"Queer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you gave me quite a turn," remonstrated the other, "coming out of the darkness like a ghost. This Wheal Danes, at midnight, puts queer thoughts ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... What a queer phase of life was dawning upon him! what a strange mission was coming to him from over the seas! what freak had destiny taken to send him his nephew's letter with its interesting detail, and this other one, on the ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... R—— arrived this morning's tide, and reports that Jack was knocked off the foretopsail yardarm, and they never see'd him again. He shouted 'Guidbye, I cannot hold on any longer.' I asked God to have his body picked up and sent home, and while I was doing it, a queer thought came over me that little Bobby was being washed overboard from the Savannah. I hope it's not true, and that God won't take him from us as well. ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... queer part of this story: The weasel is small, and any scar made upon its snow-white coat is doubly conspicuous. If the pelt is torn or injured it is rejected; so the trapper must take his captive clean and scarless. The weasel will not enter a cage trap, and the much ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... Marriage' followed quickly (1829-30), and despite a certain pruriency of imagination, displayed considerable powers of analysis, powers destined shortly to distinguish a story which ranks high among its author's works, 'La Maison du chat-qui-pelote' (1830). This delightful novelette, the queer title of which is nearly equivalent to 'At the Sign of the Cat and the Racket,' showed in its treatment of the heroine's unhappy passion the intuition and penetration of the born psychologist, and in its admirable description of bourgeois life the pictorial genius of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... day when she woke up from a long sleep and found that the pain in her head was gone, and that the things in the room which had been taking all manner of queer shapes looked all ...
— The Kitchen Cat, and other Tales • Amy Walton
... have. The ordinary girl would have told a living experiment like me to go hang long before this. But you didn't. And now you see a totally different sort of Doggie and you're making yourself miserable because he's a queer, unsympathetic, unfamiliar stranger." ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... a sudden, the cook, as she went to the pantry to get some flour, stopped near the barrel of sugar. She heard a queer little sound coming ...
— The Story of a Bold Tin Soldier • Laura Lee Hope
... queer little sound, shut her eyes, spread out her hands, and dropped on to the carpet as though she ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... Caroline was dead, the black woman dropped a glass of water and a capsule of calomel and stared. A queer terror seized her. She began such a wailing that it aroused others in Niggertown. At the sound they got out of their beds and came to the Siner cabin, their eyes big with mystery and fear. At the sight of old Caroline's motionless body they lifted ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... small; but they seem to stand thickly together, and their foliage should afford a haven from both hawk and gunner. To it joyously flits the tired linnet. As it perches aloft upon a convenient whip-like wand, it notices for the first time a queer, square brick tower of small dimensions, rising in the center of a court-yard surrounded by trees. The tower is like an old and dingy turret that has been shorn from a castle, and set on the hilltop without apparent reason. It is two stories in height, with one window, ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... persecuted. There are no people in London who are not appealed to by the rich; the appeals of the rich shriek from every hoarding and shout from every hustings. For it should always be remembered that the queer, abrupt ugliness of our streets and costumes are not the creation of democracy, but of aristocracy. The House of Lords objected to the Embankment being disfigured by trams. But most of the rich men who disfigure the street-walls with their wares are actually in the House of Lords. ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... Isn't it queer how people will say, "I can't stop drinking," but when they're in jail they have to! The prison is a sanitarium for drunkards. They don't drink while on a visit there. Then why not stop it while one has a free foot? I thought of all these things while I was locked up, and I decided that ...
— Dave Ranney • Dave Ranney
... am only concerned with one or two points in it. The chief characteristic I take to be this careful introduction of violent drama into a scene already prepared to vouch for it—a scene so alive that it compels belief, so queer that almost anything might happen there naturally. The effect which Dickens gets from the picture in his novels, as opposed to the action, is used as a sort of attestation of the action; and it surely fulfils its mission very strikingly in the best of his ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... though she expected to turn pious nigger, and preach to white folks. So now you see what good comes of sending her to school. If she should get converted she would have to go to meeting: at least, as long as James lives. I wish he had not such queer notions about her. It seems to trouble him to know he must die and leave her. He says if he should get well he would take her home with him, or educate her here. Oh, how awful! What can the child mean? So careful, too, of her! He says we shall ruin ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson
... were a queer bear—a queer un—th' queerest I ever hear tell about. Awake in winter an' takin' after folks without bein' provoked. 'Tis th' first black bear I ever heard tell about that done that. I knows bears pretty well an' they alus takes tother way about as ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... say, tell me this," whispered Ned; "and I won't ask you any more questions. There will not be anything one don't like to eat, will there? I mean anything queer." ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... where provisions could be bought and at prices so low that the women wondered. Saying nothing so good to make men strong, he bought for the mistress a big piece of boiled pork, which, sliced thin, we enjoyed either with bread or our ship-biscuit. We watched the baking of bread. It was fired in queer little white plastered ovens set in front of each house, looking somewhat like beehives placed on top of strong tables. The ovens are filled with wood, which is set on fire, and when the oven is hot enough the wood is raked out, the loaves shoved in, and ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... friend speak of feeling ill? No, not until a moment before the final stroke was made. Then Mr. Carwell had said he felt "queer," and had acted as though dizzy. The major, who was himself quite a convivial spirit, attributed it to some highballs he and his friend had had in the clubhouse just prior to ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... to be gold on the cabin floor. His surprise deepened when, a few days later, he found another "prospect" in the same place. His two sweepings had yielded perhaps a pennyweight of the precious metal—enough to set him to thinking. It seemed queer that in the neighborhood of Black Jack's bunk he could find no ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... was awakened by something white, hard, and round which rolled gently and stopped still quite close to me. It was not alive, although it had a queer smell, and I wondered why it moved at all. Presently I heard voices and there appeared a little man, and with him somebody who was not a man because it was differently dressed and spoke in a higher voice. I saw that they had sticks in their ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... Franks; and though the natives of the more distant regions of the East have not yet appeared among us in such number, yet the lamb-skin cap of the Persian, the pugree, or small Indian turban, and even the queer head-dress of the Parsee, is far from being a stranger in our assemblies. We doubt whether the name of Akhbar Khan himself, proclaimed at the foot of a staircase, would excite the same sensation in the present day, as the announcement of the most undistinguished wearer of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... is a fine time; and the big Zoological Garden, which is a favorite place for studying the Berlin populace at the diversions they prefer when left to their own devices. At one table will be a cluster of students, with their queer little pill-box caps of all colors, their close-cropped heads and well-shaved necks, and their saber-scarred faces. At the next table half a dozen spectacled, long-coated men, who look as though they might be university professors, ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... would either care or dare to put in a word for you? Nor let the supposition of matrimonial differences frighten you: honey-moon lasts not now-a-days above a fortnight; and Dunmow flitch, as I have been informed, was never claimed; though some say once it was. Marriage is a queer state, Child, whether paired by the parties or by their friends. Out of three brothers of us, you know, there was but one had courage to marry. And why was it, do you think? We were ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... "You queer little person," he said affectionately. "Tell me instead about yourself. What is a day like at your place of business? Do you mind—it helps to concentrate my attention—if I hold your ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... she glanced from one to the other of the girls, saw that their eyes were shining with a queer mixture of curiosity and sympathy, and felt that she would do anything in the world rather ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... sand, amongst the sea-thistles that grew there, and Nino trotted up and looked at him, to be ready if anything happened. Marcello knew the man's queer ways, and ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... than can be expected, my love, but no worse." The queer smile broadened. "But surely you haven't torn yourself away from the young husband from whom, I hear, you have never been parted for a moment? That I can't believe. People tell me that there has never been ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... of a sudden, he laughed right out To see me sit quietly listening so; And began to tell us stories about Some queer ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... my archaeological studies had taught me to recognise with certainty every sign by which the notable personages of legend and of history are distinguished. This knowledge came to my aid during various very queer conjectures with which I was labouring. I examined the wand, and saw that it appeared to have been cut from a ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... to hear you say that, sir. There's all the troops coming back. What queer-looking chaps they are, with their ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... lived in a queer cabin on the Pomme de Terre River. If you should ever ride over the new Northern Pacific when it shall be completed, or over that branch of it which crosses the Pomme de Terre, you can get out at a station which will, no doubt, be called for an old settler, Gager's Station; and if you would like ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... the yellow man; "My husband is right," she thought; "perhaps it is M. Laffitte; there are such queer ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... appetite. Chap who had scraped up a few guineas perhaps to do himself well—on the bust. No, that won't do. Ordered his dinner too well for that. Had the air of a man accustomed to the best places. Brown said so. A shilling and five coppers to the porter. Queer kind of tip! What in blazes was the fellow doing? What sort of company does ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... on their knees, side by side. And the father poured out his heart in prayer. And the boy listened. Somehow he saw himself in the looking-glass of his knee-joints as he hadn't before. It is queer about that mirror of the knee-joints, the things you see in it. Most people don't like to use it much. And they got up from their knees. The father's eyes were wet. And ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... arive, but papa still remained in his room until called for. Papa read in the chapell. It was the first time I had ever heard him read in my life—that is in public. When he came out on to the stage I remember the people behind me exclaimed "Oh how queer he is! Isn't he funny!" I thought papa was very funny, although I did not think him queer. He read "A Trying Situation" and "The Golden Arm," a ghost story that he heard down South when he was a ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... you this," he said, "if you made connections. If you'd been later than five minutes past seven, I was to keep dark. You've got seven minutes and a half to spare. Queer orders, but the big railroad boss, ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... Lady replied, again with that queer smile about her lips, "I am very often near when you think ...
— Everychild - A Story Which The Old May Interpret to the Young and Which the Young May Interpret to the Old • Louis Dodge
... myself that there is a queer kind of flavour in the place to-night," Mr. Weevle rejoins. "I suppose it's chops at ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... There was a queer shady look in the corners. She wasn't a bit afraid. The children at Bethany Home weren't allowed to be. She liked this a great deal better. She wasn't compelled to eat her whole breakfast off of oatmeal, and always had such lovely desserts for dinner. ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... men, a broad-chested, thick-set fellow, in a black coat and a wide, white straw hat, got upon the bulwark, and stood holding on by a backstay, watching our approach, but he did not offer to hail. I thought this queer; it struck me that he hesitated to hail us, as though wanting the language of the sea in this ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... have played a queer little game! From the day I first met you I felt that you were coquetting with me, coquetting mysteriously, obscurely, coquetting as only you can without showing it to others. Little by little you conquered ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... deposited there for safety. The morning following the departure of the ships we noticed a large number of boxes in our courtyard and also several sheep tied to the flag-staff. For a time we could not understand the meaning of this queer collection and were compelled to assign it to the usual incomprehensibilities of Chinese life. Mr. Gouverneur went in search of our interpreter, hoping that he could explain the situation, but to our surprise he had fled. We learned that he stood in great ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... Anne" hybrid, with lowering, top-heavy projections like scowling eyebrows over squinting eyes; neither mongrel Renaissance, nor feeble, sickly, imitation Elizabethan facades, and Tudor towers; none of the queer, composite, freakish impertinences of architectural style, which now-a-day do duty as the adventurous vanguard, the aesthetic vedettes "making straight the way," for the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... chieftain was a lean giant who was darker but, under his darkness, paler than the rest. On his forehead was a queer, star-shaped scar. He rode a black horse, and before him he held close with his left arm a pretty little girl dressed in strange, rich clothes. The big man's hand was pressed against her breast as he held her; but though it was a large hand, it did not quite cover a dark-red stain on the embroideries ...
— The White People • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... south shore of the great lake, did they talk of Paymaster Bullen and wonder what had become of him. Donald was inclined to believe that he had either returned to New York, or still remained where they had left him; but Christie only smiled, and said Bullen was such a queer fish that there was no predicting what he might ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... of Van Cleft's," said Shirley, as he followed into the adjoining compartment. "It's a phonograph. Have you received any phoney 'phone calls to-night? Queer ones that you didn't expect and couldn't explain? Van Cleft has, and he decided to take records of them on ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... it, grandmamma." She shook back the soft curls with a little sigh. "It's queer and old, and funny—some of the words. And the writing is blurred and yellow. Look." She held ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... a queer freak of our human nature, that those who use the Bible in a dead, foreign language, unsuited for use in our public schools, should call our English version of the scriptures a sectarian book, and then oppose its use in our ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... of Us... of Us!" And he would go away, stamping, spitting aside, disgusted and worried; while the other, stepping out, saucepan in hand, hot, begrimed and placid, watched with a superior, cock-sure smile the back of his "queer little man" reeling in a rage. They were ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... Queer idiotic fancies bestrode his dreams: what was impossible came naturally to pass: earth became wonderland, and no one wondered. Patch and Miss French lay in sick beds upon respective mantelpieces: Lord ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... sharp gun report close at hand frightened the reptile away. Before leaving the neighbourhood the viper-catcher presented his child friend with a specimen which he had tamed and rendered harmless by removing the fangs. This creature the queer boy fed with milk and often carried ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... "We'll queer you!" cried a valiant youngster "if you don't rush to-morrow we'll tie up your baseball team and cart 'em ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... discovered in the morning, from the steeple of Santa Maria, a queer ruined church, and was oddly impressed by the bare facade, with the yawning apertures of empty windows. I went to it, but every entrance was bricked up save one, which had a door of rough boards fastened by a padlock; and in a neighbouring ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... fee—feel a little queer," said Edwards, who certainly did not exaggerate his sensations. A cold sweat burst out on his forehead, his hands were moist and clammy, and though it was a warm evening he shivered from head to foot, while he ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... sent. Let my father send and let not my heart be vexed.... To the gods Shamash and Marduk I pray for my father." If we forget the outlandish-sounding names, how natural this seems! How like our boys was this boy who wrote the queer-looking characters on this bit of clay which we may ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... connected by four cross bars, one at the forward end, and three on the upright posts, in about the positions illustrated. The upper cross bar was extended 6 inches beyond the posts at each side, and served as a handle for guiding the queer craft. An 18-inch square board was used for the seat of the rennwolf. It rested on the second cross-bar of the post about 12 inches from the runners, and the forward end was supported on legs nailed to the tie ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... queer young man, whom his few friends called crazy on account of his lonely and ascetic manner of life, and ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... sprang to his feet. There was a queer grating little sound, followed by a sharp click. Duncombe had swung round and faced them. He had turned the key in the door, and was calmly pocketing it. The hand which held that small shining revolver was certainly not the hand ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... extra duty. He had gone out for half a dozen teams and applied for membership in the exacting Math Club and Writing Club. The Commandant glanced up; Grayson was still in his extreme brace. The Commandant suddenly had the queer idea that Grayson could hold ...
— The Adventurer • Cyril M. Kornbluth
... Douglas, "there's no longer any doubt in my mind. This is the fifth time we've been anticipated—trapped! The enemy is informed directly of the attacking plans of our scout details. There's a spy at this base!" He lowered his eyes for a second and said in a queer tone of voice: "Thirteen of ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... and the drying blood upon my hands seemed black. If possible I was in a worse plight than he, on account of the yellow fungus into which I had jumped. Our jackets were unbuttoned, and our shoes had been taken off and lay at our feet. And we were sitting with our backs to this queer bluish light, peering at such a monster as Durer ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... When I had said this, Emily likewise took one up and said it should be hers; when Anne came down, she said one should be hers. Mine was the prettiest of the whole, the tallest and the most perfect in every part. Emily's was a grave-looking fellow, and we called him 'Gravey.' Anne's was a queer little thing, much like herself, and we called him 'Waiting-boy.' Branwell chose his, ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... The intention of the contract is good, and right for many, no doubt; but in our case it may defeat its own ends because we are the queer sort of people we are—folk in whom domestic ties of a forced kind ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... we have hitherto used Italian place-names. Will he say that the population of Praha is not Czech because on our maps that capital is commonly called Prague? It pleases the Marchese to be facetious about what he describes as "that queer thing called the Srba Hrvata i Slovenca Kralji (Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes)"; he should have said "Kraljevina Srba, Hrvata i Slovenaca." He says that in Serbia "no industry is possible," whereas in one single town, Lescovac, there are no less ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... with leaves on a pale ground. He called Madame Homais, Monsieur Homais, Justin, the children, the cook; he spoke of it to his chief; every one wanted to see this rug. Why did the doctor's wife give the clerk presents? It looked queer. They decided that she must be ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... for instrumental performance. The instrumental music consists of that marvellously developed series of drum tunes—the attempt to understand which has taken up much of my time, and led me into queer company—and the many tunes played on the 'mrimba and the orchid- root-stringed harp: they are, I believe, entirely distinct from the song tunes. And these peaceful tunes my men were now singing were, in their florid elaboration very different from the one they fought the rapids to, of—So ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... of books, I began quickly to find my way. I travelled into by-paths, of course; I got Christian Science badly, and New Thought in a mild attack. I still have in my mind what the sober reader would doubtless consider queer kinks; for instance, I still practice "mental healing," in a form, and I don't always tell my secret thoughts about Theosophy and Spiritualism. But almost at once I worked myself out of the religion I had been taught, and away from my husband's politics, and the drugs of my doctors. One of ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... but I did not feel any too satisfied as to what might happen to us on the way with this queer lot. The officer evidently had a similar idea, for he ordered one of the sub-officers to accompany us as far as Amiens. This sub-officer got into our carriage, and we set off again. We arrived at Amiens at six in the morning. Daylight had not yet succeeded in piercing through the ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... Ashton?" demanded the countess-dowager, with as much hauteur as so queer an old figure and face could put on, whilst Maude bent over her employment ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... face." "Why, Jim," another hand drops in, "that's the very chap as sings them first-rate sea-songs of a night! I seed him myself come out o' the mizen-chains!" "Hallo!" says another at this, "then there's some'at queer i' the wind!" I thought he gave rather a weather-look aloft, comin' on deck i' the morning! I'll bet a week's grog the chap's desarted from the king's flag, mates! Well, ye know, hereupon I couldn't do no less nor shove in my oar, so I takes word from all hands not to blow the gaff,[A] an' then ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... built it. It is a queer piece of architecture, a fragment, that has been thrown off in the revolutions of the wheel mechanical, this tower of mine. It doesn't seem to belong to the parsonage. It isn't a part of the church now, if ever it has been. No one comes to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... else; every morning I see the sunrise from beginning to end. I've grown so used to it that it seems as though all my life I had been driving and struggling with the muddy roads. When it does not rain, and there are no pits of mud on the road, one feels queer and even a little bored. And how filthy I am, what a rapscallion I look! What a state my luckless ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... feet, it could not have made a much more startled company than the tract-tacker left behind him. A tract!—actually tacked up on the wall, and waiting for some human voice to give it utterance! A tract in a railroad depot! How queer! how singular! how almost improper! Why? Oh, Ester didn't know; it was so unusual. Yes; but then that didn't make it improper. No; but—then, she—it—Well, it was fanatical. Oh yes, that was it. She knew it was improper in some way. It was strange that that very convenient ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... quite safe. He's not mad, far from it. He's just a bit queer—he's got 'bats in the belfry', as men say. He gets these attacks when he's at home in the dark winter days and has nothing to occupy him. But there's little sign of it in the summer. ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... Bible says. What yer mammy tells you 's bound to be right, dead right, so I think I'll take the sentiment o' this yere round-up on believin'. O' course, as a square man I'm boun' to admit the Bible tells some pow'ful queer tales, onlike anythin' we-'uns strikes now days. Take that tale about a fish swallerin' a feller named Jonah; why, a fish 't could swaller a man 'od have to be as big in the barrel as the Pecos River is wide an' have an openin' in his face bigger'n Phantom Lake Cave. ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... nice little girl indeed,' said the doctor; 'little, but well-formed. Halloa, Mrs Bangham! You're looking queer! You be off, ma'am, this minute, and fetch a little more brandy, or we ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... hardly believe his ears; that wasn't at all the way the master was accustomed to speak. It was very strange! Somehow—everything was very strange. The room looked queer. Everybody was sitting so still, so straight—as if it were an exhibition day, or something very particular. And the master—he looked strange, too; why, he had on his fine lace jabot and his best coat, that he wore only on holidays, ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... husbands," said Elizabeth quietly, spurred into coming to the rescue of the sex she despised. "But," she added, "there are many girls nowadays who are poor who prefer to remain single." She was amused at having been led into so unusual a discussion with this queer old gentleman. ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... I wuz. Yer see, it happened this way. We wuz a coastin' through ther Red Sea one brilln' arternoon, watchin' ther monkeys an' crocodiles on ther Arabian shore when all at onct I noticed a queer yaller-redness in ther sky on ther Afriky shore. It wuz caused by a simoom. Great clouds o' sand, driv' by the wind, wuz a-rushin' acrost ther desert toward ther ship, an' as it came out toward us, we seed we ...
— Jack Wright and His Electric Stage; - or, Leagued Against the James Boys • "Noname"
... and more astonished the longer they talked with David, and Don told himself that there had been some queer doings in the settlement that morning. His interest and curiosity were thoroughly aroused, but he did not ask any more questions, for he knew that David could not explain matters without exposing one or more members ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon
... all the islands in the world," cried Lady Deppingham. "The idea! Queer spells! See here, Mr. Britt, if I have any queer spells to speak of, I won't have them treated publicly. If Lord Deppingham can afford to overlook them, I daresay I can, also, even though it costs me the inheritance to do so. Please be good enough to leave me out of the insanity ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... one usable hand the Rover woman drew the fabric about the carving, muffling it except for the eyes. Those were large ovals deeply carved, and in them Ross saw a glitter. Jewels set there? Yet, he had a queer, shivery feeling that something more than gems occupied those sockets—that he had actually been regarded for an instant ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... been compelled to yield to their demands. When Queen Mary herself returned to rule Scotland after the death of her French husband, King Francis, she found her path anything but easy. A sovereign of one faith and a nation of another had not yet learned to endure each other, and there were queer doings in Scotland, wild nobles running off with the Queen, wilder fanatics lecturing at her in her own court, her French favorite assassinated, a new husband, a Scotch one, sent the same dark road, more civil war, imprisonments, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... he said, "and his sloop was pitching her catheads under, this thing was washed upon a spare anchor, where it stuck. It's a queer flag. Can it have had ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... charm, which she had worked for him, and put it round his neck, and told him she had taken it with her to St. Laud, to give it him there beneath the cross, only he had gone away from her, so that she couldn't do so: and then Jacques begged pardon again and again in his own queer way; and then, having sat there by the mill-stream till the last red streak of sunlight was gone, they returned home to the village, and Annot told her father that Dame Rouel had been so very pressing, she had made them ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... enough what brought the people, and would sometimes remark laughingly, "They come; I know why they all come. It is just to get a sight of the two curios of Peking, the I.G. and his queer musicians." ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... Chichester—to let the reader into a secret—had, upon the first appearance of the Spanish ship, been greatly exercised in his mind lest he should fail in courage when the two ships came to blows; but with the discharge of the first shot the queer agitated feeling which he had mistaken for fear completely passed away, and was instantly forgotten; and now, his services being no longer required at the helm, he armed himself with a handspike snatched from the deck, and, watching his opportunity, ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... of the Appearance in the chamber was, I suppose, invented afterwards; but of the injury to the building there could be no question; and the zig-zag line, where the mortar is a little thicker than before, is still distinctly visible. The queer burnt spots, called the "Devil's footsteps," had never attracted attention before this time, though there is no evidence that they had not existed previously, except that of the late Miss M., a "Goody," so called, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... lingered most under the southern wall, where the afternoon light slept in the dreamiest, sweetest way. I sat down on an old stone, and looked away to the desolate salt-marshes and still, shining surface of the etang; and, as I did so, reflected that this was a queer little out-of-the-world corner to have been chosen, in the great dominions of either monarch, for that pompous interview which took place, in 1538, between Francis I. and Charles V. It was also not easy to perceive how Louis IX., when in 1248 and 1270 he started for the Holy Land, set his army ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... sit among the groups at the little tables, and watch the passing throng in front of you, you will see some queer "types," many of them seldom en evidence except on these Friday afternoons in the Luxembourg. Buried, no doubt, in some garret hermitage or studio, they emerge thus weekly to greet ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... had left them out of sight; and then walked her horse slowly while she thought what had been meant by that queer speech of Winthrop's. Then she reminded herself that it was of no sort of consequence what had been meant by it, and she ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... Jim," the Prodigal 'phoned to me from the Forks; "he's gone off and left the cabin on Ophir, taken to the hills. Some prospectors have just come in and say they met him heading for the White Snake Valley. Seemed kind of queer, they say. Wouldn't talk much. They thought he was in a fair way ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... "There's something mighty queer in all this," thought the book-keeper. "What Mr. Rockwell can see in that boy, I don't understand. He's an impudent young rascal, and I'll get him turned off if it's ...
— Fame and Fortune - or, The Progress of Richard Hunter • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... "we have got in the queer way of dividing the room between us, and the few men who attend sit on one side ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... something else, I'm sure there is. You said, 'And I don't either,' in such a queer way. How do you know they don't ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... strangely remind the reader of Amory's Life of John Buncle—those queer volumes to which many a reader has been sent by Hazlitt's intoxicating description of them in his Round Table, and a few perhaps by a shy allusion contained in one of the essays of Elia. The real John Dunton has not the boundless spirits of the fictitious ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... tasting of many strange and wonderful flavors. The little man had clung to all the traditions of his seagoing forefathers, who had brought back from the Orient spicy things and sweet things—conserved fruits and preserved ginger, queer nuts in syrup, golden-flavored tea, and these he served with thick slices of buttered bread of ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... queer. But he didn't stop. He ran into his house. And there another queer thing happened. The moment his wife caught sight of him she gave a scream and rushed out of the ...
— The Tale of Billy Woodchuck • Arthur Scott Bailey
... 87, lives in a shack furnished by the city. With him lives his second wife, a much older woman. Both he and his wife have a reputation for being "queer" and do not welcome outside visitors. However, he readily gave an interview and seemed most willing to relate the story ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Mississippi Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... approach of darkness became exceedingly restless, flying about his cage, going over and under and around his perches, posturing in extraordinary ways, uttering at every moment a strange, harsh-breathing sound. Two smaller thrushes met the evening hour by fluttering, and a queer sort of dance elsewhere described. Two orchard orioles saluted the twilight by gymnastics on the roof of the cage. The bluebirds made careful and deliberate arrangements for a comfortable night, ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... his last leave of a life he loved. Rex, who was unnaturally calm, even for a man of his solid nerve, sat motionless beside his friend, emptying his huge beaker twice in every hour with unfailing regularity. He talked quietly but constantly, interspersing queer bits of cynicism and odds and ends of uncommon wisdom in his placid conversation. Greif knew by his manner that he was in reality sad and preoccupied, but was grateful for his pleasant talk, which blunted the keen edge of this rupture with first youth's associations. From time to time Greif wondered ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... saw there was going to be a bit of a dust Bob's a queer chap when the porter's up in him so says I just ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... the farmer and his wife agreed that she must be a gipsy who had been lost, and that she was queer ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... no more. Should any one attempt to fill his pockets, the money vanishes, and he is instantly assailed by a shower of boxes on the ear from invisible hands."[B] In the Netherlands, the "Gypnissen," "queer little women," lived in a castle which had been reared in a single night.[C] The Ainu have tales of the Poiyaumbe, a name which means literally "little beings residing on the soil" (Mr. Batchelor ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson
... queer "ha, ha's," They made our lugs grow eerie, O; The hungry bike did scrape and fyke, Till we were wae and weary, O: But a royal ghaist, wha ance was cas'd, A prisoner, aughteen year awa', He fir'd a Fiddler in the North, That dang ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... for hundreds of men who find life unpleasant in more civilized sections, and we must keep them under supervision. By the way, I have just received notification from the United States marshal at Ketchikan that three queer characters dropped off the steamer from Seattle there and were heading for the Klondike, and would probably pass through here, and he asks us to keep an eye on them. Thus far I ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... stride, she chafes at her rider the strange and queer: Buheyseh is mad with hope—beat sister she shall and must, Though Duhl, of the hand and heel so clumsy, she has to thank. She is near now, nose by tail—they are neck by croup—joy! fear! What folly makes Hoseyn shout 'Dog Duhl, Damned son of the Dust, ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... about goin' to meet his baby and his mother and he seems to get so happy every time he talks about it." Jones's voice trembled slightly as he went on to say, "But brethering, it makes me feel most wonderfully queer when I hear Jake talk about meetin' his little girl. He seems to have no doubt at all about meetin' her, and say, you remember my little boy died the same fall as Jake's little girl, and to tell the truth I'm just a little fearful at times about bein' ready ...
— The Deacon of Dobbinsville - A Story Based on Actual Happenings • John A. Morrison
... I ever broke into, this one's the most curious," said Red. "And one of the curiousest things in it is that I think it's queer. Why should I, now? What put it into our heads that affairs ought to go so and so and so, when they never do anything of the sort? Take any book you read, or any story a man tells you: it runs ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... accused of having set fire to Rome. "So true it is," ran the historian's comment, "that a person who violates the laws of chastity is capable of any crime." He smiled inwardly at this recollection, reflecting that the moralists, after all, had queer ideas about life. ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... were so queer, so very queer, I laughed as I would die; Albeit in the general way, A sober ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... know what to make of it," Walter confessed. "Every few hundred feet there are branches partly broken off and left hanging. Queer, isn't it?" ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... did not diminish, but rather increased from day to day. All her grief had turned to fear, and her strength to combat it grew less and less. "Soon I shall not dare venture outside the door," she thought. "I may get to be a bit queer and morose, even if I don't become quite insane. God, God, take this awful fear away from me!" she prayed. "I can see that my mother and father think I'm not right in my head; and every one else must think the same. Oh, dear Lord ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... host, who loved talking as well as the rest, and who for the last ten minutes had been vainly endeavouring to obtain attention. "Silence! my maunders, it's late, and we shall have the queer cuffins [magistrates] upon us if we keep it up much longer. What, ho, Mim, are you still gabbling at the foot of the table when your betters are talking? As sure as my name's King Cole, I'll choke you with ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... once a bear that had been tamed and made to dance by a man who beat him when he did not mind. This bear was called Dandy, and he had been taught many queer tricks. He could shoulder a pole as if it were a gun, and could balance it on his nose, or stand on his hind-legs and hold it by his fore-paws behind ...
— The Nursery, January 1877, Volume XXI, No. 1 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... before I had that accident I didn't know how to get through the rehearsals. I nearly fell off two or three times, but there was no one there to see. The more I practised the more cold I got, and I used to have horrible shivering fits. It's so queer. I don't believe I'm made like other people. Estelle gets hot and scarlet when ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... I'm shamming, Kitty? Sometimes I think I am, and sometimes I'm not quite sure. You know, if you think about your spine long enough you can imagine that it's very queer. But I haven't been thinking about my spine. It doesn't interest me. Dr. Robson would have told me if he thought I was shamming, because I asked him to. There's one thing makes me think it isn't fancy. I keep on wanting to do ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... water—"look you now—you can't humbug me. What the devil do you care about my daughter's respectability or comfort, or anything else, grave old dog as you are! It is my daughter herself you are licking your brown old chaps at!—and, 'faith, my Alley is a very pretty girl—very—but queer as moonshine. You'll drive a much better bargain ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... cannot look at it as a war—just a plain war, you know. I've had a queer experience that I will tell you about some day, but it convinced me that above all, and through all, there is a Power that forces us, often against our best-laid plans, and I believe that Power can force the world as well. ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... to breed further south than Lake Mohunk. The brown creeper and the yellow-rumped warbler I will merely mention. Both migrate to the North in the spring, and the latter is only an occasional winter resident. The former is a queer little creature that alights at the base of a tree and creeps spirally round and round to its very top, when it sweeps down to the base of another tree to repeat the process. He is ever intent on business. Purple ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... and I were a queer pair that interested him, and when he discovered that I bore the name of Eleazar Williams his friendship was sealed to us. Eunice Williams of Deerfield, the grandmother of Thomas Williams, was a traditional brand never snatched from the burning, ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... effort it was impossible to discover the slightest analogy between the writing of the anonymous letters and the impressions left on the blotting-pad of the duke. The countess and her assistants in this queer task, therefore, came to the conclusion that they would have to search in a ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... by douaniers, only to extort money for not doing a duty which would be absurd if done!" "Why, really I don't see that," &c. &c. "What a plague it is to send your servant (a whole morning's work) from one subaltern with a queer name, to another, for a lady's ticket to witness any of the functions at the Sistine!" Well, it did appear to him the simplest thing in the world; it was ten times more troublesome to see any thing in London! "What a nuisance it is on quitting an Italian city, to find ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... are queer things that only come to sailormen; They're true, but they're never understood; And I know one thing about the Admiral, That I can't tell rightly as I should. I've been with him when hope sank under us— He hardly seemed a mortal like the rest, I could swear that he had ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... Elizabethan books as Lyly's 'Euphues' and Phil Holland's 'Pliny,' and the speculations of such earlier writers as Paracelsus. Bacon and Shakespeare, like other Elizabethans, accepted the popular science of their period, and decorated their pages with queer ideas about beasts, and stones, and plants; which were mere folklore. A sensible friend of my own was staggered, if not converted, by the parallelisms adduced in Judge Webb's chapter 'Of Bacon as a Man of Science.' ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... inborn courtesy which made him polite to every woman he met—young or old—prevented his betraying himself. She tried to suggest something like this to Miss Felicia, but that good woman had only said: "Men are queer, my dear, and these Southerners are the queerest of them all. They are so chivalrous that at times they get tiresome. Breen is no better than the rest of them." This had ended it with Miss Felicia. Nor would she ever mention his name to her again. Jack was ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... window of the same inn, singing and playing upon the violoncello: I had not observed the circumstance, but my perrucchiere's distress was evident; he writhed and twisted about like a man pinched with the cholic, and pulled a hundred queer faces: at last—What is the matter, Ercolani, said I, are you not well? Mistress, replies the fellow, if that beast don't leave off soon, I shall run mad with rage, or else die; and so you'll see an honest Venetian lad killed ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... he became possessed with a queer longing that she would move again, forwards, within the focus of the firelight. However, she spoke from where ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... had seen a less fanciable maiden than herself in our village, or any other. But 'tis the mercy of Providence to hide reality from us where 'tis like to hurt most, and no doubt if our neighbours knew the naked truth of their queer appearances and uncomfortable natures, there would come a rush of them felo-de-sees and a lot of unhappiness that ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... Long Acre. Listening, as we did, then and afterwards, to the tale, as it was told by his own sympathetic lips, much of the incongruity, otherwise no doubt apparent in the narrative, seemed at those times to disappear altogether. The incongruity, we mean, observable between the queer little ticket-porter and the elfin phantoms of the belfry; between Trotty Veck, in his "breezy, goose-skinned, blue-nosed, red-eyed, stony-toed, tooth-chattering" stand-point by the old church-door, and the Goblin Sight beheld by him when he had clambered up, ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... in the finding of about ten dollars, a knife, and three queer-looking implements that Hemingway ...
— The High School Freshmen - Dick & Co.'s First Year Pranks and Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... himself hated having to go and speak to his uncle Bulstrode, and perhaps after drinking wine he had said many foolish things about Featherstone's property, and these had been magnified by report. Fred felt that he made a wretched figure as a fellow who bragged about expectations from a queer old miser like Featherstone, and went to beg for certificates at his bidding. But—those expectations! He really had them, and he saw no agreeable alternative if he gave them up; besides, he had lately made a debt which galled him extremely, and old Featherstone ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... clearer vision, the feeling was general that he had made a mistake. He was fifty-six, in the prime of life, never in better health, with "success lying easily upon him"—said one; "at the very summit of his career," said another—and all agreed it was "queer," "strange,"—unless, they argued, he was really ill. Even the most acute students of human affairs among his friends wondered. It seemed incomprehensible that any man should want to give up before he was, for some reason, compelled ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... watch her; but she would talk, and her mind, he said, was "all elbows." And yet, the next year, when her marriage was announced, he went away alone, quite suddenly ... and it was just afterwards that he published Love's Viaticum. Men are queer! ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... and snow. The old dog lay all day under the stove in the parlour. The crab-apple-tree stood outside in the snow, with the queer stone under her branch. ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... use knowin'. Time is queer anyway on a prairie. Sometimes it takes a considerable while for it to go past. And then again, as the other fellow said, 'Time is shorter than it is long.' Maybe if you are sleepy you 'd better ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... rows. There is a little bird's nest of a gallery at the rear of the room, where the spectators cannot stand up without striking the ceiling with their heads. At the sides of the space set apart for the musicians are two queer little private boxes, perched up against the wall like old-fashioned pulpits, and reached by a narrow flight of steps like a ladder. The aristocratic seats (after the boxes) are the fauteuils d'orchestre, for which we pay the ruinous sum of twenty-five sous each. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... days it was the habit to think and say that the House of Commons was an essentially 'queer place,' which no one could understand until he was a Member of it. It may, perhaps, be doubted whether that somewhat mysterious quality still altogether attaches to that assembly. 'Our own Reporter' has invaded it in all its purlieus. No longer content ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... into my room quite early after my breakfast. I was reading my Bible, as I used to, you know, every morning, to see whether I could be interested again, as I used to be. I was finding I couldn't when Craven came in. He looked queer. He's been looking queerer every day, and I don't think he's been sleeping. Then he began to ask me questions, not actually about anything, but odd questions like, Where was I born? and Why did I read the Bible? and things like that—just ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... or not as you please, it is the solemn truth I'm telling you—that cave was full of queer little mysterious noises, like people whispering, and the soft tread of feet all about us. I looked, and Dirk looked, but we could see nothing; yet the sounds continued, now seeming to come from the back of the cave, and then all about us. I believe ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... him," said Frank to himself, arguing on the subject exactly as his father had done; "but for an engaged lover he seems to me to have a very queer way with him." Frank, poor fellow! who was of a coarser mould, would, under such circumstances, have been all for kissing—sometimes, indeed, even under ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... his descendants. God is a God of righteousness and therefore in a future world He will torture every human being who dies without availing himself of a certain "plan of salvation" designed to give him a chance of escape. This is a queer sort of righteousness! The plan of salvation consists in sending His own Son—a Son who has existed eternally, which the rest of us have not—to live a few years on earth and go through a certain programme ending ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... long-haired deer skin and canvas. In this he slept. He was slight of build but wiry. Possessed of a peculiar supple strength and agility, he easily surpassed other men of greater weight in everything he undertook, both of labor and sport. One queer thing about him was that he always wore a pair of glasses with smoked lenses of such large proportions that they hid his eyes completely; he was never without them. One more thing, he always wore the Eskimo cut of garments; in cold weather, deer skin; in warm weather and at work, blue drill; ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... now for the other. What a queer man he was, though! Could all that have been put on in the garden—pretending he didn't know! (This was such a tiresome old knot!) If she only hadn't been such a goose and laughed—what must he think? What could have been the reason he rushed off in such a hurry? Probably was afraid she'd tell ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... are taken from an admirable selection of sailor songs published by John Ashton. The names of the writers are not given, but their strong nautical flavour and queer composition indicate their origin. No landsman can ever imitate the sailor when the power of song or composition is on him. He puts his own funny sentiment and descriptive faculty into his work, ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... Devonshire they say as "Busy as Batty," but no one knows who "Batty" was. As I have mentioned The Doctor, &c., I may was well jot down two more odd sayings from the same old curiosity-shop:—"As proud as old COLE's dog which took the wall of a dung-CART, and got CRUSHED by the wheel." And, "As queer as Dick's hat-band, that went nine times round his hat and was fastened by ...
— Notes & Queries No. 29, Saturday, May 18, 1850 • Various
... before Hale had encircled the room, he was so disturbed at what he saw that he could scarcely complete his frightful inspection. In every enclosure he viewed a monstrosity that in some way resembled a human. Every reptile, every insect, every queer, misshapen animal not only looked human in some shocking manner, but also seemed to possess human characteristics. It seemed as though some demented creator with a perverted sense of humor had attempted to mock man by calling forth monsters ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... he sat writing in his chair," he muttered. "Look—the pen's fallen from his fingers as he fell forward. Queer!" ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... in all the years since, that first picture of him has suffered no change with me. He was so intensely alive that I cannot think of him as dead—and I do not. He is just away on another of those trips and it really seems queer that I shall not hear him tell ...
— Appreciations of Richard Harding Davis • Various
... Later I heard that a similar notion entered into some of the wild ancient tales of the common folk—a notion likewise alluding to ghoulish, wolfish shapes taken by smoke from the great chimney, and queer contours assumed by certain of the sinuous tree-roots that thrust their way into the cellar ...
— The Shunned House • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... maintains a useful position in society, and Mr. Merrick's peculiarities only served to render him the more interesting to those who knew him best. He did astonishing things in a most matter-of-fact way and acted more on impulse than on calm reflection; so it is not to be wondered at that the queer little man's nieces had imbibed some of his queerness. Being by nature lively and aggressive young women, whose eager interest in life would not permit them to be idle, they encountered ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... said he. "In fact, I have been strangely idle for the last fortnight. The most exciting things that have appeared above my personal horizon have been a queer little edition of Albertus-Magnus, struck off in an obscure printing shop in Florence in the early part of the sixteenth century, and a splendid, large paper Poe, to which I fortunately happened ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... asking God to help a fellow," said he to himself. "Strange, too, that He should answer my prayer in part before I asked, by causing that queer jumble of good and evil, Bill Cronk, to suggest to me this way of turning an honest penny. I wish Bill was as good a friend to himself as he is to others. I fear that he will go to the dogs. Bless me! ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... daughter?" repeated the colonel. "Well, that's a queer question to ask us. We've been saying where is Solomon White ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... crazy! Everybody said it, and what everybody says has ever been universally received as indisputable testimony. Many people, indeed, averred that Grim never had been quite right—that he always had been queer, and that since his mad marriage with that flighty bit of a child, Jacquelina, he had ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... old, his father determined to emigrate to America, and for that purpose went to Liverpool to embark for the United States. But when he had got as far as the docks, Mrs. Gibson, good soul, frightened at the bigness of the ships (a queer cause of alarm), refused plumply ever to put her foot on one of them. So her husband, a dutiful man with a full sense of his wife's government upon him, consented unwillingly to stop in Liverpool, where he settled down to work again as a gardener. Hitherto, Jack and his brothers ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... of a different stripe. "We had a man with us at Menlo called Segredor. He was a queer kind of fellow. The men got in the habit of plaguing him; and, finally, one day he said to the assembled experimenters in the top room of the laboratory: 'The next man that does it, I will kill him.' They paid no attention to this, and next day one of them made some sarcastic remark to him. ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... queer, troubled, dazed sort of look in her eyes. Edith handed her the shilling and she disappeared ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... seized the fat struggling churchman and commenced to hop up and down. The Bishop being shorter must perforce accompany them in their gyrations; while the whole company sat and rolled about over the ground, and roared to see my lord of Hereford's queer capers. At last he sank in a heap, fuddled with ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... of limbs which could be used at will either as arms or legs. Their eyes were set at the extreme sides of their heads a trifle above the center and protruded in such a manner that they could be directed either forward or back and also independently of each other, thus permitting this queer animal to look in any direction, or in two directions at once, without the necessity of ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... unroll their luncheons. These were wrapped in little fancy napkins that were carefully shaken and folded to serve for the next day. As the Everglade teachers had dismissed Mrs. Preston from the first as queer, her absence from the noon gossip was rather ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... his hands upon his knees, opened his mouth, and waited for his hearer's laughter and wonder; but the hearer merely smiled, and with a queer look of frolic in the depths of ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... It is odd, indeed, that we should have such great regard for the interest of the foreigner on the money question, and then so utterly ignore his interests on the tariff question. If our hind sight were not better than our fore sight, it would seem queer to hear politicians advocate the gold standard and a high tariff, and with the same breath rage against the trusts, when the trust is simply the fruit of ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... Aunt Peggy, now that his enemy was no more, Bacchus became very magnanimous. He said Jupiter had been a faithful old animal, though mighty queer sometimes, and he believed the death of Aunt Peggy had set him crazy, therefore he forgave him for the condition in which he had put his face, and should lay him by his mistress at the burial-ground. Lydia begged an old candle-box of Miss Janet, for a coffin, ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... every village had one or two eccentric characters who were treated ordinarily with a benevolent toleration, but who were regarded meanwhile as impracticable and queer. These exceptional individuals lived an isolated existence, cut off by their very eccentricities, whether of genius or of defect, from genuinely intimate intercourse with their fellows. If they had the making of criminals, the restraints and inhibitions of the small community rendered ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... model of the Palace of Westminster, and sundry docks, resists the approach of an interminable centipede, on which she stamps, vainly endeavouring to impede the progress of the coil of fire and blood approaching to soil and fire her fair robe; beside her stands John Bull, in a queer mixed costume, half sailor, with the smalls and gaiters of a coalheaver. He bears the Habeas Corpus Act under his arm, but stands aghast and paralysed, it never seeming to have occurred to the ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... prelude to a narrative of how a British military force, under orders for one theatre of war, was boldly diverted to another; incidentally the bearding of Moshesh; and a queer Pax Britannica. ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne |
