age of the chrysanthemum. What this gaudy flower will be, daily expanding and varying to suit the whim of fashion, no one can tell. It may be made to bloom like the cabbage; it may spread out like an umbrella—it can never be large enough nor showy enough to suit us. Undeniably it is very effective, especially in masses of gorgeous color. In ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... go, because it does not suit me." And then wavering a little at the thought of her wretched experience—"I had too much trouble finding a place where an honest home is offered for honest work, to leave this one for your whim. No, ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... the surface. It was his duty to receive each kibble as it was drawn up to the mouth of the shaft full of ore, empty it, and send it down again. Several coils of chain passing round the large drum of a great horse-windlass, called by the miners a "whim," was the means by which the kibbles were hoisted and lowered. The chain was so arranged that one kibble was lowered by it while the other was being drawn up. Frankey had emptied one of the kibbles, and had given the signal to the boy attending the horse ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... Lavater and Geoffroy St. Hilaire. An inexplicable impulse led me to demand this book, the "History of Vesalius and his Times." I had no particular reason, that I knew of, to be interested in Vesalius; I merely followed an idle whim, suggested rather by the peculiar shape and position of the folio, than by any solid reason; and this whim did not hurry me out of my lounging mood. I settled myself in one of the windows, and leisurely turned over the leaves of my book, reading a line here and a phrase there, until ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... giddiness of being a land-owner for the first time, or perhaps it was the abject wretchedness of the only hotel in town that inspired the whim which seized me during my solitary dinner. I had spent one night here, and did not welcome the prospect of a second. A return to New York was not practicable, because I had arranged to meet several contractors and an architect at the farm, next morning, to discuss the alterations I wanted made. ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... of my story. My father has an amiable whim of his own—he always prefers to have deserters from the army as his assistants. He is well aware that men of that kidney have practically renounced the world. Now who do you think rushed into his house one evening all ragged and travel-stained? Why the very soldier-youngster ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... v. To cause somebody to be removed from a {IRC} channel, an option only available to {CHOP}s. This is an extreme measure, often used to combat extreme {flamage} or {flood}ing, but sometimes used at the chop's whim. :kill file: [USENET] n. (alt. 'KILL file') Per-user file(s) used by some {USENET} reading programs (originally Larry Wall's 'rn(1)') to discard summarily (without presenting for reading) articles matching some ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... you to give her some other present," said Mrs. Peckover, in her most persuasive tones. "You may think it all a whim of mine, if you like—I dare say I'm an old fool; but I don't want you to ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... a shrug for the woman's whim. "Why, for Strelsau. She gave no reasons for going, and took with her only one lady, Lieutenant von Bernenstein being in attendance. It was a bustle, if you like, with everybody to be roused and got out of bed, and a carriage to be made ready, and messages ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... playfulness of his wit, and the exhilarating whim of his manner. My ill humour soon evaporated; and yielding to the sympathetic gaiety he had inspired, I said to him—'You are a wicked wit, Belmont. But, though I laugh, do not imagine I am a convert to your mandevilian system: ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... who quickly learned to purge His fancy of the tender whim That she was floating at the verge Of womanhood, half hid to him, Saw ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... own way," muttered Hazon, in English. "You are sacrificing all we have done and obtained this trip to an empty whim. How does that ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... sensible, cautious, and willing to compromise; distrusting alike the logical habit of the French to push out premises into conclusions at all hazards; and the German habit of system-building. The Englishman has no system, he has his whim, and is careless of consistency. It is quite possible for him to have an aesthetic liking for the Middle Ages, without wishing to restore them as an actual state of society. It is hard for an Englishman to understand to what ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... could give out;—at any rate, I cannot help thinking she wills her strength away from herself, for she has lost vigor and color from that day. I have sometimes thought he gained the force she lost; but this may have been a whim, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... reflectively. "'T is folly to want her," he said finally, as he rose and began the removal of his coat, "now that ye need not her money; but she's enough to tempt any man with blood in his veins, and I can afford the whim. Keep that blood in check, however, till ye have her fast; and do not frighten her as ye have done. To think of Lord Clowes, cool enough to match any man, losing his head over a whiffling bit of woman-flesh! What ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... owed its origin to a whim; but it was the whim of a man whose will swayed the movements of millions. He was not even willing to begin his work on the high ground of the mainland, but chose the Island of Hares, the nearest of the islands to the gulf. It was a seaport, not a capital, that he at first had in view. Legend ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... taste, and rapidity of invention. There are few authors in France more popular, none so much the familiar genius of every fireside. La Fontaine himself was a mere child of nature, indolent, and led by the whim of the moment, rather than by any fixed principle. He was desired by his father to take charge of the domain of which he was the keeper, and to unite himself in marriage with a family relative. With unthinking docility he consented to both, but neglected alike his official duties and ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... rugged, resolute face, smiling at her now with that peculiar forgiving tenderness that an older person bestows upon a child that is about to yield its childish whim. ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... individuality and cater to her whims. I resolved to be more considerate of her in the future. But my native caution made me make a reservation. I would yield to her wishes whenever my self-respect would let me do so. I had a shrewd notion that a person who would cater to every whim of my husband's mother would be little better ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... effusive. He returned to lunch, and hung about her the whole afternoon, much to her inconvenience, because he had not been included in her arrangements for some months now, and she could not easily alter them all at once just to humour a whim of his. But wherefore the whim? A very little reflection explained it. Looks and tones, and words of her partners of the previous night, not heeded at the time, recurred to her now, and made her thoughtful. But she could not feel flattered, for it was obviously not her whom Colonel Colquhoun ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... you will, but I beg you will not disown me. I have a conscience in this matter; if it was only a whim, I would ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... search. Out, men, and help us. The man that catches him shall be rewarded well. We must find him; he is hereabouts, for I heard his voice. A murrain on the fellow—all this trouble for a woman's whim." ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... or demi-gorgon. How could the ordinary rules of life or the accustomed paths of men be expected to control him? They could not and did not. And here he was pursuing her, seeking her out with his eyes, grateful for a smile, waiting as much as he dared on her every wish and whim. ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... theological whim of his master, was as vehement and as insolent now in enforcing the intolerant views of James as he had previously been in supporting the counsels to tolerance contained in the original letters ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... "She takes a whim for him; a fancy of a month; he thinks it heaven and eternity. She has ruined him. His genius is burned up; his youth is dead; he will do nothing more of any worth. Women like her are like the Indian drugs, that sleep and kill. How is that any fault of mine? He could ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... for her Highness in some whim had insulted him with his origin, caused pork to be removed from before him at table, or injured him in some such silly way; and he had a violent animosity to the old Baron de Magny, both in his capacity of Protestant, and because the latter in some haughty mood had publicly ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and, taking out a little phial from his waistcoat pocket, dropped a dose from it into a wine-glass and forced it between the man's lips. "Don't make an ass of yourself, Nigel. The shot you fired was nothing—the mere whim of a man, whose brain had been fired by champagne and who wasn't therefore altogether responsible ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... beautiful brasses in various parts of the kingdom. But the fanatics were not alone to blame; for it is well known that churchwardens and even incumbents of our churches have in many cases taken up and sold the brasses to satisfy some whim of their own in what they called "restoration" of the edifice ...
— A Short Account of King's College Chapel • Walter Poole Littlechild
... the gigantic projects which amused the leisure hours of this great prelate. Though gigantic, they were neither beyond his strength to execute, nor beyond the demands of his age and country. They were not like those works, which, forced into being by whim, or transitory impulse, perish with the breath that made them; but, taking deep root, were cherished and invigorated by the national sentiment, so as to bear rich fruit for posterity. This was particularly the case with the institution at Alcala. It soon became the subject of royal ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... vastly entertained. She's a woman of infinite spirit and she likes other women to have spirit too. She's not without romance—and I wouldn't give a thank-you for her if she were. If you'd run off out of restlessness or a mere whim or fit of temper, I doubt if she'd troubled about you further; but love—that was another thing altogether. Oh, and your courage in escaping from that dissolute rascal—that captured her. My dear, Queensberry's Duchess is your friend. She's as desirous as I am that you should be Polly ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... fellow," said he, as we watched the rear carriages of our train disappearing round a curve, "I am sorry to make you the victim of what may seem a mere whim, but on my life, Watson, I simply CAN'T leave that case in this condition. Every instinct that I possess cries out against it. It's wrong—it's all wrong—I'll swear that it's wrong. And yet the lady's story was complete, the maid's corroboration ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... original material, and he was disappointed that the uniformity of the training had not produced two characters more similar than those of Jane and Elsie. Jane's tendencies were to the practical and the positive; and she gladly availed herself of her uncle's whim to educate her like a man of business, regretting none of the accomplishments and showy acquirements which are too apt to be considered the principal part of female education. Expecting that she would be left in possession of considerable property, and virtually the guardian of her younger ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... "If the whim be on her, and she has naught else to amuse her, she will bid me tell of the life at home, and of our neighbours and friends," answered Dorcas. "But never has she spoke as she did today. Nor can I guess why she would have ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... want to stay there, that they were not satisfied with her, that she preferred to return to them. They would reply that it had already cost them enough to bring her to Paris, that it was a silly whim on her part and that she was very well off where she was, and they would send her back to the cafe in tears. She dared not tell all that she suffered in the company of the waiters in the cafe, insolent, boasting, cynical fellows, fed on the remains ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... remember. There is no doubt, however, that this great ruler, Lycurgus, was crazy, or he was one of those persons whose brains cease to develop after they have left their teens. He certainly secures the first prize as a "whim" strategist. In spite of his insane eccentricities, he was allowed the full exercise of his freedom. Had he flourished in 1915 A.D. instead of 820 "B.C." (which does not mean British Columbia), the asylum for the insane at New Westminster ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... liberalism of Rousseau, the free and humane truisms that had refreshed the other nations, the return to Nature and to natural rights. But that which in Rousseau was a creed, became in Hazlitt a taste and in Lamb little more than a whim. These latter and their like form a group at the beginning of the nineteenth century of those we may call the Eccentrics: they gather round Coleridge and his decaying dreams or linger in the tracks of Keats and Shelley ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... young man fell in with Bossuet's controversial writings, and was speedily converted by them to the Roman Catholic faith. The apostasy of a gentleman-commoner would of course be for a time the chief subject of conversation in the common room of Magdalene. His whim about Arabic learning would naturally be mentioned, and would give occasion to some jokes about the probability of his turning Mussulman. If such jokes were made, Johnson, who frequently visited Oxford, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... lieutenant, that appears rather an expensive whim!—bad enough to maintain children of our ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... satisfaction. I think that is the way it ought to be. A man ought to love a woman more than she loves him. It ought to be enough for him if she lets him give her everything she wants in the world. He ought to serve her like the old knights—give up his whole life to satisfy some whim of hers; and it's her part, if she likes, to be cold and distant. That's my ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... your heart to beguile, But never you mind—he's laughing all the while; For little he cares, so he has his own whim, And weeping or laughing are all one to him. His eye is as keen as the lightning's flash, His tongue like the red bolt quick and rash; And so savage is he, that his own dear mother Is scarce more safe in ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... sullen and defiant silence tantalized the girl to the verge of anger, especially now that she had seen something of his true self. She was painfully conscious of a sense of betrayal at having yielded so easily to his pleasant mood, only to be shut out on an instant's whim, while a girlish curiosity to know the cause of the change overpowered her. He offered no explanation, however, and took no further part in the conversation until, noting the lateness of the hour, he rose and thanked her for her hospitality in the ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... that? What a sacrifice! And to a foolish whim of Nelly's. There had been no musty smell in the house till Nelly came there to keep the shutters closed so that the sun would not fade the carpets. The old pine was one of the most splendid things of beauty in the valley. And it was something ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... I were to do what you wish, it would be a caprice, a mere whim. In displaying such an impatient humor I show my whole court that I have no control over my own feelings. Do not people already say that I am dreaming of the conquest of the world, but that I ought previously to begin by achieving a conquest ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... Campbell," said Captain Lumley, "so you have joined us at last; better late than never. You're but just in time. I thought you would soon get over that foolish whim of yours, which you mentioned in your letter to me, of leaving the service, just after you had passed, and had such good chance of promotion. What could have put it in ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... Julia, you are your own mistress, (though under the protection of Sir Anthony), yet have you, for this long year, been a slave to the caprice, the whim, the jealousy of this ungrateful Faulkland, who will ever delay assuming the right of a husband, while you suffer him to be equally imperious as ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... Sclater had a talk with him concerning his whim of waiting at table, telling him he must not do so again; it was not the custom for gentlemen to do the things that servants were paid to do; it was not fair to the servants, and so on—happening to end with an utterance of mild wonder at his fancy for such a peculiarity. ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... thought Helen, after they went away; "if another exists, different from the first——well—I see no reason why a whim should wreck my happiness." Then, tempted and scheming, she sat motionless for hours. Alas! for the soul which of its own free will, unmoors itself from the Rock of Ages, to drift away on dark and uncertain seas; who, lured ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... become the expression of the separation of the individual from his community, from himself and from other individuals—what it was originally. It is only the abstract profession of special perversity, of private whim. The infinite splitting-up of religion in North America, for example, gives it outwardly the form of a purely individual concern. It has been added to the heap of private interests, and exiled from the community as community. But there is no misunderstanding ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... reproached him for neglecting his regular work and reducing herself and her children to poverty and want, while he wasted his time and strength in chasing a dream. His neighbors jeered at him as a madman, one who put his plain duty aside for the gratification of what seemed to their dull minds merely a whim. His poor wife could hardly be blamed for reproaching him. She could neither understand nor sympathize with his hopes and fears, while she knew that if he followed his trade, he could at least save his family from want. It was a trying time for both of them. But who ever heard tell ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... smuggling expeditions, as well in those that bring a suitable remuneration as in those where one risks death for a hundred cents. And ordinarily, Arrochkoa accompanies him, without necessity, in sport and for a whim. ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... drove away with taunts the priests who had come to give the usual benediction. Wild youths were they,—the most of them,—gay, ardent, in the hey-day of life, caring mainly for pleasure, and with little heed of aught beyond the moment's whim. There seemed naught to give them care, in sooth. The sea lay smooth beneath them, the air was mild, the moon poured its soft lustre upon the deck, and propitious fortune appeared to smile upon the ship as it rushed onward, under the impulse of its long ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... still and see our liege lord slain for a woman's whim?" he cried. "Had we only our good swords, we might defy this maiden-queen ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... looked like one that would—my brother too, Whom he's so like, bad done it. Is he here still? Bring him to me—I have so often talked To Sittah of this brother, whom she knew not, That I must let her see his counterfeit. Go fetch him. How a single worthy action, Though but of whim or passion born, gives rise To other ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... family nags were made back-sore with the wearing of them, and their youthful spirits revived by new beginners sliding about on their rounded sides. My whims were sneered at, and then followed. Of course I was driven from whim to whim, to keep them busy, and to preserve my originality, and at last I became eccentric for eccentricity's sake. All this prepared the way for my Nemesis. But as yet my wild oats were green and flourishing in the field ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... Ruth with sparkling eyes, "I'm sure he's worth a lot more than some of the fellows who have always had every whim gratified. Now, which street? You'll have to tell me. I'm ashamed to say I don't know this part of town very well. Isn't it pretty down here? This house? What a wonderful clematis! I never saw such ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... again to the charge, and determines to carry out his tyrannical whim by the following order of the Council:—"The Council threaten the Lord Mayor and aldermen with imprisonment, if they do not forthwith enforce the king's command that all shops should be shut up in Cheapside and Lombard Street that were not goldsmiths' ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... none; and yet, my dear, I must date all my misfortunes from the time I was introduced to his Grace. You see that these gentlefolks have so much to think of, and are not in the habit of troubling their heads much as to what becomes of a poor peasant girl, after the whim which may have led them to patronize her has once passed over. My mother made me a new linsey woolsey petticoat, and a snood of scarlet frieze, and I was as fine as ninepence, with the first pair of stockings on that ever I had worn in my life, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... autocratic form of government. Imperial whims, it was said, over-ride grave economic considerations. In recent years, however, a change seems to have taken place in public opinion, and some people now assert that this so-called Imperial whim was an act of far-seeing policy. As by far the greater part of the goods and passengers are carried the whole length of the line, it is well that the line should be as short as possible, and that branch lines should be constructed to the ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... to the twentieth century author, notwithstanding its apparent caprice, has always been governed by immutable laws. But these laws were not recognised in the benighted epoch in which we happen to live at present. On the contrary, Fashion is thought a whim, a sort of shuttlecock for the weak-minded of both sexes to make rise and fall, bound and rebound with the battledore called—social influence. But it will interest a great many people to learn that Fashion ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... shaped so cruelly? What whim has cast such fate? Where is, in our creation, The botch that ...
— Citadel • Algirdas Jonas Budrys
... he said slightingly. "What difference does it make what vermin like that mob do? Just for a whim, to endanger ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... upon those distant people as more elemental than we, and thus feel for them the indulgent compassion that a child excites? However it is, theirs is to us a simple time of primitive emotion and romance, and the tapestries they have left us encourage the whim. ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... even if the clever thief or thieves had heard of Van Vreck's whim, no attempt would be made to dispose of the spoil to him. The elderly millionaire, though one of the most eccentric men living, was known as the soul ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... at once that this was but another manifestation of Ayesha's magic powers, which some whim of hers had drawn us from our beds to witness. Yet I confess that I felt frightened. Even the boldest of men, however free from superstition, might be excused should their nerve fail them if, when standing in a churchyard at midnight, suddenly on every side they saw the dead arising ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... man, whose manners were so agreeable and so courteous during the first months after his arrival in India, began now to show symptoms of a haughty and overbearing spirit. He had adopted, for reasons which the reader may conjecture, but which appeared to be mere whim, at Fort St. George, the name of Tresham, in addition to that by which he had hitherto been distinguished, and in this he presisted with an obstinacy, which belonged more to the pride than the craft of his ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... to every one, and never spoke more than was necessary, at the best of times. And, latterly, it had not been the best of times with him. I dare say, he had had some causes for anxiety (of which I knew nothing) about my lady's affairs; and he was evidently annoyed by my lady's whim (as he once inadvertently called it) of placing Miss Galindo under him in the position of a clerk. Yet he had always been friends, in his quiet way, with Miss Galindo, and she devoted herself to her new occupation ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... was useless. The sudden whim for Radicalism at home, and revolution abroad, which seized British statesmen in the first frenzy of the Reform Bill, instead of punishing the revolt of the Belgians, suffered the dismemberment of the kingdom of the Netherlands; a measure ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... psychologists this petty and common whim for exaggerating the merit of the science they pursue. But here the limit is really passed, and no scholar will admit that the perception and representation of a body, as it may take place in the ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... and rapidity of invention. There are few authors in France more popular, none so much the familiar genius of every fireside. La Fontaine himself was a mere child of nature, indolent, and led by the whim of the moment, rather than by any fixed principle. He was desired by his father to take charge of the domain of which he was the keeper, and to unite himself in marriage with a family relative. With unthinking docility he consented to both, but neglected alike his official ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... this whim of hers long ago, and thought she ought to get married like other people; there was nothing she need wait for—she was old enough and she would not be any richer either, for she was to have half the kingdom, which she ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... fellatio was a month later, with the young surgeon. I confessed the whim to try it, and he acceded. Though this nauseous and fatiguing act, very imperfectly performed, was prompted mostly by curiosity, there arose soon a passional hankering for repetition. In short, appetence for fellatio grew slowly ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... undefined creature to me—just a woman, and so elusive as never to get within the grasp of my mind's eye; just a woman whom I had endowed with every grace; whose kindly spirit shone through eyes, now brown, now blue, now black, according to my latest whim; who ofttimes worn, or perhaps feigning weariness, rested on my shoulder a little head, crowned with a glory of hair sometimes black, and sometimes golden or auburn, and not infrequently red, a dashing, daring red. Sometimes she was slender and elf-like, a ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... the work in hand until successful in straightening out the tangled threads, and might have remained engaged in peaceful traffic until the end of life, had it not been for a misunderstanding with her who held my heart in captivity to her slightest whim. It matters little now the cause of the quarrel, or where rested the greater blame; enough that its occurrence drove me forth reckless of everything, desirous only to leave all of my own race, and seek amid savage environment and excitement forgetfulness ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... followed his words, but, in this fraction of time, a series of impressions swept through her brain with the continuity of a bird's flight. It was clear to her at once, that what prompted his insistence was not an ordinary curiosity, or a passing whim; in a flash, she understood that here, below the surface, something was at work in him, the existence of which she had not even suspected. She was more than annoyed with herself at her own foolish obtuseness; she had had these ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... worthy! Not worthy!" He had not thought her fit to be his wife. Her father and her world would think it quite otherwise. They would count him unworthy to mate with her, an heiress, the pet of society; he a man who had given up his life for a whim, a fad, a fanatical fancy! But she knew it was not so. She knew him to be a man of all men. She knew it was true that she was not such a woman as a man like that could fitly wed, and the thought galled ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... she will be when married. Her father, I fear, will leave her too much to herself, and in that case I scarce know what may become of her; she has neither judgment nor principle to direct her choice, and therefore, in all probability, the same whim which one day will guide it, will the next lead her to ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... barber probably chanced on him in this period, finding him bereft of an adviser, and ready to be swayed by whatever whim should come. Perhaps he was attracted by the barber's hardihood, perhaps the absurdity of his inspiration had some fascination for him, perhaps he merely saw that the thing was new and, feeling jaded, let the barber have his ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... his heart that his only title to the position he assumed was the whim of his schoolfellows. He was a usurper, in fact, and however much he tried to persuade himself he was acting solely for the good of Willoughby, he knew those motives were only half sincere. And in spite of all ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... hate will, of course, succeed Christian love as the human creed. Friendship, as we know it, will largely cease to exist. Friends will be those who can be cowed into truculence or bought. There will be no truth, justice, equity, in our meaning. Only the will or whim of the Emperor. His State Church, with its worship of Him, will ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... remarkable beauty; moreover he was self-confident, somewhat ironical, and had a rather biting humour; he could not fail to please. He began to be seen everywhere, directly he had received his commission as an officer. He was much admired in society, and he indulged every whim, even every caprice and every folly, and gave himself airs, but that too was attractive in him. Women went out of their senses over him; men called him a coxcomb, and were secretly jealous of him. He lived, ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... father and mother, each in turn, or often from both together, because the mother mingles her qualities with the vital force of the father? Some physicians declare that they have known many children born without any resemblance to either father or mother, and attribute these mysteries to the whim of the Almighty." ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... Francis," rejoined the other, "that vengeance—ample, refined vengeance—cannot be too dearly purchased; and you will now perceive that I am willing to pay as extravagantly as yourself for the gratification of a whim. On no other terms than these would Lanyere consent to part with the authority he possesses, which while it will ensure you the hand of Aveline, will ensure me the keenest revenge upon Sir Jocelyn. I have therefore acceded to his terms. Thou hast got a rare bargain, Lanyere; ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... to say, the fame outran The merit of this doubtful man, For taciturnity in him, Though not a mere caprice or whim, Was not a virtue, such as truth, High birth, or beauty, ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... they set, in double chase, For such was fortune's whim, The Farmer rode to hunt the stag, And Huggins ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various
... must know that an English gentleman never breaks his word—that is, he never should break it—and you may rest assured that I will not break mine. If your view of such matters is so loose, Peter, what security have I that you won't deceive me and betray me when it is your interest or your whim to ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... to where they intended to go on their honeymoon. Only Mr. and Mrs. Harlowe and Mrs. Gray had shared their confidence regarding their purposed destination, and their elders proved themselves to be good secret-keepers. Withholding this bit of information was in the nature of a whim on Grace's part, and though she and Tom were daily besieged with questions by their friends, no one had any serious thought of spoiling Grace's little surprise by endeavoring to pry it from ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... able to speak, but he could still hear and see. At these words he turned his head toward Don Juan with a violent wrench. His neck remained twisted like that of a marble statue doomed by the sculptor's whim to look forever sideways, his staring eyes assumed a hideous fixity. He was dead, dead in the act of losing his only, his last illusion. In seeking a shelter in his son's heart he had found a tomb more hollow than those which men dig for their dead. His hair, too, had risen with horror ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... how many have lived and suffered, and died, unlettered and unsung—snatched by a tyrant's whim from life to death, in the glory of the sun, in the gloom of night, in blood and flame, and torment? Indeed, their name ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... voices, had these Bells; and far and wide they might be heard upon the wind. Much too sturdy Chimes were they, to be dependent on the pleasure of the wind, moreover; for, fighting gallantly against it when it took an adverse whim, they would pour their cheerful notes into a listening ear right royally; and bent on being heard on stormy nights, by some poor mother watching a sick child, or some lone wife whose husband was at sea, ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... really operate, in the present constitution of Nature. We are subject, unquestionably, to certain "laws of thought," which we can neither repeal nor resist, and which impose upon us a logical necessity to conceive, to reason, and to infer, not according to our own whim or caprice, but according to established rules. We are equally subject to certain "conditions of existence,"—arising partly from our own constitution, partly from the constitution of external objects and the relations subsisting ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... for a season, which means three months unless sooner filled. The men do not fish from the deck of the vessel, but from little flat-bottomed dories, each man paddling his own boat and changing its location to suit his whim. When brought on board the vessel the fish are immediately cleaned, split open and salted right down in the hold, without the formality of putting them in barrels or casks. After they are landed on shore they are dried and assorted ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... patience of the work-women, ringed like a dowager with great audacious squares of ruby and white diamond, booted and hatted as one who wears and throws away, with a bag of golden mesh on her wrist to pay the price of any whim—it could not be that she doubted what answer she should receive. And yet she did—did, and had before this: so much was evident at first sight. She was a curious gypsyish type, for all her Rue de la Paix curvings and slim, inevitable folds and pleats; a full, drooping mouth in a slender ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... King ordered him to give it to. On this evening the King, glancing all around him, cast his eye upon me, and told the valet to give the candle to me. It was an honour which he bestowed sometimes upon one, sometimes upon another, according to his whim, but which, by his manner of bestowing it, was always coveted, as a great distinction. My surprise may be imagined when I heard myself named aloud for this office, not only on this but on many other occasions. It was not that there was any ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... jewel-sceptres vail, And from their treasures scatter pearled hail; Great Brahma from his mystic heaven groans, And all his priesthood moans, Before young Bacchus' eye-wink turning pale. Into these regions came I, following him, Sick-hearted, weary—so I took a whim To stray away into these forests drear, Alone, without a peer: And I have told thee all ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... the morning, because there was nothing awaiting her attention. She was so free that there was no object in breakfasting, because there was no obligation demanding her strength. She was so free that whether she should go out or remain indoors depended merely upon the whim of the moment. There was for her nothing ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... I was exhausted before I commenced it. I am only speaking a word for the lunatics who think they enjoy it. I am one of the victims to our cousin's whim. He expects to get me converted here, I think, or ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... knowledge of modern languages and of the classics; a liking for mathematics and physics, especially all that related to electricity and magnetism; a fancy for the occult sciences, if there is any propriety in coupling these words; and a whim for odd and obsolete literature, like the Parthenologia of Fortunius Licetus, the quaint treatise 'De Sternutatione,' books about alchemy, and witchcraft, apparitions, and modern works relating to Spiritualism. With these were ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... mysteriously chattering on the top of a cairn of stones, and then shooting him with silver, which is known never to fail in finishing the imps of the Evil One. And lucky indeed was it for pug that he chanced, through whim, to abscond from that quarter; for if he had not so disappeared, he might have died by the lead, if not by the silver. As it was, the bold peasant laid claim to the full glory of compelling ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... great hope I place in you, most valued friend! I have written to Herr von Luettichau, and herewith turn to Reissiger. If Devrient cannot give up her Armida, if she cannot afford me the sacrifice of a whim, then all my welfare rests only on the promptness with which this opera is brought out, and my own is taken up. I therefore fervently pray Reissiger to hurry: and you—I beseech you—do the same with Devrient. By punctuality and ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... of doubt, this olde poore man Was ever in suspect of her marriage: For ever deem'd he, since it first began, That when the lord *fulfill'd had his corage,* *had gratified his whim* He woulde think it were a disparage* *disparagement To his estate, so low for to alight, And voide* her as soon as ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... she had ever hoped for, dreamed of, in the lean years of heart starvation. The complete devotion of a strong man, a man who held a place in the world she knew. Every luxury wealth could purchase at her disposal, even to satiation. Her every whim ministered to, and even anticipated. This was something of the ripe fruit literally heaped into Elvine's lap. She had longed for it, schemed for it, and Providence had permitted all ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... thought relating to amendment of the Constitution. One need not be committed to the belief that amendment is weakening the fundamental law, or that excessive amendment is essential to meet every ephemeral whim. We ought to amend to meet the demands of the people when sanctioned by ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... lips that yearned; ecstasy in the Oriental pride of a superb Jewess who was singing to the demure enchantment of little violins. Her restlessness satisfied, a momentary pang of distrust healed by the brotherly talk of the broad-shouldered man who cared for her and nimbly fulfilled her every whim. An unvoiced desire to keep him from drinking so many highballs; an enduring thankfulness to him when she was back at the flat; a defiant joy that he had kissed her good-night—just once, and so tenderly; a determination to "be good for him," and a fear that he had "spent too ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... intended quitting Vernon to reside in Paris. Madame Raquin protested: she had arranged her mode of life, and would not modify it in any way. Thereupon her son had a nervous attack, and threatened to fall ill, if she did not give way to his whim. ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... interest that appears to be affected by your conduct should have its utmost claims considered—your father's in the first place; and that interest, not in the miserable limits of a few days' pique or whim in which it would seem to express itself; but in its whole extent ... the hereafter which all momentary passion prevents him seeing ... indeed, the present on either side which everyone else must see. And this examination made, with whatever ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... into her room for a while, and called together her maids and passed them in review. It was a whim of the good-hearted young Duchess to go round to country-houses carrying three maids along with her. She had one maid as her personal and bodily attendant, a second to dress her hair, and a third maid to look after her ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... was very gushing, and told Bluebell they were an emotional pair. Evelyn was strangely brought up,—every fancy, however extravagant, gratified, partly on account of her delicate health, and partly from the sentimental sympathy of her mother. One whim was, she would never learn from ugly people, and the supply of beautiful governesses being limited, her education ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... her husband with every consideration, but always with a trace of formality that was significant of the changed relation. Hamilton, on his part, was inclined to regard his wife's dramatic renunciation of him as a passing whim, which it were wiser to ignore until such time as it should have worn itself out. In the meantime, he was so much absorbed by the struggle over his business difficulties that, he had little time or disposition ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... this side have emancipated our tongues more than our pens. What stands between Americans and good writing is usually want of culture; we write as well as we know how, while in England the obstacle seems to be merely a boorish whim. The style of English books and magazines is growing far less careful than ours,—less finished, less harmonious, more slipshod, more slangy. What second-rate American writer would see any wit in describing himself, like Dean Alford in his recent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... girl, and if only we can get some of the "finishing school" nonsense out of her head she will make a fine woman. She has had (it was my fault, not hers) the disadvantage of being brought up, or rather brought down, by having every possible want and whim gratified. Out of kindness for herself and her future husband, if she should have one, I want her to learn a little about earning a living. She is nearly nineteen, and I told her if she would try the bookshop job for a while I would ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... she might learn to understand Jim, he could never understand her. It was not only that she was the first woman who had come into his life, though that had much to do with it. But he was a man without much instinct or imagination; he took everything seriously and literally, he could not understand a whim. And when she saw how her pretty feminine inconsistencies puzzled him, and how he failed to understand the whimsical, butterfly fancies she confided to him, she would cry with vexation, and think she hated him; but then the knightly devotion of his big heart would win her back again, and ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... authority.—"As the Father gave Me commandment, even so I do." Every soul must have a supreme source of authority in its life, if it is to have peace. Its own whim, the suggestion of passion, the vagrant impulse of the moment, are inconsistent with tranquillity. There must be for each of us one voice which is imperative, one command which is indisputable, one authority which admits of no gainsaying. If you will search your ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... no idea," she confessed. "He comes and goes as the whim seizes him, and I very seldom know where he is. One week it is whiting and another codling. Lately he seems to have shown some partiality for ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... far from wishing to be a strong-minded person of either gender, that she did not comprehend that her aunt could wish it for her, or could herself seriously claim to be one. The talk about a professorship was in her estimation the wayward, humorous whim of an eccentric who was fond of solemn joking. Mrs. Stanley, meanwhile, could not see why her utterance should not be taken in earnest, and opened ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... sung by a Norfolk man, always seems to me a great curiosity, as the last line is lengthened out and twisted about in a most grotesque manner, apparently to suit the whim or fancy of the singer, for no two of them seem to conjure vocally with it in the same way. Everyone present is supposed to join in the last line as a kind of chorus, and not only join in, but "give it lungs," as they say. Some of them pay such attention ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... metal ribs. The inside form was designed to permit continuous work by moving the form ahead as the concreting progressed. It consisted as shown by Fig. 252, of an invert form on which an arch form was carried on rollers. The invert form was pulled along by cable from a horsepower whim set ahead, being steered, aligned and kept to grade by being slid on a light wooden track. It had the form of a long half cylinder, with its forward end beveled off to form a scoop-like snout. The arch center consisted of semi-circular rings 2 ft. long, ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... where General Bredow slept last winter,—I should work more commodiously. My Secretary (Collini) and I could work together there. I should have a little more sun, which is a great point for me.—Only the whim of a sick man, perhaps! Well, even so, your Majesty will have pity on it. You promised to make me happy." [—OEuvres de ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... is unwilling to have the map of Europe altered because Mr. Robert Calverley has taken a whim to go into Italy. He is angrier than I have ever known him to be. He swears that with a pen's flourish you have imperiled the well-being of England, and raves in the same breath of the preferment he had designed for you. Beware of him. For my own part, I shrug and acquiesce, ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... soul with its presage of disaster. He saw the hand of destiny, and everything in him rebelled against the inexorable cruelty of it all. It was infamous that any life should be dominated by a whim of the Fates; that any creature should enter this world with a silken cord about his throat. Destiny. Does it mould our lives; or do our lives, inundated with the forces of heredity, mould our destinies? He tried to grapple with the thought; ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... sinking on high-grade ore, Judson Eells had taken a good deal for granted when he had set out to develop the Stinging Lizard. He had squared out his shaft and sunk on the vein only as far as the muckers could throw out the waste; and then, instead of installing a windlass or a whim, he had decided upon a gallows-frame and hoist. But to bring in his machinery he must first have a road, for the trail was all but impassable; and so, without sinking, he had blasted his way up the canyon, only to find his efforts wasted. The ore had been dug out before ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... "I thought we were come among friends; but just now I was in doubt if ye would have it so. But it is a truth that childhood is hasty, and I will only consider it as a childish freak." Then said King Magnus, "It is no childish whim, but a trait of my family, that I never forget what I have given, or what I have not given. If this trifle had been settled against my will, there would soon have followed' some other discord like it. In all particulars I ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... much. 6. Whim'si-cal, full of whims. 20. Cur'ried, cleaned. Fore'top, hair on the forepart of the head. 24. Bun'gler, a clumsy workman. 26. Dis-posed', inclined to, Back'ward, slow, unwilling. 27. Ca'pa-ble, possessing ability. Per-form'ing, accomplishing. 29. Re-fus'al, choice of ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... I have been rambling over the country, but I am now confined with some lingering complaints, originating, as I take it, in the stomach. To divert my spirits a little in this miserable fog of ennui, I have taken a whim to give you a history of myself. My name has made some little noise in this country; you have done me the honour to interest yourself very warmly in my behalf; and I think a faithful account of what character of a man I am, and how I came by that character, may perhaps amuse ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... thirty-eight. Hawthorne disapproved the proposed plan, and steadily refused to go into the Class Golgotha, as he styled the dismal collection. I joined him in this freak, and so our places were left vacant. I now regret the whim, since even a moderately correct outline of his features as a youth would, at this day, ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... over, all's well? Gad, my head begins to whim it about. Why dost thou not speak? Thou art both as drunk and as ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... be frank with you, miss," said Jeff, turning a colorless face upon her. "If you was ez rich as the Bank of California, and could throw your money on any fancy or whim that struck you at the moment; if you felt you could buy up any man and woman in California that was willing to be bought up; and if me and my aunt were starving in the road, we wouldn't touch the money that we hadn't earned fairly, and didn't belong ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... scandalized them. An open, systematic and sometimes brutal attack was made upon the customs, traditions and prejudices of the people. The reformer did not confine himself to the civil institutions: he laid violent hands upon the Church, and forced his way into the family, regulating, as the whim seized him, both public affairs and the private life of the citizen. The old-fashioned Russian was a stranger in Peter's new empire. His eyes were shocked by the spectacle of an unaccustomed garb, and novel administrative titles fell strangely on his ear. Names and things, the almanac and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... to show mercy to any one just then, for you and your pestilent, meddlesome crew fought like fiends, and cost me several good men that I could ill spare. Your gratitude, therefore," and I thought I detected an echo of something very like scorn in his voice, "is due solely to my boy Pedro, whose whim of saving you I did not even then care to thwart. But enough of this; you are my guest, and may, if you will, become my friend. I hope your accommodation is to ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... striking, I am not prepared to lay stress on it as an argument for the geographical determination of Marco's Arbre Sec. His use of the title more than once to characterise the whole frontier of Khorasan can hardly have been a mere whim of his own: and possibly some explanation of that circumstance will yet be elicited from the Persian historians or geographers ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... expedition—where a table d'hote is kept for us, without trouble on our parts, and we adjourn after dinner, when one of the old world (old friends) drops casually down among us. Come and find us out, and seal our judicious change with your approbation, whenever the whim bites, or the sun prompts. No need of announcement, for we are sure to ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... she made up her mind to live with her brothers at Fern Vale, she would be her own mistress, and have entire control over her own actions; so that the acceptance and prolongation of any visit would in a great measure depend upon her own whim. He said, however, from what he knew of her disposition, he had no doubt she would far prefer the agreeable society of such friends as Mrs. and Miss Rainsfield, to the dull monotony of a guardianship of ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... deliberate, narrative manner. I want live things in their pride to remain. I will not kill one grasshopper vain Though he eats a hole in my shirt like a door. I let him out, give him one chance more. Perhaps, while he gnaws my hat in his whim, Grasshopper lyrics occur ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... of flatterers and dependants she had become haughty, vain, and supercilious; still she was lovely, and no one knew better how to practise the most winning arts of her sex, when whim or interest prompted ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... for each of them is, or was, possessed of some dominating vice, passion, whim or weakness which made him incapable of fulfilling the ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... territorial divisions, the old financial system, the old judicial and legal regulations, the old ecclesiastical arrangements, and, most significant of all, the old condition of holding land—serfdom and feudalism—all were shattered. Yet all this destruction was not a mad whim of the moment. It had been preparing slowly and painfully for many generations. It was foreshadowed by the mass of well-considered complaints in the cahiers. It was achieved not only by the decrees of the Assembly, but by the forceful expression ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... that if I read, and read alone, Too many books that no men yet have written, I may go blind, or worse? You know yourself, Of all insistent and insidious creatures, To be the one to save me, and to guard For me their flaming language? And you know That if I give much headway to the whim That's in me never to be quite sure that even Through all those years of storm and fire I waited For this one rainy day, I may go on, And on, and on alone, through smoke and ashes, To a cold end? You know so dismal much As that about me? . . . Well, ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... had completely discomfited our enemies. On the following day Comte Jean laid before me several projects, which were far from pleasing in my eyes; too much time was required in their execution. I knew the king too well to be blind to the danger of allowing this mere whim of the moment to take root in his mind. One idea caught my fancy, and without mentioning it to Comte Jean, I determined upon carrying it into execution. The marechale de Mirepoix happened at this moment not to be at Paris at her hotel in the rue Bergere, but ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... Correspondence with France put such a Whim into some Folks Heads, and because they have an Academy for the same Use at Paris, we forsooth must have one at London. The Foreign News, which sometimes tells us more Truth of our doings here than our own, has the very Names of the Members of the Academy which the Doctor speaks of. I ...
— Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley (1712) and The British Academy (1712) • John Oldmixon
... Vatican marbles; But I can't wholly believe that this was the actual reason,— He was so ready before, when we asked him to come and escort us. Certainly he is odd, my dear Miss Roper. To change so Suddenly, just for a whim, was not quite fair to the party,— Not quite right. I declare, I really almost am offended: I, his great friend, as you say, have doubtless a title to be so. Not that I greatly regret it, for dear Georgina distinctly Wishes for nothing so much as to show her ...
— Amours de Voyage • Arthur Hugh Clough
... looked up to see whether there was not a smile upon his face. She had no idea that her new "whim" for serious reading was to be allowed to pass without remark. But his look was quite grave as ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... ill that Mr. Truelocke keeps aloof from the prayers, but respects his scruples, and reveres his character. For proof thereof, I did not cease urging on Harry his careless promise, that our union should have our father's blessing on it; and the good pastor falling in with my whim, prevailed on Mr. Truelocke to remarry us very privately in the little church I spoke of, he himself assisting. 'Twas a foolish fancy, I wot, but I was not easy till I had it gratified. And it is now my constant hope that Harry will never put to sea again, but will be content to plough ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling
... much too serious in its purport, too searching in its character-delineation and too thoughtful in its wit, to be treated as a mere farce. Its title—not, perhaps, a very happy one—is explained in this saying of one of the characters: "Marry for whim and leave the rest to the divorce court—that's the New York idea of marriage." And again: "The modern American marriage is like a wire fence—the woman's the wire—the posts are the husbands. One—two—three! And if you cast your eye over the future, you can count ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell
... ill, to spurn. He thought of little but Canadian farms, And heeded not Rebellion's loud alarms, [Footnote: The Rebellion of 1837.] Which his old master pointed out to him, To put a stop to such a foolish whim. Yet it caused them sincerest grief of heart From all kind friends and relatives to part, Without a prospect of beholding more Each much-loved face, on dear ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... Stede—bad!" Jeremy gave a start as this soliloquy progressed. He had wondered once or twice what had become of the prisoners taken aboard the brig. That attempted escape of Job's had cost dear in human life it seemed. And his own deliverance had been the mere whim of a mad-man! He shuddered and thanked God fervently for the fortune that had so ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... "Manfred" was completed in 1817, and was followed by the fourth canto of "Childe Harold." Margarita Cogni was the reigning favourite of Byron's unworthy harem at this time; and his poem of "Don Juan," now begun, most faithfully and lamentably reflects every whim and passion that, like the rack of autumn, swept across ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... their little hearts made glad by novelty and colour. Great was the surprise of the older folk, who said, 'It is a new thing in the world when so great a show as this comes out of the accustomed track of shows to erect its tent in our small town!' Yet so it was; from some whim of the manager, or of some one who had the ear of the manager, the thing ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... through the crowds. By a rope from the collar, three dead bodies were drawn along the ground, dusty and disfigured by bumping against stone and clod. They were those of slaves, hanged the preceding day, perhaps for pilfering, perhaps for a mere whim, since every baron had ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... of the best comedies, we are almost transported to another world, and escape from this dull age to one that was all life, and whim, and mirth, and humour. The curtain rises, and a gayer scene presents itself, as on the canvas of Watteau. We are admitted behind the scenes like spectators at court, on a levee or birthday; but it is the court, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... tells? To repeat it all would require years and days; for year by year it is telling the old stories, sometimes short ones, sometimes long ones, according to its whim; it tells of old times, of the ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... of this calamity, unparalleled since the beginning of British rule in India, was over the land that the most gorgeous "durbar" ever held in India was ordered for the purpose of gratifying a whim of Queen Victoria, who had induced Lord Beaconsfield to have her proclaimed Empress of India, or, as is far more probable, which he had instigated her to accept. The natives who spoke of this to us ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... combed. The wild look had left her eyes. She was like one whose back is relieved of a heavy burden. Her lips moved as she scattered little red squares of paper into the grave. I suppose they thought it a crazy whim of hers—they who saw her do it. I thought that I understood the curious bit of symbolism and so did the schoolmaster, who stood beside me. Doubtless the pieces of ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... this infirmity. And so that night, ere lying down to sleep, There came on him, half making him to weep And half to laugh that such a thing should be, A mad conceit and antic fantasy (And yet more sad than merry was the whim) To crave this boon of Sleep, beseeching him To send the dream of dreams most coveted. And ere he lay him down upon his bed, A soft sweet song was born within his thought; But if he sang the song, or if 'twas nought But the soul's longing whispered ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... to believe that I shall be frightened out of free, or even caustic remark, by any critique of the papers, or by any dignified frown of the literary coteries of the city.... This LORGNETTE of mine will range very much as my whim directs. In morals, it will aim to be correct; in religion, to be respectful; in literature, modest; in the arts, attentive; in fashion, observing; in society, free; in narrative, to be honest; ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... an excellent manager, and he himself a pleasant, good-humored man, full of whim and inoffensive mirth. His powers of amusement were of a high order, considering his station in life and his want of education. These qualities contributed, in a great degree, to bring both the young and old to ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... really great wealth of contrite love upon her daughter and husband, spending on Alma and loading her with gifts of jewelry and finery to somehow express her grateful adoration of her; paying her husband the secret penance of twofold fidelity to his well-being and every whim, Alma, returning from a trip, taken reluctantly, and at her mother's bidding, down to the basement trunk room, found her gone, a modish black-lace hat and the sable ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... for me her madness work't again, And made her take a whim to run away, She would have kill'd me else, do what I could; I'le stay no longer, lest she come again. I'd not be in her fingers as I was For ...
— The Fatal Jealousie (1673) • Henry Nevil Payne
... does not rid himself of you in a more summary manner, daughter," rejoined Rochford. "If you would stand well with him, you must study his lightest word, look, and action—humour him in every whim—and yield to every caprice. Above all, ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... a whim of Madame de Maintenon's, who fed them with scraps from the royal table, some carp were taken out of a muddy pool and placed in a marble basin of bright, clean water. The carp perished. The animals might be sacrificed, but man could never infect them with the ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... sword. We had not then seen a Governor in his chamber at the State-House with his hat on, a cigar in his mouth, and his feet upon the stove. Domestic service, in spite of the proverb, was not seldom an inheritance, nor was household peace dependent on the whim of a foreign armed neutrality in the kitchen. Servant and master were of one stock; there was decent authority and becoming respect; the tradition of the Old World lingered after its superstition had passed away. There was an ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... not ask your story," said Chalmers. "I tell you frankly that it was a sudden whim that prompted me to send for some stranger to dine with me. I assure you you will not suffer through any curiosity ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... these prints; and the order was implicitly obeyed; but it was not Fouche's police. Fouche saw the absurdity of interfering with trifles. I recollect that immediately after the creation of the Legion of Honour, it being summer, the young men of Paris indulged in the whim of wearing a carnation in a button-hole, which at a distance had rather a deceptive effect. Bonaparte took this very seriously. He sent for Fouche, and desired him to arrest those who presumed thus to turn the new order into ridicule. Fouche merely ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... in a filibustering effort to keep the bill from coming to a final vote and succeeded. Now, why did he fail us? Did he renounce the faith of a lifetime? No. Did the suffragists offend him? No; but even if they had done so a man of character does not change his views in a moment for a personal whim. Why, then, this change? Any member of the Legislature, for or against suffrage, if he would speak as frankly to others as he did to us, would tell you it was for money. Rumor was plentiful stating the amount and the donor. The saloons all over Oklahoma, with a remarkable ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... of was the room of old Mr. Bud. Davenport had spoken of going there often to sketch. Such a queer, snug old place might have an attraction of its own for the man. There was, indeed, a chance—a bare chance—of his having, upon a whim, prolonged a stay in that place or its neighborhood. Or, at least, Mr. Bud might have later news of him ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... remorse and wore without shame the diadem of the Caesars. Through this pantomime of policy, fortune played the clown to his caprices. At his touch, crowns crumbled, beggars reigned, systems vanished, the wildest theories took the color of his whim, and all that was venerable, and all that was novel, changed places with ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... times. This is the excuse Ah find foh you in thinking Ah would value money moh than the spohtsmanship of a gentleman. Yoh times are bad, young man!' he says. 'They have succeeded in staining the puhple and white at the vehy end. Ah would neveh have raced afteh to-day. It was a whim of an old man to see his colohs once moh among a field of hawses. Ah knew Ah was not of this day. Ah should have known bettah than to become a paht of it even foh a little time. Ah have learned ma lesson,' he says, lookin' up at me. 'But you have ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... he did understand how serious a thing it was, his going as a missionary into the Far North. Why did he do it? Was it a whim, or the excited imagination of youth, or that prompting which the young often have to make the world better? Or was it a fine spirit of adventure with a good heart behind it? Perhaps it was ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... Eastern India now, a richer clime, Richer, alas! in everything but rhyme, The Muses steer their course; and, fond of change, At large, in other worlds, desire to range; Resolved, at least, since they the fool must play, To do it in a different place, and way. F. What whim is this, what error of the brain, What madness worse than in the dog-star's reign? 10 Why into foreign countries would you roam, Are there not knaves and fools enough at home? If satire be thy object—and thy lays As yet have shown no talents fit for praise— If satire be thy object, search all ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... see the remains of this interesting little girl laid in the cold and silent grave. I think it was the ancient Romans who personified DEATH in the form of a walking skeleton, scythe in hand, cutting down whatever the whim of his fancy might suggest. This representation may accord with the relentless strokes his scythe is sometimes seen to make; but the light of heaven reveals a Hand that holds his bony arm within its grasp; and that Hand is the hand of our ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... under the shadow of this "great rock in a weary land," I unaccountably felt the influence of those very superstitious fears and terrors which I was so anxious to combat in my fellow-travellers. I then soliloquized to myself, "What a poor creature is man, how weak, how miserable! how exposed to every whim and folly which a credulous mind can invent!" Thus soliloquizing, I got within the mysterious precincts of the Great Mountain Rock, in the course of three-quarters of an hour. I had, however, still more fear of the living than the dead, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... could not, and need not, do anything about, as if it were the normal tendency in them in their several ways. We all of us know that modern art is not haphazard, it is not hit or miss in its intention at least, certainly not the outcome of oddity, of whim, or of eccentricity, for these traits belong to the superficial and cultivated. We have found that with the best moderns there has been and is inherent in them the same sincerity of feeling, the same spirit directing their research. The single ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... A caprice, an empty whim will make her stiffen against reasons of all kinds; it will not please her to love her clearly recognized good, it will please her to hate it. Do you consider such a faculty, sir, to be the richest present God can have ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... lies, egad, 'tis very true, The illustrious Cardinal Richelieu: My grief is genuine—void of whim! Alas! my pension lies ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... first Chinese edition of the Tripitaka, in manuscript and not printed, was collected in 518. Although Wu-Ti's edicts, particularly that against animal sacrifices, gave great dissatisfaction, yet the Buddhist movement seems to have been popular and not merely an imperial whim, for many distinguished persons, for instance the authors Liu Hsieh and Yao Ch'a,[632] took ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... danger for a national spirit thus composed is the humdrum, the plain and ugly, the ignoble: in a word, das Gemeine, die Gemeinheit, that curse of Germany, against which Goethe was all his life fighting. The excellence of a national spirit thus composed is freedom from whim, flightiness, perverseness; patient fidelity to Nature, in a word, SCIENCE,—leading it at last, though slowly, and not by the most brilliant road, out of the bondage of the humdrum and common, into the better life. The universal dead-level of plainness and homeliness, the lack of ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... being laborers, and beg for an opportunity to earn a living in some one's employ. One of the saddest facts, and most threatening of disaster in these present commercial conditions, is the common desire to be employed, to get a job, dependent on the whim of another, instead of a determination to direct one's own labor and be the manager of one's own business. The sound educational development is wanting in the daily occupation of the hired laborer, and there is a loss of manhood ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... of human curiosity has as little to be said for it—or against it—as a child's whim. It is an affair of the senses, and an extraordinarily innocent one. It is a vanity of the eye or ear. It is another form of the hatred of being left out. So many human beings do not like to miss ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... almost to a whim, was his sudden decision that, although I might not touch the novels of Scott, I was free to read those of Dickens. I recollect that my stepmother showed some surprise at this, and that my Father explained ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... he caught the look in her eyes, he was more than ever convinced that he would be able to keep Helen without satisfying her extremely expensive whim. ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... at this foolish whim, and failed to quite understand him. We remained together until we "collapsed," at Bowling Green, when we ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... to the way of it I am going to call an old writer for whom, be it whim or not, I have an almost 18th century reverence—Longinus. No one exactly knows who he was; although it is usual to identify him with that Longinus who philosophised in the court of the Queen Zenobia and was by her, in her downfall, handed over with her other counsellors to be ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... This sudden whim of conferring on him a degree in divinity, and her change of manner—implying that she had been laughing at him before—irritated him. "I presume," he said, "that you are acquainted with the movements ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... was not to be misled by the spelling. That was no guide anyhow. He avoided every recognised phrase in the language and mispronounced everything in order that he shouldn't be suspected of ignorance, but whim. ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... in the claim of any such person. There are, of course, some human beings so constituted that they can influence for good the physical conditions of other people. I am very sorry that his present whim has seized him. I would like the burro, and you would like the price of him. Well, all in good time. Meanwhile, if I can help ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... bench invited him more than the bustling hotel and the prospect of a dreary dinner. But he forced himself to his tub and evening clothes, and once more dined alone. The fixed habits of a lifetime are not to be lightly set aside for some passing whim. ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... Chess, she's having the loveliest things made, if they are mourning, and the sisters, they ask her about everything they order—to wear, I mean. And, just think! Mrs. Schuyler never wears any jewels but pearls! It's a whim, you know, or it was her husband's whim, or something, but anyway, she has oceans of pearls, and no ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... see a fellow-creature thus tied, unable to move or to raise a hand in his own defence; scourged on his bare back, with a cowhide, until the blood flows in streams from his quivering flesh? And for what? Often for the most trifling fault; and, as sometimes occurs, because a mere whim or caprice of his brutal overseer demands it. Pale with passion, his eyes flashing and his stalwart frame trembling with rage, like some volcano, just ready to belch forth its fiery contents, and, in all its might and fury, spread death and destruction all around, he continues ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... Richard, whose fate I must sigh at; Alas, that such frolic should now be so quiet! What spirits were his! what wit and what whim! Now breaking a jest, and now breaking a limb; Now wrangling and grumbling to keep up the ball, 55 Now teasing and vexing, yet laughing at all! In short, so provoking a devil was Dick, That we wish'd him full ten times a day at Old Nick; But, missing his mirth ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... the thing seemed to penetrate even his darkened mind, and then he would whisper, "I'll make believe it's Charlie, any way," so Charlie he persisted in calling her, and Richard encouraged him in this whim, when he found how much satisfaction it afforded the old man to ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... waved it in a circle. Instantly the whole tribe vanished. It was as if a puff of wind had blown them; or as if they had been figures thrown on a screen by a magic lantern and suddenly switched off at the performer's whim. Then the chief continued forward, we ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... his ear, in obedience to which he bundled out his daughters, as they hung back politely, closed the door upon the last skirt, and reconducted the Countess to the head of the table, scratching his chin in some perplexity, but ready to humour her slightest whim. ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... most whimsical bit, I must say. First, she's no and then she's yes. You're lucky, my coin, to have fallen into the custody of one who will not give you over to the mercy of strangers for the sake of a whim. You are now retired on a pension, well deserved after valiant service in the cause of a ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... her breakfast. On account of this abstinence, Henrik now jested, and Petrea answered him quite gaily; Louise, on the contrary, took up the matter quite seriously, and thought—as many others did—that this whim of Petrea's had a distant relationship to folly; and folly, Louise—the sensible Louise—considered the most horrible of horrors; Louise, who ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... the blacksmith working for the Paradise Co., was making some repairs about the surface of the air shaft, and among his tools was a bar of steel an inch square, and 8 or 10 feet long, which was thrown across the shaft, and while working at the whim wheel he slipped and struck this bar which fell to the bottom of the shaft, 100 feet deep and the blacksmith followed. When the other workmen went down to his assistance they found that the bar ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... if you will, but I beg you will not disown me. I have a conscience in this matter; if it was only a whim, I ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... fine eye for direction and distance. One, two, three, four blocks from the public square. That's the block with the solitary oak-tree in it, if I'm right. Yes? Well, I must have lots in that very block. When I take a whim of that kind, heaven and earth can't turn me, Mr. Plausaby. So you'd just as ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... Muse, dear Lyra, must be trim, Must not indulge in vagrant whim, Of voice or vesture. Boudoir decorum will allow No gleaming eye, no glowing ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 10, 1892 • Various
... same brood of enemies to man's success in laudable undertakings; and of which ignorance is the chief, and may be regarded as the prolific source of all the others. In this case, undoubtedly, as in others, some are opposed from a mere notion of opposition, or from a mere whim; others again, simply to agree with, or differ from, some, who are either in favor or opposed; whilst some must oppose whatever they themselves do not originate;—and, others again, have no doubt been led honestly ...
— Address delivered by Hon. Henry H. Crapo, Governor of Michigan, before the Central Michigan Agricultural Society, at their Sheep-shearing Exhibition held at the Agricultural College Farm, on Thursday, • Henry Howland Crapo
... error, of a human creature. That other, which he displays, with mock emphasis, of restitution to the downtrodden fairyhood, is an exotic, fair and slight bud, grafted into the sturdier indigenous stock. For let us fix but a steady look upon the thing itself, and what is there before us? a whim, a trick of the fancy, tickling the fancy. We are amused with a quaint calamity—a panic of caps and cloaks. We laugh—we cannot help it—as the pigmy assembly flies a thousand ways at once—grave councillors and all—throwing terrified somersets—hiding ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... Sydney Smith, alias Peter Plymley. I had forgotten his very existence till I discerned the queer contrast between his black coat and his snow-white head, and the equally curious contrast between the clerical amplitude of his person, and the most unclerical wit, whim, ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... even an hour's delay, because the squire's sudden death had made a deep impression on her mind. All this, translated into Harry's blunt and simple speech, was intelligible enough to Mr. Hardwicke. The girlish whim that all should be done on her birthday made him smile, but the remembrance of Godfrey Thorne was present in his mind as in hers. He did not attach much importance to the whole affair, and felt that he should not be overwhelmed with surprise should he hear a few months later ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... to him; of passports We never had the whim. Strong ones I believe it would need To recall, to our side of the limit, Subjects of Pluto King of the Dead: But, from the Germanic Empire Into the gallant and cynical abode Of Messieurs your pretty Frenchmen,—A jolly and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... to the house, and doubts began to gnaw at him. Was he going to destroy his plans now at a whim? He felt an impulse to get into the rocket and leave without her—yet he thought of the cold emptiness of space and himself drifting through alien worlds, alone, lonely. Perhaps it was wrong but he couldn't condemn her for something that was partly his fault. ...
— The Odyssey of Sam Meecham • Charles E. Fritch
... a perfect understanding between them, and the master first glanced up and made sure of the position of the sun and the length of time he might allow for the trip home, before he decided to follow the whim of the wolf-dog. Then he turned Satan and cantered, with the piebald trailing, ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... willing," the girl said dreamily, "to sacrifice the happiness of all those you love and all who love you to follow this whim?" ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... mothers know this; my wife's mother thought me a good match, and my wife thought so too. I loved her very dearly, or I would not have married—though I don't know, either: people often marry in a whim." ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... quite awful. He was a soldier above all things, and told the Queen he felt very awkward in evening-dress, as though in leaving off his uniform he had "taken off his skin." He must have been rather a discommoding guest, from a little whim he had of sleeping only on straw. He always had with him a leathern case, which at every place he stopped, was filled with fresh straw from ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... man on earth to stick to anything! But for the sake of a whim he'll risk his life and the honour of all his ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... returned Lord Frederick, 'and must press you for a plain and straightforward answer. Is what you have just said only a mere whim of the moment, occasioned by your being out of humour and irritated, or is it your serious intention, and one that ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
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