"Free-and-easy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the finest-looking men in the world. A great shock of rough dusty-dark hair, bright-laughing hazel eyes, massive aquiline face, most massive yet most delicate, of sallow-brown complexion, almost Indian-looking; clothes cynically loose, free-and-easy;—smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is musical metallic,—fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie between; speech and speculation free and plenteous: I do not meet, in these late decades, such company over a pipe!' Not only were pipes smoked ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... the waifs and strays which the war had drifted down to the pretty frontier town the great rendezvous was the Hotel Hagen, at the bend of the turn leading from the bridge up to the railway station. The Hagen was a free-and-easy place compared with the Rheinischer, and among its inmates there was no one who could sing a better song than manly George—type of the Briton at whom foreigners stare—who, ignorant of a word of their language, wholly unprovided with any authorisation ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... Churchill, a nephew of the great Duke of Marlborough, suggested to the disconsolate widow-by-brevet that she should share his home, the proposal was accepted, and the actress entered for a second time into a free-and-easy compact, and for a second time remained faithful thereto until her new admirer went the way of Mr. Maynwaring. It was even rumoured—scandalous gossip!—that the two were married; and one day the Princess ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... face with a broom she carried, thereby toppling him over ignominiously into the coal-scuttle, and then, placing her plump hands saucily akimbo, she exclaimed with enchanting naivete: "There! Mr. Free-and-easy! take that for ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... legate, yet dressed tonight in cloth of gold, with no trace of his churchly dignity about him; there was their younger brother Giuffredo, Prince of Squillace, a handsome stripling, flanked by his wife, the free-and-easy Donna Sancia of Aragon, swarthy, coarse-featured, and fleshy, despite her youth; there was Giovanni's sometime wife; the lovely, golden-headed Lucrezia, the innocent cause of all this hate that festered in the Lord of Pesaro's soul; there was their mother, the nobly handsome Giovanozza ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... leave San Pasqual whenever he pleased. Bob realized that a longer stay at the Hat Ranch, while inviting enough, would nevertheless prove expensive, by reason of the retention of his nurse, for Donna could not continue to entertain him unchaperoned, even in such a free-and-easy town as San Pasqual, and he was fearful that a longer stay, even under the prevailing conditions, might prove embarrassing to Donna, in case interest in his affairs should revive; hence he announced his determination of going up to San Francisco to recuperate and ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... happened to Dwight? Something that is not easily settled; for as the chickens sputter in the oven below, and the water boils off the potatoes, and the pudding is manufactured, and the cloud deepens and glooms, he does not recover his free-and-easy air and manner. He ceases his walk after a little, from sheer weariness, but he thrusts out his arm and seizes a chair with the air of one who has not time to be leisurely, and flings himself into it, and clasps his arms on the table, and ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... him, just on a chance?" His smile broadened to a grin, but when Lorraine continued to look at him with a neutral expression in her eyes, he threw away his cigarette and abandoned with it his free-and-easy manner. ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... him all evening mistrustfully, as he sat on the sofa-bed, stroking old Pluto, who had come with him to the party. Specht now poured out another glass for Pix, and laid it down beside him. Pix quaffed it in silence; Specht refilled it, and began in a free-and-easy tone—"Now, Pix, what do you think of ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... to enjoy himself—to "live in the free-and-easy style of the Regency days." He wanted to learn the shoe-trick, in order to visit the thieves' taverns of the city, like Rodolphe in the Mysteries of Paris; drew out of his pocket a dirty clay pipe, abused the servants, ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... lucky, seeing you," cried Mr. Tom Herbert, who was a free-and-easy sort of a gentleman, the second son of a brother justice of Mr. Hare. "I wish to goodness you'd give us a draught of your cider, Carlyle. We went up to Beauchamp's for a stroll, but found them all out, and I'm awful thirsty. ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... the bar—that solemn sanctuary—and, smiting old John upon the back, inquire if there was never a pretty girl in the house, and where he hid his little chambermaids, with a hundred other impertinences of that nature; none of your free-and-easy companions, who would scrape their boots upon the firedogs in the common room, and be not at all particular on the subject of spittoons; none of your unconscionable blades, requiring impossible chops, and taking unheard-of ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... holidays' he called them—in the still countrified suburbs of Hampstead and Edgware; there was the gathering at the Turk's Head, with its literary magnates, for his severer hours; and for his more pliant moments, the genial 'free-and-easy' or shilling whist-club of a less pretentious kind, where the student of mixed character might shine with something of the old supremacy of George Conway's inn at Ballymahon. And there must have been quieter and more chastened resting-places of memory, when, softening ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... table sat Master Pothier, with a black earthen mug of Norman cider in one hand and a pipe in the other. His budget of law hung on a peg in the corner, as quite superfluous at a free-and-easy at the Fleur-de-Lis. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... In that free-and-easy way in which meetings are conducted in Japan it was permissible for us to leave after another speech had been made. The proceedings were interrupted while the promoters of the gathering showed us a collection of books and memorials of Hearn, arranged under a large portrait, and accompanied us to ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... laughing. "This is Moses, father, my host's servant, and my very good friend, and a remarkably free-and-easy friend, as you see. He will guide us back to the cave, since Van der Kemp seems ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... to hear what the visitors were saying, and she kept crossing herself, pressing her fingers to her forehead, and gazing at the ikons. Anisim, slightly drunk, opened the door into the kitchen and said in a free-and-easy way: ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... pages to some choice flowers of Transatlantic rhetoric, culled from the small-talk of one of his fellow-passengers, whom he calls "an American Presbyterian clergyman"—though we grievously suspect him to have been a boatswain, who had jumped from the forecastle to the pulpit by one of those free-and-easy transitions not unusual in the "free and enlightened republic." At Smyrna, he signalized his return to the "land of the Franks," (which we had always imagined to be Europe,) by ordering a beefsteak and a bottle of porter, and bespeaking the paper of a Manchester traveller in drab leggings—and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... out in a loose blouse and slippers, a short pipe in his mouth, and an old newspaper in his hand, and threw himself on the heathery scrub which met the shingle, within easy hail of the fishermen. There he lay, the picture of free-and-easy, loafing, hand-to-mouth young England, "improving his mind," as he shouted to them, by the perusal of the fortnight-old weekly paper, soiled with the marks of toddy-glasses and tobacco-ashes, the legacy of the last ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... I never brought her up at all, except to give her a lick of a strap now and again. Don't put it on me, Governor. She ain't accustomed to it, you see: that's all. But she'll soon pick up your free-and-easy ways. ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... fraction of truth, have lain soaking in the mind of our free-and-easy community so long, that what strength they had is well-nigh got ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... him to be polite, and even formal, rather than free-and-easy and rude. She taught him to be a man. He must not be what brave boys called a molly-coddle: like most womanly women, she had a veneration for man, and she gave him her own high idea of the ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... punctilious, and in these free-and-easy places, perhaps, especially so. If only for his own protection he did not seek to make advances unless some kind of introduction paved the way. But for these two to skate together in the semi-darkness without speech, often of necessity brushing shoulders ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... not but notice that her very tendons and bones mollified, paralysed-like from feeling, so that his was the sensation of basking in a soft bower of love. What is more, her demonstrative ways and free-and-easy talk put even those of a born coquette to shame, with the result that while Chia Lien, at this time, longed to become heart and soul one with her, the woman designedly ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... and he found it,' Mrs. Selwyn suggested, whereupon Soame Rivers tapped her playfully upon the wrist, carrying on the quotation with the words of Prince Hal, 'Peace, chewit, peace.' Mr. Soame Rivers was a very free-and-easy young gentleman, occasionally, and as he was a son of Lord Riverstown, much might be ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... judge from the looks of the party, a happier mode of convincing them of our "free-and-easy" feelings could not possibly have been discovered. From any mortification this proceeding might have caused me, I was speedily relieved by Trevanion calling O'Leary to one side, while he explained to him that he must nominally act as second on the ground, as Trevanion, being ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... traders, trappers, and planters of the Mississippi Valley looked as a resort for relieving themselves of accumulated thirst and passion; as the home of mixed races, some of which were but a few decades removed from savagery; this city could not avoid its reputation for lax principles, and free-and-easy vice. ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... the Club, where to their friends in town Our country neighbours once a month come down; We term it Free-and-Easy, and yet we Find it no easy matter to be free: E'en in our small assembly, friends among, Are minds perverse, there's something will be wrong; Men are not equal; some will claim a right To be the kings and heroes of the night; Will their own favourite themes and notions start, And ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... Gentlemen of the free-and-easy sort, who plume themselves on being acquainted with a move or two, and being usually equal to the time of day, express the wide range of their capacity for adventure by observing that they are good for anything from ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... progressing a number of young fellows, who found more congenial enjoyment in their glasses and cigars, were seated at a table in a room down stairs, which Mrs. Chapman had provided as a sort of free-and-easy for such of her guests as were inclined to enjoy themselves in their own way. Chapman had provided generously, both of wines and cigars, which might have seemed strange to one of his Dogtown acquaintances. ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... neighbouring tree smoking a pipe of that excessive shortness and blackness that seems to be peculiarly beloved by Irishmen in the humbler ranks of life. The man was very tall and broad-shouldered, and carried himself with a free-and-easy swagger, as he rose and approached the ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... drawin' mighty close lines on him. You can't take a man living a free-and-easy life the way he was and wing him all at once and tie him down to a chair without seein' some suffering. Don't ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... something to say which is worth hearing is the substance of good conversation, we must reckon among its accidents and ornaments a manner which knows how to be easy and free without being free-and-easy; a habitual deference to the tastes and even the prejudices of other people; a hearty desire to be, or at least to seem, interested in their concerns; and a constant recollection that even the most patient hearers may sometimes wish to be speakers. Above all else, the agreeable talker ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... of brevity and point. After this the Empress went and talked sociably (for an Empress) with various ladies around the circle; several gentlemen entered into a disjointed general conversation with the Emperor; the Dukes and Princes, Admirals and Maids of Honor dropped into free-and-easy chat with first one and then another of our party, and whoever chose stepped forward and spoke with the modest little Grand Duchess Marie, the Czar's daughter. She is fourteen years old, light-haired, blue-eyed, unassuming and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... also true. There is an Indian kind of free-and-easy manner which is meant to indicate a spirit of friendliness, which is just as little understood by the Englishman, and which he not unfrequently imagines to be intentional rudeness, ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... and the door. He felt himself groaning inwardly. Was that awful girl mad? What did her strange telegram mean? And why, if Mrs. Bernard Temple sent for him in a hurry, had she not the civility to wait at home to see him? This was really taking matters with a free-and-easy hand with a vengeance. The proud Sir John had never felt more thoroughly angry in his life. He stalked up to Antonia now, and endeavoured to pass her, but she ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... Lady Holland's fault; even now, his being a clergyman hurts my mind a little sometimes, and I fancy I should like him more entirely if he were not so. I have a superstitious veneration for the cloth, which his free-and-easy wearing of it occasionally disturbs a little; but I feel deeply honored by his notice, and most grateful for the good-will which he expresses towards me, and should have been too glad to have heard him laugh once more at his own jokes, which I acknowledge he ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... a thousand times more of plotting and counterplotting, was going on among four children and their elders in a comfortable, free-and-easy seeming household in Washington, as the boys and girls, young men and young women were in the last agonies of making ready for Christmas. Matty is fully entitled to be called a young woman, when we see her. She has just passed ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... brilliant, blending the delicate perfume of aristocracy with free-and-easy Bohemianism, and enhanced by the artistic background of pictures, bric-a-brac, and marble facsimiles of the masterpieces of statuary, including the Venus of Milo ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... his bold conduct by appealing to a clause in Luther's Smalkald Articles.67 He contended that there provision was made for the kind of meeting that he was conducting; and, therefore, he invited men of all classes to meet him on Sunday afternoons, read a passage of Scripture together, and talk in a free-and-easy fashion on spiritual topics. He became known as rather a curiosity; and Valentine Lscher, the popular Lutheran preacher, mentioned him by name in his sermons, and held him up before the people as an example they would all do ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... passages, through which the air then passes with difficulty. His upper teeth overlapped each other, and this defect (which Lavater calls terrible) was all the more apparent because they were as white as those of a dog. But for a certain lawless and slothful good humor, and the free-and-easy ways of a rustic tippler, the man would have alarmed the least observing ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... to be sure, in the absence of the sort of female society he had become accustomed to; but there were many compensations in his free-and-easy bachelor life, in his pretense of business, which consisted in watching the ticker, as it is called, in an occasional interview with Henderson, and in the floating summer amusements of the relaxed city. There was nothing unusual in this life except ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... at this free-and-easy method of address. It seemed to him that, since the old lady evidently knew who he was, she might be a little more respectful in ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... to have drawn such a portrait as will raise the same sort of Sponge in the minds of all, but we trust we have given such a general outline of style, and indication of character, as an ordinary knowledge of the world will enable them to imagine a good, pushing, free-and-easy sort of man, wishing to be a gentleman without ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... liberties of speech or action. The boy and girl who went to school together grow up to be the young man and woman of society; and while the memory of school days is a bond of hearty friendliness between them, it is not necessary that they should evince their mutual regard by a free-and-easy demeanor. ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... she has but to question her account and all is over. In the summer she takes her savings of the winter, packs her trunk and takes a trip more or less extensive, and there is none to say her nay,—nothing to bother her save the accumulation of her own baggage. There is an independent, happy, free-and-easy swing about the motion of her life. Her mind is constantly being broadened by contact with the world in its working clothes; in her leisure moments by the better thoughts of dead and living men which she meets in her applications to books and periodicals; in her vacations, by ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... that whalers hail— How many barrels? And that question once answered, pirates straightway steer apart, for they are infernal villains on both sides, and don't like to see overmuch of each other's villanous likenesses. But look at the godly, honest, unostentatious, hospitable, sociable, free-and-easy whaler! What does the whaler do when she meets another whaler in any sort of decent weather? She has a Gam, a thing so utterly unknown to all other ships that they never heard of the name even; and if by chance they should hear of it, they only grin ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... somewhat intimidated by her well-bred manners and cultured conversation. He made no secret of his preference for the homelier virtues of the elder sister, whose irrepressible propensity for picturesque, up-to-date slang and free-and-easy style put them on a more equal social footing. So began an acquaintance which resulted in the young man becoming a frequent and intimate visitor ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... Jake's) was a free-and-easy democratic resort. No three knocks and a password before you turn the key here. Almost before your knuckles hit the panel you heard Mr. Botcher's hearty voice shouting "Come in," in spite of the closed transom. The Honourable Jake, being a tee-totaller, had no bathroom, and none but ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... as to find that the proprietress of the plantation, Senora Carmen Vargas, and her children, were spending the season here. During the rainy winter months they live in Cuzco, but when summer brings fine weather they come to Huadquina to enjoy the free-and-easy life of the country. They made us welcome, not only with that hospitality to passing travelers which is common to sugar estates all over the world, but gave us real assistance in our explorations. Senora Carmen's estate covers more than two hundred square miles. ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... building with a low, flat roof, mostly earthen, and easily reached from the ground by an outside stair. It would be somewhat difficult to get a sick man and his bed up there, however low, and somewhat free-and-easy dealing with another man's house to burrow through the roof a hole wide enough for the purpose; but there is no impossibility, and the difficulty is part of the lesson of the incident, and is recognised expressly ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... cosey parlor. Though, as usual, it was kept as the room for state occasions, it was not a stately room. It was furnished with elegance and good taste; but what was better, the genial home atmosphere from the rest of the house had invaded it, and one did not feel, on entering it from the free-and-easy sitting-room, as if passing from a sunny climate to the icebergs of the Pole. Therefore I am sure my reader will follow me gladly out of the biting, boisterous wind into the homelike apartment, and as we stand in fancy before the glowing grate, we will make the acquaintance of the ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... may be, and something less than a short story. In verse it is at times but a mere rhymed anecdote, or it may attain almost to the direct swiftness of a ballad. The Canterbury Tales are contes, most of them, if not all; and so are some of the Tales of a Wayside Inn. The free-and-easy tales of Prior were written in imitation of the French conte en vers; and that, likewise, was the model of more than one of the lively narrative poems ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... will not tempt them to abandon their free-and-easy life; and the Condor's first officer is forced to the conclusion, that he must return to ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... wondered why, if Mr. Glover were really a competent man, he could not have held his position as chief engineer of the system, but Doctor Lanning explained that frequently Western men of real talent were wholly lacking in ambition and preferred a free-and-easy life to one of constant responsibility; others, again, drank—and this suggestion opened a discussion as to whether Western men could possibly do more drinking than Eastern men, and transact business ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... himself to every man and woman in Protestant Ulster. There was no more familiar figure in the streets of Belfast. Barefooted street urchins, catching sight of him on the steps of the Ulster Club, would gather round and, with free-and-easy familiarity, shout "Three cheers for Londonderry." He knew everybody and was everybody's friend. There was no aristocratic hauteur or aloofness about his genial personality. He was in the habit of entertaining the whole Unionist Council, some five hundred ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... feelings. There is that in the Bible to make you weep, but nothing to move you to laughter. Why is this? Are there not smiles as well as tears in life? Have we not a deep, joyous nature, as well as aspiration, reverence, awe? Is there not a free-and-easy side of existence, as well as vexation and sorrow? We assent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... But, mostly, each of them is partly true and partly false: and—'circumstances alter cases.' The fact is, that life aboard a Bluenose was just what we might expect from crews that lived a comparatively free-and-easy life ashore in a sparsely settled colony, and a very strenuous life afloat in ships which depended, like all ships, on disciplined effort for both success {94} and safety. When national discipline ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... skilled—already Edwin had the mien natural to a ruler, and Big James, with dignified deference, would submit unresentingly to his attitude. It was the subtlest thing. It was not that Edwin obscurely objected to the suggestion of his being present at the free-and-easy; it was that he objected (but nicely, and with good nature) to any assumption of Big James's right to influence him towards an act that his father would not approve. Instead of saying, "Why not?" Big James ought to have said: "Nobody but you can decide that, ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... come and play for you whenever you say. But besides that I'd awfully like to have a note from you as soon as you are able to write. I'll answer it, you know—and then you'll answer that, perhaps—and so the hours will go by. I know this is a rather free-and-easy-sounding proposition from a perfect stranger, as I suppose you think me, but circumstances do alter cases, you know, and if our circumstances can't alter our cases, then it's no good ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... to-night. Who ever heard of borrowing a person's dress without the leave of the owner? Truly, this is a free-and-easy country!" ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... certain that Robert Ashford, with his foxy face and cross eyes, would not steal his master's goods or any one else's did he get the chance. Unless he were caught in the act, he could do it with impunity, for everything here is carried on in such a free-and-easy fashion that any amount of goods might be carried off without ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... many a noble gallery; and you will not fail to remark that the choice spirits of the day, the go-ahead lads of that time, had let down the flaps of their cocked hats into slouching, and we must say, most slovenly circular brims. There was a sort of free-and-easy look affected in that day about the head, totally at enmity with the prim rigidity of the cocked beaver; you might have taken off your chapeau rond, as it then came to be called, and you might ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... disturbs all the company. Soup and fish are brought for him, and meat, which he leisurely eats, while twelve other gentlemen are kept waiting. We mark Mr. Binnie's twinkling eyes, as they watch the young man. "Eh," he seems to say, "but that's just about as free-and-easy a young chap as ever I set eyes on." And so Mr. Barnes was a cool young chap. That dish is so good, he must really have some more. He discusses the second supply leisurely; and turning round simpering to his neighbour, says, "I really hope ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... activity—to wit, the traffic in the body of woman. True, at one time, some ten years ago, he had travelled over Russia as the representative for the dubious wines of some unknown firm; and this activity had imparted to his tongue that free-and-easy unconstraint for which, in general, travelling salesmen are distinguished. This former activity had, as well, brought him up against his real profession. In some way, while going to Rostov-on-the-Don, he had contrived to make a very young sempstress ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... greeting, but Cynthia was not in the least embarrassed. She smiled at him as frankly as if he had been another Betty, yet with a little air of gracious dignity which is rarely found in girls of her age. She was quite simple and unaffected, but one could never imagine her taking part in the free-and-easy, slangy, unchivalrous intercourse which so often prevails nowadays between girls and boys. She held herself like a Queen, and silent Miles looked at her, and in the depths of his honest heart vowed himself to ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... to see a man a-wrestling with the dumps, 'Cause in the game of life he doesn't always catch the trumps, But I can always cotton to a free-and-easy cuss As takes his dose and thanks the Lord it wasn't any wuss. There ain't no use of swearin' and cussin' at your luck, 'Cause you can't correct your troubles more than you can drown a duck. Remember that when ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... they glorified their office, you may be sure. Discipline had grown rather free-and-easy in the town about that time, and it is said that the guard-house never was so full within human memory as after their first tour of duty. I remember hearing that one young reprobate, son of a leading Northern philanthropist in those parts, was much aggrieved at being ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... thinking that he has a divine right to the world's oyster, cannot swallow it properly till he has donned a white choker, and refuses to be comforted when Jonathan disposes of it in his rapid way with the shell for a platter. We confess that we prefer the free-and-easy manner in its proper place to the diplomatic way of always treating the reader with sentiments of the highest consideration, and like a book all the more for having ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... abstinence from illicit pleasures is there moral safety and health, while integrity, peace, and happiness, are the conscious rewards of virtue. Impurity travels downward with intemperance, obscenity, and corrupting diseases, to degradation and death. A dissolute, licentious, free-and-easy life is filled with the dregs of human suffering, iniquity, and despair. The penalties which follow a violation of the law of chastity are found to be severe and ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... and steady, was sought for, if not popular, even in the free-and-easy West; one of those men who are unwillingly masters among men. Just and mild, always; with a peculiar gift that made men talk their best thoughts to him, knowing they would be understood; if any core of eternal ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... he brought them books and chocolates, watered the garden, mowed the tennis ground, mended the bells, and made himself generally useful. At first this flashy, muddling, free-and-easy household had disgusted him; and his cool assured manner and critical air irritated his relatives; whilst his attitude of superior comment had proved a vexatious restraint. But week by week Douglas ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... could never sally forth without insult. The golden robins, especially, would chase him as far as I could follow with my eye, making him duck clumsily to avoid their importunate bills. I do not believe, however, that he robbed any nests hereabouts, for the refuse of the gas-works, which, in our free-and-easy community, is allowed to poison the river, supplied him with dead alewives in abundance. I used to watch him making his periodical visits to the salt-marshes and coming back with a fish in his beak to his young savages, who, no doubt, like it in that condition which makes it savory ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... of temperament that I have in mind in making these remarks is one that has counted in literature, art, government and manners as well as in philosophy. In manners we find formalists and free-and-easy persons. In government, authoritarians and anarchists. In literature, purists or academicals, and realists. In art, classics and romantics. You recognize these contrasts as familiar; well, in philosophy ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... of the free-and-easy character: volunteers were called for, and responded with songs, step-dances, and the like; while the audience, lying and sitting round on the sand, greeted their efforts with hearty applause, and joined in ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... Isa to look at her, and judge whether the charming account I heard was all youthful enthusiasm. Edith went out driving with my mother, and we began our TETE-A-TETE walk, in which I heard a great deal of the difficulties of that free-and-easy house at Oxford, and how often Isa wishes for some one who would be a real guide and helper, instead of only giving a playful, slap-dash answer, like good- natured mockery. The treatment may suit Mary's own daughters, but 'Just as you please, my dear,' is not good for sensitive, ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge |
