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More "Contortion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dinner—Alfred had been placed upon a diet of squab broth, none of the flesh, just the broth—Alfred quietly arose and, with the aid of the big looking glass, (mirrors had not been discovered as yet, in Brownsville), and a contortion feat such as he had never attempted previously, he scanned the bruised parts. Lin's worst fears seemed confirmed; all his person reflected in the looking glass was black as ink, as he ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... he stepped airily out to the camera and bade his victim "look pleasant." Failing to get the impossible response the artist bade his sitter to smile. Then the old farmer with a wrathful and torture-riven contortion of his mouth ejaculated, "I ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... elderly Mexican senator, who was the essence of politeness of the good old school. Every morning he stood smiling, hat in hand, while he inquired how each of us had slept. I shall never forget the cholera-like contortion of horror he displayed, when the clerical militant (poking his fun at him), declared that Texas was within the natural boundary of the State, and that some morning they would make a breakfast of ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... clustered about the worn capitals of pillars, or craning forth over the church-leads with the open mouths of gargoyles. About them all there is that sort of stiff quaint unreality, that conjunction of the grotesque, and even of a certain bourgeois snugness, with passionate contortion and horror, that is so characteristic of Gothic art. Esmeralda is somewhat an exception; she and the goat traverse the story like two children who have wandered in a dream. The finest moment of the book is when these two share with the two other leading characters, Dom Claude and Quasimodo, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on Karl's part, as Frau Schmidt, with the same extraordinary contortion of the mouth—half smile, half sneer—brought Sigmund to his father, to say good-night. That process over, he was brought to me, and then, as if it were a matter which "understood itself," to Karl. Eugen and I, like family men, as we ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... in the forests, Leviathan in the deep, and Typhon in the sewer. You surpass everything. There is the trace of lightning in your deformity; your face has been battered by the thunderbolt. The jagged contortion of forked lightning has imprinted its mark on your face. It struck you and passed on. A mighty and mysterious wrath has, in a fit of passion, cemented your spirit in a terrible and superhuman form. Hell is a penal furnace, where the iron called Fatality is raised to a white heat. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... despair, her cold, white, pointed fingers pressed tight upon those glorious temples, her little palms hiding the misery of that striking face, her knees convulsively closed, that shining foot tucked beneath the other in the contortion of grief. We will leave her there on the ladder, learning that sorry lesson which Great Love only will set its favourites when they have gone a-whoring after false gods ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... this exerted first in one way and then in another was enough to upset the equilibrium of any ordinary man, especially when the jerks were so sudden and unexpected that it was impossible for one to brace himself against them. After a scene of rather undignified contortion I was finally compelled to retire in defeat, but without the slightest evidence of any other force than that exerted by a strong, muscular young woman. I asked that the rod might be made to whirl in my hands in the manner which has been described, but ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... to time by the new workings, especially in those places where the surface is most uneven. Thus its outcrop at Lydney is very imperfectly defined, and at Oakwood Mill the vein is rendered worthless by a fault, whilst on each side of the Lydbrook valley there is a contortion, by which it is thrown down in one instance seventy yards, and in two others ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... fascinated Gladys even while it horrified and almost made her sick. She watched every contortion of the bodies with the most morbid and intense interest, though feeling it to be hideous all the time. It excited her very much, and her cheeks flushed, her eyes shone with unwonted brilliance. When it was over, she rose to ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... a hot fire burning in Jan's brain, a blazing, writhing contortion of things that brought a low moaning from his lips. He ran tirelessly and swiftly until he sank down upon the snow in a silent place far from where he had left John Cummins. His eyes still blazed with ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... a deep blue colour; the strata are nearly horizontal, but dip a little to the S.W. This body of strata is cut across by a granite dyke, at some places forty feet wide, at others not above ten; the strata in the vicinity of the dyke are broken and bent in a remarkable manner; this dislocation and contortion does not extend far from the walls of the dyke, but veins of granite branch out from it to a great distance, varying in width from three feet to the hundredth part of an inch: the dyke is visible from the top of the cliff to the water's edge, but does not re-appear ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... audacity. Waiters, porters, and boys, when asked if they know French, answer with the greatest assurance, "Oui" or "Un peu," and they try in a thousand ways to make themselves understood, laughing themselves sometimes at the eccentric contortion of their speech, and ending every answer with "S'il vous plait" or a "Pardon, monsieur;" which are often said so prettily and yet are so out of place that they make one laugh even against one's will. It is considered such a common thing to know ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... when the clenching commenced, the vision was faint, as if she were looking into a dark room. But, as the struggle proceeded, the room seemed to be gradually lighted up for her; and every grapple, every blow, every facial contortion of this horrible contest, were plainly visible. And yet she was not in the room, but lying in her little bed, bound as in the awful dream of the clashing orbs. She knew she was there, and yet she felt that her eyes, all her faculties of observation, ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... The facial contortion which served him for a laugh, and at the same time as a symbol of unfathomable reserve, was repeated, accompanied by a jocose manifestation, in the nature of a sharp and taunting cackle, which seemed to indicate a conviction that he was getting much the best ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... it from yourself, of course," she added with an aggrieved contortion of her features, "but as I was just telling Angela, I would not for worlds intrude ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... and black Caesar was not going to be behind his masters, not he. So he, too, in spite of old Nan's protestations and entreaties, had become a confirmed swearer. It had really grown into so fixed a habit that the words meant nothing: it was no more than a trick of physical contortion of which a man may be utterly unconscious. How to break himself ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... plenty of time last night, after we went to bed and you kept me awake by doing your grand combined kicking and contortion act. You take it from me—every time you get one of your restless fits, you smash all world's records for landing sudden and violent kicks ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... head, the same circular bristle of red hair, the same bloodless countenance. The features were set, however, in a horrible smile, a fixed and unnatural grin, which in that still and moonlit room was more jarring to the nerves than any scowl or contortion. So like was the face to that of our little friend that I looked round at him to make sure that he was indeed with us. Then I recalled to mind that he had mentioned to us that his brother and ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... violins, and is not in itself valuable; it runs the transverse way of the fibres and is probably the effect of the wind upon the tree in its early stages of growth. "Roe," which is said to be caused by the contortion of the woody fibres, and takes a wavy line parallel to them, is also found in the hollow of bent stems and in the root structure, and when combined with "mottle" is very valuable. "Dapple" is an exaggerated form of mottle. "Thunder shake," "wind shake," or "tornado shake" is a rupture of the ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner
... never satisfied, whose desire to pin on paper the most evanescent movements of the human machine is almost a mania. The French sculptor avoids studied poses. The model tumbles down anywhere, in any contortion or relaxation he or she wishes. Practically instantaneous is the method adopted by Rodin to preserve the fleeting attitudes, the first shiver of surfaces. He draws rapidly with his eye on the model. It is a mere scrawl, a few enveloping ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... on. Yet her voice had not faltered. There was no contortion of sorrow in her face. There was a sort of soft calmness about her almost akin to the calmness of the evening. It was the more remarkable in her because she was not usually a tranquil woman. Artois had never known her before in deep grief. But he had known her in joy, and ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... express canoe," said Mr. Kennedy, with a contortion of the left side of his head that was intended for a wink; "you know they got leave to come by ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... contortion, to mark the moment of dissolution. The face only grew more serene and less death-like, as the soul passed ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... deposits, Mackintosh refers to Darwin's "very suggestive description of the Moel-Tryfan deposits...Under the drift he saw that the surface of the slate, TO A DEPTH OF SEVERAL FEET, HAD BEEN SHATTERED AND CONTORTED IN A VERY PECULIAR MANNER." The contortion of the slate, which Mackintosh regarded as "the most interesting of the Moel-Tryfan phenomena," had not previously been regarded as "sufficiently striking to arrest attention" by any geologist except Darwin. The Pleistocene gravel and sand containing marine shells on ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... shudder—a painful contortion, such as any one might suffer if rudely jerked out ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... are several islands at its mouth and in the interior, but there being no chart, and no motive for entering it, we stood on towards the mountains on the main shore, some of which are very high. In many parts the contortion of the strata, and the confusion of all kinds of materials, are extraordinary. The sides of the mountains on the shore are clad with moss alone, trees of very stunted growth only appearing in the sheltered valleys. No visible portion of the shore seems capable ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... strained my eyes after his every motion. But when he was near the top he lay perfectly quiet, and continued so till I could bear it no longer, and crept up after him. When I came behind him, he looked round angrily, and made a most emphatic contortion of his face; after which I dared not climb to a level with him, but lay trembling with expectation. The next moment I heard him call in a ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... resentment in portraying our richly moneyed, blue-blooded society to the life? How are manners ever to be corrected with a smile if the smile is always suspected of being an agonized grin, the contortion of the features by the throes of a mortified spirit? Was George William Curtis in his amusing ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... did something else in a facial way just as defiant of analysis as his previous contortion and equally effective on Mr. O'Royster's nerves. He moved toward Mr. O'Royster and held up his hand for the money. It was slowly yielded up, and without so much as an acknowledgment, the man thrust it into ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... churned in Bostil's bull neck; a thick and ugly contortion worked in his face; his ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... for beauty," drawled Simonoff. "This is the dance of Greek maidens at the sacrificial rites to Demeter. The Grand street thing is a contortion before the obese complacency of the great god Jazz. And ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... seemed to have deserted Westover. Adelaide lay in her mother's arms, either awake and restless or in fitful sleep from which she frequently awoke with a muffled scream or a physical contortion. Once, as she nestled closer, her mother heard her murmur: "You ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... with her nose in the air, her mouth wide open, her other features registering the most complete lunacy. Joseph, her brother, at whom they fairly shrieked in order to make him smile, produced the most singular contortion of the mouth that I have ever seen, which denoted an extreme gift for mimicry, rare in ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... by the middle into an arch, and nothing touched the bed but the head and the heels; the toes were turned back in the most extraordinary contortion, and the teeth set by the rigour of the convulsion, and in the man's white face and fixed eyes were the horror and anxiety, that so often show themselves when the body feels itself in ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... men, leave also no mark on our poet. The elaborate thought, the metrical harshness of the first, could find no counterpart in Herrick; whilst Marvell, beyond him in imaginative power, though twisting it too often into contortion and excess, appears to have been little known as a lyrist then:—as, indeed, his great merits have never reached anything like due popular recognition. Yet Marvell's natural description is nearer Herrick's in ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... indescribable contortion of his figure, charitably supposed to be intended for a bow, and ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... like all men who believe in their own individual judgment, he doubted collective wisdom. Yet now that his protegee had been accepted by others, he questioned that judgment and became her critic. It struck him that her sudden outburst was strained; it seemed to him that in this mere contortion of passion the sibyl's robe had become rudely disarranged. He spoke to Hamlin, and ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... and covered at each end with a bull's hide, producing a most barbarous noise, accompanied by a baba, or rattle, loud shouts, palaver, songs, and violent gesticulations, forming a system of confused uproar, unmusical, and ungraceful. Their motions are irregular, sometimes in violent contortion, and at others voluptuous and slow. Nothing can be done without a palaver; and at the change of every dance, he from whom the proposition originates, makes a solemn harangue over the musical instruments, ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... with the lower rotundities of her face hastily modelled into the resemblance of an over-benevolent smile a contortion which neglected to spread its intended geniality upward to the ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... down at the delicate little hand, up into the pleading eyes, and over her set square face there passed a contortion,—there is really no other word to describe it,—a contortion of unwilling amusement. The chin dropped, the lips twitched, the red lines which did duty for eyebrows wrinkled towards the nose. Similarly affected, an Irishwoman would have invoked all the saints in her calendar, ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... of the shoes belonging to the cherished suit of clothes. She knew the sacred light in which they were regarded by their owner, and she felt quite sure that if "ole miss" ever attempted, in one of her fits of anger, to exercise her power of limb twisting or back contortion upon her, that the sight of those little blue shoes would create a revulsion of feeling, and, as she put it to herself, "stop her mighty short." The shoes had never been missed, for the box containing the suit was only opened on one day of the year, and then all the ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... was a female named Sutchnimia, and she had been introduced to my notice as infallible, her character as usual being well supported by her mahout; but no sooner did this heroic beast descry the tiger, than she twisted herself into every possible contortion, throwing herself about in the most aimless attitudes, with a vigour that threatened the safety of the howdah and severely taxed the strength ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... sad stories of the death of kings,'" she quoted with a fairy chuckle. She thought that she saw a small contortion pass over his features, only to be banished at once. He had retired within the walls of that impassive and inscrutable reserve which minor railroad officials can at will erect between themselves and the lay public. Only the broken rhythms of the telegraph ticker relieved the ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... assembly, not liking to be longer absent from papa. We came out upon the lovely, calm, moonlight night, so sweet, so exquisitely heavenly; and I felt how differently nature looked without, to those distressing sights of bodily agitation and contortion we had witnessed within. I thought of the poor young negro girl's quiet testimony, and gentle voice and manner, and wondered if she, too, would learn in time to become uproarious, and shout, "Glory! Glory!" The probability is, that she will become like her neighbours; for I ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... blow to Jude, who still, however, retained consciousness, though now incapable of even hiss or contortion. He was held over the trap again, and the leader once more commenced speaking. "Spy," he said, "you have been condemned by the Galley-on-Land to the death which now yawns beneath you. Men, lift him up till I give my final order." He paused ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... it. At all events, a bold "header" could not have had for him a more unfortunate ending. Scarce had he sunk between the timber when a wild shriek came forth from his throat,—accompanied by a pallor of countenance, and a contortion of his features, that proclaimed something more than a mere "start" received by suddenly sinking waist-deep ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... forthwith begins to build a home, which is nothing more than a calcareous tube, superficially resembling a corpulent worm, instantaneously petrified while in the act of a more or less elaborate wriggle or fantastic contortion. In this complicated tunnel the creature resides, presenting a lovely circular disc of glowing pink as its front door. A few inches beneath the water this operculum or lid is not unlike a pearl, but as you gaze upon it, it slips on one side, and five animated red rays appear, ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... martyrdoms, as with the Germans under Albrecht Duerer; no abominable butcheries, as with the Bolognese of the seventeenth century; no macerated saints and tattered assassins, as with the Spaniards; no mystery, no contortion, no horrors: vigorous and serene beauty, pure and cheerful life, real or ideal, on wall or canvas, in bronze or in marble. The literature is analogous to the art, only less perfect, more tainted ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... seemed to be trying vainly to rise from his reclining position on the veranda, "why do you not disengage yourself from the veranda of our friend? And why, in the name of Heaven, do you attach to yourself so much of this thing, and make to yourself such unnecessary contortion? Ah," he continued, suddenly withdrawing one of his own feet from the veranda with an evident effort, "I am myself attached! Surely ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... languorous drone. But there are also some funny parts, according to the Algerian idea. They are played by a jet black Somauli woman who joins in the dance and a jet black Somauli boy in the orchestra who has a face of India rubber and a gift for "facial contortion" that would make the fortune of an ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... Sylvan kept hold of his prize, compressed his sinewy arms, and abode by his purpose of not quitting his hold of the philosopher's throat till he had breathed his last. Two more bitter yells, accompanied each with a desperate contortion of the countenance, and squeeze of the hands, concluded, in less than five minutes, the dreadful strife. Agelastes lay dead upon the ground, and his assassin Sylvan, springing from the body as if terrified and alarmed at what ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... a stroke from the King's whip, he doubled himself up, performed the contortion now called turning a coachwheel, then, recovering himself, put his hands on his hips and danced wildly on the steps; while Henry, shaking his whip at him, laughed at the only too obvious pun, for Anguish was the English version of Angus, the title of Queen Margaret's second ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... these subterranean spurs, as though it were the mould for a new tree instead of the print of an old one. These pitch-pines of Monterey are, with the single exception of the Monterey cypress, the most fantastic of forest trees. No words can give an idea of the contortion of their growth; they might figure without change in a circle of the nether hell as Dante pictured it; and at the rate at which trees grow, and at which forest fires spring up and gallop through the hills of California, we may look forward to a time when there will not be one of them left ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nervous attacks which are violent, before the Pyrrhic dance of married life! Oh! how many hopes for a lover are there in the vivacity of those convulsive movements, in the fire of those glances, in the strength of those limbs, beautiful even in contortion! It is then that a woman is carried away like an impetuous wind, darts forth like the flames of a conflagration, exhibits a movement like a billow which glides over the white pebbles. She is overcome with excess of love, she sees the future, she is the seer who prophesies, but above all, she ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... two-hundred-dollar client to go to the deuce. That's why I've made money. Put your back against the chair, like an Englishwoman. That's it. No, don't talk, I tell you. Now look joyful, hang it! Look joyful.... No, no! Joy isn't a contortion. It's something right ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... naturally," said Bones, with a facial contortion which passed for a wink. "Certainly not. We business men never rob anybody. Ali, bring ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... and handsomely placed upon his shoulders, his features sharply defined and very prominent. His teeth were remarkably white, but so long and narrow, that they gave a peculiarly sinister and malicious expression to his face—which expression was greatly heightened by the ghastly contortion that was meant for a smile, and which was in constant requisition, in order to show off the said teeth, which Theophilus considered one of his greatest attractions. But my cousin had no personal attractions. There was nothing manly or ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... suddenly remembered. For a few moments he stood irresolute, and then, with an extraordinary contortion of visage, dropped into his chair again and ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... gun went off, and instantly blew his red cap some height into the air, and we made up our minds it must be full, as it was before, of our guide's skull, and that he had now gone to that bourn from which no hunter, like no traveller, could ever return. We ran to his assistance. The gun by some contortion of the Norwegian's body, was twisted upside down, and instead of the muzzle being pointed downwards, had been elevated, point blank, towards his head. The poor Norwegian, breathing with great labour, closed eyes, and opened mouth, lay ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... in life than you think. There is at your age, more than..." he had a strange contortion of the body, as though in a sudden access of internal pain; that humorous smile, that abode in the form of his lips, changed into a ghastly, forced grin... "than one love in ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... much over the poor fellow's abortive attempt to say "Am I not a man and a brother?" that his three scholars burst out into a second edition of shouts of laughter at the sight of him, and thus succeeded in waking Robin, who, after a great contortion, sat up on the grass, and, rubbing his eyes, demanded in an injured ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... won her terrible bet that she would ride straight across Manchester and Salford on her bike, hands tied together, feet fastened to the pedals. At the Art Institute in Chicago, Marjutti had given a lecture on the art of contortion. ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... fracture, or displacement naturally in the body of a stratum. But if the strata are cemented by the heat of fusion, and erected with an expansive power acting below, we may expect to find every species of fracture, dislocation, and contortion in those bodies and every degree of departure from a horizontal towards ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... man in a battle-girdle (?), of a red cloak, He puts —— every plain. He smites them, over left chariot wheel (?); The Riastartha wounds them. [Note: The Riastartha ('distorted one') was a name given to Cuchulainn because of the contortion, described later, which came over him.] The form that appeared to me on him hitherto, I see that his form ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown
... hands. They may lead thee afar from thy original purpose—twisting thee in and out with many a contortion; fixing thee with nail and fastening; trailing thee over the wall, to droop thy clusters to the hands of strangers. Nevertheless, be sure to let Him have His way with thee; this is necessary for ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... yet I only laugh, and the little old lady, with a final facial contortion surpassing all dreams, limps beyond ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... figure stretched itself to its full height. There was a slight rending sound. Then it began to swing forward, slow and straight, in the manner of a falling tree. A swift muscular contortion made the left shoulder strike the ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... application to the drawing of the figure, made the difficulties of foreshortening and the delineation of brusque attitude mere child's play to this audacious genius. The most rapid movement, the most perilous contortion of bodies falling through the air or flying, he depicted with hard, firmly-traced, unerring outline. If we dare to criticise the productions of a master so original and so accomplished, all we can say is that Signorelli ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... sez he, bein' a profane kind of Chicago doctor, and not bein' ever under conviction. 'Thet man died of strychnine. Look at thet face. Look at thet contortion of them fashal muscles. Thet's strychnine. Thet's risers Sardonikus' (thet's what he said; ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... swayed and his moccasins slid here and there over the ground from the contortion of limbs and body. Then he began pushing with might and main. His eyes were beginning to clear, but the perspiration dripped from the twisted coppery features. Reading his purpose, Deerfoot began pushing also. Neither yielded for a minute or two, and then the chief was slowly forced backward. There ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... his arms thrown abroad, while his lower limbs were interlocked as though his death struggle had been a grievous one. On his rigid face there stood an expression of horror, and as it seemed to me, of hatred, such as I have never seen upon human features. This malignant and terrible contortion, combined with the low forehead, blunt nose, and prognathous jaw gave the dead man a singularly simious and ape-like appearance, which was increased by his writhing, unnatural posture. I have seen death in many forms, ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hands. Out of the violet ovals beneath the upper tips of the Things spurted streams of blue flame. They fell upon Yuruk and splashed over him upon the heap of the slain. In the mound was a dreadful movement, a contortion; the bodies stiffened, seemed to try to rise, to push away—dead nerves and muscles responding to the blasting energy passing ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... the formations which we examine, the greater are the changes which the sedimentary deposits have undergone. Time, as I have explained in Chapters 5, 6, and 7, has multiplied the effects of condensation by pressure and cementation, and the modification produced by heat, fracture, contortion, upheaval, and denudation. The organic remains also have sometimes been obliterated entirely, or the mineral matter of which they were composed has been removed and ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... withers. The second, third and fourth jumps were not far enough apart to be seen and judged separately; as well may one hope to decide whether a whirling wheel had straight or crooked spokes. The fifth jump, however, was a masterpiece of rapid-fire contortion, and it was important because it left Andy on the ground, gazing, with an extremely grieved expression, at the uninterrupted convolutions of the "dandy ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... was hampered by the wetness of his legs; and while he heard the clamour of the soldiers, the cries, the rumbling of the drums, he pulled with all his might; all the muscles and sinews of his body were seen in strain; and what was more, the contortion of his mouth showed what agony of haste he suffered, and how his whole frame laboured to the toe-tips. Then there were drummers and men with flying garments, who ran stark naked toward the fray. Strange postures too: this fellow upright, that man ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... he, with a queer contortion of his face. "The property of the deceased would go to ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... doubted collective wisdom. Yet now that his protegee had been accepted by others, he questioned that judgment and became her critic. It struck him that her sudden outburst was strained; it seemed to him that in this mere contortion of passion the sibyl's robe had become rudely disarranged. He spoke to Hamlin, and even approached ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... laughed outright. Juno did not know whether to resent it or join in the laugh too. There was something about the older woman, however, which aroused in girls a sense of camaraderie rather than reserve, though Juno had never quite been able to analyze it. She smiled, and by some form of contortion of which necessity and long practice had made her a passed mistress, contrived to get herself settled ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... written it would be fit to read, for I wish to fix attention on the exhaustion of the writer. He certainly could endure such fatigue for no more than a single epistle. The schoolboy, when forced to it, seldom holds out for more than half a page, though he employs every contortion of shoulder, tongue, and leg to ease and ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... a few moments he stood irresolute, and then, with an extraordinary contortion of visage, dropped into his chair again and sat gazing blankly ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... more about her?' The man rubbed his coarse beard down upon his collar, and clanked his chains, and made guttural sounds to his horses, which possibly explained to them the meaning he did not verbally express. Then he looked up and made a facial contortion, which clearly meant that there was more to be said concerning Jen if any one could be found brave enough to ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... the most signal of these instances, almost to create anew. It is exceedingly striking to observe how the contracted, rigid soul seems to soften, and grow warm, and expand, and quiver with life. With the new energy infused, it painfully struggles to work itself into freedom, from the wretched contortion in which it has so long been fixed as by the impressed spell of some infernal magic. It is seen filled with a distressed and indignant emotion at its own ignorance; actuated with a restless earnestness ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... charge showed the happy blending of composure and ignorance we sometimes find; a condition concerning which a sufferer once said of himself, "I never open my mouth but I put my foot in it;" a confusion of metaphor, and suggestion of physical contortion, not often so neatly combined in a dozen words. The boatswain commented: "He didn't mind. He didn't know what to do, but there he stood, looking all the time as happy as a duck barefooted." A duck shod, and the consequent expression of its countenance, presents to my mind infinite ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... see you again I'll bring another salad," quoth Philip, as he rode out of the court; and his father, by way of excusing a contortion of features, smoothed the entangled lock of hair, and muttered something about, "This comes of not wearing a ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... With a dexterous contortion of his nether lip, the man gathered an end of his huge moustache into the corner of his mouth: "What would ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... with a tooth of the animal called the "acouti"; and then, in order to heal the gashes thus made, he rubbed into them an infusion of pimento, which occasioned an agonizing pain to the poor patient; but it was indispensable that he should endure the whole, adds our author, without the least contortion of countenance or any other ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... rapidly, and a curious contortion puckered her mouth and chin. Karen thought that she was going to cry and her ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... included deliberation in taking breath, thorough opening of the mouth, practice before a mirror to produce a pleasing effect, and to avoid facial contortion; he would not allow any visible effort, the aim being to sing as naturally and spontaneously as a bird. His wife played the accompaniments, so that the master could give his whole attention to the attitude, production, and facial ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... cherished suit of clothes. She knew the sacred light in which they were regarded by their owner, and she felt quite sure that if "ole miss" ever attempted, in one of her fits of anger, to exercise her power of limb twisting or back contortion upon her, that the sight of those little blue shoes would create a revulsion of feeling, and, as she put it to herself, "stop her mighty short." The shoes had never been missed, for the box containing the suit was only opened on one day of the year, and then all the old lady could endure ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... strength into play in order to give to the disc its highest force. The body is bent forward, the toes of one foot cling to the ground, the muscles of the torso are strained, the whole body is in an attitude of violent tension which can endure only for an instant. Yet the face is free from contortion, free from any trace of effort, calm and beautiful. This shows that Myron, intent as he was upon reproducing nature, could yet depart from his realistic formulae when the requirements of beautiful art ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... mark upon him; no contortion left its snarling twist on the placid features of him who had contributed so much of genius and patriotic fire to the freedom and future greatness of his country—so much to the happiness ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... from some lazar-house. Life-long study of perspective in its application to the drawing of the figure, made the difficulties of foreshortening and the delineation of brusque attitude mere child's play to this audacious genius. The most rapid movement, the most perilous contortion of bodies falling through the air or flying, he depicted with hard, firmly-traced, unerring outline. If we dare to criticise the productions of a master so original and so accomplished, all we can say is that Signorelli revelled ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... in a dazed world of his own, Reginald Simpkins, Lance-Corporal and sometime pride of Mogg's, walked over No Man's Land. Every now and then he looked mechanically to his left and right, and grinned. At least he made a contortion with his facial muscles, which experience told him used to produce a grin. He did it to encourage the six. Whether he succeeded or not is immaterial: the intention was good, even if the peculiar tightness of his skin spoiled ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... Jansenism. Thus the one side not wishing to admit that they were in conformity with people who were considered heretics, and the other side not wishing to admit that they were in opposition to a learned saint whose opinions were always considered orthodox, have both performed a hundred feats of contortion, etc.' ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... SURPULA. In its babyhood it attaches itself to the coral, and forthwith begins to build a home, which is nothing more than a calcareous tube, superficially resembling a corpulent worm, instantaneously petrified while in the act of a more or less elaborate wriggle or fantastic contortion. In this complicated tunnel the creature resides, presenting a lovely circular disc of glowing pink as its front door. A few inches beneath the water this operculum or lid is not unlike a pearl, but as you gaze upon it, it slips on one side, and five ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... sending messages mainly by means of the smoke issuing from their dusky lips. It was puffed forth, in every variety of manner, sometimes with little short jets, then with longer ones, then from one corner of the mouth and again from the other, all being accompanied by a contortion of the flexible lips which doubtless suggested some of the words in ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... laughed—then a spasm seemed to run through him, a horrible boneless contortion of limbs and body, a slippery, twitching movement, a repulsive though almost inaudible clicking of rehabilitated joints—and the ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... himself he passed on. Fletcher, who was standing only a few numbers away, smiled at Peter's remark. The S.M. spotted him, and shouted, 'What are you grinning at—anything foonny?' Fletcher said, 'No, sir,' and straightened his face with a wry contortion. The S.M. shouted to the Orderly Sergeant: 'Take this man's name.' Fletcher was up before the C.O. in the evening and got three days for laughing in the ranks. I'm sure Peter'll get into trouble before long. He did the same sort of thing yesterday. ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... perfect response to his parents? thorough oneness with them? A child at strife with his parents, one in whom their will is not his, is no child; as a child he is dead, and his death is manifest in rigidity and contortion. His spiritual order is on the way to chaos. Disintegration has begun. Death is at work in him. See the same child yielding to the will that is righteously above his own; see the life begin to flow from the heart ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... been introduced to my notice as infallible, her character as usual being well supported by her mahout; but no sooner did this heroic beast descry the tiger, than she twisted herself into every possible contortion, throwing herself about in the most aimless attitudes, with a vigour that threatened the safety of the howdah and severely taxed ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... hungry until I cry in my sleep when I dream about a muffin! I thought at first that getting out of bed before my eyes are fairly open and turning myself into a circus actor by doing every kind of overhand, foot, arm and leg contortion that the mind of cruel man could invent to torture a human being with, would kill me before I had been at it a week, but when I read on page sixteen that as soon as all that horror was over I must jump right into the tub of cold water, I kicked, ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... of one design after another of rotary steam engines, demolishing for all time the fond hopes of ingenious but ill-informed inventors who think that improvements and advances in mechanism design consist in contortion and complexity. ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... scientific laws have served art and art criticism a very bad turn of late years. Nothing can be more useful to an artist than knowledge of how the emotions are expressed by the contortion of the features; but nobody in his senses could ever imagine that a rule for the expression of anger was rigid throughout and must never be departed from; every one approaching such a rule with a view to practice instead of ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... A fleeting contortion, like mirthless ridicule, touched her lips as she saw him, with head lowered, cut more savagely into the piece of wood. She noticed, and enjoyed, ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... his knees, like a child to his school-mistress, holding his hands pressed flatly together, with a piteous face and a 'Pray, pray!' I laughed, and told him he was a very bad child. His 'Pray, pray!' was repeated, with another strangely pleasant contortion of countenance. But I still answered—'No, indeed—I should not forgive him, till I had made him truly sensible of his fault.' On which he rose from his knees, pulled out a paper fool's cap, which he had been carving and fashioning for himself, fixed it on his head, ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... a curious desire to compare her with the phantom that had dispossessed her in his fancy. Unconsciously when he saw her, he transferred the shame that devoured him, from him to her, and gazed coldly at the face that could twist to that despicable contortion. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... watched the storm by the lightning-flashes and waited for the end. But the end came not. The galley was light, broad, and buoyant as a life-boat; at the same time it was so strongly constructed that there was scarcely any twist or contortion in the sinewy fabric. So we floated buoyantly and safely upon the summit of vast waves, and a storm that would have destroyed a ship of the European fashion scarcely injured this in the slightest degree. It ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... cries betoken mental as well as physical anguish, and laughter denoted a mixed pleasurable feeling either in mind or body. There is a remarkable instance of this transference from the senses to the emotional feelings in the case of what is called sardonic laughter, in which a similar contortion of countenance to that caused by the pungency of a Sardinian herb is considered to denote a certain moral acerbity. Here there is an analogy established between the senses and emotions in their outward manifestation, just as there is in language in the double meaning of such ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... remarkable statement in a voice which he strove to divest of a triumphant inflection. No one said "Rats," though Clovis's lips moved in a monosyllabic contortion which probably invoked those ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... o' the image o' the Almichty?" asked Tibbie, with a grotesque contortion of her mouth, and a roll of her veiled eyeballs. "I doobt, Thamas," she continued, "ye angert yersel' mair nor ye quaietit them wi' the thrashin'. The wrath o' man, ye ken, Thamas, worketh not the richtyisness ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... this contortion had been completed in Cuchulain, then it was that the hero of valour sprang into his scythed war-chariot, with its iron sickles, its thin blades, its hooks and its hard spikes, with its hero's fore-prongs, with its opening fixtures, with its stinging nails that were fastened to the poles ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... new workings, especially in those places where the surface is most uneven. Thus its outcrop at Lydney is very imperfectly defined, and at Oakwood Mill the vein is rendered worthless by a fault, whilst on each side of the Lydbrook valley there is a contortion, by which it is thrown down in one instance seventy yards, and in two ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... eye caught hers the expression vanished, the mask-like face returned; he set the children down, and moved away. And when school began, although he marshaled them triumphantly to the very door,—with what contortion of face or simulation of character she was unable to guess,—after he had entered the schoolroom and taken his seat every vestige of his previous facial aberration was gone, and only his usual stolidity remained. In vain, as Mrs. Martin expected, the hundred delighted little eyes before her dwelt ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... on his hands and knees. I strained my eyes after his every motion. But when he was near the top he lay perfectly quiet, and continued so till I could bear it no longer, and crept up after him. When I came behind him, he looked round angrily, and made a most emphatic contortion of his face; after which I dared not climb to a level with him, but lay trembling with expectation. The next moment I heard him ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... all the same—a weaver of fairy nothings could write a delicious thesis on the question; is Lackaday's smile a grin or is his grin a smile? Anyhow, whatever may be the definition of the special ear-to-ear white-teeth-revealing contortion of his visage, it had in it something wistful, irresistible. You will find it in the face of a tickled baby six months old. He touched his row ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... underhand—a draw his father had taught him. He pulled twice, his shots almost as one. Bain's big Colt boomed while it was pointed downward and he was falling. His bullet scattered dust and gravel at Duane's feet. He fell loosely, without contortion. ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... naturally in the body of a stratum. But if the strata are cemented by the heat of fusion, and erected with an expansive power acting below, we may expect to find every species of fracture, dislocation, and contortion in those bodies and every degree of departure from a horizontal towards a ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... even while it horrified and almost made her sick. She watched every contortion of the bodies with the most morbid and intense interest, though feeling it to be hideous all the time. It excited her very much, and her cheeks flushed, her eyes shone with unwonted brilliance. When it was over, she ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... Kate—the express canoe," said Mr. Kennedy, with a contortion of the left side of his head that was intended for a wink; "you know they got leave to come by ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... is like believing in miracles. Both theories suppose that God does not know the future. What is a casualty? A happening which absolutely nobody knows beforehand. What is a miracle? A contradiction, a contortion of the laws of nature. Lack of foresight and contradiction in the All Knowing, who directs the machinery of the world, are two ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... genius of antiquity, before nervous attacks which are violent, before the Pyrrhic dance of married life! Oh! how many hopes for a lover are there in the vivacity of those convulsive movements, in the fire of those glances, in the strength of those limbs, beautiful even in contortion! It is then that a woman is carried away like an impetuous wind, darts forth like the flames of a conflagration, exhibits a movement like a billow which glides over the white pebbles. She is overcome with excess of love, she sees the future, ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... that shut in about the sanctuary, just as, a half-year before, on our "Rockport" fighting ground, I strove to drag him through the bushes toward Cliff Street, while he tried to fling me off the projecting rock. And so we locked limb and limb in the horrible contortion of this savage strife. Every muscle had been so wrenched, no pain or wound reported itself fairly to the congested brain. I had nearly reached the wall, and I was making a frantic effort to fling the Indian against it. I had his shoulder almost upon the rocky side, and ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... a clearer idea of what I am seeking to convey if I suggest a concrete image for the whole world of a man's thought and knowledge. Imagine a large clear jelly, in which at all angles and in all states of simplicity or contortion his ideas are imbedded. They are all valid and possible ideas as they lie, none incompatible with any. If you imagine the direction of up or down in this clear jelly being as it were the direction in which ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... of his insanity; and he is sane as you or I, save on these very rare occasions. But, fortunately, before he has these attacks he always shows certain premonitory symptoms, which are providential danger-signals, warning us to be upon our guard. The chief of these is that nervous contortion of the forehead which you must have observed. This is a phenomenon which always appears from three to four days before his attacks of frenzy. The moment it showed itself his wife came into town on some pretext, and took refuge in my ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... but decomposition, decay, disappearance, aneantissement, reduction of the fair frame of life to nothingness. That is the peculiar horror of this war. Were the picture, as it well might be, even more hideous, and did it suggest something more definite, a story of struggle, say, recorded in contortion, or by wounds and ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... Haverford had followed her uneasily, behind some palms. She was a thin little woman with a maddening habit of drawing her tight veil down even closer by a contortion of her lower jaw, so that the rector found himself watching her chin rather ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... its selection. The tall bay horses had been flicked at least a hundred times to make them stand out and show themselves, in the form London coachmen think so imposing to passers-by. The footman had yawned as often, expressing with each contortion an excessive longing for beer. Many street boys had lavished their criticisms, favourable and otherwise, on the wheels, the panels, the varnish, the driver's wig, and that dignitary's legs, whom they had the presumption to address as "John." Diverse connoisseurs on the pavement had appraised the ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... was smiling, so the auctioneer prattled on, and the deformed creature upon the catasta wound his ill-shapen body into every kind of contortion, grinning from ear to ear, displaying the malformation of his spine, and the hideousness of his long hairy arms, whilst he uttered weird cries that were supposed to imitate those of wild animals ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... At its thicker end Gwendolyn saw that the Piper was supporting a head—a head with small, fiery eyes and a tongue flame-like in its color and swift darting. Next, "Hiss-s-s-s-s!" And with one hideous contortion, the huge black body wrung itself free ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... restrain and overawe the ruffianism of man. Though man smiles with secret derision at the competition of woman, in dress and show, yet he is too tender of her reputation to allow her the same field with himself wherein to exercise her powers. We believe that this contortion of character is justly attributable to the denial of the right of voting, the great mode by which the questions of the day are decided in this country. Politics are our national life. As civilization advances, its ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... river bank, in every attitude and contortion of the death agony, were some dozen prostrate forms of men, women, and children, all dead and still. It seemed as though they must have crawled forth from the houses when the terrible fever thirst was upon them, and dragging ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... an unworthy resentment in portraying our richly moneyed, blue-blooded society to the life? How are manners ever to be corrected with a smile if the smile is always suspected of being an agonized grin, the contortion of the features by the throes of a mortified spirit? Was George William Curtis in his ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... we've got! [He stares into space.] My dear, what are you talking about? [With a contortion.] I 'm ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... much!" exclaimed Cordelia, in sign language on her fingers. Etiquette forbade her to employ her tongue in the expression of her gratitude, seeing that the girls had placed a ban on it. A curious contortion of the deaf-and-dumb alphabet was used among the Indian girls when pride forbade the use ...
— Big and Little Sisters • Theodora R. Jenness
... Theodore requested to be shown immediately to the stranger's room. Alone, helpless, speechless, in the dingiest and most comfortless of rooms, he found Mr. Hastings! He went forward with eager, pitying haste, and spoke to the poor man—no answer, only a pitiful contortion of the face, and a hopeless attempt to raise the useless hand. Clearly there was work enough for the next three hours! With the promptness, not only natural in him, but added to by long habit, Theodore went to work. Under his orders the room ...
— Three People • Pansy
... frequently culpable of affected grace, but this affectation is never more distasteful than when used as a bait to desire. The smile of true grace thus gives place to the most repulsive grimace; the fine play of look, so ravishing when it displays a true sentiment, is only contortion; the melodious inflections of the voice, an irresistible attraction from candid lips, are only a vain cadence, a tremulousness which savors of study: in a word, all the harmonious charms of woman become only deception, an ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... good will on the viands prepared (Pork chops were the principal portion), Then retiring to bed, with their dreams they were scared, And spent half the night in contortion; Then rose in their sleep and came down to this room, And, instead of a purposeless pawing, They painted these pictures, then fled in the gloom, And Furniss ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... boots, with trousers tightly drawn to display proportions of limbs that would have made Sim Tappertit green with envy; a black frock coat, buff waistcoat, coloured tie, a high collar, a wizened countenance, just now wrinkled with spasmodic contortion, kindly meant for ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 27, 1891 • Various
... was the first touch of comedy relief in the tragic situation. They cast at one another a glance of appreciation trenching on a smile, and the abashed questioner drew out a plug of tobacco, and with a manner of preoccupation gnawed a bit from it; then replaced it in his pocket, with a physical contortion which caused the plank on which the jury were seated to creak ominously, to the manifest anxiety ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... faces; Weeping, twisting, yelling, howling faces; Faces fixed in a contortion between a scream and a ...
— Japanese Prints • John Gould Fletcher
... in groups of four, at little tables placed about the room; and the gentlemen, as had been arranged, were helped first to each course. Happening to raise my eyes to address the youth upon my right hand, I saw his countenance suddenly distorted by a contortion expressive of any thing but pleasure. Turning involuntarily to my left-hand neighbor, who happened to be Mr. Winston, I saw a grimace, almost similar, pass over his face, followed by a look of ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... of Luna Park winked out even as they emerged, the whole violent contortion fading back into silver mist. There was ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... transported, and the yellow fires of his deep-set eyes glared on her, while his lips moved to speak, but not a word came, and it became a contortion; he grasped the switch in his hand ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... higher, and turned the palms of his hands outwards with a glance indescribably comical)—"crackers with paper prodigies, crackers with sweetmeats—such sweetmeats!" He smacked his lips with a grotesque contortion, and looked at Master McGreedy, who choked himself with his last raisin, and forthwith ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... entitled to the vein below the point of junction. The law was framed to validate a procedure more or less established by mining custom. It was obviously framed with a very simple and precise conception in mind—namely, a simple vein definitely and easily followed, without much interruption or contortion. ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... was out of the lane Davy stopped and twisted his countenance into such an unearthly and terrific contortion that Dora, although she knew his gifts in that respect, was honestly alarmed lest he should never in the world be able to get it ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... me, sir?' said James Hornett. He had always smiled, and was smiling even now. The smile was no more than a contortion of the muscles of the face, which made a long mirthless crease on either cheek, and left the eyes untouched by the least light of sympathy. It gave him a propitiatory dog-like look, and there was ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... a battle-girdle (?), of a red cloak, He puts —— every plain. He smites them, over left chariot wheel (?); The Riastartha wounds them. [Note: The Riastartha ('distorted one') was a name given to Cuchulainn because of the contortion, described later, which came over him.] The form that appeared to me on him hitherto, I see that his form ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown
... the wire-work Across it, and dropped there a firework, And fled: one's heart's beating redoubled; A pause, while the pit's mouth was troubled, The blackness and silence so utter, By the firework's slow sparkling and sputter; Then earth in a sudden contortion Gave out to our gaze her abortion. Such a brute! Were I friend Clement Marot (Whose experience of nature's but narrow, And whose faculties move in no small mist When he versifies David the Psalmist) I should ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... who seemed to be trying vainly to rise from his reclining position on the veranda, "why do you not disengage yourself from the veranda of our friend? And why, in the name of Heaven, do you attach to yourself so much of this thing, and make to yourself such unnecessary contortion? Ah," he continued, suddenly withdrawing one of his own feet from the veranda with an evident effort, "I am myself attached! Surely ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... this was ready he stepped airily out to the camera and bade his victim "look pleasant." Failing to get the impossible response the artist bade his sitter to smile. Then the old farmer with a wrathful and torture-riven contortion of his mouth ejaculated, "I ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... In graceful unison they removed their masks; three flushed and unusually pretty faces regarded the author of their being attentively—more attentively still when that round and ruddy gentleman, executing a facial contortion, screwed his monocle into an ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... burning in Jan's brain, a blazing, writhing contortion of things that brought a low moaning from his lips. He ran tirelessly and swiftly until he sank down upon the snow in a silent place far from where he had left John Cummins. His eyes still blazed with their strange ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... again was wrestling with something elemental in him that threatened to ruin every thing. He remembered the bowed stumbling figure that had gone before him in the Marylebone meadows. Then he had been its enemy; now by a queer contortion of the mind he thought of himself as the only protector of that cold clay under the bed—honoured in life, but in death a poor pawn in a rogue's cause. He stood a little apart from the others near the door, and his ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... at dinner—Alfred had been placed upon a diet of squab broth, none of the flesh, just the broth—Alfred quietly arose and, with the aid of the big looking glass, (mirrors had not been discovered as yet, in Brownsville), and a contortion feat such as he had never attempted previously, he scanned the bruised parts. Lin's worst fears seemed confirmed; all his person reflected in the looking glass was black as ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... gift, which has met—as it ought to—with glad recognition. He has strength, he has fervour, he has passion. But while his strength is sometimes the happy and graceful play of rippling muscles, it is often contortion. If Mr. De La Mare may seem too delicate, too restrained, Mr. Lawrence cares comparatively little for delicacy; and the word restraint is not in his bright lexicon. In other words, he is aggressively "modern." He is one of the most skilful manipulators of free verse—he ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... over the beautiful corpse, as it lay placidly extended, disfigured by no contortion, but on the contrary, a heavenly repose in the features—a sad mockery of worldly vanity. Death had arrayed himself in ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... stroke from the King's whip, he doubled himself up, performed the contortion now called turning a coachwheel, then, recovering himself, put his hands on his hips and danced wildly on the steps; while Henry, shaking his whip at him, laughed at the only too obvious pun, for Anguish was the English version ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... with a contortion of his nose and lips intended to convey unutterable scorn; "of course she refused you, when you asked her as a child would ask for an apple, or a cake! What ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... off, and the sun was making an astounding high light on his bald spot. The cigar, too, was gone. She saw he was looking at her. One hand, between the pickets, seemed waving at her, and almost he seemed to wink at her jocosely, though she knew it to be the contortion ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... is talking of getting up something to pass the time;" says he, regarding Mrs. Chichester with a frowning brow—a contortion that fills that frivolous young woman's ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... time, to preserve the spell even while he talked of breaking it; saw him through slow strolls and soft sessions, long gossips, fitful hopeless questions—there was so much more to tell than, by any contortion, she COULD—and explanations addressed gallantly and patiently to her understanding, but not, by good fortune, really reaching it. They were perfectly at cross-purposes, and it was the better, and they wandered together in the silver haze with all ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... do any thing to entitle him to claim distinction of any sort. The young Coxcomb who next entered, was a direct contrast to the last applicant, both in person and manner. Approaching with a fashionable contortion, he stretched out his lady-like hand, and in the most languid and affected tone imaginable, inquired for The Idler. "That, Sir," said Margin, "is amongst the works we have unhappily lost, but you will be sure to meet with it at any of the fashionable libraries in the neighbourhood ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... artist will avail him little in his attempt to conceal the defect; because, in order to hide it, he must contract the skin, bring down the upper feathers and shove in the lower ones, which would throw all the surrounding parts into contortion. ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... may be simply a contemptuous facial contortion, or it may be some brief satirical utterance that throws a contemptuous side-light on what it attacks without attempting to prove or disprove; a depreciatory implication may be given in a sneer such as could only be answered by elaborate ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... a moment," said Clerk Henriet, bending his body in a writhing contortion to listen to what might be going on inside the chamber; "I dare not take you in till I see whether my lord be in good ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... some of those whom we expected might be made subservient to our sport. Every man has some favourite topick of conversation, on which, by a feigned seriousness of attention, he may be drawn to expatiate without end. Every man has some habitual contortion of body, or established mode of expression, which never fails to raise mirth if it be pointed out to notice. By premonitions of these particularities I secured our pleasantry. Our companion entered with his usual gaiety, and began ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... instantly caught upon his sleeve, and though he withdrew his hand immediately, yet his arm was so dreadfully scorched, that he had well-nigh screamed with pain. He suppressed the natural expression of anguish, however, and only intimated the agony which he felt by a contortion and a muttered groan. The White Lady passed her cold hand over his arm, and, ere she had finished the following metrical chant, his pain had entirely gone, and no mark of the ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... discussing. And I do not think the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Cardwell), the noble Lord the Member for the West Riding (Viscount Goderich), and the noble Lord the Member for London, have any right to throw themselves into something like a contortion of agony with regard to the manner of this despatch; because, as was stated to the House the other night by the learned Attorney-General for Ireland, they did not tell us much about the feelings of another public servant, acting on behalf of the Crown ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... his side-wheel fashion. We declined his help. He paddled on, twisting himself into knots, and grinning in the most friendly manner. We told him to begone. "I am," said he, wrenching himself into a new contortion, "I am what showed Artemus Ward round Stratford." This information he repeated again and again, as if we could not resist him after we had comprehended that. We shook him off; but when we returned at sundown across the fields, from a visit to Anne Hathaway's ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... courage, of brains, of invention; his flaccid muscles were suddenly again under control; he wreathed his features with his smug artificial smile, that was like a grimace in its best estate, and now hardly seemed more than a contortion. But beauty in any sense was not what the observer was prepared to expect in Nehemiah, and the moonshiner seemed to accept the smile at its face value, and to ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... may be found in this Terpichorean competition because every movement, every jump and contortion receive the greatest attention and are followed by admiration and applause, when worthy of the demonstration, from those who have danced before or have ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... and one swift contortion of outraged flesh lifted him from the spot and he escaped through the crowd, followed by the mocking laughter of the Hillmen. Terry picked up the spear and crossed the circle of savages to hand it to the largest and loudest savage in the group to which the braggart had belonged. He looked him ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... Correggio's nudes. Staves of sunlight slanted down through the still pool, lighting it up with wonderful distinctness. Hundreds of thousands of minute living creatures sported and tumbled in its depth with every contortion that gaiety could suggest; perfectly happy, though consisting only of a head, or a tail, or at most a head and a tail, and all doomed to die within the ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... salt water over the nettings. Incessantly the quartermaster walked to and fro scattering sand over the black pools that kept running, running together as the minutes were tolled out, and the red flashes from the guns revealed faces in a hideous contortion. One little fellow, with whom I had had many a lively word at mess, had his arm taken off at the shoulder as he went skipping past me with the charge under his coat, and I have but to listen now to hear the patter of the blood on the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... he said at last, with so strained a look about his mouth that it was almost a contortion, 'I haven't ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... face, as I told you) he must have reddened, pictorically and scientifically speaking, six whole tints and a half, if not a full octave above his natural colour:—any man, Madam, but my uncle Toby, who had observed this, together with the violent knitting of my father's brows, and the extravagant contortion of his body during the whole affair,—would have concluded my father in a rage; and taking that for granted,—had he been a lover of such kind of concord as arises from two such instruments being put in exact tune,—he would instantly have skrew'd up his, to the same pitch;—and then ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... he exclaimed, with a sickly, angular contortion of himself. 'Would you be so good as ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... deliver himself from the creature's grasp, but in vain. Sylvan kept hold of his prize, compressed his sinewy arms, and abode by his purpose of not quitting his hold of the philosopher's throat till he had breathed his last. Two more bitter yells, accompanied each with a desperate contortion of the countenance, and squeeze of the hands, concluded, in less than five minutes, the dreadful strife. Agelastes lay dead upon the ground, and his assassin Sylvan, springing from the body as if terrified and alarmed at what he had done, made his escape by ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... was a violent writhing and contortion beneath the clothes, but the blows rained down fast and, in a very ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... some contortion, got the false queue into my grasp, and I, with the strength of desperation, by that means seized hold upon the lowest rung. With my friend's arm round me I realized that exhaustion was even nearer than I had supposed. ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... unable to handle them. The caterpillars of the Sphinx moth and the Great Peacock moth, for example, would fall an easy prey to the beetle were it not that at the first bite of the assailant the intended victim, by a contortion of its powerful flanks, sends the former flying. After several attacks, all of which end by the beetle being flung back to some considerable distance, the insect regretfully abandons his prey. I have kept two strong and lively caterpillars for a fortnight in the cage of my golden beetles, and ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... now passed down the little narrow room, but when she came to the critical spot, the supposed meeting ground, her desire to laugh conflicting with the effort to pull a long face, caused such a wry contortion of her plump visage that seriousness deserted them once more, and they bubbled over in mirth that would have been boisterous had it not been prudently ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... and the silk did wind Her fair cold form; Little availed the shining shroud, Though ruddy in hue, to cheer or warm. A watcher looked upon her low, and said— She sleeps, but sleeps, she is not dead. But in that sleeps contortion showed The terror of the vision there— A silent vision unavowed, Revealing earth's foundation bare, And Gorgon in her hidden place. It was a thing of fear to see So foul a dream upon so fair a face, And the dreamer ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... the fetters, learning, as I had anticipated, that they fastened with a lock. I sat gazing at the steel bracelets in the light of the lamp which swung over my head, and it became apparent to me that I had gained little by my contortion. ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... a night in a sleeping-car coffin was to Kedzie an experience of faery. She laughed aloud when she bumped her head, and getting out of and into her clothes was a fascinating exercise in contortion. She was entranced by the wash-room with its hot and cold water and its basin of apparent silver, whose contents did not have to be lifted and splashed into a slop-jar, but magically emptied themselves at the raising ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... peculiar, so utterly unlike every common solitude of Nature, that one enters upon it with the shudder we give at that which is wholly unnatural. On all sides are gigantic serpent convolutions of black lava, their immense folds rolled into every conceivable contortion, as if, in their fiery agonies, they had struggled and wreathed and knotted together, and then grown cold and black with the imperishable signs of those terrific convulsions upon them. Not a blade of grass, not a flower, not even the hardiest lichen, springs up to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... cartooned out of all familiar likeness, effecting an alteration as shocking to behold, in a man of his severe cast of countenance, as was his falsetto mimicry to hear. She rose in a kind of terror, perceiving that this contortion was produced in burlesque of her own expression, and, as he pressed nearer her, stepped back, overturning her chair. She had little recollection of her father during her childhood; and as long as she could remember, no one had spoken to ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... in an inanimate way between his feet: he seemed to be swollen to an unnatural size by some awful disease, by the mysterious action of an unknown poison. He lifted his head, saw the two before him waiting, opened his mouth with an extraordinary, sneering contortion of his puffed face—to speak to them, I suppose—and then a thought seemed to strike him. His thick, purplish lips came together without a sound, he went off in a resolute waddle to the gharry and began to jerk at the door-handle with such a blind brutality of impatience that I expected to see ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... one way and then in another was enough to upset the equilibrium of any ordinary man, especially when the jerks were so sudden and unexpected that it was impossible for one to brace himself against them. After a scene of rather undignified contortion I was finally compelled to retire in defeat, but without the slightest evidence of any other force than that exerted by a strong, muscular young woman. I asked that the rod might be made to whirl in my hands ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... can testify. Come one, come all, Messieurs, only once in a lifetime does one have a chance to see the Signorina Stella Fabiani, the child wonder, Queen of the Mat and Queen of the Air, in her extraordinary acts of flight and contortion—" ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... first time I stood before the cataracts of Niagara, I seemed to see a vision of the fears and hopes of America. It was midnight, the moon was full, and I saw from the Suspension Bridge the ceaseless contortion, confusion, whirl, and chaos, which burst forth in clouds of foam from that immense central chasm which divides the American from the British dominion; and as I looked on that ever-changing movement, and listened to that everlasting roar, I saw an emblem of the devouring activity, and ceaseless, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... in a facial way just as defiant of analysis as his previous contortion and equally effective on Mr. O'Royster's nerves. He moved toward Mr. O'Royster and held up his hand for the money. It was slowly yielded up, and without so much as an acknowledgment, the man thrust it into ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... Dulcie had been extremely well brought up, I regret to say that the only answer she chose to make to this appeal was that slight contortion of the features, which with a pretty girl is euphemised as a "moue," and with a plain one is called "making a face." When he saw it he knew that all hope of changing her ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... the floor, twisted his silken limbs in one great straining contortion of pain, and was dead. Out of the old king was wrung an involuntary "O-h!" of compassion. The look he got, made him cut it suddenly short and not put any more hyphens in it. Sir Uwaine, at a sign from his mother, went to the anteroom ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the delicate little hand, up into the pleading eyes, and over her set square face there passed a contortion,—there is really no other word to describe it,—a contortion of unwilling amusement. The chin dropped, the lips twitched, the red lines which did duty for eyebrows wrinkled towards the nose. Similarly affected, an Irishwoman would have invoked all the saints in her calendar, and rained ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... yet afterwards when she saw her face in a river, she felt vexed and threw her pipes away, although art had made melody a compensation for her unsightliness. And Marsyas, it seems, by a sort of mouthpiece forcibly repressed the violence of his breath, and tricked up and hid the contortion of his face, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... and as flat as a schoolroom bench. And see the results of his workmanship! A few rebels, like Herscher, who, from hatred of the conventional, go for exaggeration and ugliness, or like myself, who, thanks to that old ass, love roughness and contortion so much, that my sculpture, they say, is "like a bag of walnuts." And the rest of ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... the drama of the ancients and the drama of the moderns lies in this: the ancients sought to illumine the labyrinths of fate by means of the torch of poetry; we moderns try to refer human nature, in whatever form or contortion it presents itself before us, to certain eternal and changeless principles, as to an immovable foundation. What to us is the means, was to them ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... the search for beauty," drawled Simonoff. "This is the dance of Greek maidens at the sacrificial rites to Demeter. The Grand street thing is a contortion before the obese complacency of the great god Jazz. And ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... did wind Her fair cold form; Little availed the shining shroud, Though ruddy in hue, to cheer or warm. A watcher looked upon her low, and said— She sleeps, but sleeps, she is not dead. But in that sleep contortion showed The terror of the vision there— A silent vision unavowed, Revealing earth's foundation bare, And Gorgon in her hidden place. It was a thing of fear to see So foul a dream upon so fair a face, And the dreamer lying ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... stories of the death of kings,'" she quoted with a fairy chuckle. She thought that she saw a small contortion pass over his features, only to be banished at once. He had retired within the walls of that impassive and inscrutable reserve which minor railroad officials can at will erect between themselves and the lay public. ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... house of Russell himself helped his guest to a glass of this choice wine, and de Grammont, on tasting it, declared it to be excellent. The Duke of Bedford, anxious to judge of its quality, poured out a glass, which no sooner approached his lips than, with a horrible contortion, he exclaimed: 'Why, what on earth is this?' The butler approached, took the bottle and applied it to his nostrils, and, to the dismay of his master, pronounced it to be castor-oil. The Duc de Grammont had swallowed this horrid ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... lady's head as she sits there, and land accurately in the saddle, which is scarcely a proper thing to do to any lady, aside from the difficulty of springing ten or fifteen feet into the air and coming down, crotched out, on a given spot, or else he must contribute a feat in contortion the like of which has ...
— A Plea for Old Cap Collier • Irvin S. Cobb
... careful contortion of the manacled hands, which seemed suddenly to have become endowed with the crafty deftness of the hands of a pickpocket, he found his working capital in a pocket of the short-sleeved coat. It had been diminished only by the hundred dollars put into John Gavitt's hands, and the ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... about 1000 feet above the bed of the watercourse, and consisted of metamorphic sandstones and shales, intersected by whinstone dykes, their summits being capped with red conglomerate. In one place the river had cut through a ridge of altered rocks, and exhibited a very singular contortion of the strata, the laminae being crippled up into an arch of 100 feet high, showing a dip on each flank of 45 degrees, forming a cave beneath running for some distance into ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... the atmosphere of the room it becomes a deadly poison. We all can live here for the next nineteen minutes in perfect safety, then at the first breath we draw we expire instantly. It is a lovely death. There is no pain, no contortion of the countenance, but we will be found here in the morning stark and stiff in our seats. I propose, gentlemen, that we teach London the great lesson it so much needs. No cause is without its martyrs. ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... in which he takes no interest, his countenance shows no indication whatever of intellectual superiority of any kind. But as soon as he is interested, and opens his eyes upon you, the change is like magic. There is a flash in his glance, a violent contortion in his frown, an exquisite humour in his sneer, and a sweetness and brilliancy in his smile, beyond anything that ever I witnessed. A person who had seen him in only one state would not know him if he saw him in another. For he has not, like Brougham, marked features ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... impurity—while the stuff is tossed to the other, there to lie festering for days, or until dry enough to be more easily removed. For all it does not stop the circulation of the carriages. The grand dames seated in them pass on, now and then showing a slight contortion in their pretty noses. But they would not miss their airing in the Paseo were it twenty times worse—that they wouldn't. To them, as to many of their English sisterhood in Hyde Park, the afternoon drive is everything—to some, as report ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... grinning; for at the end of a stare, there comes always a grin; and very commonly, the entrance of a gentleman or lady into a room is accompanied with a grin, which is designed to express complacence and social pleasure, but really shews nothing more than a certain contortion of muscles, that must make a stranger laugh really, as they laugh artificially. The French grin is equally remote from the cheerful serenity of a smile, and the cordial mirth of an honest English horse-laugh. I shall not perhaps stay here long enough to form a just ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... when we were boys, the circus acrobats always—always, remember—rubbed young children with snake-oil and walloped them with a rawhide to educate them in tumbling and contortion? Well, if I could get the snake-oil for the joints and a curly young wig, I'd like to get back at five hundred of those books and devour them ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... have had it from yourself, of course," she added with an aggrieved contortion of her features, "but as I was just telling Angela, I would not for ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... demons—spirits of the unrepentent dead, the forms of wretches who had died without owning the name of their Saviour, were withering in the torments of hell-fire; awful indeed was the appearance of these figures; they were larger than human, and twisted into every variety of contortion which it was conceived possible that agony could assume. Their eyes were made to protrude from their faces, their fiery tongues were hanging from their scorched lips; the hairs of each demon stood on end and looked like agonized snakes; they were of various hideous colours; one was a ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... of uneasiness on Karl's part, as Frau Schmidt, with the same extraordinary contortion of the mouth—half smile, half sneer—brought Sigmund to his father, to say good-night. That process over, he was brought to me, and then, as if it were a matter which "understood itself," to Karl. Eugen and I, like family men, as we were, had gone through the ceremony with ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... was an elderly Mexican senator, who was the essence of politeness of the good old school. Every morning he stood smiling, hat in hand, while he inquired how each of us had slept. I shall never forget the cholera-like contortion of horror he displayed, when the clerical militant (poking his fun at him), declared that Texas was within the natural boundary of the State, and that some morning they would make a ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... roundly as troopers! and black Caesar was not going to be behind his masters, not he. So he, too, in spite of old Nan's protestations and entreaties, had become a confirmed swearer. It had really grown into so fixed a habit that the words meant nothing: it was no more than a trick of physical contortion of which a man may be utterly unconscious. How to break himself of ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... There could be no mistake. It was the same which, with the strange, glassy looking eyes, had glared upon her on that awful night of the storm when she was visited by the vampyre. And Varney returned that gaze unflinchingly There was a hideous and strange contortion of his ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... Apollo; the other, by night, shows Polyphemus. You—you are a Titan. You would be Behemoth in the forests, Leviathan in the deep, and Typhon in the sewer. You surpass everything. There is the trace of lightning in your deformity; your face has been battered by the thunderbolt. The jagged contortion of forked lightning has imprinted its mark on your face. It struck you and passed on. A mighty and mysterious wrath has, in a fit of passion, cemented your spirit in a terrible and superhuman form. Hell is a penal furnace, where the iron called Fatality is raised to a white ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... I must end to-day, or at latest to-morrow, and it will be a favour to give me the one day. For this kindness I rely on your word.' Anyone would have thought she was quite forty-eight. Though her face as a rule looked so gentle, whenever an unhappy thought crossed her mind she showed it by a contortion that frightened one at first, and from time to time I saw her face twitching with anger, scorn, or ill-will. I forgot to say that she was very little and thin. Such is, roughly given, a description ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... raised his hand to his head and removed a section of woolly sheepskin; and there, too, was the indenture in the crown; there the enormous mouth, spreading from ear to ear, with the lips which, as he gave a chuckle, and the wrinkles about his eyes evinced a passing facial contortion, I saw to be wholly wanting in pliancy. There was the expression, fixed at least as far as the mouth and lower face was concerned, the protruding teeth, and the grotesque appearance of a smile such as a demon might have smiled over ruined innocence. Oh, ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... for a new tree instead of the print of an old one. These pitch-pines of Monterey are, with the single exception of the Monterey cypress, the most fantastic of forest trees. No words can give an idea of the contortion of their growth; they might figure without change in a circle of the nether hell as Dante pictured it; and at the rate at which trees grow, and at which forest fires spring up and gallop through the hills of California, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... into this remark, and so much more in the contortion of visage which accompanied it, that the girl stood regarding him in ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs
... sentiment, yet I only laugh, and the little old lady, with a final facial contortion surpassing all dreams, limps beyond ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... have been better for him had he made a complete plunge of it. At all events, a bold "header" could not have had for him a more unfortunate ending. Scarce had he sunk between the timber when a wild shriek came forth from his throat,—accompanied by a pallor of countenance, and a contortion of his features, that proclaimed something more than a mere "start" received by suddenly ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... Distortion. — N. distortion, detortion[obs3], contortion; twist, crookedness &c. (obliquity) 217; grimace; deformity; malformation, malconformation[obs3]; harelip; monstrosity, misproportion[obs3], want of symmetry, anamorphosis[obs3]; ugliness &c. 846; talipes[obs3]; teratology. asymmetry; irregularity. V. distort, contort, twist, warp, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
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