"Free-and-easy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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, ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... 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 flint lay under the simple, truthful manner ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... a Free-and-Easy singer for the heroine. One evening, returning from the waterside, being slightly tipsy, he had entered the music hall. At the door stood a woman selling big bouquets at twenty francs apiece. He had bought one without quite knowing what he should do with it, and before he was much more than in ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... 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
... got into a mighty free-and-easy style of talking of late. He was perfectly right, though in addition to the wind, which sprung up immediately afterwards, we got a thick fog, which totally obscured the land. I steered a course, however, which I hoped would carry us to the harbour's mouth. We ran ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... fortunate 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. Huadquina ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... 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 ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... 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
... gave her black friend what comfort she could; but Dick Lee's tongue would never again be the free-and-easy member of society it had been. Even when at home, and about his commonest "chores," he was all the while struggling with what he called his "pronounciation." If he should succeed as well with the rest of his "schooling," it was safe to ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... of the greatest land speculators of his time, owned over 32,000 acres along the Ohio. He held a patent from Lord Dunmore, dated July 5, 1775, for nearly 3,000 acres lying about the mouth of this stream. In accordance with the free-and-easy habit of trans-Alleghany pioneers, ten men squatted on the tract, greatly to the indignation of the Father of his Country, who in 1784 brought against them a successful suit for ejectment. Twelve years later, more familiar with this than with most of his land grants, he sold it ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... future leaders of San Francisco society, and the bearers of what were to be her proudest names, were mostly "hearses." Their husbands were the forceful, able men of the city, but they themselves were conventional as only conventional women can be when goaded into it by a general free-and-easy, unconventional atmosphere. That was their only method of showing disapproval. The effect was worthy but dull. It was a pity, for among them were many intelligent, charming women who needed only a different atmosphere, to expand. The Keiths never saw them, and gained their ideas of them only ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... brings them to me and puts down their meaning and spelling with their Japanese equivalents. He speaks English already far better than many professional interpreters, but would be more pleasing if he had not picked up some American vulgarisms and free-and-easy ways. It is so important to me to have a good interpreter, or I should not have engaged so young and inexperienced a servant; but he is so clever that he is now able to be cook, laundryman, and general attendant, as well as courier ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... shield, screening his real 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 ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... roast fowls, and sweetmeats, with a gallantry that did honour to his nation. After about fifteen dishes, he concluded the repast with dessert, some of which he even carried out of doors, for some young gentlemen at table, amused with his coolness and gallant free-and-easy manner, induced him to pocket a handful of macaroons, which he discussed on his way to the theatre, whither everybody went in the cheery social little German place. The lady in black, the boy's mamma, laughed and blushed, and looked exceedingly pleased and shy as the dinner ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... hearing, laughed at the recital of their own irregularities and expressed their admiration when they reflected on the almost miraculous preservation of the army from destruction.' Men off duty amused themselves with free-and-easy musketry, which would have been all very well if there had not been such a dearth of powder for the real thing. Races, wrestling, and quoits were better; while fishing was highly commendable, both in the way of diet as well as in the way of sport. Such entries as 'Thritty Lobbsters' ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... 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 we ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... a little thirsty," said Donald, flinging himself down on a seat in a free-and-easy way, with his legs astride, so as to allow free suspension to his huge goat-skin purse, and doffing his bonnet, and wiping the perspiration from his forehead—"Herself's no fery hungry, but a little thirsty; and she'll teukit, if you please, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... became formally engaged. The Princess said at first that she did not think her betrothed "by any means so disagreeable as she had expected." In time, however, this ardour of affection abated. The Prince was a baddish subject, and he had a free-and-easy manner, and wanted tact and refinement. He returned to London from some races seated on the outside of a coach, and in a highly excited state. Worst of all, he lodged at his tailor's. The engagement ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... lapse of an annuity. But sister Laura was thus provided for well enough, while I had not a shilling in actual money, although plenty of hypothetical thousands and sundry castles in the air. It was the consciousness of the latter kind of property, no doubt, that gave me so free-and-easy an air, and made me so completely the master of my own actions. How I did worry that blessed old woman! how Laura lectured and scolded! how the governor stormed! and how I was forgiven the next minute, and we were all as happy again as the day was long! But at length the time of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... Dream,' you won't wonder at my sending the present one on Trial, both done as they are in the same lawless, perhaps impudent, way. I know you would not care who did these things, so long as they were well done; but one doesn't wish to meddle, and in so free-and-easy a way, with a Great Man's Masterpieces, and utterly fail: especially when two much better men have been before one. One excuse is, that Shelley and Dr. Trench only took parts of these plays, not caring ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... scene, seeming to say that it could disclose a good deal more if it wished. Harper paused at the door and laid a hand upon his companion's arm. "It is all up with us, Doctor," he said in extreme agitation, which contrasted strangely with his free-and-easy words; "the game has gone against us all. Let's not go in ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... cent gained, hackney coaches are comparatively little used by the men; for it must be remembered that idlers in this country are an invisible minority of the community! The natural consequence is, that they are clean and expensive. The drivers are charmingly independent and undeniably free-and-easy birds, but not meaning to be uncivil. One of them showed his independence by asking two dollars one night for a three-mile drive home to the hotel. I inquired of the master, and found the proper charge was a dollar and a half; but, on my sending out the same, Jarvey was too proud to confess he was ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... never like 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 beneath the load your suffering head is bowed ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... him with alacrity, and wedging in between his legs, placed his little black hands in a free-and-easy way on his master's knees, and looking up ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a more civil aspect of affairs than the picture of thirty death-dealing demons in the tops of a Yankee frigate, let us see how they manage their aggressions upon the untamed field and forest. During his various ramblings, our traveller's free-and-easy manner gained him the confidence of several able and energetic men—an advantage which enabled him to peep behind the scenes in many of the western movements. The following incident, which came under his own knowledge, comes within the design of this article, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... the large, clear blue eyes, though in form and colour exactly similar, there was wanting that misty, dreamy depth of expression; all was clear, bold, and bright, but with a light wholly of this world: the beautifully cut mouth had a proud and somewhat sarcastic expression, while an air of free-and-easy superiority sat not ungracefully in every turn and movement of his fine form. He was listening with a good-humoured, negligent air, half comic, half contemptuous, to Haley, who was very volubly expatiating on ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... a tour over the State of Maine and Canada. During this cool excursion, he got way up among the wood-choppers and log-men of the Aroostook and Penobscot country. These wood-chopping and log-rolling gentry, according to all accounts, must be a jolly, free-and-easy, hard-toiling and hardy race. The "folks" up about there live in very primitive style; their camps and houses are very useful, but not much addicted to the "ornamental." Howard had a very long, tedious and perilous ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... him familiarly as "thou." Perhaps there is a little too much familiarity in all this, for the worthy man has not yet begun to realize the prestige and authority of his new station; and there was some one who considered this free-and-easy manner very humiliating. But that some one can not see him at this moment, and the master takes advantage of the fact to bestow a hearty greeting upon the old bookkeeper, Sigismond, who comes out last of all, erect and red-faced, imprisoned in a high collar and bareheaded—whatever ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... the delight of comparing notes of the doings during the delightful preceding twenty-four hours. Thus, whilst Brown detailed the delights of the pantomime to which Uncle John had taken him on Saturday night, Robinson descanted on the marvels of the Zoological Gardens, with special reference to the free-and-easy life of monkeydom, and Smith never wearied of enlarging on the terrors and glories of the Tower of London. Altogether, there were fourteen weeks' holiday in the year—six weeks in August, five at Christmas and three at Whitsuntide, with two days ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... idealized English country. Very much, to be sure, in all his works has to be conceded to the spirit of romance. Both in 'The Vicar of Wakefield' and in 'She Stoops to Conquer' characterization is mostly conventional, and events are very arbitrarily manipulated for the sake of the effects in rather free-and-easy disregard of all principles of motivation. But the kindly knowledge of the main forces in human nature, the unfailing sympathy, and the irrepressible conviction that happiness depends in the last analysis on the ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... general licentiousness, partly upon the French education of many of Charles's courtiers, and partly on the poets. Dryden undoubtedly formed his diction by the usage of the Court. The age was a very free-and-easy, not to say a very coarse one. Its coarseness was not external, like that of Elizabeth's day, but the outward mark of an inward depravity. What Swift's notion of the refinement of women was may be judged by his anecdotes of Stella. I will not say that Dryden's ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... beautiful to me;—a true human soul... one of 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 at home, but walks were ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... 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
... did not quite like him, you know, when first I met him at Rogers's; but that was 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 ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... was the cause of our getting into trouble, a couple of Italians, who had taken offense at the free-and-easy ways of Fogarty, Crane and Carroll, who occupied the same apartment with them, informing the guard that the New-Yorker had the little animal in his pocket, the fare for which was immediately ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... at which flats dare to rail, [1] (From which till the next Central sittings I hail), Is still the same snug, free-and-easy old hole, Where Macheath met his blowens, and Wild floor'd his bowl [2] In a ward with one's pals, not locked up in a cell, [3] To an old hand like me it's a ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... just like his nephew in 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... degree of disturbance, although he 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, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... face flushed with pleasure at her free-and-easy reception of him, while an almost inaudible "Gracias" fell from his lips. At once he knew that his first surmise, that the Girl was an American, had been correct. Not that his experience in life had furnished him ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... 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 pretty. Every body ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a depressing effect on the men; but the influence of robust health, youth, strong hope, and that light-hearted courage which makes the British soldier so formidable to his foes, soon restored to most of them their wonted free-and-easy enjoyment of the present and disregard for the future. Even the serving out of cholera-belts and pocket-filters failed ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... with profuse assurances of amicable consideration, he departed, probably laying the flattering unction to his soul that much valuable information had been unconsciously imparted to him. He did not know that the free-and-easy young cavalry soldier who talked with such apparent frankness had learned a staff officer's duties as aide-decamp to one of our most astutely cautious Generals. This is the story as it was told to me at second hand, and if ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... some unexpected grasshopper, some free-and-easy beetle presents itself without invitation or excuse, scampering over our white mats, to see the manner in which Chrysantheme indicates it to my righteous vengeance,—merely pointing her finger at it, without another word than "Hou!" ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... have 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 ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... forty-three cents lasted like the widow's cruse of oil. We went to see the fat lady, who, if she was really as big as she looked to me then, must have weighed at least a ton. My admiration for gran'ther's daredevil qualities rose to infinity when he entered into free-and-easy talk with her, about how much she ate, and could she raise her arms enough to do up her own hair, and how many yards of velvet it took to make her gorgeous, gold-trimmed robe. She laughed a great deal at us, but she was evidently touched by his human interest, for she confided to ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... were too near for Barbara to do more than give her a warm squeeze of the hand; but she watched the girl out of sight, feeling very sorry for her. If she had lived a free-and-easy life on her father's plantation, never having known a mother's care, it was no wonder that she should be a little wild and find her ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... posted, 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 ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... who were connected with the Church were received by them only under the most formal restrictions. Finding it impossible to eat Chinese food, a simple, but foreign menage, took the place of the hitherto free-and-easy conditions. ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... taskmaster, Farmer Groby; it was one in a semi-clerical costume, who now represented what had once been the free-and-easy Alec d'Urberville. Not being hot at his preaching there was less enthusiasm about him now, and the presence of the grinder seemed to embarrass him. A pale distress was already on Tess's face, and she pulled her curtained ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... most light-hearted and indifferent of this free-and-easy family, who always had roast turkey when it was to be had, and who could laugh and chat merrily over warmed-up meat and johnny-cake, or even no meat at all, when such days came. How she ever came to think that she could go to ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... same way 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 at it, and repeat ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... 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. ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... quite unconscious of it, and I think my immediate friends knew too well how disgusted I should be at such proceedings, to have the heart to tell me. I felt great impatience at our being called a party, and would not allow that we were such. I had a lounging, free-and-easy way of carrying things on. I exercised no sufficient censorship upon the Tracts. I did not confine them to the writings of such persons as agreed in all things with myself; and, as to my own Tracts, I printed on them a notice to the effect, ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... Alford's 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 ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... squalid colony of human nests than even this. When the sailor flinched, and hung back, Philip strode forward, determined to conquer, unheeding the battery of stares turned upon himself and his companion by the inhabitants, and the free-and-easy comments, of which they were by no ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... Stevens seated in his dingy office in company with the McCloskey, who had recently been discharged from custody in default of sufficient evidence being found to warrant his committal for trial. He was sitting with his feet upon the stove, and was smoking a cigar in the most free-and-easy ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... suspect PUNCH of any prestige in favour of the restrictions laid upon the drama—for our own free-and-easy habit of erecting our theatre in the first convenient street we come to, and going through our performance without caring a rush for the Lord Chamberlain or the Middlesex magistrates, must convince all who know us, that we are for a thoroughly free trade in theatricals; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 28, 1841 • Various
... Nellie. When after the Company Lesson, [Footnote: Sunday School Bible Lesson.] I spoke to them of her beautiful life, they all cried, and we had a little dedication meeting, giving ourselves to God to live like Nellie, and claiming His power for help. Afternoon free-and-easy. Hall just on full, but could not keep the meeting on as we had ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... free-and-easy, laisser-aller air about everybody and everything at Nome City, which would, perhaps, have jarred upon an ultra-respectable mind. Most of the ladies at the Golden Gate Hotel were located there in couples, unattended, permanently at any rate, by male protectors. The bedroom ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... hands, the unobtrusive perfection of his toilet and the very texture of his handkerchiefs told plainly enough that he had been familiar with high life from the cradle. His way of living, too, was the subject of much curious comment. Without being really extravagant, he still spent money in a free-and-easy fashion, and always gave one the impression of having unbounded resources, though no one could tell exactly what they were. The only solution of the riddle was that he might have access to the treasury of some mighty man who, for reasons which ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Sir John 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 dodged ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... a robust appearance, and a free-and-easy way with him. His free-and-easy way shows itself chiefly in his habit of smiling upon and waving his hand to all those whom he encounters on his daily walks. He is talkative at times, but his vocabulary ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 31, 1917 • Various
... need, have explained this free-and-easy demeanor. The old maid wore a merino gown of a dark plum color, of which the cut and trimming dated from the year of the Restoration; a little worked collar, worth perhaps three francs; and a common straw hat with blue satin ribbons edged with straw plait, such as the old-clothes buyers wear ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... superficial gossip that really meant nothing. His good nature never forsook him, and he always had his temper well under control. He knew to a nicety the side his bread was buttered on. That happy-go-lucky disposition of his stood him in good stead many a time, and his free-and-easy manner of drawing people out frequently served as an aid to determine his future course of action. The limited exchange of conversation he had with the loungers satisfied him that he was right in his estimate that there would be a hot time in the old town on Saturday night if he remained. ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... nothing of young men besides the awkward and blushing clodhoppers of Chaney Creek, was somewhat dazzled by the free-and-easy speech and manner of the hard-cheeked bagman. Yet there was something in his airy talk and point-blank compliments that aroused a faint feeling of resentment which she could scarcely account for. Aunt Abigail was delighted ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... that, though I am by no means 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 ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... 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 ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... 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 ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... noticed a growing uneasiness in Rory's manner, despite his efforts towards a free-and-easy cordiality. At last ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... looking from one to the other as if it was an announcement full of interest, while the lad on the pier frowned a little at his brother's free-and-easy way. ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... French chronicler, contemporary of Montaigne, born in Perigord; led the life of a knight-errant, and wrote Memoirs remarkable for the free-and-easy, faithful, and vivid delineations of the characters of the most ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... round-toed shoes of morocco leather, and the makers of horn rings for fingers, wrists, arms and ankles wrought as deftly with their toes as with their fingers; where working silversmiths plied their trade in precious metals and gems in a free-and-easy open-air fashion that would have made the mouth of a London thief water; and where idle Arabs sipped coffee and smoked the live-long day, as though coffee and tobacco were the aim and end of life—which ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... good-tempered nature, the thought of any real damage from consequences had been completely passed over by John. If Dan Duff did go into fits, he'd recover from them; if Alice Hook was startled into something worse, she was not dead. It was all sport to free-and-easy John; and, but for circumstances, there's no knowing how long he might have carried this game on. These circumstances touched upon a point that influences us all, more or less—pecuniary consideration. John was minus funds, and it was necessary that something should be done; ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... inviting as they were disreputable in appearance; there was manuscript music among the general litter, a guitar hung from the wall by a tarnished blue and silver ribbon, and a violin lay on the piano; and yet, notwithstanding the air of free-and-easy disorder, one could hardly help recognizing a sort of vagabond comfort and luxury in the Bohemian surroundings. It was so very evident that the owners must enjoy life in an easy, light-hearted, though perhaps light-headed fashion; and it was ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... great pretensions or size, but like hundreds of poor men's houses in Palestine still—a one-storied 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 in the narrative by Christ's notice of their 'faith.' We can fancy the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... very big men do not look well in glossy black coats and silk hats; they seem to want wideawakes, bowlers, caps, anything rather than a Paris hat, and some loose-cut jacket of a free-and-easy colour, suitable for the field, or cricket, or boating. They do not belong to the town and narrow doorways; Nature grew them for ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... years, in 1859, Bismarck was transferred to St. Petersburg as the Prussian ambassador to Alexander II. He was then forty-three years of age, and was known as the sworn foe of Austria. His free-and-easy but haughty manners were a great contrast to those of his stiff, buttoned-up, and pretentious predecessors; and he became a great favorite in Russian court circles. The comparatively small salary he received,—less than twenty thousand dollars, with a ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... young fellow who had been twice to the Friary that day. What business had he to be shutting the gate after him in that free-and-easy way at ten o'clock at night? He must find it out somehow; he must make an excuse for calling there, and put the question as indifferently as he could; but even when he made up his mind to pursue this course, Archie felt just as ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... to play, he seemed to throw off the air of restraint that had been about him since he discovered the kind of company Bart Hodge had brought him into. He became his free-and-easy, jolly self, soon cracking a joke or two that set the boys laughing, and beginning by taking the very first pot on the table after entering ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... 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 ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... amounted practically to a revolution in farming. At least it ought to have. And it would have if those young men had come again to hoe their field. But it turned out, most unfortunately, that they were busy. To their great regret they were too busy to come. They had been working under a free-and-easy arrangement. Each man was to give what time he could every Saturday. It was left to every man's honour to do what he could. There was no compulsion. Each man trusted the others to be there. In fact ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... it easy for us to attach any meaning to the word "servant." There were women who came in occasionally to do the washing, or to help about extra work. But they were decently clothed, and had homes of their own, more or less comfortable, and their quaint talk and free-and-easy ways were often as much of a lift to the household as the actual assistance ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... monosyllables and cling to the sheltering refuge of such safe subjects as are the substance of everybody's and anybody's chit-chat. Maybe I judge them harshly when I persuade myself that the records of their past could not stand the open daylight of a free-and-easy discussion. This verdict is, however, the suggestion of my instinct, and need not carry weight with ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... 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
... romantic exterior of a Macedonian brigand, here was a young man of the period with astonishingly courteous manners, of—and this was of secondary consideration—of frank and winning charm, with a free-and-easy intimacy with Balzac, of fearless truthfulness regarding his deficiencies, and with a golf handicap of one. The Colonel's hand and heart went out in instinctive coordination. The Colonel Winwoods of this country are not gods; they are very humanly fallible; ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... 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, and ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... guiltless of bustle, fashion, or parade, where each man stood for what he was; and, being a sagacious set, every one's true value was pretty accurately known. It was a neighborly town, with gossip enough to stir the social atmosphere with small gusts of interest or wonder, yet do no harm. A sensible, free-and-easy town, for the wisest man in it wore the worst boots, and no one thought the less of his understanding; the belle of the village went shopping with a big sun-bonnet and tin pail, and no one found her beauty lessened; oddities of all sorts ambled peacefully about on their various hobbies, and ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... unadorned. So these and every one else he decided to "drop," and carried this resolution into effect with a certain amount of rudeness. On the next occasion that Varvar Nikolaievitch Vishnepokromov called to indulge in a free-and-easy symposium on politics, philosophy, literature, morals, and the state of financial affairs in England (he was, in all matters which admit of superficial discussion, the pleasantest fellow alive, seeing that he was a typical representative ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... "with kindly solicitude, help her on with her clothes." We can even pause to admire the experienced skill with which they put each garment in its proper place—and deftly button it. That she should have the ribald slang of the free-and-easy neighborhood at her tongue's end and be destitute of delicacy as a young cow might be expected; but we are hardly prepared to see one grown up among such surroundings so unutterably stupid as not to know ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... 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 ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... 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 of Wales, afterwards Queen Caroline, asked the "incomparable sweet ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... indicated in this reasoning on the subject of veracity, would in its tendency be destructive to the safeguards of personal virtue and of social purity; and his arguments for the lie of exigency are similar to those which are put forward in excuse for common sins against chastity, by the free-and-easy defenders of a lax standard in such matters. "Some moralists," says the average young man of the world, "in their extreme regard for personal purity, will not admit that any act of unchastity is necessary, even to protect one's health, ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... make her commit any follies, but I shall teach her a great many." On his deathbed he said: "My only regret is that I cannot leave anything to my wife with whom I have every imaginable reason to be content." In this free-and-easy salon, a young noble said, soon after the marriage of Scarron: "If it were a question of taking liberties with the queen or Mme. Scarron, I would not deliberate; I would sooner ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... carpets, curtains, lounges, and marble-topped tables, too good for human nature's daily food; and being sustained by this consciousness, they cheerfully went on receiving their friends in the study, and having good times in the old free-and-easy way; for did not everybody know that this room was not their best? and if the furniture was old-fashioned and a little the worse for antiquity, was it not certain that they had better, which they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... blameless deportment; obliged to keep house on so small a scale that, without the help of a louis regularly advanced to him each week by his coffee-house father-in-law, he could not make both ends meet.[3156] His free-and-easy tastes, his alternately impetuous and indolent disposition, his love of enjoyment and of having his own way, his rude, violent instincts, his expansiveness, creativeness and activity, all rebel against this life: he is ill-suited for the quiet routine of our civil ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... him; there was Cesare, Cardinal of Valencia, who was to go to Naples to-morrow as papal 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 Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... free-and-easy way, told him the story of a wayfarer who once came through that region preaching abolitionism to the negroes. The negroes themselves betrayed him, and he was promptly taken in charge. His body was found ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... almost as elegant as Booth's Theatre in New York, but it is a cafe chantant. Keeping still to the favorite haunts of the blousard, we enter the showiest of the cafes chantants peculiar to him—as free-and-easy a beuglant as one could wish. Beuglant, by the way, is the argot name of this sort of place; and as the word comes from beugler, to "bellow," it may easily be seen how flattering it is as a definite noun for a place where the chief attraction ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... "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 - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... acknowledged the introduction with extreme chilliness. She strongly disapproved of Chris's faculty for developing unexpected friendships. The child was so regrettably free-and-easy in all her ways. Of course, if Trevor Mordaunt approved of their intimacy, and apparently he did, there was nothing to be said, but she herself could not regard it with favour. Once more she congratulated herself that her responsibilities where Chris was concerned ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... great surprise, Polly ventured to look at Tom, feeling glad that her back was toward the light, and his was not. It was not a large room, and Tom seemed to fill it entirely; not that he had grown so very much, except broader in the shoulders, but there was a brisk, genial, free-and-easy air about him, suggestive of a stirring, out-of-door life, with people who kept their eyes wide open, and were not very particular what they did with their arms and legs. The rough-and-ready travelling suit, stout boots, ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... again and we have a benevolent 'broad-brim,' stiff, symmetrical and proper to the last degree, like an Italian villa; and, once more changing the straight lines to crooked ones, the conventional formalist becomes the unconventional, free-and-easy South-westerner, who may stand for Swiss or any other ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... offended 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 ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... "rise from below," and we all saw her and 'Erd 'er. Then, later on, appears Bruennhilde, asleep, "in a complete suit of gleaming plate-armour, with helmet on her head and long shield over her body," a style of free-and-easy costume which, as everyone knows, is highly conducive to sleeping in perfect comfort. No wonder Siegfried mistakes her for a man-in-armour out of the Lord Mayor's Show, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 18, 1892 • Various
... one of her lovers came within any close distance of her, he speedily could 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 indulged ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... called "Walt" instead of Walter, so let it be. The name accords with the free-and-easy style of his verse. If you can find some abridged selections from that verse, read them by all means; but if you must search the whole of it for the passages that are worth reading, then pass it cheerfully by; for such another vain display of egotism, vulgarity and rant never appeared under the ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... use a vulgar phrase, cutting it rather fat; I'm not so precious green as you think. I don't mind giving you a couple of hundred, or so, for what fun I've had, but five thousand—whew! rather a high price for the amusement, considering what a remarkably free-and-easy ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... though driven, on state occasions especially, to imitate French and English habits, yet they love nothing better than at times to enjoy themselves in their native way. The ball given by the prince to-night is what might be called a free-and-easy. It is his particular desire that no one should come in full dress; in fact, he rather likes to have his stranger guests come in their worst clothes, for this prevents the attention of the public being called ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... is a very free-and-easy field hospital; no irksome regulations, and restrictions, and inspections. A doctor comes round in the morning and looks at each of us. The dressings are done once in twenty-four hours by an orderly. ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... got a 'art," ses Bill. "I can't chuck up pals in that free-and-easy way. Once I take a liking to anybody I'd do anything for 'em, and I've never met three chaps I like better than wot I do you. Three nicer, straight-forrad, free-'anded mates I've never ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... riotous to-night, wasn't it? Yes, she understood! A great many of the men were wearing little badges. Some society or other was celebrating—and was doing it with abandon. Most of the men were half drunk. It was certainly a free-and-easy night! ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... 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 ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... sir," said young Mr Benny, "favour an alpaca lounge coat with this particular line. We stock them in all sizes. Alpacas are seldom made to measure,—'free-and-easy' being their motto, if I may so ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... best markets in America. And the people of the place, largely made up of Loyalists, vied with each other in providing entertainment for the British army. There were fashionable balls for the officers and free-and-easy revels for the soldiers. Almost at any time the British army might have marched out to Valley Forge and dealt a final blow to Washington's naked and starving troops, but it preferred the good food and the dissipations of Philadelphia; and so the winter dragged ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... 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 have sat on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... each containing a 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
... buzzing little auditorium of the Players' Studio, Charlie endeavored to further his quest. But the atmosphere seemed, paradoxically enough, a handicap. A free-and-easy atmosphere with men and women in odd-looking rigs sauntering about. The place was as immoral as a honky-tonk. Charlie stared at the young women in smocks and bobbed hair, smoking cigarettes, sitting with their legs showing. They should have been prostitutes but they weren't. Or maybe they were, ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... 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 pitch-and-toss to manslaughter; between which opposite ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... every-day demeanor. He had been in constant companionship with some of the greatest statesmen and orators of his time, but even his devotion to Charles James Fox had never beguiled him into any of Fox's careless, free-and-easy ways. He was sorely tried, as all {121} contemporary accounts tell us, by the abrupt and overbearing manners of his son-in-law, Lord Durham, but he always contrived, in public at least, to bear Durham's eccentricities with unruffled temper ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... trysting-place, accompanied by Andson, a chum from the Upper Fourth, and Fletcher junior. It was quite an informal little gathering, and the business was conducted in a free-and-easy manner, and with an entire absence of the cut-and-dried ceremony which characterized similar undertakings in the palmy days of the ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... Service was hateful to the free-and-easy Texan who lived by anything except hard and honest work, and it was damnably hateful to the lawless class. Steele's authority, now obvious to all, was unlimited; it could go as far as he had power to ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... tragic occurrences through which he had passed would have made Matt melancholy and low-spirited, but such was not the case. Mrs. Lincoln had naturally been of a light heart, and the boy partook of much of his mother's disposition. He loved a free-and-easy life, loved to roam from place to place. With a captain who was a friend of Uncle Dan, he had made a trip to Bangor and Augusta, and he had likewise put in two weeks at a lumber camp in Maine, and a month during ...
— Young Auctioneers - The Polishing of a Rolling Stone • Edward Stratemeyer
... I'll find out about them," Nekhludoff said, more and more astonished by her free-and-easy manner. "But I was going to speak to you about myself. Do you remember what I ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... moment when she came down the stairs and took the white apron which Brophy handed to her she had ceased to be the city-wearied girl. It was homely adventure, to be sure, but the very plainness of it, in the free-and-easy environment of the north woods, appealed to her sense of novelty. There was especial zest for her in this bullyragging of Crowley by the man who was to be victim of the machinations by the Vose-Mern ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... free-and-easy way of address was just the thing for such characters. Mr. Beecher had shown him, to his great surprise, that a man could be a decent and comfortable human being, although he was a minister, and had so gained his confidence and ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... 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
... part, 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 came to ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... town the more exacting became the Martyr. He could not get over his free-and-easy way of living in the gay old days when the tithes of his benefice yielded him nigh a thousand yellow crowns a year. He could not see why he was not entitled to have his rents back again; and after a vain effort on the part of the council to make him see it, he went off ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... at Gedge's free-and-easy way of talking, glancing the while at the Doctor to see how he would take it, nodded his head and delivered himself of a grunt, as the little party filed out of the long, whitewashed, ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... 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 ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell |
