|
|
|
More "Wriggle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... same with her wrists. That's right now. Wrap that shawl of hers three or four times tightly round her mouth. That's it; let her breathe through her nose. Now you keep a sharp watch over her, and see she doesn't wriggle out of these things. If you see any one coming clap your hand over her mouth, and see she doesn't make a sound. When he comes up you can let go and help me if necessary; it won't matter her giving a bit of a ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... endeavouring to hook themselves on to the wealthier and younger members of the male community. They poison the air round them with sickly perfumes; they assume titles, and speak of one another as "cette chere comtesse;" their walk is something between a prance and a wriggle; they prowl about the terrace whilst the music is playing, seeking whom they may devour, or rather whom they may inveigle into paying for their devouring: and, bon Dieu! how they do gorge themselves with food and drink when some silly lad or aged roue allows himself to be bullied ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... of sport ruined by such a proceeding; And to snigglers we earnestly wish and desire To give the advice they so sadly seem needing. Let them think, as they work their inglorious plan, How old IZAAK must turn in his grave and must wriggle; And may they in future all see if they can, By learning to angle, forget how ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... dozen of the rascals, whom we had a rare hunt after through the hold and fo'c's'le before we could collar them. They are fast bound now, though, lashed head and feet to the mainmast bitts; and it will puzzle them to wriggle themselves loose from old Masters' double hitches, I know. Besides which, two of our men are guarding there, with boarding-pikes in their hands and orders to run 'em through the gizzard if they offer ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... more above the level of the front outside platform, and 1 foot or more above that of the inside floor, and are usually very small; so that, in entering or leaving the building, you have to step up to, or even climb, and wriggle yourself through the opening, and then step down on the other side. Inside the building you find the centre of the floor space occupied by a longitudinal fireplace, about 2 feet broad, extending from front to back of the building; and the floors on each side of this fireplace slope upwards ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... succeeded in rushing into a clinch, and Tad found himself gripped in those arms of steel. Wriggle and twist as be would he could not free himself from their embrace. His adversary, on the other hand, found himself fully occupied in holding on to his slippery young antagonist, giving him neither time nor opportunity effectually to ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... the fact that he could dodge well. This eel-like attribute compensated for a certain lack of pace. He was past the Donaldson's three-quarters in an instant, and running for the line, with only the back to pass, and with Clowes in hot pursuit. Another wriggle took him past the back, but it also gave Clowes time to catch him up. Clowes was a far faster runner, and he got to him just as he reached the twenty-five line. They came down together with a crash, Clowes on top, and as they fell ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... when he says that the air is thick with danger. When the blackness of night comes, then will come, also, those who make war from behind the trees of the forest. In the darkness, how is the young white and his friends to tell enemies from friends? The jackals will wriggle through and over the wall of trees like snakes through tall grass. After what they have seen, can my white friends expect mercy at ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... dugs. Again came the harsh, suspicious nose of the foster about Finn's tail, and this time a low growl followed the resentful sniff, and blind, helpless, unformed little jelly that Finn was, instinct made him wriggle fearfully from under that cold nose. The language in which bitches speak to the very young among puppies is simplicity itself. The Master, human though he was, had not failed to catch the sense of this observation of the foster's, ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... that so soon as the woodwork had dropped he, counterfeiting an unappeasable bloodthirstiness, should fling himself headlong against the straining bars, uttering hair-raising roars. This also was the cue for Riley to wriggle nimbly through a door set in the end of the cage and slam the door behind him; then to outface the great beast and by threats, with bar and pistol both extended, to force him backward step by step, still snarling but seemingly daunted, round and round ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... say when describing the thing to a friend, "like the skin of a horse determined to get rid of a gad-fly." The same moment the tiles on the roof began to clatter like so many castanets in the hands of giants, and the ground to wriggle and heave. But they were too much absorbed in what was before their eyes to heed much what went on under their feet. The oscillatory displacement of the front of the church did not at most seem to cover more than ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... did," replied the captain. "And take notice that if you wriggle again I will make ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... door was shut, the Lindworm turned to her and said, "Fair maiden, shed a shift!" The shepherd's daughter answered him, "Prince Lindworm, slough a skin!"—"No one has ever dared tell me to do that before!" said he.—"But I command you to do it now!" said she. Then he began to moan and wriggle: and in a few minutes a long snake-skin lay upon the floor beside him. The girl drew off her first shift, and spread it on top of ...
— East of the Sun and West of the Moon - Old Tales from the North • Peter Christen Asbjornsen
... fill their jars in the pond, and your huge black shadow would wriggle on the water like sleep ...
— The Crescent Moon • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... Prag. If he do—It is well known how Royal Highness fared when he did, and what a Campaign Royal Highness made of it this Year 1757! How the Weser did prove wadable, as Schmettau had said to no purpose; wadable, bridgable; and Royal Highness had to wriggle back, ever back; no stand to be made, or far worse than none: back, ever back, till he got into the Sea, for that matter, and to the END of more than one thing! Poor man, friends say he has an incurable Hanover Ministry, a Program that is inexecutable. As yet he has not lost head, any ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... hitherto been the most prominent champions of Protestantism in Germany (though both half-hearted and pusillanimous shufflers) were Gustavus's brother-in-law, the Elector of Brandenburg, and the Elector of Saxony. They were now doing their best to wriggle out of their obligations, and by a shameful neutrality avert the emperor's displeasure. But they had reckoned without their host if they supposed that Gustavus would lend himself to such a scheme. The reply which he gave to Herr von Wilmerstorff, who had been sent to him by the Elector ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... ruler gave a tremendous wriggle with the whole body, which proved as ineffectual ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... unpardonable length, All belly to the mouth, Writhe then and wriggle, If there's ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... quarters with Cornelius. How the latter had managed to exist through the troubled times I can't say. As Stein's agent, after all, he must have had Doramin's protection in a measure; and in one way or another he had managed to wriggle through all the deadly complications, while I have no doubt that his conduct, whatever line he was forced to take, was marked by that abjectness which was like the stamp of the man. That was his characteristic; ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... were on the ground, started first and managed to reach the schoolhouse in time but without a second to spare. The boys, who had to wriggle hastily down from the trees, were later; and Anne, who had not been picking gum at all but was wandering happily in the far end of the grove, waist deep among the bracken, singing softly to herself, with a wreath of rice lilies on her hair as if ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... 'em all over to you, Mary, dear, so you'd never have to do another day's worrying or pinching in all your life. But never you nor anybody else depend upon an Arab's gratitude or an Arab's generosity. He'll promise you the moon, and then wriggle out of giving you so much as a star—just as Abdul ben Meerza did with me.' And upon Miss Morrison asking what he meant by that, he replied, laughingly: 'Ask Van; he knew the old codger better than I—knew his whole blessed family, blow him!—and ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... fever seemed to have slipped away from him and the tightness had gone from his cough. But I said nothing as that red-faced and sweet-scented doctor looked the child over. His stethoscope, apparently, tickled Dinkie's ribs, for after trying to wriggle away a couple of times he laughed out loud. The doctor also laughed. But Dinky-Dunk's eye happened ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... the buffalo wild to avenge to inflict an insult to wriggle he has failed in his duty he has been kept to his bed for the last two days I ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... lest the sun should set,' he answered, and began to wriggle along so fast that the girl could ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... as noiselessly as possible he began to wriggle away, inch by inch, from Bill, and toward the fire. Several times he fancied the men moved restlessly in their sleep, but when he looked toward them they appeared to be still sleeping heavily. On each occasion, however, he lay still until he became wholly satisfied that he had been mistaken and ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... got a Christian. On the other hand, it tickles me immensely to behold a plethoric commonplace Briton roar himself purple with impassioned platitude at a political meeting; but I perceive that all my neighbours take him with the utmost seriousness. Again, your literary journalist professes to wriggle in his chair over the humour of Jane Austen; to me she is the dullest lady that ever faithfully photographed the trivial. Years ago I happened to be crossing Putney Bridge, in a frock-coat and silk hat, when a passing member of ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... Assegais, you know. That's the name of it. Only the eyes. Creeping, creeping, creeping. No noise. One raised. Waggons drawn up in laager. Oxen out-spanned in the middle. Trekking all day. Tired out; dog tired. Crawl, crawl, crawl! Hands and knees. Might be snakes. A wriggle. Men sitting about the camp fire. Smoking. Gleam of their eyes! Under the waggons. Nearer, nearer, nearer! Then, the throwing ones in your midst. Shower of 'em. Right and left. 'Halloa! stand by, boys!' Look up; see 'em swarming, black like ants, over ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... go down or go up here in the mountains, and then it was always a little more money needed than we had. And when you came she couldn't bear to have the strain touch you, and almost the last thing she said was, 'You'll make it easier for her, she's such a little tot.' It wasn't because I meant to wriggle out of my promise that made me pretend not to see when your shoes gave out and your dresses got old and things in the house didn't run straight; it ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... while I lay flatten'd along the beam, scarce daring to breathe. But at length, when the man had pass'd below for the sixth time, I found heart to wriggle myself toward the doorway over which the gallows protruded. By slow degrees, and pausing whenever the fellow drew near, I crept close up to the wall: then, waiting the proper moment, cast my legs over, dangled for a second or two swinging myself toward the sill, flung myself off, ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... again. The crack is more often than not unperceived for a considerable time by the performer, and meanwhile grease and dirt work their way secretly into the pores of the wood. A repairer may take a glance at the state of the fracture, whip out some glue, paint a little on each side, wriggle the whole well at the risk of extending the wound, get in a little more glue, and let that harden under pressure from the cramps, which—unless extraordinary care and skill is exercised, damage other ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... president, Shorty?" Lorry felt the warmth of a new life, felt the little body wriggle in snug contentment. "I wouldn't advise it. Tough job." Baby Newcomb twisted in his ...
— I'll Kill You Tomorrow • Helen Huber
... highest, the darkest, and the dirtiest streets of Paris, was, and is, and probably will long be, the Rue St Denis. Beginning at the bank of the Seine, and running due north, it spins out its length like a tape-worm, with every now and then a gentle wriggle, right across the capital, till it reaches the furthest barrier, and thence has a kind of suburban tail prolonged into the wide, straight road, a league in length, that stretches to the town of Sainct-Denys-en-France. This was, from time immemorial, the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... conversation veers in that direction. This is nothing, though, to the white awe in the air when visitors call and I am questioned how I earn my living in London. I hardly know whether to laugh or cry at the long-drawn breath of relief when I wriggle out of a tight place without telling a lie. But you can't hide an eel in a sack, and I know the truth will pop out one of these days. Only yesterday I went district-visiting with Aunt Rachel, and one of the Balaams of life, who keeps a tavern for fishermen, lured us into his bar parlour to ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... wriggle and cheeped her last little cheep, Babe had to be carried over and held down where she could kiss mamma good night. Casey got rather white around the mouth, then. But he didn't say a word. Indeed, he had said mighty little since that fourth blow of the ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... from it, and it did gather to itself strange and horrid arms from the sand all about it. And it stretched two of the arms unto me; but I smote with the Diskos, and I smote thrice; and afterward they did wriggle upon the sand. But this was not the end, as I did hope; for the Yellow Thing arose, and ran at me, as it might be that you should see a spider run. And I did leap backward, this way and that; but the monster had a great swiftness; so that I did ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... serpent's mouth. The creature snapped its jaws together so suddenly that its teeth stuck fast in the putty, and this made it so furious that it wriggled around until it had tied itself into a hard knot, and could wriggle no longer. ...
— The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People • L. Frank Baum
... am. My papa often says so and he knows all about it," replied Alfred with an involuntary wriggle suggestive of painful memories. Then, as if anxious to change the conversation from its somewhat personal channel, he asked, pointing to a row of grinning heads above the wall, "Do ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... chamber was by means of an aperture so low that we had to lie flat on the ground, and so narrow that even I found it hard work to wriggle through. ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... deliberate. Would it not be better to keep her in ignorance? What was to be gained by revealing to her the—But Miss Thackeray was luring him on to destruction. She stood outside the door and beckoned. That in itself was ominous. Why should she wriggle a forefinger at him instead of calling out in her usual ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... to hurl Zsa Zsa at Wims but found to his surprise he could only wriggle his fingers. The effort sent little slivers of pain slicing ...
— I Was a Teen-Age Secret Weapon • Richard Sabia
... said he, "I'll keep a hand on you, my lady, that you won't be able to wriggle away from. If you are slippery, and faith you are, why I'm tough, and so you'll find it." "Get rid of your kinks before you marry," said he. "I've no use for a wife with one eye on me, and it a dubious one, and the other one squinting into a parlour two streets off. You've got to settle down ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... a final wriggle and Twaddles deftly backed out of the oven, turning to show a flushed face and a pair ...
— Four Little Blossoms on Apple Tree Island • Mabel C. Hawley
... I never have!" said Aunt Agatha with considerable decision. "And it's not at all likely I ever shall. There are bugs and things," she added vaguely, "and snakes that wriggle about." ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... expressive member! Oh! it's useless to attempt description. Mortal man cannot conceive of the delicate shades of sentiment expressible by a dog's tail, unless he has studied the subject—the wag, the waggle, the cock, the droop, the slope, the wriggle! Away with description—it is impotent and ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... than 'e does air, an' 'e ought to 'ave a permanent chimney-sweep detailed to clear the soot out of 'is lungs an' breathin' toobs. But if Pint-o'-Bass does smoke more'n is good for 'im or any other respectable factory chimney, I'll admit the smoke 'asn't sooted up 'is intelleck none, an' 'e can wriggle 'is way out of a hole where a double-jointed snake 'ud stick. An' durin' the Retreat, when, as you knows, cigarettes in the Expeditionary Force was scarcer'n snowballs in 'ell, ole Pint-o'-Bass managed to carry on, an' wasn't never seen without ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... "one must pick them out right. But all I mean is—for I express myself with violence—that she's in a position to watch me. There's an element of suspense for me, and she can see me wriggle. But my wriggling doesn't matter," he pursued. "I can bear it. Besides, ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... as used to keep all but a shilling or two in a belt next to 'is skin so that he couldn't get at it easy, but it was all no good. He was always running short in the most inconvenient places. I've seen 'im wriggle for five minutes right off, with a tramcar conductor standing over 'im and the other people in the tram reading their papers with one eye and watching him with ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... the usual style, suggesting a conscientious rehash of the encyclopedia. But suppose it were done differently, and with a caption like this, 'Why Does an Angle-Worm Wriggle?' Set that in irregular type that weaved and squirmed across the column, and Jones-in-the-street-car would at least look ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... just fading into dusk. Of course we had taken our bearings from the other hill; so now, after reassuring ourselves of them, we began to wriggle our way at a great pace through the high grass. Our calculations were quite accurate. We stalked successfully, and at last, drenched in sweat, found ourselves lying flat within ten yards of a small bush behind which we could make out dimly the black mass of the ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... off without hooking the victim, and the Devil finally lost his temper. "I've heard of these San Franciscans before," he muttered; "wait till I get hold of one,—that's all!" he added malevolently, as he rebaited his hook. A sharp tug and a wriggle foiled his next trial, and finally, with considerable effort, he landed a portly two-hundred-pound broker upon the ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... scowl settled upon Hawker's brow, and he kicked at the dressing case. "Say, Hollie, look here! Sometimes I think you regard me as a bug and like to see me wriggle. But——" ...
— The Third Violet • Stephen Crane
... on our way downstairs with demure "Good morning"; they would go to church and post themselves so that they could survey our pew, and Lord Charles—who possessed the power of moving at will the whole skin of the scalp—would wriggle his hair up and down till we were choking with laughter, to our own imminent risk. After a month of this, Auntie was literally driven out of the pretty Chateau, and took refuge in a girls' school, much to our disgust, but still she was not allowed to ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... him. I have the priestling in a sack. I have him trussed and bound and gagged, so that he can neither speak nor wriggle!" ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... wild flowers bloom and die; the heavens go round With the song of wheeling planetary rings: You wriggle in the sun; each moment brings Its freight for you; in all ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley
... the insect larvas that may have lurked in it when first removed. Lay the turves out in a frame, grass side downwards, and give them a soaking with water in which a very small quantity of salt has been dissolved. This will cause the remaining bots and slugs to wriggle out, and by means of a little patient labour they can be gathered and destroyed. In January or February sow the seed rather thickly in lines along the centre of each strip of turf, and cover with fine earth. By keeping ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... which a man is not only a life-long litigant, passing all his days in the courts, either as plaintiff or defendant, but is actually led by his bad taste to pride himself on his litigiousness; he imagines that he is a master in dishonesty; able to take every crooked turn, and wriggle into and out of every hole, bending like a withy and getting out of the way of justice: and all for what?—in order to gain small points not worth mentioning, he not knowing that so to order his life as to be able to do without a napping ...
— The Republic • Plato
... false as it makes lizards wriggle," said he. "Lippo is a lizard. No dog ever caught him napping, though he looks so ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... do, by spells, and the Deep Woods people leaned back and looked out over the Wide Blue Water, and away out there saw Mr. Eagle swoop down and pick up something which looked at first like a shoe-string; then they saw it wriggle, and knew it was a small water-snake, which was going to be Mr. Eagle's dinner; and they talked about it and wondered how he could enjoy ...
— Hollow Tree Nights and Days • Albert Bigelow Paine
... you had that kid around all the time," grunted Short and Long, as Jess finally allowed him to wriggle loose. "I think he's more of a terror than ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... anger, although tempestuous, were never very prolonged. The curious convulsive wriggle of one of his arms, which always showed when he was excited, gradually died away, and after looking for some time at the papers of de Meneval—who had written away like an automaton during all this uproar—he came across to the fire with a smile upon his lips, and a brow ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... bread but break it. Take salt only with a clean knife. Dip not the meat in the same. Hold not thy knife upright but sloping, and lay it down at the right hand of plate with blade on plate. Look not earnestly at any other that is eating. When moderately satisfied leave the table. Sing not, hum not, wriggle not.... Smell not of thy Meat; make not a noise with thy Tongue, Mouth, Lips, or Breath in Thy Eating and Drinking.... When any speak to thee, stand up. Say not I have heard it before. Never endeavour to help him out if he tell it ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... that gun!" he warned Trevison. "I'll blow a hole through you if you wriggle a finger!" Watching Trevison, he spoke to Braman: "You got ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... no answer, but watched the beautiful face, now very pale, behind which conflicting thoughts seemed to wriggle like a knot of vipers. Suddenly she leaped up with ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... don't he give you some?" exclaimed aunt Corinne with a wriggle. "I had a gold dollar, but I b'lieve that little old man with a bag on his back ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... so I put one foot on him to take his scalp—his rattles, I mean—when horrid thrills coursed through me. The uncanny thing began to wriggle and rattle with old-time vigour. I do not like to think of that simian inheritance. But, fortified by Nimrod's assurance that it was 'purely reflex neuro-ganglionic movement,' I hardened my heart and captured his 'pod ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... upon The new-bought virgin, made her blush and shake. Her comrades, also, thought themselves undone: Oh! Mahomet! that his Majesty should take Such notice of a giaour, while scarce to one Of them his lips imperial ever spake! There was a general whisper, toss, and wriggle, But etiquette forbade them all ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... a tidy white gate, And a narrow brown pathway that will not run straight; For it turns and it twists and it wanders about To the left and the right, as in humorous doubt. 'Tis a humorous path, and a joke from its birth Till it ends at the door with a wriggle of mirth. And here in the mount lives the queer tinker man With his little red ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... neck! Have you ever felt a mustache on your neck? It intoxicates you, makes you feel creepy, goes to the tips of your fingers. You wriggle, shake your shoulders, toss back your head. You wish to get away and at the same time to remain there; it is delightful, but irritating. But ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... Gardener said with a kind of groan. "Things change so, here. Whenever I look again, it's sure to be something different! Yet I does my duty! I gets up wriggle-early ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... prospected. We should have known enough by that time to leave four or five men on guard close by; as it was, when the men still on board the dhow began kicking up a babel, Fred and I came running and jumping back through the marsh just in time to see a crocodile wriggle off into the water, with the corpse in his jaws feet first. Fred fired a shotted salute, but missed, ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... Men say more than they mean when they are engaged in emptying mine host's cellar. Come, gentlemen, another bottle. We must hang the damned young rebel, but we'll do him this much grace—we'll drink a happy despatch to him, a short wriggle at the end of his rope, and a pleasant journey to ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... glee instantly arose within him. Seizing the handle of the heavy hunting-whip, which still hung from his right wrist by a leather thong, he flourished it in the air, and brought it down on his charger's flank with a crack like a pistol-shot, causing the animal to wriggle its tail, toss its ponderous head, and kick up its heels, in a ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... of water.... It makes me feel growly all the time.... I can not get away from my ball and chain.... I think we'll make things snap and crackle a little.... This is the biggest swamp I ever tried to wriggle through.... We'll both put on our thinking caps and I guess get quite a lot of funnies in the reminiscences.... Now here is the publisher's screech for money.... O, to get out of this History prison!... I am too tired to ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... the dark chambers, calling the great thoats after me. They had difficulty in negotiating some of the doorways, but as the buildings fronting the city's principal exposures were all designed upon a magnificent scale, they were able to wriggle through without sticking fast; and thus we finally made the inner court where I found, as I had expected, the usual carpet of moss-like vegetation which would prove their food and drink until I could return them to their own enclosure. That they would be as quiet and contented here ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... is interesting. A snapping turtle will lie quietly at the bottom of a pond or lake, looking like an old water-soaked log with a branch—its head and neck—at one end. From the tip of the tongue the creature extrudes two small filaments of a pinkish colour which wriggle about, bearing a perfect resemblance to the small round worms of which fishes are so fond. Attracted by these, fishes swim up to grasp the squirming objects and are engulfed by the cruel mouth of the angler. Certain marine turtles have long-fringed appendages on the head and neck, which, waving ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... penny of mine will go for masses, for if my Pat has his head and shoulders out, I can safely reckon he'll soon wriggle himself away entirely, God bless ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... the foe, in division from all; With crowds of illogical Christians, no doubt; Till the rescuing earthquake cracked. Thus are we man made firm; Made warm by the numbers compact. We follow no longer a trumpet-snout, At a trot where the hog is tracked, Nor wriggle the way of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to wriggle, and strain, and stammer, and we do not recognize the root of the trouble and shun it, and learn to yield and quietly relax our nerves and muscles, of course the strain becomes worse. Then, rather than suffer from it any longer, we ...
— The Freedom of Life • Annie Payson Call
... were now so loose in their partially emptied box that they could wriggle and even change positions if they liked. The big young man wheeled, passed his arm round Winifred's waist as if for a waltz, half lifted her off her feet, and set her down where he ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... to command the attention and the confidence of your buyers, you've got to be up and dressed all day to hold what trade is yours, and twisting and turning all night to wriggle into some of the other fellow's. When business is good, that is the time to force it, because it will come easy; and when it is bad, that is the time to force it, too, because we will need ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... she cried. 'I won't let you speak. You've said it, a satellite, you're not going to wriggle out ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... spread and run down your legs." Friend Elephant did as he was ordered. Friend Mouse-deer then instructed the Elephant as follows: "As soon as I begin to lick up the molasses on your back, bellow as loud as you can and make believe to be hurt, and writhe and wriggle ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... together exactly, either; for Rollo who was usually pretty alert and ready in emergencies of difficulty or danger, when he found himself rolling down the slope, though he could not stop, still contrived to wriggle and twist himself off to one side, so as to get clear of the horse and roll off himself in a different direction. They both, however, the animal and the boy, soon came to a stop. Rollo was up in an instant. The horse, too, contrived, after some scrambling, to ...
— Rollo in Switzerland • Jacob Abbott
... to wait, for presently Woofer crawled out of his blankets on the far side, and began to wriggle away on ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... however, for one instant. Up he went again. But, in fact, his best chance was in going up, for he was within four yards of the top when the mishap occurred. With a sigh of relief I saw him at last throw his arm over the verge and then wriggle his body upon the ledge. A few seconds later he was lying on his stomach, with his face over the ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... even by a trifle from his own natural stance. A change of the position of the feet by even a couple of inches one way or the other may alter the stance altogether, and knock the player clean off his putting. In this new position he will wriggle about and feel uncomfortable. Everything is wrong. His coat is in the way, his pockets seem too full of old balls, the feel of his stockings on his legs irritates him, and he is conscious that there ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... "He can wriggle like an eel," said the Commissary at Nice. We both recalled those words, and laid our plans deep to prevent the man's wriggling away from us on this ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... the occasion to which we are so guardedly referring, both in a wig and out of it; he passed behind a screen without it, and immediately (as quickly as we write) popped out in it, giving it a finishing touch rather like the butler's wriggle to his coat as he goes to the door. There are the two kinds of learned brothers, those who use the screen, and those who (so far as the jury knows) sleep in their wigs. The latter are the swells, ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... my father. "Your chain is locked, I see:—but no matter,—I can loosen it so that you can wriggle through." By having cut the cords, around which the chain had been passed, he had relieved the tautness, and was now able to do what he promised. He then took off my boots, and, grasping me under the arms, drew me backward out of the loosened coils as I moved them ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... was certain that if that little monkey had managed to wriggle through some hole into the sea, on her voyage home, she would have swum after the ship and climbed up the rudder chains. Possibly, but she was only twelve months old! If, however, she had met with an early death, her mother's lot would have lacked its redemption. The joint life of ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... cannot make him sound good. Of course I might leave out his doubtful qualities, and describe him merely as beautiful and affectionate; I might ... but I couldn't. I think Chum's habitual smile would get larger, he would wriggle the end of himself more ecstatically than ever if he heard himself summed up as beautiful and affectionate. Anyway, I couldn't do it, for I get carried away when I speak of him and I reveal ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... gentleman named Cummins, selected by the audience as one of the Tying Committee, tied one of the Brothers, and a Mr. Hulley, the other committee-man, the other. But the Brothers saw instantly that they could not wriggle out of these knots. They, therefore, refused to let the tying be finished, saying that it was "brutal" although a surgeon present said it was not; one tied brother was untied by Ferguson, the agent; and then the Brothers went to work and performed their various tricks without ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... here. I'll wriggle my way to that tree," pointing, "and you creep behind that one," pointing again, this time to a tree perhaps a hundred yards distant from ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... 26th.—After Lord DESBOROUGH'S vivacious attack upon the Cippenham Motor Depot, it is doubtful whether anyone could have enabled the Government to wriggle out of the demand for an independent inquiry. At any rate Lord INVERFORTH was insufficiently agile. The innumerable type-written sheets which he read out laboriously may have contained a complete reply to Lord DESBOROUGH'S main allegations, even ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... becomes more definite in details limned from life. 'The Jesuits have so many loopholes for escape, pretexts, colors of insinuation, that they are more changeful than the Sophist of Plato; and when one thinks to have caught them between thumb and finger, they wriggle out and vanish' (ib. vol. i. p. 230). 'The Jesuit fathers have methods of acquiring in this world, and making their neophytes acquire, heaven without diminution, or rather with augmentation, of this life's indulgences' (ib. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... Hockins. Perhaps we may find room to stay where we are, after all, till morning. Come here, Ebony, you've got something of the eel about you. Try if you can wriggle in." ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... until he came to the muscles of her back. You know how we all like to have our backs scratched, just like dogs and cats? Well, I don't suppose Cellette had ever happened on just that feeling before. It touched the cat chord. She began to gurgle and—and wriggle. 'Keep still, please,' says the boy, very grave and earnest. And a minute later, 'Keep still, will you?' Then ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... dear mistress, how frightened I felt. Here was a sudden end to my freedom! Imprisoned in a strange man's pocket, from which escape was impossible, nearly stifled with the smell of tobacco, and filled with dread as to what would happen next. I managed to wriggle my head out of the corner, but saw at once that it would be useless to think of jumping out, the distance from the ground being far too great. I remained still therefore, and as the man walked out of the yard had a faint ...
— The Kitchen Cat, and other Tales • Amy Walton
... a pair of which the Frenchman hairdresser is lacing for one of his customers. Another of the party, who has completed the upper part of his toilet, is so hampered with the voluminous folds and stiffening of his cravat that he cannot wriggle into his unmentionables. The caricaturists take us into the garrets of these fellows, abodes of squalor and wretchedness, and show us that beneath their exterior magnificence there is nothing, or next to nothing. In a pair of rough anonymous satires—The Dandy Dressing at Home and The Dandy ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... worked. He was used not only to wriggle around the line inside of ends and to squirm through difficult outlets, but to charge the line as well, a feat of which his height and strong legs rendered him well capable. He proved a consistant ground-gainer, and with Blair, who worked like a hero, and Kingdon, who won laurels for himself ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... drew her white skirts around his shoulders, and cossetted him as if he had been a baby. He tried to wriggle away from her on to the ground beyond, but this she sturdily prevented, and the late-rising moon cast its light just then upon a face, oddly set and determined for that ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... and wriggle!" called a man above. "Jam the steel into the hard cake beneath!" and with the cold sweat oozing from my hair I proceeded to obey him. How long I took to cover the distance we could not afterward agree, but once I lay prone for minutes together, with both arms buried ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... worse,' he says. 'Th' throuble about divoorce is it always lets out iv th' bad bargain th' wan that made it bad. If I owned a half in a payin' business with ye, I'd niver let th' sun go down on a quarrel,' he says. 'But if ye had a bad mouth I'd go into coort an' wriggle out iv th' partnership because ye'ar a cantankerous old villain that no wan cud get on with,' he says. 'If people knew they cudden't get away fr'm each other they'd settle down to life, just as I detarmined to like coal smoke whin I found th' collection wasn't big enough to put a new chimbley ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... a dime, and heard himself say, "That's all right, I don't want the stuff. Take it in to that little chap in a striped suit, in the next car,—dirty little beggar, wriggled like an eel all day. This will probably make him wriggle all night. Never mind, ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... watch them wriggle! I wanted to take them, one by one, and strip off their shams! Take that fellow Rutherford, the steel man! Or Plimpton, the coal baron, casting his eyes up to heaven, and singing psalms through his nose! The instant I laid eyes on that whining old hypocrite, I hated him; and I vowed ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair
... shaking his head fiercely, like a dog worrying a rat. "You were seen carrying the body downstairs, the night of the murder. You might as well own up to it, first as last. Lies will not help you. We know too much for you to wriggle out of it. And never mind smoothing your hair down like that. We know all about that scar on your forehead, and how ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... began to blaze away. Half the German attack never came out of their trench. If they really intended business against us, which I doubt, they were half-hearted in carrying it out. They didn't show for five minutes, and they left two or three score men on the ground. Whenever we saw a man wriggle we were told to fire at him; it might be an unwounded man trying to crawl back. For a time our guns gave them beans. Then it was practically over, but about sunset their guns got back at us again, and the artillery fight went on until it was moonlight. The chaps ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... ask in what fundamental beliefs this presentation rests. These are, first, that life tends to move along certain lines that constitute the law of human nature. Just as the infant tends first to wriggle, then creep, then walk, then run and dance, so human nature tends to move upward from savagery through primitive settled life to the complex forms of larger settled units. In this progress, material or economic forces play a large part; but ideas, originally born out of circumstances, ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... to him had a wide net spread around him — wide of mesh too, perhaps; and it was through a mesh he meant to wriggle, but the net was intact from ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... any path that led away from that evil place, and away also from the lower depths. So, though the way became more and more difficult as they advanced, they continued to press on, now up, now down, at another place going on their hands and knees, and further on having to wriggle between cracks which sorely nipped the Hunter as he forced his heavy frame through. And in the end they came out on the verge of the vast vault, which appeared to fill so much of the space below; emerged on a wind-swept platform, with a sudden din after the quiet of the tortuous passage as of ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... staring down at a red, smashed thing on the ground that, in spite of partial obliteration, could still wriggle unavailing legs. Then when the gaunt man pointed to another mass that bore down upon them, he drew his sword hastily. Up the valley now it was like a fog bank torn to rags. He tried to ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... gave under the strain, moving upward and inward upon its hinges, disclosing an oblong gap above the jamb. With a splendid wriggle the fugitive vaulted up, thrusting his person into the clear space thus provided. Balanced across the opening upon his stomach, half in and half out, for one moment he remained there, his legs kicking wildly as though for a purchase against something more solid than ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... live timekeepers to slide into it;) black, glossy crickets, with their long filaments sticking out like the whips of four-horse stage-coaches; motionless, slug-like creatures, larvae, perhaps, more horrible in their pulpy stillness than even in the infernal wriggle of maturity! But no sooner is the stone turned and the wholesome light of day let upon this compressed and blinded community of creeping things, than all of them that enjoy the luxury of legs—and some of them have a good many—rush ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... safety. The mere transfixing of the eel did not always mean his securing, but another of us must put a lance in the contorting curves and with quick and dexterous motion lift him to the bank where his struggles might be ended with knife or rock. The release of him for a second might permit him to wriggle to ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... the boudoir, the singer found that Madame Hulot had fainted; but in spite of having lost consciousness, her nervous trembling kept her still perpetually shaking, as the pieces of a snake that has been cut up still wriggle and move. Strong salts, cold water, and all the ordinary remedies were applied to recall the Baroness to her senses, or rather, to the ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... found her breath, and taken one quick look round as if to satisfy herself she was unobserved, suddenly cast herself down, in her turn, upon the damp earth, and inserting her head beneath the prickly barricade of the holly leaves, begin to crawl and wriggle forward until she had completely disappeared under it. What in the world ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... the lower button of his coat, shrugged his shoulders with an extra wriggle at the collar (the modern hero's method of girding up his loins), and walked calmly into Bartholomew ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... him blankly. Wally gave an expressive wriggle in his chair, and Jim sat up suddenly, with a ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... cases of provisions, so that only a little space was clear for us at the stern. The cabin was about 2 metres long, 1 1/2 metre wide, and 1 1/2 metre high, and was crammed with stuff—tinned meats, cloths, guns, trading goods, etc. One person could wriggle in it, crawling on hands and knees, but two had to wind round each other in impossible positions, and it was quite unthinkable that both should spend the night below. But with the happy carelessness and impatience of a long-delayed start, we did not think ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... yer blastit humbug!' she exclaimed, as, with a vigorous throw and a wriggle, she freed herself from his embrace and ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... shadow darkened my page, and when I looked up, there was Turkey towering over Mason, with his hand on his collar, and his whip lifted. The whip did not look formidable. Mason received the threat as a joke, and laughed in Turkey's face. Perceiving, however, that Turkey looked dangerous, with a sudden wriggle, at which he was an adept, he broke free, and, trusting to his tried speed of foot, turned his head and made a grimace as he took to his heels. Before, however, he could widen the space between them sufficiently, Turkey's whip came down upon him. With ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... father was a short, powerful man, and though he was nearly fifty years old his hair was black and thick and coarse. At night he would rub his unshaven cheek on Sue's small cheek and tickle her. She would chuckle and wriggle as though it were fun. I used to watch this hungrily, and once I awkwardly drew close and offered my cheek to be tickled. My father at once grew as awkward as I, and he gave me a rub so rough it stung. And this wasn't fair—I had hoped for a cuddle. ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... front of the hound. The way to put an end to the gaudy crimes that the suffragist alarmists talk about is to shave the heads of all the pretty girls in the world, and pluck out their eyebrows, and pull their teeth, and put them in khaki, and forbid them to wriggle on dance-floors, or to wear scents, or to use lip-sticks, or to roll their eyes. Reform, as usual, mistakes ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... inquired, with a conceited wriggle, what could be the merits of a country, where gentlemanly, gliding, thin-skinned creatures like himself were unable to move about without personal annoyance? Whereupon the amiable 'SOMETHING' made no scruple ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... had left the house. I cannot understand how public opinion tolerated for so long the abominable cruelty of forcing little boys to clamber up flues. These unhappy brats were made to creep into the chimneys from the grates, and then to wriggle their way up by digging their toes into the interstices of the bricks, and by working their elbows and knees alternately; stifled in the pitch-darkness of the narrow flue by foul air, suffocated by the showers ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... this very moment that the foxhound puppy chose for rushing in—all wriggle and bark and clumsy paws—and plunging between Fina's feet. She reeled, staggered, and she, the puppy, the stand, the glass case, and the precious pagoda, all went down together in a ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... in Louisiana, was part o' the river, an' Vidal's Island, in its middle, was in the river, this bend wa'n't jest eight mile' round, it wuz twenty. These are the bends. F'om here to Cairo we got to run one etarnal wriggle o' six hund'd 'n' eighty mile' to ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... is man? a beast of prey. An hour ago, and I'd have taken a crust, and gone in peace. But no: they would trick and juggle, curse them; they would wriggle and cheat! Well, I accept the challenge: ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... Its brow, and no ear for my song; Hush'd the caves of its breath, and the finger of death The raised features hath flatten'd along. The eyes' wonted beam, and the eyelids' quick gleam— The intelligent sight, are no more; But the worms of the soil, as they wriggle and coil, Come hither their dwellings to bore. No lineament here is left to declare If monarch or chief art thou; Alexander the Brave, as the portionless slave That on dunghill expires, is as low. Thou delver of death, in my ear let thy breath Who tenants my hand, unfold; That my voice may ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the shirt up over his head and let the twigs go all down his back, and along both sides of him, and Gisli strove all he might to wriggle away from him; but Grettir flogged him through and through, and then let him go; and Gisli thought he would learn no more of Grettir and have such another flogging withal; nor did he ever again ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... If there is not, and especially if anything is there which he wishes to shun, a four hundred and fifty pounder cannot crash a hole large enough for you to push him through. By such a pitiful chink as that did his Infallible Highness wriggle himself out of the range of my guns, and pursue his line ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... only found it, you went through a lot to bring it to us," said Norma affectionately. "No, Betty, you and Bob can't wriggle ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... are others I could mention who took part in this contention, And at first 'twas my intention, but at present I forbear; There's young Look-sharp, and Wriggle, who would make an angel giggle, And a young conceited Zeigel, who was seated near the door; If you could only see them, you'd laugh till you were sore, And then ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... unrealities which have somehow got coiled up with it. All the odd little eccentricities in the form of service and the recent fashion of spicing sermons with unexpected swear-words are just pathetic efforts to wriggle out of ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... poor sufferer was passing away and would recommend Rushton & Co. to the bereaved and distracted relatives. By these means often—after first carefully inquiring into the financial position of the stricken family—Misery would contrive to wriggle his unsavoury carcass into the house of sorrow, seeking, even in the chamber of death, to further the interests of Rushton & Co. and to earn his miserable two and ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... voices, commenting on the scene, then they would be silent for a long period, simply drinking it in and trying to photograph it forever on their memories. Joyce frankly and openly enjoyed it all, but Cynthia seemed nervous and restless. She began at length to wriggle about, got up twice and walked around restlessly, and looked at her watch ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... the camp she felt a trifle remorseful about her behavior. Some day she would marry him—she had got far enough to admit that—and perhaps it was unkind of her not to let the matter be settled. And at that she gave a petulant wriggle of her shoulders under her cotton blouse. Wasn't that his business? Wasn't he the one to end it, not wait on her pleasure? Were all men so easily ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... he would have been seven years before, when he first arrived from abroad, had he been told that there was no need for him to seek or plan anything, that his rut had long been shaped, eternally predetermined, and that wriggle as he might, he would be what all in his position were. He could not have believed it! Had he not at one time longed with all his heart to establish a republic in Russia; then himself to be a Napoleon; then to be a philosopher; and then a strategist and the conqueror ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... You don't get on to me. It was this way. I got up and looked out on the world. I says: 'J. R., it's clear you haven't enough cash for your ambitions. But you've got a opportunity. Throw it in. Be bold. If your conscience squirms, let it squirm. If it wriggles, let it wriggle. Take the risk. Expand to large ideas.' I took it. Say, I made parties unwilling investors in me. Now, then, there they are, as delegated in you. Here's me, Julius R., monarch by purchase and election of the sovereign state of Lua. You asks, 'What next?' I says: ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... back of Zo's neck; and his patient acknowledged the process with a wriggle and a scream. The performance being so far at an end, Zo called to the dog, and issued her orders ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... from nine to ten knots; the lighting was excellent, there was no difficulty about heating. It was a strange sight to see the vessel skimming along the top of the water, suddenly give a downward plunge with its snout, and disappear with a shark-like wriggle of its stern, only to come up again at a distance out and in an unlooked-for direction. A few small matters connected with the accumulators had to be seen to, but they did not take ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... child we did not wish to photograph in the place of one upon whom we had designs, and then at the last moment exchanged her. But the baby thus beguiled seemed to divine our purpose; and, resenting such ensnarements, would promptly wriggle out of focus. It was like trying to observe some active animalculae under a high power. The microscope is perfect, the creatures are entrapped in a drop of water on the slide; but the game is not won by any means. Sometimes, ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... advantage. She would catch him in her powerful grasp, and, lifting him off his feet, swing him in the air as if about to slam him to his final resting-place, when by some inexplicable manoeuvre he would writhe from between her fingers or wriggle himself to the back of her neck and mash her nose flat against her breast as if bent on suffocating her or breaking her neck. In a moment she would reach back with both hands and pull him over her head very much as men doff a shirt. Likely as not, Chang came down with his heels in the air, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... the telescope. The foremast across which he lay was complete almost to the royal-mast, though the yards were gone; and to his left, just above the battered fore-top, five men were lashed, dead and drowned. Most of them had their eyes wide open, and seemed to stare at Zeb and wriggle about in the stir of the sea as if they lived. Spent and wretched as he was, it lifted his hair. He almost called out to them at first, and then he dragged his gaze off them, and turned it to the right. The survivor still clung here, and Zeb—who had been vaguely wondering how on earth he contrived ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... in the air from one swinging rope to another, and springing up the bars of the cage. The little monkey jumps, catches a rope, drops to the ground, and springs at another rope. Now he is in a corner, the others have him; but no, with a dive and a wriggle he has slipped through them, and is chattering and grimacing on the other ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... now Luck Is fat, And wise men take her as she comes: The Bowler may be sure the Bat Will share the sugarplums. So never wriggle, nor protest, Nor eye the zenith in disgust, But, Johnson, bowl your level best, And ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... contemptuously; "why, a redskin would make no more noise in cutting them holes and gashes, than you would in cutting a hunk of deer's flesh for your dinner. He would lie on the ground, and wriggle from one to another like an eel; but I reckon he didn't begin till the camp was still. The canoes wasn't hauled up till we had sarched the woods, as we thought, and then we was moving about close by them ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... head was destroyed, yet the legs pushed the abdomen and corselet on; so that a disapproving friend had to divide his sympathy, and to feel for each of the pieces. And what appeared to us worthy of remark was, that whereas, when a snake was decollated, it was only the tail that continued to wriggle—when a worm was divided, all the segments writhed in the same way, and manifested an equal irritability; showing the difference between creatures of annulated structure, according as they have or have not a brain. A new argument against the brain as the organ of sensation, was afforded ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... to ask his client to keep the deadly secret, or to apply the famous wriggle of Hippolytus: "My tongue hath sworn, but my ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various
... chubby baby of eight months, so full of sunshine and content and blessed good health, that although her two first teeth were just grumbling through, she would sit in her high chair by the window or roll and wriggle about on the floor, singing tuneless songs and telling herself wordless stories, an hour at a time, without making any demands on anybody, so that grandma and the aunties declared that half the time they would not know there was a baby in the house. Perhaps ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... his feet, and knowing that if Molly was able to wriggle and groan she could not be badly hurt, picked up the sack and scouted up Molly's horse. He found it without difficulty, and tied the sack with the saddle strings in front of the horn. He loosed the horse and led it to where Molly still lay on the ground. The poor girl was sitting up, clutching her ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... can wriggle through if they can. One thing is certain, it won't be for lack of trying. So, whatever you may have to send to the major, get ready; the lightning express leaves at 4.30. I must go and report my movements to the commanding officer, and then will come back to you. Is the adjutant ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... Obviously the tactics of the snake were wearing it down. Though the lizard seemed to have lost none of its spirit, the flesh was becoming weak. While it panted, its eyes twinkled with inane ferocity, and the snake, with that peculiar fearsome, gliding movement—neither wriggle nor squirm—typical of the species, slowly edged its victim under the shadow of a tussock. There both reposed, the snake calm in craft and design, the lizard waiting for the one chance of its life. Swallowing the lizard under any circumstances seemed an impossible feat. To begin the ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... "French infantrymen's trousers. One cannot make out their coats, but their red trousers show as they wriggle forward ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... times when the moray made a vicious rush, still 'e 'ung on and that's not as easy as it sounds. But in about 'alf an hour the fish was seemin'ly done for and the New Yorker pulled 'im in, 'and over 'and, as easy as you please. Just as 'e got 'im to the gunwale, though, the moray gave an extra wriggle, and bein' afraid that 'e might get away agen, the fisherman gave a sudden pull and brought 'im on board without waitin' to ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... she cried in an awestricken voice; "there is a split, and you'll make it worse if you wriggle about so. Be a good boy, Dickie, and try to prove agreeable ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... she said, 'I'll tell you.' H. O., don't wriggle so; sit on my frock if the straws tickle ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... uncover its atrocities is like turning over a huge stone in the meadow in springtime, that has been a hiding-place for bugs and worms that nest away in the dark. As soon as the hot, searching sunlight finds them, they will wriggle and squirm in agony until they can crawl under cover again. So I do not wonder that, when the hideous cruelty of the tenement-house sweat-shop is brought to light, the sweater and all his friends wriggle and squirm in ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... goggle-eyed, squinting, bow-legged, knock-knee'd, rheumatic, crazy. Some of the small tradesmen's houses, such as the crockery-shop and the harness-maker, had a Cyclops window in the middle of the gable, within an inch or two of its apex, suggesting that some forlorn rural Prentice must wriggle himself into that apartment horizontally, when he retired to rest, after the manner of the worm. So bountiful in its abundance was the surrounding country, and so lean and scant the village, that one might have ...
— Tom Tiddler's Ground • Charles Dickens
... driving in that respect. But he did show nervous timidity at feeding with the other horses, and so Miguel cheerfully went to the urging with fork and tongue. But only the one time. Soon the colt took to burying his nose in the box along with the others, and would wriggle his tail with a vigor that seemed to tell of his gratitude at being accepted as part of the great establishment and its devices. And then another thing. With this change in his method of feeding, he soon came to reveal steadily increasing courage and ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... with a gesture of irritation, while the aigrette in her hat sent out little iridescent flashes of blue and green. "Oh, you wouldn't know if I told you," she answered impatiently, and left the room so hastily that he felt she had meant to wriggle away from the repeated question. What did it mean? he wondered for a minute as he slowly sipped his coffee. Even if she should go with Brady alone, where was the harm of it? and why should she avoid so innocent an admission. ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... down at a red smashed thing on the ground that, in spite of partial obliteration, could still wriggle unavailing legs. Then, when the gaunt man pointed to another mass that bore down upon them, he drew his sword hastily. Up the valley now it was like a fog bank torn to rags. He tried ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... small commission would let him know when some poor sufferer was passing away and would recommend Rushton & Co. to the bereaved and distracted relatives. By these means often—after first carefully inquiring into the financial position of the stricken family—Misery would contrive to wriggle his unsavoury carcass into the house of sorrow, seeking, even in the chamber of death, to further the interests of Rushton & Co. and to earn his miserable two and a ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... Oh, ma'am, you will never be able to cane if you hold it like that. You should hold it like this, Miss Phoebe, and give it a wriggle ...
— Quality Street - A Comedy • J. M. Barrie
... seems to shoot out a thousand serpentine heads or knots of water, which wriggle down deliberately through the air and expend themselves in mist before half the descent is over. Then a new set burst from the body and sides of the fall, with the same fortune on the remaining distance; and thus the most charming fretwork of watery nodules, each trailing its vapory train ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... as she was under the glaring light, the letter still clutched stiffly in her hand, her eyes still staring widely at the irregular, un-English writing. The letters seemed to writhe and squirm into life before her distorted vision, to wriggle like a procession of monstrous insects across the page. Were they insects or were they reptiles? She asked herself the ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... felt very uneasy. She tried to wriggle away from her companion, who held her arm firmly. "To sacrifice?" ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... experimented with balancing a roll on the back of one, but it promptly fell off again. They tied two rolls together and slung them across the back of another, pannier fashion; but the little beast gave a kick and a wriggle and deposited the load on the ground. Various dodges were tried, perspiration poured off the faces of the officers, they were covered with dust, their language grew stronger and stronger, and at last, feeling themselves entirely nonplussed, one of them, looking ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... slender thread of silk. But still he followed the dreadful roar of the Minotaur, which now grew louder and louder, and finally so very loud that Theseus fully expected to come close upon him, at every new zizgag and wriggle of the path. And at last, in an open space, at the very center of the labyrinth, he ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... transept a 325-mm. shell has knocked a clean hole through which a mastodon might wriggle. Just opposite this transept, amid universal wreckage, a cafe is miraculously preserved. Its glass, mugs, counters, chairs, and ornaments are all there, covered with white dust, exactly as they were left one night. You could put your hand through a window aperture and pick up ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... the gentleman, as the Phoenix, with one last wriggle that melted into a flutter, got out of its nest in the breast of Robert and stood up on the ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... burst into tears, and began to wriggle herself free from his arms. "Let me go," she demanded; "let me go. I ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... me infinite honour then," said Paliser, who spoke better than he knew. But her visible discomfort delighted him. He saw that she wanted to wriggle out of it and, like a true sportsman, he gave her an opening in which ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... the wealthier and younger members of the male community. They poison the air round them with sickly perfumes; they assume titles, and speak of one another as "cette chere comtesse;" their walk is something between a prance and a wriggle; they prowl about the terrace whilst the music is playing, seeking whom they may devour, or rather whom they may inveigle into paying for their devouring: and, bon Dieu! how they do gorge themselves with food and drink when some silly ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... only cover I had was Dick's broad back, for the sapling to which he was tied was small. I drew my hunting-knife. One more wriggle brought me close to Dick, with my face near his hands, which were bound behind him. I slipped the blade under the lasso, ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... I lay flatten'd along the beam, scarce daring to breathe. But at length, when the man had pass'd below for the sixth time, I found heart to wriggle myself toward the doorway over which the gallows protruded. By slow degrees, and pausing whenever the fellow drew near, I crept close up to the wall: then, waiting the proper moment, cast my legs over, dangled for ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... a persistence which took no thought of the pain she was inflicting upon herself, she began working her hands to and fro behind her until she fancied that the pressure on her wrists was not so great as before. With an effort she managed to wriggle over against the wall and so to straighten into a ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... position—the status of the owners and rulers of rural England throughout recent centuries. Our esquires did not win their estates till they had given up any particular fancy for winning their spurs. Esquire does not mean squire, and esq. does not mean anything. But it remains on our letters a little wriggle in pen and ink and an indecipherable hieroglyph twisted by the strange turns of our history, which have turned a military discipline into a pacific oligarchy, and that into a mere plutocracy at last. And there are similar historic ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... me a bit of a chit, sir, to show it's all right," said the policeman, when they had lifted her into the front seat, pale and rigid now. "And if you take my advice," he whispered, "you'll keep an eye on her; she can wriggle like an eel, and if she grabs the steering-wheel when you're moving, she'll break all your bloomin' necks ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... the darkness below the hatch, then the fellow's head and shoulders appeared; but, as we reached to seize him, he evaded our outstretched fingers by a quick wriggle, flung himself safely to the deck on the far side of the hatch, and leaping to the bulwark, dove into the river with scarcely ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... ceased speaking to each other. In his mental confusion Old Man Anderson kept revolving in his mind, with satisfaction, a new plan he had evolved. The next time Jim should fall asleep he would crawl back through the aperture in the conduit wall, pry up the boards over the opening into the prison yard, wriggle out, and take his chances in getting over the wall somehow! Better even be shot by a guard than die like a rat in this unspeakable place, as he was doing, where he couldn't stand up and dared not lie down on account of the things that were forever crawling through the place! His ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... over to you, Mary dear, so you'd never have to do another day's worrying or pinching in all your life. But never you nor anybody else depend upon an Arab's gratitude or an Arab's generosity. He'll promise you the moon, and then wriggle out of giving you so much as a star—just as Abdul ben Meerza did with me.' And upon Miss Morrison asking what he meant by that, he replied, laughingly: 'Ask Van, he knew the old codger better than I—knew his whole blessed family, blow him!—and was able to talk to the old skinflint ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... away?" muttered the submarine boy. "Well, that's it should be. I wonder if there are any more of this strange crew—men or women spies that don't happen to have suspected so far? If there are, I don't believe they'll wriggle through the meshes of old Uncle Sam's Secret ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... girl was uncomplaining. She clung doggedly to the Earth man's hand when they were able to walk erect: followed swiftly and unquestioningly when they were compelled to crawl or wriggle through ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... pair of which the Frenchman hairdresser is lacing for one of his customers. Another of the party, who has completed the upper part of his toilet, is so hampered with the voluminous folds and stiffening of his cravat that he cannot wriggle into his unmentionables. The caricaturists take us into the garrets of these fellows, abodes of squalor and wretchedness, and show us that beneath their exterior magnificence there is nothing, or next to nothing. In a pair of rough anonymous satires—The Dandy Dressing at Home ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... One night, as his wife let him in, Produced as the fruit of his hunting A cottontail's velvety skin, Which, seeing young Bonaparte wriggle, He gave him without a demur, And the babe with an aqueous giggle He swallowed ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... from the tips. Owing to the intensity of the heat this is difficult to accomplish. One warrior dashes wildly toward the fire and retreats; another lies as close to the ground as a frightened lizard, endeavoring to wriggle himself up to the fire; others seek to catch on their wands the sparks that fly in the air. At last one by one they all succeed in burning the downy balls from the wands. The test of endurance is very severe, the heat of the fire being ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... of animal life, were evidently those whose society was most attractive to her. Connie tried all she could to conquer her dislike, and entice the wayward thing to her heart; but nothing would do. Sometimes she would seem to soften for a moment; but all at once, with a wriggle and a backward spasm in the arms of the person who carried her, she would manifest such a fresh access of repulsion, that, for fear of an outburst of fierce and objurgatory wailing which might upset poor Connie altogether, she would be borne off hurriedly,—sometimes, ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... watcheth like a serpent on a wall, Or flyeth like an eagle in the air, Or runs as desperate ships, void of all care, Or, (as great Solomon hath wisely said) Is as the way of wantons with a maid, Who tick, and toy, and with a tempting giggle Provoke to lust, and by degrees, so wriggle Them into their affections, that they go The way to death, so do themselves undo: As it is said, this mischief to prevent, Let all men watch, yea, and be diligent Observers of its motions, and then fly, This is the way to live, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... case of the tail wagging the dog. But it is too late now to go back to the order of nature or the truth of history. The Puritan, like another Old Man of the Sea, is astride our shoulders and won't come down, protest, pray, roll, wriggle as Sindbad may. Why, the Puritan has imposed his Thanksgiving Day and pumpkin-pie upon South Carolina, even. [Applause.] He got mad at the old Whig party, on account of his higher law and abolitionism, and put it to death. When the Puritan first came to these shores, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... the captain. "And take notice that if you wriggle again I will make short work of ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... punched the button with the air of milady ringing for her carriage. The waiter came with his large-chinned, low-voiced manner of respectful familiarity. Liz smoothed her silken skirt with a satisfied wriggle. She made the most of it. Here she could order and be waited upon. It was all that her world offered her of the ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... Leclerc, aged twenty-five, who was said to be Napoleon's double. Hippolyte Charles had been the friend of Leclerc, and Paulette resolutely set her mind on inflicting salutary punishment on her sister-in-law for the wrong she was doing her brother. She quickly managed to wriggle confidences out of Leclerc concerning the Josephine-Charles connection, then peached. Charles was banished from the army, and, on the authority of Madame Leclerc, we learn that Josephine "nearly died of grief." The avenging little vixen had put a big spoke ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... Dan, with a twinkle in his eye, "the pigs were swine." Roseen gave an impatient wriggle. "Well, well, it's too bad to be tormentin' ye that way. I'll begin right now.—Well, very well then. There was wan time the Spider an' the Gout was thravellin' together, goin' to seek their fortun's. Well, ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... in crossing a river, was carried away by the current, but managed to wriggle on to a bundle of thorns which was floating by, and was thus carried at a great rate down-stream. A Fox caught sight of it from the bank as it went whirling along, and called out, "Gad! ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... like that. Now you sit right straight down in that chair and read your poem over slowly, while I whip into my own clothes, and then we'll go along together. Fred can't come until a little later anyway. Sit still now, and don't wriggle around and ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... We need not wriggle and twist to try to avoid admitting that the calling of the martyred Zacharias, 'the son of Barachias,' is an error of some one who confused the author of the prophetic book with the person whose murder is narrated in 2 Chronicles xxiv. We do ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... eaten by the fish, which appear to thrive on them better than on dead meat. Having great tenacity of life, if not snapped up immediately by the fish they remain alive for a day or two, and, as they wriggle about on the bottom, are almost certain to be finally eaten; whereas the particles of dead flesh that fall to the bottom are largely neglected by the fish and begin to putrefy in a few hours. In the fish troughs there are, therefore, certain gains in both cleanliness and ...
— New England Salmon Hatcheries and Salmon Fisheries in the Late 19th Century • Various
... it was found that he had contrived to wind several fathoms of the line round his body. From the line having been kept tight, it was not so cleverly twisted as is often the case, and a blow on the tail quieted him before he had managed further to wriggle it round himself after he was out of the water. When the line was unwound, and the shark stretched out, he was a handsome-looking fish of a blue lead colour, about four feet long. Harry and David did not feel disposed to eat any of the shark, ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston
... riflemen marching as escort, smart and gay in their brown forest-dress, the green thrums rippling and flying from sleeve and leggin' and open double-cape, and the raccoon-tails all a-bobbing behind their caps like the tails that April lambkins wriggle. ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... again, his lips wrinkling back in a snarl as the emanations of fear from the men he could not see reached panic peak. He still crouched, belly flat, on the protecting pads of his cage; but he strove now to wriggle closer to the door, just as his mate made ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... hands, gave a convulsive wriggle of joy—that changed midway, into a backward jerk ... ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... little Jeff Carew says. He jumped through the window-pane himself. We wouldn't believe that until we measured one there at the jail of the same size as Blenkins's window-glass, and he went through it without a wriggle." ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... we'll do it," said Thorny, breaking a long silence as Betty composed herself with an irrepressible wriggle of delight after one of these refreshing peeps. "We'll keep Sanch hidden, and smuggle him into Ben's old room at your house. Then I'll drive on to the barn, and not say a word, but send Ben to get something out of that room. You just let him in, to see what he'll do. I'll bet you a dollar ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... money-bag, down on your stomach," said the other, "and wriggle like a snake through a hedge, or we shall leave our carcasses behind us sooner ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... in front of the cigar-store, and not one of 'em but our Abby ever got a chance to name the day. Abby was as set as the everlastin' hills, and if she'd made up her mind to have a man he could n't wriggle away from her nohow in the world. It beats all how girls do run after these slick-haired, sweet-tongued, Miss Nancy kind o' fellers, that ain't but little good as beaux an' worth less than ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... another penny of mine will go for masses, for if my Pat has his head and shoulders out, I can safely reckon he'll soon wriggle himself away entirely, God bless ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... they had been lured to the house under false pretences, grew among Lady Dauntrey's visitors and was expressed stealthily, a word here, a word there, and sullen looks behind the backs of host and hostess. Even on the first day disappointment began to wriggle from guest to guest, like a little cold, sharp-nosed snake, leaving its ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Molly," he suggested at last. Then he turned to Chris, who was watching him with almost no expression. "You can wriggle your chair to the phone in half an hour, I guess. Knock the phone off and yell for help. It's better than you deserve, unless you really did ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... north, the mist fell upon the waters or blew away over the meadows, and it was cold. Mr. Gabriel wrapped the cloak about Faith and fastened it, and tied her bonnet. Just now Dan was so busy handling the boat—and it's rather risky, you have to wriggle up the creek so—that he took little notice of us. Then Mr. Gabriel stood up, as if to change his position; and taking off his hat, he held it aloft, while he passed the other hand across his forehead. And leaning against the mast, he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... are not to be scared with a gun, and are often beaten down with poles and cudgels as they stoop to go under the eaves. Swifts are much infested with those pests to the genus called hippoboscoe hirundinis; and often wriggle and scratch themselves in their flight to get rid of ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... infantrymen's trousers. One cannot make out their coats, but their red trousers show as they wriggle forward ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... do you call that? Look at your damned wake. Like an eel's wriggle. Keep her full, and ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... known, which it seldom is. Don't tell Europe; but I really am come to look at the repairs of Cliveden, and how they go on; not without an eye to the lilacs and the apple-blossoms: for even self can find a corner to wriggle into, though friendship may fit out the vessel. Mr. Berry may, perhaps, wish I had more political curiosity; but as I must return to town on Monday for Lord Cholmondeley's wedding, I may hear before the departure of the post, if the seals are given: ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... used, should be as perfect as possible). EAR ... EEL makes a weak In. by S. to some persons, but it would make a much more vivid first impression to most persons to deal with them in this way: EAR ... (w)ring ... twist ... wriggle ... EEL. But "Bivouac ... aqueduct" is a perfect In. by S. as to the last syllable of the former and the first syllable of the latter, since those syllables are pronounced exactly alike. We may connect Bivouac to Rain thus: "Bivouac ... ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... instance which was not so tragical. A Hottentot was carried off by a lion during the night, wrapped up in his sheep-skin kaross, sleeping, as they usually do, with his face to the ground. As the lion trotted away with him, the fellow contrived to wriggle out of his kaross, and the lion went off ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... frantically to clamber back into it; he snatches the small, damp towels, and attempts to dry his shivering limbs; his clothes have fallen on the wet floor; he cannot force his blue toes into his oozy socks. At the moment he is attempting to wriggle himself into his trousers the horse is hitched-to again, and the jerky and jolty journey back up the beach begins. If the hair of a boy of ten could turn white in a single morning, there would be many a hoary-headed youngster in British watering-places. ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... Haven't you sense enough to see it's going to be nip and tuck if we ever get out of this? You've shown yourself, from start to finish, a miserable cheat; there's no trust to be put in either your judgment or your intentions. Be still," he commanded, as she sought to wriggle out of his grasp, to avoid the direct blaze of his eyes. "I am going to do what I can for you; to see you safe through this, if I can. Not because you are anything to me, but just because you are Ben Gaynor's, and he ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... Dan. "Let me go and stir him out, sir, with the shovel. He's down some hole, with his tail hanging out. Mebbe I can give him a chop and make him wriggle out back'ards so as to give you ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... paternity and maternity of eels, we know a great deal about their childhood and youth, or, to speak more eelishly, their grigginess and elverhood. The young grigs, when they do make their appearance, leave us in no doubt at all about their presence or their reality. They wriggle up weirs, walls, and floodgates; they force there way bodily through chinks and apertures; they find out every drain, pipe, or conduit in a given plane rectilinear figure; and when all other spots have been fully occupied, they take to dry land, like veritable snakes, and cut straight across ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... to do for his wife. A smile, an attentive manner, the general effect of having combed his hair and washed behind his ears, a word now and then to show that he is awake (I am assuming that he controls the tendency to wriggle)—and no more is needed. He is a lay figure, but not necessarily a lay ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... get ourselves free?" Tom demanded: "I've been trying to wriggle my hands out, but I'll admit ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... sun should set,' he answered, and began to wriggle along so fast that the girl could hardly ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... deliver, that they have one if only they can disentangle it from the unrealities which have somehow got coiled up with it. All the odd little eccentricities in the form of service and the recent fashion of spicing sermons with unexpected swear-words are just pathetic efforts to wriggle out of the clothes ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... have been engaged in the House till close on post time. Disraeli trying to wriggle out of the question, and get it put upon words without meaning, to enable more to vote as they please, i.e. his men or those favourably inclined to him. But he is beaten in this point, and we have now the right question before us. It is not now quite certain whether ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... possible he began to wriggle away, inch by inch, from Bill, and toward the fire. Several times he fancied the men moved restlessly in their sleep, but when he looked toward them they appeared to be still sleeping heavily. On each occasion, however, he lay still until he became wholly satisfied that he had been mistaken ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... wren hopped about in the alders and chirped dozy notes. Peace and restfulness brooded. The man at the brook leaned low and thrust his head into the water and then rose and shook the drops from his thick thatch of brown hair. He did it with a sort of canine wriggle and smiled at the ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... "I've been able to wriggle my fingers for several minutes. I think I could walk in an ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... this one-sided conversation Gibbs had managed to wriggle his mutilated body on to a wicker chair, where he steadied himself with his crutch, evincing manifest signs of choler the while by running his fat fingers through the reddish door-mat of hair, hitching up his trowsers, and rapping nervously his timber stump of a leg on the floor, until at last, ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... learned priest. Nobody could look at this portrait and call Edward White Benson a fool. But is any one in danger of doing so? Would not every one admit some ability in the unhereditary recipient of fifteen thousand a year? Parsons are not a brilliant body, but to wriggle, or climb, or rise to the top of the Black Army involves ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... sure I never have!" said Aunt Agatha with considerable decision. "And it's not at all likely I ever shall. There are bugs and things," she added vaguely, "and snakes that wriggle about." ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... me here, young man, hard and fast," Mr. Bartholomew said. "If I was inclined to want to wriggle out, I see no chance of it. But I don't. You have set forth here exactly my meaning and intent. I want your best efforts in this matter, Mr. Swift, and if you give them to me I'll foot ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... have nothing further to fear from him," said the Superintendent with satisfaction. "He has no doubt, very powerful friends, and if the evidence were not so damning and direct as that collected after so much patience and perseverance by Mr. Garfield, he might perhaps wriggle out of it. But once we have him he can hope for no escape," he added. "And we shall arrest him before an hour is out. Fortunately he is still quite unsuspicious, though his chief fear is of Mr. Garfield, and of the ugly revelations which ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... make Losy good all in a minute? Fixie always akses God to make her good"—he stopped in his whispered talk, suddenly—he had fancied for a moment that Rosy was waking, and it was true that she had moved. She had given a sort of wriggle, for, sweet and gentle as Fixie was, she did not at all like being spoken of as not good. She didn't see why he need pray to God to make her good, more than other people, she said to herself, and for half a second she was inclined to jump up and tell Pix to go away; it ...
— Rosy • Mrs. Molesworth
... when each transmitter sent out its particular whine its own similarly tuned receiver spring would wriggle ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... with a glad light, and she took Patricia in her arms. "It's perfectly glorious, Miss Pat, darling," she said with a rapturous squeeze. "I'm so delighted I can't help kissing you on the spot," and she did it with a heartiness that made Patricia wriggle. ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... right!" laughed the old man, trying to wriggle out of his son's grasp; "only not just yet a whiles. I'm agoin' in here to drink your good health, Adam lad, and all here's a-comin' ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... delay. As before, Pippity showed considerable anxiety, calmly remarking, however, as I translated his jargon, that he would, as on the previous day, hold fast to my shoulder with his bill. He made Grilly get down below at the same time and hold on to my feet; and when I began to crawl and wriggle along the best way I could, I was assisted very materially by the parrot above and ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... that was like a great, gasping intake of breath, as men and women watched. Out toward the Patriarch, alone now, the Flopper began to wriggle and writhe his way along. God in Heaven have pity! What was this sight they looked upon—this poor, distorted, mangled thing that grovelled in the earth—that figure towering there in the sunlight with venerable white beard and hair, erect, ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... like a man," continued Ebony, "hims dood eberyting like a man. An' w'en hims topple into de sea hims give sitch a most awful wriggle dat his bonds bu'sted. But hims berry sly, was Massa Zeppa—amazin' sly. I t'ought him lie on's back zif him be dead. Jest move a leetle to look like drownin', an' w'en he long way astern, he slew round, off wid de hanky fro hims eyes an' larf to hisseff ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... balance," said Jim; "these fish are fierce." They were, in the wilder parts. They would bite like mad, and then wriggle and wrench themselves off the hook before you could get them up the bank. I never saw or heard of such ferocity, except in the celebrated scaly warrior which chased an equally famous fisherman all over an Adirondack lake, jumped across his boat ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... provided there is anything on the other side he wishes to get at. If there is not, and especially if anything is there which he wishes to shun, a four hundred and fifty pounder cannot crash a hole large enough for you to push him through. By such a pitiful chink as that did his Infallible Highness wriggle himself out of the range of my guns, and pursue his line ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... of a pond or lake, looking like an old water-soaked log with a branch—its head and neck—at one end. From the tip of the tongue the creature extrudes two small filaments of a pinkish colour which wriggle about, bearing a perfect resemblance to the small round worms of which fishes are so fond. Attracted by these, fishes swim up to grasp the squirming objects and are engulfed by the cruel mouth of the angler. Certain marine turtles have long-fringed appendages ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... Trimmer's little Primer, Buckram binding, touch and try— Nothing bid—who'll buy, who'll buy? Here's Colley Cibber, Bruce the fibber, Plays of Cherry, ditto Merry, Tickle, Mickle, When I bow and when I wriggle, With a simper and a giggle, Ears regaling, bidders nailing, Ladies utter in a flutter— "Mister Smatter, how you chatter, Dear, how clever! well, I never Heard so ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... with all my might as the goad flew over me. He turned to run as I jumped, and I bore him to the ground, came down right upon him, and slipped upon his smashed body and fell. He seemed to wriggle ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... the dead mixed with the living, the wounded untended, without dressings, food, or water, and harassed by the fire from both sides and from our artillery. It was a very painful thing to watch these poor fellows moving about feebly and trying to wriggle themselves into some position of safety, and it reminded me of the wounded Dervishes after Omdurman—only these were ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... want to," said Polly. "But why don't you be the kangaroo, then, Joe, and let Davie be something else? Give him the snake, then he won't have to jump, and it's easier to wriggle." ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... exactly, either; for Rollo who was usually pretty alert and ready in emergencies of difficulty or danger, when he found himself rolling down the slope, though he could not stop, still contrived to wriggle and twist himself off to one side, so as to get clear of the horse and roll off himself in a different direction. They both, however, the animal and the boy, soon came to a stop. Rollo was up in an instant. The horse, too, contrived, after some scrambling, to gain his feet. ...
— Rollo in Switzerland • Jacob Abbott
... there was anything queer in my thinking about new ulsters for the boys, I did not tease mother any more about them just then. She kissed me again quite kindly, and then carried Racey away. He just woke up a very little as she lifted him, and gave a sort of cross wriggle—poor little boy, he had been so comfortably asleep. But when he saw that it was mother who was lifting him, he left off being cross in ...
— The Boys and I • Mrs. Molesworth
... got him, don't let go o' him!" admonished the Boy, and amid encouraging jeers Baldy departed, carrying the bundle victoriously. He had not more than crossed the bridge, however, when the watchers on the island saw a slender black head wriggle out from one end of the bundle, dart upward behind his left arm, and seize the man viciously by the ear. With a yell Baldy grabbed the head, and held it securely in his great fist till the Boy ran to his rescue. When James ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... not come, and she darted swiftly into the balsams back of the cabin, with Baree hung in the crook of her arm, like a sack filled at both ends and tied in the middle. He felt like that, too. But he still had no inclination to wriggle himself free. Nepeese ran with him until her arm ached. Then she stopped and put him down on his feet, holding to the end of the caribou-skin thong that was tied about his neck. She was prepared for ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... truly when he says that the air is thick with danger. When the blackness of night comes, then will come, also, those who make war from behind the trees of the forest. In the darkness, how is the young white and his friends to tell enemies from friends? The jackals will wriggle through and over the wall of trees like snakes through tall grass. After what they have seen, can my white friends expect mercy at hands already ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... warriors was returning. First come the Judge, tougher than rawhide, half walking and half flying, his wings spread out, 'cree-ing' to himself about bulldogs and their ways; next come Bobby, still sputtering and swearing, and behind ambled Thomas at a lively wriggle, a coy, large smile upon ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... cried. 'I won't let you speak. You've said it, a satellite, you're not going to wriggle out of ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... less and less frequent. Obviously the tactics of the snake were wearing it down. Though the lizard seemed to have lost none of its spirit, the flesh was becoming weak. While it panted, its eyes twinkled with inane ferocity, and the snake, with that peculiar fearsome, gliding movement—neither wriggle nor squirm—typical of the species, slowly edged its victim under the shadow of a tussock. There both reposed, the snake calm in craft and design, the lizard waiting for the one chance of its life. Swallowing ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... put an end to the gaudy crimes that the suffragist alarmists talk about is to shave the heads of all the pretty girls in the world, and pluck out their eyebrows, and pull their teeth, and put them in khaki, and forbid them to wriggle on dance-floors, or to wear scents, or to use lip-sticks, or to roll their eyes. Reform, as usual, mistakes ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... going to say to me? For the last hour I have been asking you to marry me, and you have said nothing; only just 'wriggle, wriggle,' talking ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... as the other boys tried to wriggle out from under the tent. "We've got to get wet now, anyway; but perhaps, if we stay as we are, we can manage to keep ...
— Harper's Young People, June 29, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... lovable, but I cannot make him sound good. Of course I might leave out his doubtful qualities, and describe him merely as beautiful and affectionate; I might ... but I couldn't. I think Chum's habitual smile would get larger, he would wriggle the end of himself more ecstatically than ever if he heard himself summed up as beautiful and affectionate. Anyway, I couldn't do it, for I get carried away when I speak of him and I reveal all ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... other,—I can vouch for it. There were some that stuck it, but they didn't count, my lad! The others didn't even know what they'd come for. And the bosses; they'd had a fright, and they didn't half wriggle and roar with laughing—I'll vouch for it, my lad! An' then, to-morrow, if they want to start again, ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... would come to fill their jars in the pond, and your huge black shadow would wriggle on the water like sleep struggling ...
— The Crescent Moon • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... had been removed. There was a goodly array of fashionable Christians, resplendent in gold-fringed mantles and silk-ribboned hats; for he was rumored eloquent, and Annibale de' Franchi was there in pompous presidency. One Jew came—Shloumi the Droll, relying on his ability to wriggle out of the infraction of the ban, and earn a meal or two by reporting the proceedings to the fattori and the other dignitaries of the Ghetto, whose human curiosity might be safely counted upon. Shloumi was rich in devices. Had he not even for months flaunted a crimson cap in the eye of ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the captain, safely landing him on deck, where he was unhooked, and left to wriggle and jump out ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... who were on the ground, started first and managed to reach the schoolhouse in time but without a second to spare. The boys, who had to wriggle hastily down from the trees, were later; and Anne, who had not been picking gum at all but was wandering happily in the far end of the grove, waist deep among the bracken, singing softly to herself, with a wreath of rice lilies on her hair as if she were some wild divinity of the shadowy places, ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... lean, now Luck Is fat, And wise men take her as she comes: The Bowler may be sure the Bat Will share the sugarplums. So never wriggle, nor protest, Nor eye the zenith in disgust, But, Johnson, bowl your level best, And recollect, what ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... of his claws. That knife would never have cut Harry's jacket-tail off, though, and when Effie had tried for some time she saw that this was so and gave it up. But with her help Harry managed to wriggle quietly out of his sleeves, so that the dragon had only an Eton jacket in his other claw. Then the children crept on tiptoe to a crack in the rocks and got in. It was much too narrow for the dragon to get in also, so they stayed in there and waited to make faces at the ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... when she had found her breath, and taken one quick look round as if to satisfy herself she was unobserved, suddenly cast herself down, in her turn, upon the damp earth, and inserting her head beneath the prickly barricade of the holly leaves, begin to crawl and wriggle forward until she had completely disappeared under it. What in the world could she ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... honest forester," said Gefroi, and groaned again. "The favour of a lord is a slippery thing—much like an eel—quick to wriggle away. An hour agone my lord Duke held me in much esteem, while now? And he struck me! On the face, here!" Slowly Gefroi got him upon his feet, and having donned cap and pourpoint, shook his head ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... forced to halt and, in the dark, loosen and pick out stones embedded in the mud bottom narrowing the passage. On the other side of that danger point, he was free to wriggle on. Could the box trace him now? He had no idea of the principle on which it operated; he ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... connection with a cheque.' The evening paper hid the manager's expressive face, but from the fact that the hands holding it tightened their grip Psmith deduced that Mr Bickersdyke's attention was not wholly concentrated on the City news. Moreover, his toes wriggled. And when a man's toes wriggle, he is interested in what you ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... Without noise, the six half-nude figures were describing circles upon the smooth floor. The silence and the serpentlike motions had a peculiar hypnotic effect upon us, and in a sort of dreamlike trance we watched them wriggle by the narrow aperture to which we pressed our faces. With each circle more of the brown, sweat-polished bodies showed beneath the twisted mats. The pace was beginning to tell upon them now. Slower and ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... through the tents, and the curses and groans of men who were hit as they lay or stumbled about trying to get out, made a hellish din. There was some wild shooting in return from my men, but it was all over in a moment, and as I managed to wriggle out of my tent the whole place was swarming with bearded men, shooting into the heaving canvas. At that moment I must have been clubbed on the head, for I knew no more until I found myself seated on an empty case having my head, which was dripping with blood, tied up ...
— The Defence of Duffer's Drift • Ernest Dunlop Swinton
... the sexuality of cryptogams. I suppose the former was by Oliver; how extremely curious is the fact of similarity of Orders in the Tropics! I feel a conviction that it is somehow connected with Glacial destruction, but I cannot "wriggle" comfortably at all on the subject. I am nearly sure that Dana makes out that the greatest number of crustacean forms inhabit ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Johnson's smallest girl. She has to sit front 'cause she giggles so much. She has yellow curls and she ducks her head down and snickers right out this way when anything funny happens in school." And Bud proceeded to duck and wriggle in perfect ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... foremast across which he lay was complete almost to the royal-mast, though the yards were gone; and to his left, just above the battered fore-top, five men were lashed, dead and drowned. Most of them had their eyes wide open, and seemed to stare at Zeb and wriggle about in the stir of the sea as if they lived. Spent and wretched as he was, it lifted his hair. He almost called out to them at first, and then he dragged his gaze off them, and turned it to the right. The survivor still clung here, and Zeb—who had been vaguely wondering how on earth ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... dress a wriggle, add a pint of nearly milk, Smother with a pillow any sneeze; Baste with talcum powder and mark upon its back— "Don't forget that you were one ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... and her desperate wriggle out of his hand revealed that the fright of the night had left more impression upon her delicate ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... surprise, head and shoulders and one arm got to the other side—a curious circumstance, as afterwards I tried repeatedly to repeat this contortionist trick on the ground, but failed every time. There I stuck, for it was impossible to wriggle farther. However, I could now reach part of the fire, and at it I beat with gloved hands. Within half a minute most of the fire was crushed to death. But a thin streak of flame, outside the radius of my arm, still flickered towards the tail. I tore off one of my gauntlets ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... him sound lovable, but I cannot make him sound good. Of course I might leave out his doubtful qualities, and describe him merely as beautiful and affectionate; I might ... but I couldn't. I think Chum's habitual smile would get larger, he would wriggle the end of himself more ecstatically than ever if he heard himself summed up as beautiful and affectionate. Anyway, I couldn't do it, for I get carried away when I speak of him and I reveal all ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... somethin' good fur beatin' out brains, an' dar lays my ax. I grabs it up, now ready fur a cleaver, an' no mistake. Big Injun ain't, though; he ain't ready fur any sich a thing. Up he comes wid a whirl, an' down I goes wid a fling, my ax a-flyin' way out yander. But in de wriggle uf a buck's tail comes up nigger ag'in; goes down Injun ag'in. Yes, an' a leetle mo' dan dat: nigger an' Injun clean ober de turn uf de hill, an' now a-slidin', slidin' down whar it ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... get up from the ground of its own accord, and, spreading its little pair of wings, it half hopped, half flew, and leaned itself against the wall of the cottage. There it stood quite still, except that the snakes continued to wriggle. But, in my private opinion, old Philemon's eyesight had been playing him ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... halt and, in the dark, loosen and pick out stones embedded in the mud bottom narrowing the passage. On the other side of that danger point, he was free to wriggle on. Could the box trace him now? He had no idea of the principle on which it operated; he ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... back. You know how we all like to have our backs scratched, just like dogs and cats? Well, I don't suppose Cellette had ever happened on just that feeling before. It touched the cat chord. She began to gurgle and—and wriggle. 'Keep still, please,' says the boy, very grave and earnest. And a minute later, 'Keep still, will you?' Then ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... serious-minded bird down. Besides, I have to admit to myself that it's darn interesting watching the vim that "Rus" puts into this secret practice. Some nights it's mighty chilly and with the grass wet down it's enough to make your spinal column wriggle, but "Rus" never ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... the ground, started first and managed to reach the schoolhouse in time but without a second to spare. The boys, who had to wriggle hastily down from the trees, were later; and Anne, who had not been picking gum at all but was wandering happily in the far end of the grove, waist deep among the bracken, singing softly to herself, with a wreath of rice lilies on her hair as if she were some wild divinity of the ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... went down to the sea as he did; he was sure that they could not find it too warm at the bottom of the sea and yet they perspired; and whenever they perspired chalk, it immediately became a new house. They wriggled like worms, some to the right and some to the left; it was clear that they had to wriggle in some direction and, of course, they could not all ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... and red marsh fires a mile or so back from the main road. Once as she flew along she shied like a horse and twisted the wheel as a wild screaming and twittering rose at the side of the car, and glancing back she saw three figures wriggle and laugh in mockery and astonishment. They had risen round the embers of a dead fire, and stood swaying on their feet and showing white teeth in orange faces. One had the long hair of a woman flapping ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... was not quite satisfied with his pupil until one bright morning last week when Alfred displayed the first signs of having acquired the Directional Wriggle. Strange as it may sound, this very human trout actually wriggled after John for a distance of five yards. Three days later he pursued his master to the village post-office and beat him by a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 13, 1920 • Various
... you call that? Look at your damned wake. Like an eel's wriggle. Keep her full, and ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... but he soon saw that he could do nothing with one arm out of commission. The man was not only powerful, but heavy, and it was all Ted could do to more than wriggle his body. ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... of the village church, sitting solitary within its circle of elms. From forth the vestry window projected two small legs, gyrating, hungry for foothold, with larceny—not to say sacrilege—in their every wriggle: a godless sight for a supporter of the Establishment. Though the rest was hidden, I knew the legs well enough; they were usually attached to the body of Bill Saunders, the peerless bad boy of the village. Bill's coveted booty, too, I could easily guess at that; it came from the ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... removed. There was a goodly array of fashionable Christians, resplendent in gold-fringed mantles and silk-ribboned hats; for he was rumored eloquent, and Annibale de' Franchi was there in pompous presidency. One Jew came—Shloumi the Droll, relying on his ability to wriggle out of the infraction of the ban, and earn a meal or two by reporting the proceedings to the fattori and the other dignitaries of the Ghetto, whose human curiosity might be safely counted upon. Shloumi was rich in devices. Had he not even for months flaunted a crimson ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... by supposing such a thing. There is not, in or out of an attorney's office in the county of Erie, or elsewhere, one who could raise a doubt, or a particle of a doubt, about the meaning of this provision of the Constitution. He may act as witnesses do, sometimes, on the stand. He may wriggle, and twist, and say he cannot tell, or cannot remember. I have seen many such efforts in my time, on the part of witnesses, to falsify and deny the truth. But there is no man who can read these words of the Constitution of the United States, and say they are not ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... like a serpent on a wall, Or flyeth like an eagle in the air, Or runs as desperate ships, void of all care, Or, (as great Solomon hath wisely said) Is as the way of wantons with a maid, Who tick, and toy, and with a tempting giggle Provoke to lust, and by degrees, so wriggle Them into their affections, that they go The way to death, so do themselves undo: As it is said, this mischief to prevent, Let all men watch, yea, and be diligent Observers of its motions, and then fly, This is the way to live, and not ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of his being and strange deprivations in others, and upon whom the unhappy realization begins to be borne in, that his is no particular case, and that he of all the world is not to be spared, but, like his forbears, must inevitably wriggle in the disguising crucible of time. And, though men accept it with apparently patient humor, the first realization that people do grow old, and that they do it before they have had time to be young, is apt to come ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... was one of those multitudes that fill our English air all the time that warm weather lasts, and is exactly of the shape of that I observ'd to be generated and hatch'd out of those little Insects that wriggle up and down in Rain-water. But, though many were of this form, yet I observ'd others to be of quite other kinds; nor were all of this or the other kind generated out of Water Insects; for whereas I observ'd that ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... old eel!" Bob glanced admiringly at his friend. "I believe you just wriggle by on the ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... minute, and then he was quiet. About this time the sun began to get fearfully hot, and I began to feel it in the legs, which are now very painful and swollen, besides was parched with thirst. Most of the wounded round me had ceased groaning by this time. As it began to get dark, I managed to wriggle my body through the shrub farther back, and after I had been at it some time, on looking up found myself right in front of another intrenchment of the enemy. They sent a few rounds at me, but they struck just in front and ricochetted over my head. After a bit, it getting darker, I got up ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... a great disappointment to me," he said, trying to look disappointed, but his back would wriggle. "This chain ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... a wriggle of delight, and much sentiment beamed in her rugged, small face, as she answered him with enthusiasm, though not stopping to couch her reply ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... cake standing erect and solid. Gripping her harpoon, she threw herself flat on her stomach and pushing the cake before her, began to wriggle her way toward the ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... "O, don't wriggle, now," retorted Will, sternly. "You know you saw him in time to warn him. You wanted to get him into it. You just come along with me, and apologize. If he is an old skinflint, you've got to remember he could have sold us out last year, only I succeeded in begging off. ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Peter tried to wriggle the child through, but he found that he must have some one to help him. Urging Robin not to move he knocked at Miss Monogue's door. She opened it, and he stepped back with an apology when he saw that some one ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... the cat that saved the situation and its life at the same time. Mary-'Gusta was near the edge of the pine grove and Con was close at her heels. David gave one more convulsive, desperate wriggle, slid from the girl's arms and disappeared through the ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... lot to do with it. Roger was right. The Slop is there and you've got to make allowances for it, and after all, why shouldn't Rachel show her baby to the girls? Damn it all, a baby is a remarkable thing, when you come to think of it. All that wriggle and bubble and squeak and kick ... and Lord only knows what'll come out of it! We ought to get married, Quinny, and father a few brats. My own notion is to get hold of a nice, large, healthy female of ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... the midst of a beautiful plain mostly on the left bank of the river Vistula. All the main part of the city lies close to the river, and the streets are so twisted and crooked that it is almost impossible to picture them. They wriggle here and there like snakes of streets. The houses, of course, are very old, and with their heavy barred doors and solid shutters, ...
— The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw • Colonel George Durston
... him had a wide net spread around him — wide of mesh too, perhaps; and it was through a mesh he meant to wriggle, but the net was intact from ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... you'd never have to do another day's worrying or pinching in all your life. But never you nor anybody else depend upon an Arab's gratitude or an Arab's generosity. He'll promise you the moon, and then wriggle out of giving you so much as a star—just as Abdul ben Meerza did with me.' And upon Miss Morrison asking what he meant by that, he replied, laughingly: 'Ask Van; he knew the old codger better than I—knew his whole blessed family, blow him!—and was able to talk ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... out by his instructions, in anticipation of the contest on which he was embarking against you and against Daubrecq, at whose house he did the same thing. He had under his orders a sort of acrobat, an extraordinarily thin dwarf, who was able to wriggle through those apertures and who thus detected all your correspondence and all your secrets. That is what his two friends revealed to me. I at once conceived the idea of saving my elder son by making use of his brother, my little Jacques, who is himself so slight and ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... were drunk. They spun round, tongue-tied, and embraced each other,—I can vouch for it. There were some that stuck it, but they didn't count, my lad! The others didn't even know what they'd come for. And the bosses; they'd had a fright, and they didn't half wriggle and roar with laughing—I'll vouch for it, my lad! An' then, to-morrow, if they want to start again, there'll be ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... a little wriggle. "Cuckoo, you're laughing at me," she said. "I mean, have you come back to stay and cuckoo as usual and make my aunts ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... the order of Hosea Hessel, of the blue nose. And several boys took hold of me, all together, turned me over on the bench, face upwards. Two sat on my legs, two on my arms, and one held my head, so that I should not be able to wriggle. And another placed his left forefinger and thumb at my nose. (It seemed he was left-handed.) He curled up his finger and thumb, closed his eye, and began to fillip me on the nose. And how, do you think? ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... Though the lizard seemed to have lost none of its spirit, the flesh was becoming weak. While it panted, its eyes twinkled with inane ferocity, and the snake, with that peculiar fearsome, gliding movement—neither wriggle nor squirm—typical of the species, slowly edged its victim under the shadow of a tussock. There both reposed, the snake calm in craft and design, the lizard waiting for the one chance of its life. Swallowing the lizard under any circumstances seemed an impossible ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... efforts of this kind were vain and useless, and that all I could hope to do was to wriggle downwards. ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... does not begin screaming or wriggle out of the bundle," thought the collegiate assessor. "This is indeed a pleasant surprise! Here I am carrying a human being under my arm as though it were a portfolio. A human being, alive, with soul, with feelings like anyone else.... If by good luck the Myelkins adopt ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... been able to wriggle my fingers for several minutes. I think I could walk in an hour ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... great bite out of a slice of bread and jam, "whether it wouldn't be better for me to do it with a knife. Most of the best things have been brought off with a knife. And it would be a new emotion to get a knife into a French President and wriggle it round." ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... of mine will go for masses, for if my Pat has his head and shoulders out, I can safely reckon he'll soon wriggle himself away entirely, ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... pulls the shirt up over his head and let the twigs go all down his back, and along both sides of him, and Gisli strove all he might to wriggle away from him; but Grettir flogged him through and through, and then let him go; and Gisli thought he would learn no more of Grettir and have such another flogging withal; nor did he ever again earn the ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... used to having their kings rule in a truly grand and kingly manner; and they insisted that he have built for himself the most magnificent palace ever seen. In all else they let him have his own way absolutely; but they wouldn't allow him to wriggle out of any of the ceremony or show that goes with being a king. A thousand servants he had to keep in his palace, night and day, to wait on him. The Royal Canoe had to be kept up—a gorgeous, polished mahogany boat, ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... These things do happen, you know! Now then—why didn't you come to us? We have a wing quite empty. But just as you like, of course. Do you lease it from HIM?—this fellow, I mean," she added, nodding towards Lebedeff. "And why does he always wriggle so?" ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... at first, with a slow waddle, and as the venomous sheep came to meet him in bounces, he then went to meet them in wriggles; so that in a while he went so fast that you could see nothing of him but a head and a wriggle. He dealt with the sheep in this way, a jump and a chop for each, and he never missed his jump and he never missed his chop. When he got his grip he swung round on it as if it was a hinge. The swing began with the chop, and it ended with the bit loose and the sheep giving ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... Frenchman hairdresser is lacing for one of his customers. Another of the party, who has completed the upper part of his toilet, is so hampered with the voluminous folds and stiffening of his cravat that he cannot wriggle into his unmentionables. The caricaturists take us into the garrets of these fellows, abodes of squalor and wretchedness, and show us that beneath their exterior magnificence there is nothing, or next to nothing. In a pair of rough anonymous satires—The ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... wood; but he bowed and leaned far over on one side, with his short legs wide spread; he passed down a perch, alternately crouching and rising, either sideways or straight; he jerked his whole body one side and then the other, in a manner ludicrously suggestive of a wriggle; he sidled along his perch, holding his wings slightly out and quivering, then slowly raised them both straight up, and instantly dropped them, or held them half open, fluttering and rustling ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... smoke than 'e does air, an' 'e ought to 'ave a permanent chimney-sweep detailed to clear the soot out of 'is lungs an' breathin' toobs. But if Pint-o'-Bass does smoke more'n is good for 'im or any other respectable factory chimney, I'll admit the smoke 'asn't sooted up 'is intelleck none, an' 'e can wriggle 'is way out of a hole where a double-jointed snake 'ud stick. An' durin' the Retreat, when, as you knows, cigarettes in the Expeditionary Force was scarcer'n snowballs in 'ell, ole Pint-o'-Bass managed to carry on, an' wasn't never seen without 'is fag, excep' at meal-times, an' sleep-times, an' ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... Well, then I HAVE got some news!" Miss Flora gave the satisfied little wriggle with which a born news-lover always prefaces her choicest bit of information. "Frank has sold his ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... hesitate, however, for one instant. Up he went again. But, in fact, his best chance was in going up, for he was within four yards of the top when the mishap occurred. With a sigh of relief I saw him at last throw his arm over the verge and then wriggle his body upon the ledge. A few seconds later he was lying on his stomach, with his face over the ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... swinging rope to another, and springing up the bars of the cage. The little monkey jumps, catches a rope, drops to the ground, and springs at another rope. Now he is in a corner, the others have him; but no, with a dive and a wriggle he has slipped through them, and is chattering and grimacing on the other side of ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... presently stooping at one moment, where the bushes grew sparse; crawling in among some sheltering rocks at another, and even getting down to wriggle along like so many snakes, when not even so much as a bush offered a means of hiding from observation, in case hostile eyes happened to be turned upwards toward the hilltop at the ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... saw that Ola was trying to wriggle out of his difficulty, but were anxious not to lose an exciting scene, screamed with laughter again; but this time at the bully's expense. The blood mounted to his head, and his anger got the better of his natural ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... I a younger man you might, perhaps, accuse me of scheming to wriggle myself into your good graces, Miss Enid. But I am getting old, and, moreover, I'm a confirmed bachelor, therefore you cannot, I think, accuse me of such ulterior motives. No, I only point out this peril for your ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... we have seen, was not asleep. With a convulsive wriggle of its tail it darted away in a panic. It was itself no mean swimmer, but it could not escape the darting terror that pursued. When the masked form was almost within reach of its victim, the mask dropped down and shot straight out, working on a sort of elbow-shaped ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... gone back to the Giant Suttung with the tale of how he had seen the mysterious serving-man change into a snake and wriggle through a hole in the mountain; and Suttung at once guessed that they had to deal with Odin himself. So he hurried to the hole and sat there to watch for the return ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... My papa often says so and he knows all about it," replied Alfred with an involuntary wriggle suggestive of painful memories. Then, as if anxious to change the conversation from its somewhat personal channel, he asked, pointing to a row of grinning heads above the wall, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... conceited wriggle, what could be the merits of a country, where gentlemanly, gliding, thin-skinned creatures like himself were unable to move about without personal annoyance? Whereupon the amiable 'SOMETHING' made ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... new-bought virgin, made her blush and shake. Her comrades, also, thought themselves undone: Oh! Mahomet! that his Majesty should take Such notice of a giaour, while scarce to one Of them his lips imperial ever spake! There was a general whisper, toss, and wriggle, But etiquette ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... marshalled by curates and teachers, awaited the party from the vicarage. The thick and darkened sunshine of Bludston flooded the asphalt of the yard, which sent up a reek of heat, causing curates to fan themselves with their black straw hats, and little boys in clean collars to wriggle in sticky discomfort, while in the still air above the ignoble town hung the heavy pall of smoke. Presently there was the sound of wheels and the sight of the head of the vicar's coachman above the coping of the schoolyard wall. Then the gates opened and the vicar and his wife and Miss Merewether, ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... the pot, took hold of the ferret, and was about to place it in the box; but it gave a wriggle and writhe, glided out of Mercer's hand, crept under the corn-bin, and, as he tried to reach it, I saw it run out at the back, and creep down a hole in the floor boards, one evidently made ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... lady of his acquaintance he said: "She is a woman who has never had the first tadpole wriggle of an idea," adding, "She has a mind as clean and white and flat as a plate: there are no eminences in it." Lady Butcher tells of a picnic-party on Box Hill at which Meredith was one of the company. "After our picnic ... it came on to rain, and as we drearily trudged down the hill with ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... himself staring down at a red smashed thing on the ground that, in spite of partial obliteration, could still wriggle unavailing legs. Then, when the gaunt man pointed to another mass that bore down upon them, he drew his sword hastily. Up the valley now it was like a fog bank torn to rags. He tried ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... sufferer was passing away and would recommend Rushton & Co. to the bereaved and distracted relatives. By these means often—after first carefully inquiring into the financial position of the stricken family—Misery would contrive to wriggle his unsavoury carcass into the house of sorrow, seeking, even in the chamber of death, to further the interests of Rushton & Co. and to earn his miserable two and ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... cried Esau; "and there I hung for ever so long, giving myself a bit of a wriggle now and then, but afraid to do much, it hurt so, dragging at my arms, while they were twisted up. I s'pose I must have been 'bout an hour like that, but it seemed a week, and I was beginning to get sick again, when all at once, after a good struggle, I ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... compliment at the expense of her "children." "They do not all get the opportunity, look you. Opportunity is a little angel; some catch him as he goes, some let him pass by forever. You must be quick with him, for he is like an eel to wriggle away. If you want a good soldier, take that aristocrat of the Chasse-Marais—that beau Victor. Pouf! All his officers were down; and how splendidly he led the troop! He was going to die with them rather than surrender. Napoleon"—and Cigarette ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... History papers. I am a fish out of water.... It makes me feel growly all the time.... I can not get away from my ball and chain.... I think we'll make things snap and crackle a little.... This is the biggest swamp I ever tried to wriggle through.... We'll both put on our thinking caps and I guess get quite a lot of funnies in the reminiscences.... Now here is the publisher's screech for money.... O, to get out of this History prison!... I am too tired to write—I mean too lazy.... No warhorse ever panted ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... laugh and wriggle away, but the cashier's gimlet eyes kept boring him, and eventually he fished out a five-dollar bill and handed it in. Mr. Hooker placed the two bills in the envelop, sealed it, and ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... that sometimes, in the lulls of telephoning and signing contracts and talking to salesmen and preparing estimates and dictating letters "that must get off to-night" and trying to wriggle out of serving on the golf club's house committee, my friend flings away his cigar, gets a corncob pipe out of his desk drawer, and contemplates his key ring a trifle wistfully. This nubby little tyrant that he carries about with him always makes him think of a river in the far Canadian north, ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... on the other hand, will show clearly by the violence of the response provoked that their nervous system is easily stimulated and exhausted. They will wriggle and squirm for hours together, emitting the same constant reflex cry. The whole body will start convulsively at a sudden touch or a loud sound which would evoke no response from a more stolid infant. The sleeplessness and crying exhaust ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... that he was not likely to succeed where his elders had failed but he would have a try, so he went to the edge of the water and spreading out his cloth on the weeds lay down on it so that his weight was distributed; in this position the weeds supported him and he managed to wriggle himself across on his face to ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... Bunny? it isn't true, Bob? A real live baby? Not a doll! a baby that will scream and wriggle up its face! But it can't be. Oh, heavenly! oh, delicious! But it can't be true, it can't! You're always making up ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... lightning his black head and forked tongue came hissing among the trees again, darting full forty feet at a stretch. As it approached, Medea tossed the contents of the gold box right down the monster's wide-open throat. Immediately, with an outrageous hiss and a tremendous wriggle—flinging his tail up to the tip-top of the tallest tree and shattering all its branches as it crashed heavily down again—the dragon fell at full length upon the ground and lay ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... at yon sinner perishing in toto, Take warning lest the same occurs to you; Each fraction of each wriggle is a photo, And therefore must ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 24, 1914 • Various
... Creep, crawl, wriggle, slide, clamber, scramble, clutch, climb, here jumping—actually jumping, I!—over a crevice, then drawing myself round an insuperable jut by two honest sturdy weeds—many thanks to them!—which had the consideration to be there and to plant themselves ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... into the temple. But without paying the least homage to the image of the 'Lo' spirit, he simply kept his eyes fixed intently on it; for albeit made of clay, it actually seemed, nevertheless, to flutter as does a terror-stricken swan, and to wriggle as a dragon in motion. It looked like a lotus, peeping its head out of the green stream, or like the sun, pouring its rays upon the russet clouds in the early morn. Pao-y's tears unwittingly trickled ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... nor'-east, he always beats for open sea. It isn't the sea he fears. It is these rock ramparts and saw-tooth reefs sticking up through the lace fret. Suddenly you twist round a sharp angle of rock like the half closed leaf of a book. You slip in behind the leaf of rock, and wriggle behind another angle—"follow the tickles o' water" is, I believe, the term—and there opens before you a harbor cove, land-locked, rock-walled from sea to sky, with the fishermen's dories awash on a silver sea, with women in brightly ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... SALUTE.—A player is required to stand on his hands with legs stretched at full length in the air, and then wriggle the feet ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... arranged to their experienced leader's satisfaction, they wrapped themselves like Indians in their blankets and tumbled down upon the heap of boughs; the air trembled with a chorus of strange sounds as one by one they dropped off into a drowsy sleep, with an occasional wriggle as a knot, or the end of a limb, made itself felt through the many-folded blanket, and engraved a distinct dent upon the sleeper's back; while overhead, the giant cloud crept upward slowly, slowly toward the zenith, spreading east and ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... Indian succeeded in rushing into a clinch, and Tad found himself gripped in those arms of steel. Wriggle and twist as be would he could not free himself from their embrace. His adversary, on the other hand, found himself fully occupied in holding on to his slippery young antagonist, giving him neither time nor opportunity effectually to dispose of the ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... said; "French infantrymen's trousers. One cannot make out their coats, but their red trousers show as they wriggle forward ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... compelled by sheer weakness to lie on the ground which will soon lie on them, if enough strong men are left by that time to cover them mercifully over with the loathsome, reeking vegetable detritus which passes here for soil, and which is so fairly animate that you can see every spadeful of it writhe and wriggle as you throw it over the rotting hour-dead shell of what was a free American citizen and a ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... others I could mention who took part in this contention, And at first 'twas my intention, but at present I forbear; There's young Look-sharp, and Wriggle, who would make an angel giggle, And a young conceited Zeigel, who was seated near the door; If you could only see them, you'd laugh till you were sore, And ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... on the back of Zo's neck; and his patient acknowledged the process with a wriggle and a scream. The performance being so far at an end, Zo called to the dog, and issued her orders ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... 'most always do, by spells, and the Deep Woods people leaned back and looked out over the Wide Blue Water, and away out there saw Mr. Eagle swoop down and pick up something which looked at first like a shoe-string; then they saw it wriggle, and knew it was a small water-snake, which was going to be Mr. Eagle's dinner; and they talked about it and wondered how ...
— Hollow Tree Nights and Days • Albert Bigelow Paine
... in my pockets after that last remark, and walked to the window glumly; but as I stood with my back to him, I could not help wondering if he was making faces at me, or up to any other undignified antics by way of relaxation. Did he ever wriggle with merriment when he was alone? I turned suddenly at the thought. He was calmly perusing a paper through his pince-nez, with an expression of countenance at once so benign, silly, and self-satisfied, that I felt I should like to ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... enough, however, in a man whose kink for repudiation in general led him to promulgate the theory that one generation cannot bind another for the payment of a debt. Hamilton, having disposed of Jefferson's attempts, under the signature of Aristides, to wriggle out of both these accusations, discoursed upon the disloyal fact that the Secretary of State was the declared opponent of every important measure which had been devised by the Government, and proceeded to lash him for ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... face, no ringlets to grace Its brow, and no ear for my song; Hush'd the caves of its breath, and the finger of death The raised features hath flatten'd along. The eyes' wonted beam, and the eyelids' quick gleam— The intelligent sight, are no more; But the worms of the soil, as they wriggle and coil, Come hither their dwellings to bore. No lineament here is left to declare If monarch or chief art thou; Alexander the Brave, as the portionless slave That on dunghill expires, is as low. Thou delver of death, in my ear let thy breath Who ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... for hours at a time they hunted elusive grasshoppers, rushing helter-skelter over the dry moss, leaping up to strike at the flying game with their paws like a kitten, or snapping wildly to catch it in their mouths and coming down with a back-breaking wriggle to keep themselves from tumbling over on their heads. Then on again, with a droll expression and noses sharpened like exclamation ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... folks false as it makes lizards wriggle," said he. "Lippo is a lizard. No dog ever caught him napping, though he looks so lazy in ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... axe, messire—a ponderous axe with haft the length of this my leg. A vilely tall, base, and most unseemly dog that hath spoiled me of my lord's sweet money-bags, wherefore I yearn to see him wriggle in a noose. To the which end I journey in these my rags, unto my lord Duke on Barham Broom, with tale of wrong and ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... do it," said Thorny, breaking a long silence as Betty composed herself with an irrepressible wriggle of delight after one of these refreshing peeps. "We'll keep Sanch hidden, and smuggle him into Ben's old room at your house. Then I'll drive on to the barn, and not say a word, but send Ben to get something out of that room. You just let him in, to see what he'll do. I'll ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... now? If the robber had had a knife in his pocket, Gum would have been a dead monkey in two seconds. But while he was unsuccessfully feeling for his knife, Gum suddenly came to, and with one violent wriggle shook itself free, and sprang on the highest shelf. The robber gave chase; then followed the most comical hunt you ever saw. The robber's face being now exposed (he had no idea that Donald had already recognised him), ...
— The Monkey That Would Not Kill • Henry Drummond
... know a great deal about their childhood and youth, or, to speak more eelishly, their grigginess and elverhood. The young grigs, when they do make their appearance, leave us in no doubt at all about their presence or their reality. They wriggle up weirs, walls, and floodgates; they force there way bodily through chinks and apertures; they find out every drain, pipe, or conduit in a given plane rectilinear figure; and when all other spots have been ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... arm, and, overcoming his mute resistance, dragged him into the first parlor. He managed to wriggle loose after a bit, however, and watched his opportunity made a dart for the smaller one off, and rushed into an alcove somewhat in shadow, intending to escape entirely later on. As he stumbled into its shelter some one, half hidden by the tall ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... Briton roar himself purple with impassioned platitude at a political meeting; but I perceive that all my neighbours take him with the utmost seriousness. Again, your literary journalist professes to wriggle in his chair over the humour of Jane Austen; to me she is the dullest lady that ever faithfully photographed the trivial. Years ago I happened to be crossing Putney Bridge, in a frock-coat and silk hat, when a passing member of the proletariat dug his ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... by a sudden thought, he put on a burst of speed, ran straight up to the leafy barrier, and dove right at it, head first as he used to "hit the center" for dear old Brighton. His maneuver did not carry him quite through, but he managed to wriggle on just in time to clear the way for Bob, who dived ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... the small tradesmen's houses, such as the crockery-shop and the harness-maker, had a Cyclops window in the middle of the gable, within an inch or two of its apex, suggesting that some forlorn rural Prentice must wriggle himself into that apartment horizontally, when he retired to rest, after the manner of the worm. So bountiful in its abundance was the surrounding country, and so lean and scant the village, that one might have thought the village had sown and planted everything it ...
— Tom Tiddler's Ground • Charles Dickens
... Bumper began to gnaw at the lining of the muff, and pretty soon got his whole body under it, and then he began to kick and wriggle to get out. He felt he was being smothered alive, and he squealed aloud. The lady finally rescued him, but not until she had torn away half the ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... stone becomes soft. Here on the right, in a little coppice beside the road, is found a place of refuge of which I give the plan as accurately as it was possible for me to take it where one had to crawl on hands and knees, and sometimes wriggle forward lying on one's stomach, over earth that was damp and rubble fallen from above, and in corridors completely filled by ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... of mad people is a wonderful sight," Verisschenzko said, as he stood by her side. "Paris has lost all good taste and sense of the fitness of things. Look! the women who are the most expert in the wriggle of the tango are mostly over forty years old! Do you see that one in the skin-tight pink robe? She is a grandmother! All are painted—all are feverish—all would be young! It is ever thus when a country is on the eve of a ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... into a muff beneath their entangled extremes, he turns over quietly, saying, "There's something very strange about the floor of this establishment,—it don't seem solid; 'pears how there's ups and downs in it." They wriggle and twist in a curious pile; endeavour to bring their knees out of "a fix"—to free themselves from the angles which they are most unmathematically working on the floor. Working and twisting,—now staggering, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... lips was throttled in his throat by steel-thewed fingers that closed about his windpipe with the suddenness of thought. The black struggled to arise—to turn upon the creature that had seized him—to wriggle from its hold; but all to no purpose. As he had been held in a mighty vise of iron he could not move. He could not scream. Those awful fingers at his throat but closed more and more tightly. His eyes bulged from their sockets. His face turned an ashy blue. Presently he relaxed once more—this ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... If only I could wriggle past that contraction in the middle, I should be safe. And if I stuck fast midway! But the more I measured the width with my eye, the less the narrowing seemed to be. To be so slightly perceptible, ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... spirit, that makes the ideal team. I don't want to see any man on Saturday standing around with his hands at his sides; as long as the ball's in play there's work for every one. Don't cry 'Down' until you can't run, crawl, wriggle, roll, or be pulled another inch. And if you're helping the runner don't stop pulling or shoving until there isn't another notch to be gained. Never mind how many tacklers there are; the ball's in play until the whistle sounds. And, one thing more, remember that you're not ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour
... returned Smith. "He's yonder behind the camp. He'd be an eel or a sarpint to wriggle ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... to fill their jars in the pond, and your huge black shadow would wriggle on the water like sleep struggling to ...
— The Crescent Moon • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... himself perhaps would. He consented to the adoption of still more drastic methods in April, and while redress was promised in certain particular instances, as in the Suigen outrage, there was no desire displayed to meet the situation fully. Taxed in Parliament, he tried to wriggle out of ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... say," put in Jake Brewer, grasping a large pickerel and thrusting his blade into its quivering body after removing the scales, "that it hurts her insides to see the critters wriggle under the knife. She air that ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... was used not only to wriggle around the line inside of ends and to squirm through difficult outlets, but to charge the line as well, a feat of which his height and strong legs rendered him well capable. He proved a consistant ground-gainer, and with Blair, who worked like ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... wall running parallel to the cliff, and about 3 feet from it. This wall rises to a height of about 4 feet before it meets the overhanging cliff, and consequently there is a long narrow passageway, about 3 feet high and 3 feet wide on the bottom, between it and the cliff. A small man might wriggle ...
— The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... caught a glimpse of it. No wonder Elias's eyes snapped as he was hurried across the yard, and led back of the barn, where there was a space between the underpinning and the ground. By lying flat one could wriggle his way under the barn, and when once beneath, there was room to ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... side, He never fail'd to save his tide, But got the start of ev'ry state, And at a change ne'er came too late; Cou'd turn his word, and oath, and faith, 375 As many ways as in a lath; By turning, wriggle, like a screw, Int' highest trust, and out, for new. For when h' had happily incurr'd, Instead of hemp, to be preferr'd, 380 And pass'd upon a government, He pay'd his trick, and out he went But, being out, and out of hopes ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... relief, but as his hand closed round it a tiny flutter passed through the fingerling; it gave a final gasp and was still. Knitting his brows in almost comical vexation, he hastened to restore it to the stream, holding it by the tail and striving to impart a life-like wriggle ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... darkened my page, and when I looked up, there was Turkey towering over Mason, with his hand on his collar, and his whip lifted. The whip did not look formidable. Mason received the threat as a joke, and laughed in Turkey's face. Perceiving, however, that Turkey looked dangerous, with a sudden wriggle, at which he was an adept, he broke free, and, trusting to his tried speed of foot, turned his head and made a grimace as he took to his heels. Before, however, he could widen the space between them sufficiently, Turkey's whip came down ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... able to escape again. He had lost all sense of direction. Even his touch on the furniture didn't help him, since everything was now displaced. Nevertheless, he continued to duck and dodge, to wriggle and creep and elude. Once Thor's clutch was actually upon him, but he managed to tear himself free with nothing worse than a long rent in his shirt-sleeve. Again Thor seized him, but only to tear his collar from the stud. A third time Thor's strong ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... If they cannot wriggle out of expressing an opinion of some sort, they will commonly retail those of some one who has already written upon the subject, and conclude by saying that though they quite admit that there is an ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... away over the meadows, and it was cold. Mr. Gabriel wrapped the cloak about Faith and fastened it, and tied her bonnet. Just now Dan was so busy handling the boat—and it's rather risky, you have to wriggle up the creek so—that he took little notice of us. Then Mr. Gabriel stood up, as if to change his position; and taking off his hat, he held it aloft, while he passed the other hand across his forehead. And leaning against the mast, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... abilities as a three-quarter rested chiefly on the fact that he could dodge well. This eel-like attribute compensated for a certain lack of pace. He was past the Donaldson's three-quarters in an instant, and running for the line, with only the back to pass, and with Clowes in hot pursuit. Another wriggle took him past the back, but it also gave Clowes time to catch him up. Clowes was a far faster runner, and he got to him just as he reached the twenty-five line. They came down together with a crash, Clowes on top, and as they ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... awaiting my arrival. On the whole, I think that being in his grasp was almost preferable to the feeling that he was dogging my steps. His left hand gripped the collar of my jacket and flannel shirt, and instantly I began to wriggle, twisting my leg about his own in an attempt to bring him to the ground; but the man was of enormous strength, and, freeing himself, he shook me as a terrier shakes a rat, until I felt there was little ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... master, astounded. He represses a wriggle of healthful satisfaction on the part of his pupils by a significant lift of his ferule, then moves ponderously up the stairs for a personal visit to the chamber of the culprit. The maid had given true report; there was no one there. Never had he been met with such ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... had honestly and honorably intended to follow the same path; to keep smiles for those above him and harsh judgments for those below him; in short, like Alfred, to wriggle his way upward. But in the depths of his being his energies were working in another direction, and they continually thrust him back where he belonged. His conflict with the street-urchins stopped of itself, it was so aimless; Pelle went in and out of their houses, and ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... look of fear disfigure his face," he continued, "and following the direction of his eyes I saw a lean brown arm with a thin hand as delicate as a woman's wriggle forward from beneath the wall of the tent towards ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... curses and groans of men who were hit as they lay or stumbled about trying to get out, made a hellish din. There was some wild shooting in return from my men, but it was all over in a moment, and as I managed to wriggle out of my tent the whole place was swarming with bearded men, shooting into the heaving canvas. At that moment I must have been clubbed on the head, for I knew no more until I found myself seated on an empty case having my head, which was dripping ...
— The Defence of Duffer's Drift • Ernest Dunlop Swinton
... she felt a trifle remorseful about her behavior. Some day she would marry him—she had got far enough to admit that—and perhaps it was unkind of her not to let the matter be settled. And at that she gave a petulant wriggle of her shoulders under her cotton blouse. Wasn't that his business? Wasn't he the one to end it, not wait on her pleasure? Were all men ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... only looking about, To see you wriggle in and out, And drawing together your slimy rings, Instead of feet, like other things: So, little worm, don't slide and slip Into your ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... our riflemen marching as escort, smart and gay in their brown forest-dress, the green thrums rippling and flying from sleeve and leggin' and open double-cape, and the raccoon-tails all a-bobbing behind their caps like the tails that April lambkins wriggle. ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... answered. "Were I a younger man you might, perhaps, accuse me of scheming to wriggle myself into your good graces, Miss Enid. But I am getting old, and, moreover, I'm a confirmed bachelor, therefore you cannot, I think, accuse me of such ulterior motives. No, I only point out this peril for your family's ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... leg, for the other was broken, seemed to be boxing Scroope, whilst Scroope was driving his big hunting knife into the brute's carcase. They went down, Scroope undermost, the leopard tearing at him. I gave a wriggle and came out of that mossy bed—I recall the sucking sound my body made as ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... our way downstairs with demure "Good morning"; they would go to church and post themselves so that they could survey our pew, and Lord Charles—who possessed the power of moving at will the whole skin of the scalp—would wriggle his hair up and down till we were choking with laughter, to our own imminent risk. After a month of this, Auntie was literally driven out of the pretty Chateau, and took refuge in a girls' school, much to our disgust, but still she was not allowed to be at rest. Mischievous ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... beche-de-mer boats become almost amphibious. Some, as they swim and dive, collect the fish into a heap on the bottom of the sea until they have a parcel worthy of being taken to the attendant dinghy, alongside which they will come with arms so full as to restrict movement to a singular wriggle of the shoulders. What would be an extremely awkward burden for a white man on shore, the expert black boy carries as he swims with case, in the course of his daily round and ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... on that suggestion, but offered to take my own tiller and lend him Grue. He couldn't wriggle out of it, seeing that his alleged motive had been the overcrowding of my boat, but he looked rather sick when Grue went aboard ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... shuddering—"just," Mr. Porson used to say when describing the thing to a friend, "like the skin of a horse determined to get rid of a gad-fly." The same moment the tiles on the roof began to clatter like so many castanets in the hands of giants, and the ground to wriggle and heave. But they were too much absorbed in what was before their eyes to heed much what went on under their feet. The oscillatory displacement of the front of the church did not at most seem to cover more than ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... his pocket for a dime, and heard himself say, "That's all right, I don't want the stuff. Take it in to that little chap in a striped suit, in the next car,—dirty little beggar, wriggled like an eel all day. This will probably make him wriggle all night. ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... Frank, tranquilly, and glancing furtively toward Burrill, who was beginning to wriggle uneasily in his chair. "Do you want to go ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... saw he kept to himself; but presently he began to wriggle backward, keeping the greasewood clump, and afterwards certain rocks and little ridges, between himself and a view of the point he had fixed upon as the spot where the shooter ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... down, Benson!" Galloway was quick to follow up his stroke, shaking his head fiercely, like a dog worrying a rat. "You were seen carrying the body downstairs, the night of the murder. You might as well own up to it, first as last. Lies will not help you. We know too much for you to wriggle out of it. And never mind smoothing your hair down like that. We know all about that scar on your forehead, and how ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... it down. Though the lizard seemed to have lost none of its spirit, the flesh was becoming weak. While it panted, its eyes twinkled with inane ferocity, and the snake, with that peculiar fearsome, gliding movement—neither wriggle nor squirm—typical of the species, slowly edged its victim under the shadow of a tussock. There both reposed, the snake calm in craft and design, the lizard waiting for the one chance of its life. Swallowing the ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... action against you when she knows the truth, is hers. But she has the right to know. To see that she knows comes within the bounds of any decent man's justifiable interference. One of us must tell her; the news would come with less grace from myself. But for you to wriggle out of your dilemma with silence, while she goes on breaking her heart, is cowardly—just as cowardly as if you'd deserted in the face of the enemy. I've no doubt you've sentenced more than one poor wretch to be shot at ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... club-house was empty, and he had just resigned himself to a solitary game, when, with a whirr and a rattle, a grey racing-car drove up, and from it emerged the same long young man whom, a couple of days earlier, he had seen wriggle out from underneath the same machine. It was Reggie Byng's habit also not to allow anything, even love, to interfere with golf; and not even the prospect of hanging about the castle grounds in the hope ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... gave a convulsive wriggle of his back and shoulders, and uttered an inarticulate "Let me ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... afternoon. A road between dusty hedges, choked, literally strangled, by a torrent of westward-streaming troops of all arms. Every few minutes there would come a break in the flow, and our motor would wriggle through, advance a few yards, and be stopped again by a widening of the torrent that jammed us into the ditch and splashed a dazzle of dust into our eyes. The dust was stifling—but ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... the game!"—there was bitter anger in his voice now. "You see the game! He wanted to get me in deep enough so that I couldn't wriggle out, deeper than ten thousand that I could get at any time on my insurance, he wanted me where I couldn't get away—and he got me. The first ten thousand wasn't enough. I went to him for a second, a third, a fourth, a fifth—hoping always that each would be the last. Each time a new note, ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... jingle set the immediate crowd in a roar. I became an object for ribald laughter and cheers; I was pushed and hustled, albeit good-naturedly enough, but none the less to my great annoyance, so that I made all haste to wriggle away and, espying a narrow lane between these canvas booths and tents, I slipped into it, took to my heels and turning a sharp corner in full career, came thus upon an ancient man who sat upon a box, puffing serenely at a long pipe and who, despite my so sudden ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... loaded "with brains," and his pack was as troublesome as the straw shoes of the Japanese horses. It was always slipping forward or backward, and as I was heavier than the Malay lad, I was always slipping down and trying to wriggle myself up on the great ridge which was the creature's backbone, and always failing, and the mahout was always stopping and pulling the rattan ropes which bound the whole arrangement together, but never succeeding in improving ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... to the Giant Suttung with the tale of how he had seen the mysterious serving-man change into a snake and wriggle through a hole in the mountain; and Suttung at once guessed that they had to deal with Odin himself. So he hurried to the hole and sat there to watch for the return ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... an awestricken voice; "there is a split, and you'll make it worse if you wriggle about so. Be a good boy, Dickie, and try to ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... very unceremoniously transformed into a muff beneath their entangled extremes, he turns over quietly, saying, "There's something very strange about the floor of this establishment,—it don't seem solid; 'pears how there's ups and downs in it." They wriggle and twist in a curious pile; endeavour to bring their knees out of "a fix"—to free themselves from the angles which they are most unmathematically working on the floor. Working and twisting,—now staggering, and again giving utterance to the coarsest language,—one of the gentry—they belong to ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... High and Far-Off Times the Elephant, O Best Beloved, had no trunk. He had only a blackish, bulgy nose, as big as a boot, that he could wriggle about from side to side; but he couldn't pick up things with it. But there was one Elephant—a new Elephant—an Elephant's Child—who was full of 'satiable curtiosity, and that means he asked ever so many questions. ...
— Just So Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... evenings. Since your father has been so worried over his business, he needs all the relaxation possible at home, he enjoys reading aloud in the evenings, and Johnny's fidgeting annoys him. A ten-year-old boy is all wriggle and racket without ...
— The Quilt that Jack Built; How He Won the Bicycle • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the other day with reading in Tertullian, that spirits or demons dilate and contract themselves, and wriggle about like worms— ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... is made to Ben Jonson:—'Horace did not screw and wriggle himselfe into great Mens famyliarity, impudentlie as ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... at home, is a light broad-cloth, with calamanco or red waistcoat and breeches; and it is remarkable that their wigs seldom hide the collar of their coats. They have always a peculiar spring in their arms, a wriggle in their bodies, and a trip in their gait. All which motions they express at once in their drinking, bowing or saluting ladies; for a distant imitation of a forward fop, and a resolution to overtop him in his way, are the distinguishing marks of ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... the wounded untended, without dressings, food, or water, and harassed by the fire from both sides and from our artillery. It was a very painful thing to watch these poor fellows moving about feebly and trying to wriggle themselves into some position of safety, and it reminded me of the wounded Dervishes after Omdurman—only these were our ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... glossy crickets, with their long filaments sticking out like the whips of four-horse stage-coaches; motionless, slug-like creatures, larvae, perhaps, more horrible in their pulpy stillness than even in the infernal wriggle of maturity! But no sooner is the stone turned and the wholesome light of day let upon this compressed and blinded community of creeping things, than all of them that enjoy the luxury of legs—and some of them have a good many—rush round wildly, butting each other and everything ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... things do happen, you know! Now then—why didn't you come to us? We have a wing quite empty. But just as you like, of course. Do you lease it from HIM?—this fellow, I mean," she added, nodding towards Lebedeff. "And why does he always wriggle so?" ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... barrens. There for hours at a time they hunted elusive grasshoppers, rushing helter-skelter over the dry moss, leaping up to strike at the flying game with their paws like a kitten, or snapping wildly to catch it in their mouths and coming down with a back-breaking wriggle to keep themselves from tumbling over on their heads. Then on again, with a droll expression and noses sharpened like exclamation ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... more than a pity," jerked out Porson, with a sudden wriggle which caused him to rock up and down upon the stiff springs of the ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... wire that it was evidently not considered necessary to place sentinels there. By throwing over their parcels first and working away the ground for more than an hour under the barbed wire, the men were able to crawl and wriggle their ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... Luck is lean, now Luck Is fat, And wise men take her as she comes: The Bowler may be sure the Bat Will share the sugarplums. So never wriggle, nor protest, Nor eye the zenith in disgust, But, Johnson, bowl your level best, And ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... would have a try, so he went to the edge of the water and spreading out his cloth on the weeds lay down on it so that his weight was distributed; in this position the weeds supported him and he managed to wriggle himself across on his face ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... going to lose forever. It must be said, in justice to her prospective son-in-law, that he was capable either of resigning himself or of frankly (with however many blushes) telling Joscelind he could n't keep his agreement, but was not capable of trying to wriggle out of his difficulty. The plan of simply telling Joscelind he couldn't,—this was the one he had fixed upon as the best, and this was the one of which I remarked to him that it had a defect which should be counted against its ...
— The Path Of Duty • Henry James
... his children: "Plague tak' thee! can thee not let the poor things be quiet? But I'll be up with thee, my gentleman: so tak' th' chamber an' be hang'd to thee, if thou wilt. Jack and little Robert shall sleep o'er the cart-house, and Boggart may rest or wriggle as he likes ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... to get at. If there is not, and especially if anything is there which he wishes to shun, a four hundred and fifty pounder cannot crash a hole large enough for you to push him through. By such a pitiful chink as that did his Infallible Highness wriggle himself out of the range of my guns, and pursue ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... days last fall when he had been so closely cornered by his creditors that it took many a writhe and a wriggle to get through. Nobody but himself, unless it was the dour Tom Barton, knew how ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... was not the liberal one she had in mind when making the preliminary arrangements. For it appeared that the young man had an appetite of which Mrs. Cafferty spoke with the respect proper to something colossal and awesome. A half-loaf did not more than break the back of a hunger which could wriggle disastrously over another half-loaf: so that, instead of being relieved by his advent, she was confronted by a more immediate and desolating bankruptcy than that from which she had attempted to escape. Exactly how to deal with this situation she did not know, and it was really ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... full of the biggest eels you ever saw. I've caught them here, often—perfectly prodigious! I tell you they're sometimes a match for a fellow; they'd almost wriggle your arm from the socket if you were not on your guard. But you're not interested in eels, I perceive. The castle's ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... Her father and mother, who are no more than her chief ministers, walk before her out of the saloon, and then she—swims after them. But swimming is not the proper word. Fishes, in making their way through the water, assist, or rather impede, their motion with no dorsal wriggle. No animal taught to move directly by its Creator adopts a gait so useless, and at the same time so graceless. Many women, having received their lessons in walking from a less eligible instructor, do move in this way, and such women this unfortunate ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... status of the owners and rulers of rural England throughout recent centuries. Our esquires did not win their estates till they had given up any particular fancy for winning their spurs. Esquire does not mean squire, and esq. does not mean anything. But it remains on our letters a little wriggle in pen and ink and an indecipherable hieroglyph twisted by the strange turns of our history, which have turned a military discipline into a pacific oligarchy, and that into a mere plutocracy at last. And there are similar historic riddles to be unpicked in the similar forms of social address. ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... not think how to fight it. After being simply dubious throughout a long pause, she in the end went into a great rage. She glared furiously at Marjory, dropped her arm as if it had burned her and moved down upon Coleman. She must have reflected that at any rate she could make him wriggle. When she was come near to him, she called out: "Rufus!" In her tone was all the old insolent statement of ownership. Coleman might have been a poodle. She knew how to call his same in a way that was anything less than a public scandal. ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... thought Lupin, "I must not wriggle about too much, or I shall risk being buried alive! ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... the cut of those solemn Presbyterian whiskers. It makes me faint to remember how many times I've tried and failed to get my hooks into him. I know you could land the deacon. I'd joyfully give you a million just to see him wriggle in ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... let it mar the mutual love, That now unites us eye to eye, If, superficially, we seem to shove Our fingers in your Irish pie— An action which, if you should so behave, Would make old MONROE wriggle in his grave. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... at him blankly. Wally gave an expressive wriggle in his chair, and Jim sat up suddenly, with a flush ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... sich as they dealt in could not be getten o' trust, although they had to be takken that way." Then he knock'd th' table three times wi' his knuckles, an' two o'th' fiddle-faced chaps 'at wor set one o' each side on him, began to wriggle abaat as if they'd getten th' murly grubs. "Stop! stop!" he sed, "one at once, if yo pleease! Brother Sawny had better give his sperit backward for a few minutes, wol we've done wi' Brother Titus's." Soa Sawny gave ovver shakkin hissen, exceptin ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... cheek from my wilful companion sent me off at a fresh angle, and presently I came in sight of the village church, sitting solitary within its circle of elms. From forth the vestry window projected two small legs, gyrating, hungry for foothold, with larceny—not to say sacrilege—in their every wriggle: a godless sight for a supporter of the Establishment. Though the rest was hidden, I knew the legs well enough; they were usually attached to the body of Bill Saunders, the peerless bad boy of the village. Bill's coveted ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... Sometimes it makes it worse,' he says. 'Th' throuble about divoorce is it always lets out iv th' bad bargain th' wan that made it bad. If I owned a half in a payin' business with ye, I'd niver let th' sun go down on a quarrel,' he says. 'But if ye had a bad mouth I'd go into coort an' wriggle out iv th' partnership because ye'ar a cantankerous old villain that no wan cud get on with,' he says. 'If people knew they cudden't get away fr'm each other they'd settle down to life, just as I detarmined to like coal smoke whin I found th' collection wasn't big enough ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... of the Temple, whose fame so bragged, Is burning alive in Paris square! How can he curse, if his mouth is gagged? Or wriggle his neck, with a collar there? 40 Or heave his chest, which a band goes round? Or threat with his fist, since his arms are spliced? Or kick with his feet, now his legs are bound? —Thinks John, I will call upon Jesus Christ. ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... train and a drowsy sense of confusion and smoke, he could not for an instant think where he was; but it did not take long for him to open his eyes, recollect the happenings of the previous day, smile with satisfaction, and hurriedly wriggle ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... see it's going to be nip and tuck if we ever get out of this? You've shown yourself, from start to finish, a miserable cheat; there's no trust to be put in either your judgment or your intentions. Be still," he commanded, as she sought to wriggle out of his grasp, to avoid the direct blaze of his eyes. "I am going to do what I can for you; to see you safe through this, if I can. Not because you are anything to me, but just because you are Ben Gaynor's, and he ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... was equal to any emergency, but this time she was too frightened to object, to wriggle in the firm grasp, or indeed, to do anything other than allow him to take her wherever he chose, and he ...
— Princess Polly At Play • Amy Brooks
... black head and forked tongue came hissing among the trees again, darting full forty feet at a stretch. As it approached, Medea tossed the contents of the gold box right down the monster's wide-open throat. Immediately, with an outrageous hiss and a tremendous wriggle—flinging his tail up to the tip-top of the tallest tree and shattering all its branches as it crashed heavily down again—the dragon fell at full length upon the ground ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... state, that in consequence of a late discovery by one BECHAMP, of living things in chalk (he has actually seen 'em wriggle!) we are no longer at liberty to say, "As different as Chalk and Cheese." The difference is gone! If it is not, we would ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various
... by his sponsors at baptism, but it was conferred upon him, by general consent of the several ministers, on account of his inability to walk as other men do. In fact, Hop-Frog could only get along by a sort of interjectional gait—something between a leap and a wriggle—a movement that afforded illimitable amusement, and of course consolation, to the king, for (notwithstanding the protuberance of his stomach and a constitutional swelling of the head) the king, by his whole court, was accounted ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... applause for her performance, as much applause as the other, which shows that an operatic audience will not only tolerate, but even applaud a singer who substitutes physical attractions, temperament and a peculiar wriggle of the spinal column for beautiful voice and ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... those whose society was most attractive to her. Connie tried all she could to conquer her dislike, and entice the wayward thing to her heart; but nothing would do. Sometimes she would seem to soften for a moment; but all at once, with a wriggle and a backward spasm in the arms of the person who carried her, she would manifest such a fresh access of repulsion, that, for fear of an outburst of fierce and objurgatory wailing which might upset poor Connie altogether, she would be borne off hurriedly,—sometimes, I confess, rather ungently ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... productions the signs of a progressive movement—the possibility, at least, of a true advance. For the contortions of the 'Precious' writers were less the result of their inability to write well than of their desperate efforts to do so. They were trying, as hard as they could, to wriggle themselves into a beautiful pose; and, naturally enough, they were unsuccessful. They were, in short, too self-conscious; but it was in this very self-consciousness that the real hope for the future lay. The teaching of Malherbe, if it ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... wild to avenge to inflict an insult to wriggle he has failed in his duty he has been kept to his bed for the last two days I was careful not ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... a loud whisper, "why do they crowd these lifts in this disgusting way? And WHY," with another wriggle, "do they permit PERSONS with packages to ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... so if you knew as much about it as I do," answered Ben, with a sudden frown and wriggle, as if he still felt the smart of the blows he had received. "We don't call it splendid; do we, Sancho?" he added, making a queer noise, which caused the poodle to growl and bang the floor irefully with his tail, as he lay close to his master's ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... I had was Dick's broad back, for the sapling to which he was tied was small. I drew my hunting-knife. One more wriggle brought me close to Dick, with my face near his hands, which were bound behind him. I slipped the blade under the lasso, ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... so unexpected that it was astounding. Lottie actually dropped her legs, gave a wriggle, and lay and stared. A new idea will stop a crying child when nothing else will. Also it was true that while Lottie disliked Miss Minchin, who was cross, and Miss Amelia, who was foolishly indulgent, she rather liked Sara, little as she knew her. She ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Tom, as the other boys tried to wriggle out from under the tent. "We've got to get wet now, anyway; but perhaps, if we stay as we are, we can manage to ...
— Harper's Young People, June 29, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... steering do you call that? Look at your damned wake. Like an eel's wriggle. Keep her full, and less ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... was leaning over the gunwale to rearrange the gear. From him I looked up the beach, to the ridge behind which the others had disappeared, and to the creepers overhanging the cliff. Suddenly it came into my head that by gaining the upper end of the ridge, where it met the cliff, I could wriggle under these creepers, and observe from behind them all that went on, as well on the next beach as on this. And with another glance at Plinny's ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... they consider the most perfect, isn't he?' Is it success to be the occasion of a young Englishman's having to stammer as you would have to stammer at such a moment for old England? No, no; success is to have made people wriggle to another ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... cried Polly, getting back into her own corner with a happy little wriggle, all unconscious of Grandpapa's conspiracy with Mother Fisher in ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... of silk. But still he followed the dreadful roar of the Minotaur, which now grew louder and louder, and finally so very loud that Theseus fully expected to come close upon him, at every new zizgag and wriggle of the path. And at last, in an open space, at the very center of the labyrinth, he did discern ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... "Selina Brown and Laura Nelson ought to have more principle than engage in anything so dishonorable. They've managed to wriggle out of it at Marian's expense, but they have both lost caste by it. Depend upon it, a great many girls here will have their own opinion of the whole affair and it won't be complimentary to ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... little beggars one at a time—go for them, throttle them, wring their necks, jump on them; and if they wriggle, stamp!" ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... worst, Bertrand. What is man? a beast of prey. An hour ago, and I'd have taken a crust, and gone in peace. But no: they would trick and juggle, curse them; they would wriggle and cheat! Well, I accept the ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... o' sin, Make all this row 'bout lettin' of 'em in? In law, p'r'aps nut; but there's a diffurence, ruther, Betwixt your mother-'n-law an' real mother, [Derisive cheers.] An' I, for one, shall wish they'd all ben som'eres, Long 'z U.S. Texes are sech reg'lar comers. But, O my patience! must we wriggle back Into th' ole crooked, pettyfoggin' track, When our artil'ry-wheels a road hev cut Stret to our purpose ef we keep the rut? 280 War's jes' dead waste excep' to wipe the slate Clean for the cyph'rin' of some nobler fate. [Applause.] Ez for dependin' on their oaths an' thet, 'twun't bind ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... to explore some caves—dry at low water—on the opposite side. Some of these are wide, lofty, and well-lighted from without. We walk in and out and around them, as if in great, irregular, Gothic halls. Some are narrow and dark. Now, we crawl into them on hands and knees; now, we wriggle onward a few feet, serpent-like, flat on our bellies; now, we are suddenly able to stand upright in pitch darkness, hearing faint moaning sounds of pent-up winds, when we are silent, and long reverberations of our own voices, ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... contemptible to let someone else be blamed for what you have done," he said once to her. "I understand that you are not really a coward, Sarah—you have to fight an extra enemy called Fear. So when you do wrong and see a chance to escape blame and punishment and refuse to wriggle out, you are really braver than the girl who isn't afraid to say she did it. And every time you conquer Fear, Sarah, you've made the next conquest easier. You'll find ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... a thing. There is not, in or out of an attorney's office in the county of Erie, or elsewhere, one who could raise a doubt, or a particle of a doubt, about the meaning of this provision of the Constitution. He may act as witnesses do, sometimes, on the stand. He may wriggle, and twist, and say he cannot tell, or cannot remember. I have seen many such efforts in my time, on the part of witnesses, to falsify and deny the truth. But there is no man who can read these words of the Constitution of the United States, and say they are ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... usual, and he was out in the room. The window was open a little at the top, same as I've had it before once or twice these spring days, and Sol never took notice. The worst of it is, my husband told me I hadn't orter keep it open, even a speck, while the bird was out of his cage. 'Sol can wriggle through the smallest kind of a crack,' says he; and it appears he was right. My, but he'll be angry! 'Marthy, it'll ...
— Peggy in Her Blue Frock • Eliza Orne White
... then he dropped her like a hot brick. By the Eternal, Rollins, he hasn't gotten off with that old love yet, you mark my words. There's Indian blood in her veins, and a look in her eye that makes me wriggle, sometimes. I watched her last night at parade when she drove out here with that copper-faced old squaw, her mother. For all her French and Italian education and her years in New York and Paris, that girl's ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... in the midst of a beautiful plain mostly on the left bank of the river Vistula. All the main part of the city lies close to the river, and the streets are so twisted and crooked that it is almost impossible to picture them. They wriggle here and there like snakes of streets. The houses, of course, are very old, and with their heavy barred doors and solid shutters, look very strange ...
— The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw • Colonel George Durston
... moon also, the earth is motionless: these are natural physical prejudices. But that lobsters are good for the blood, because when cooked they are red; that eels cure paralysis because they wriggle; that the moon affects our maladies because one day someone observed that a sick man had an increase of fever during the waning of the moon; these ideas and a thousand others are the errors of ancient charlatans who judged without reasoning, and ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... mean, Mrs. Stuyvesant-Knox happen to ask for a visit from me?" I ventured to wriggle out, like a worm who isn't sure whether it had better turn or not. I was certain that for some reason of her own, Mother had suggested the idea, if only hypnotically; but she seemed almost too frank as she answered, and it was frightening ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... warn't doin' nothin' but peekin'," said the girl, trying to wriggle away from Polly's grasp. But Polly ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... it will give us anything at all in the way of "Liberty," as most people understand that word. In the place of the rusty old manacles, the chain and shot, the iron yoke, cruel, ill-fitting, violent implements from which it was yet possible to wriggle and escape to outlawry, it may be the world will discover only a completer restriction, will develop a scheme of neat gyves, light but efficient, beautifully adaptable to the wrists and ankles, never chafing, never oppressing, slipped on and worn until at last, like the mask of the ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... just a lump of ice!" Irene Paul often said, putting her own plump arms about Adelle's thin little body; and while Adelle tried to wriggle out of the embrace she teased her by assuming the man's ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... mad people is a wonderful sight," Verisschenzko said, as he stood by her side. "Paris has lost all good taste and sense of the fitness of things. Look! the women who are the most expert in the wriggle of the tango are mostly over forty years old! Do you see that one in the skin-tight pink robe? She is a grandmother! All are painted—all are feverish—all would be young! It is ever thus when a country is on the eve of a ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... rich in figures. Metaphor is an enigma, wherein the thief who is plotting a stroke, the prisoner who is arranging an escape, take refuge. No idiom is more metaphorical than slang: devisser le coco (to unscrew the nut), to twist the neck; tortiller (to wriggle), to eat; etre gerbe, to be tried; a rat, a bread thief; il lansquine, it rains, a striking, ancient figure which partly bears its date about it, which assimilates long oblique lines of rain, with the dense and slanting pikes ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... themselves, seeing that they were utterly worn out. This unforeseen catastrophe evidently astonished their driver. Slipping from the box, he stood resting his hands against the side of the britchka, while Chichikov tumbled and floundered about in the mud, in a vain endeavour to wriggle clear of the stuff. ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... we going to get ourselves free?" Tom demanded: "I've been trying to wriggle my hands out, but I'll admit that ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... Westhouse!' cried a chorus of voices. 'Yes, it is Gauger Westhouse,' said the man calmly, giving his neck a wriggle as though he were in pain. 'I represent the King's law, and in its name I arrest ye all, and declare all the contraband goods which I see around me to be confiscate and forfeited, according to the second section of the first clause of the statute upon ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... had selected the club-house was empty, and he had just resigned himself to a solitary game, when, with a whirr and a rattle, a grey racing-car drove up, and from it emerged the same long young man whom, a couple of days earlier, he had seen wriggle out from underneath the same machine. It was Reggie Byng's habit also not to allow anything, even love, to interfere with golf; and not even the prospect of hanging about the castle grounds in the hope of catching a glimpse of Alice Faraday and ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... mouth could open in a bleat of protest, the Master's hand had returned him to the warm dugs. Again came the harsh, suspicious nose of the foster about Finn's tail, and this time a low growl followed the resentful sniff, and blind, helpless, unformed little jelly that Finn was, instinct made him wriggle fearfully from under that cold nose. The language in which bitches speak to the very young among puppies is simplicity itself. The Master, human though he was, had not failed to catch the sense of this observation of the ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... kink for repudiation in general led him to promulgate the theory that one generation cannot bind another for the payment of a debt. Hamilton, having disposed of Jefferson's attempts, under the signature of Aristides, to wriggle out of both these accusations, discoursed upon the disloyal fact that the Secretary of State was the declared opponent of every important measure which had been devised by the Government, and proceeded to lash him for his hypocrisy in sitting daily at the right hand of the President ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... persistence which took no thought of the pain she was inflicting upon herself, she began working her hands to and fro behind her until she fancied that the pressure on her wrists was not so great as before. With an effort she managed to wriggle over against the wall and so to straighten ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... break it. Take salt only with a clean knife. Dip not the meat in the same. Hold not thy knife upright but sloping, and lay it down at the right hand of plate with blade on plate. Look not earnestly at any other that is eating. When moderately satisfied leave the table. Sing not, hum not, wriggle not.... Smell not of thy Meat; make not a noise with thy Tongue, Mouth, Lips, or Breath in Thy Eating and Drinking.... When any speak to thee, stand up. Say not I have heard it before. Never endeavour to help him out if he tell it not right. ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... bottom, where we must cross a soft mound formed of the powdery dust thrown off by the avalanche in its rush. Leo slipped over safely, but I, following a yard or two to his right, of a sudden felt the hard crust yield beneath me. An ill-judged but quite natural flounder and wriggle, such as a newly-landed flat-fish gives upon the sand, completed the mischief, and with one piercing but swiftly ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... scratching every hour, not each other's eyes but the History papers. I am a fish out of water.... It makes me feel growly all the time.... I can not get away from my ball and chain.... I think we'll make things snap and crackle a little.... This is the biggest swamp I ever tried to wriggle through.... We'll both put on our thinking caps and I guess get quite a lot of funnies in the reminiscences.... Now here is the publisher's screech for money.... O, to get out of this History prison!... I am too tired to write—I mean too lazy.... No warhorse ever panted for the rush of battle ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... that the girl took less notice of him than she did of his companion. At first he tried to think that he was dreaming, and for a long while he kept his eyes shut very tight to what he did not want to see, but in spite of his efforts, the truth managed to wriggle through, and then the young man gave up trying to deceive himself, and set about finding some way to get the better of ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... looked and saw Lovelace Peyton, I began to shudder too. He was hanging half in and half out of a little window high up in the shed like a skylight, and the big bottle was slowly slipping as he tried to wriggle either in or out. There was no ladder in sight, and neither of us was near tall enough to reach him. He was beginning to whimper and be scared himself, and I could see the heavy bottle start to slip faster from his arm. We had less than a second to lose. ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Florence felt very uneasy. She tried to wriggle away from her companion, who held her arm firmly. ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... On this he rose up in his place and cried: "Wata[n] Thanks! I'm glad some of them will die, for they are getting so thick that they tread on me." He fairly shook with joy at the thought, so that he fell over backward and could not get on his feet again, but had to wriggle off on his back, as the ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... the Secret Service net is around the place, and no suspected person can get away?" muttered the submarine boy. "Well, that's it should be. I wonder if there are any more of this strange crew—men or women spies that don't happen to have suspected so far? If there are, I don't believe they'll wriggle through the meshes of old Uncle Sam's ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... one moment, where the bushes grew sparse; crawling in among some sheltering rocks at another, and even getting down to wriggle along like so many snakes, when not even so much as a bush offered a means of hiding from observation, in case hostile eyes happened to be turned upwards toward the hilltop at the ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... a time," began Dan, with a twinkle in his eye, "the pigs were swine." Roseen gave an impatient wriggle. "Well, well, it's too bad to be tormentin' ye that way. I'll begin right now.—Well, very well then. There was wan time the Spider an' the Gout was thravellin' together, goin' to seek their fortun's. Well, they come to ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... the fact that the hands holding it tightened their grip Psmith deduced that Mr Bickersdyke's attention was not wholly concentrated on the City news. Moreover, his toes wriggled. And when a man's toes wriggle, he is interested in ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... vicarage. The thick and darkened sunshine of Bludston flooded the asphalt of the yard, which sent up a reek of heat, causing curates to fan themselves with their black straw hats, and little boys in clean collars to wriggle in sticky discomfort, while in the still air above the ignoble town hung the heavy pall of smoke. Presently there was the sound of wheels and the sight of the head of the vicar's coachman above the coping of the ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... back, back, back into a thousand years ago," began Akela, and the Cubs gave a wriggle of satisfaction, and prepared to take that mighty ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay
... asked with the expression of pained surprise that never failed to make his ward wriggle with delight. There were links in the educational scheme that Jimmie forged better than any of the cooperative guardians. Not even Jimmie realized the value of the giggle as a developing factor in Eleanor's existence. ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... causes us to wriggle, and strain, and stammer, and we do not recognize the root of the trouble and shun it, and learn to yield and quietly relax our nerves and muscles, of course the strain becomes worse. Then, rather than suffer from it any longer, we keep away from people, just as the blushing man is tempted to do. ...
— The Freedom of Life • Annie Payson Call
... on my feet in such a way that I was very uncomfortable and tried to readjust matters, but the slightest wriggle of my toe was enough to make him snap at it so fiercely that nothing but thick woollen bedclothes saved me from being ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... harder than you think. I can make him sound lovable, but I cannot make him sound good. Of course I might leave out his doubtful qualities, and describe him merely as beautiful and affectionate; I might ... but I couldn't. I think Chum's habitual smile would get larger, he would wriggle the end of himself more ecstatically than ever if he heard himself summed up as beautiful and affectionate. Anyway, I couldn't do it, for I get carried away when I speak of him and I ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... have once fairly got my legs in St. Stephen's, I shall soon have my hands in office: 'power,' says some one, 'is a snake that when it once finds a hole into which it can introduce its head, soon manages to wriggle in the rest of its body.'" With such meditations I endeavoured to beguile the time and cheat myself into forgetfulness of the lameness of my horse, and the dripping wetness of his rider. At last ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... progressive movement—the possibility, at least, of a true advance. For the contortions of the 'Precious' writers were less the result of their inability to write well than of their desperate efforts to do so. They were trying, as hard as they could, to wriggle themselves into a beautiful pose; and, naturally enough, they were unsuccessful. They were, in short, too self-conscious; but it was in this very self-consciousness that the real hope for the future lay. The teaching of Malherbe, if it did ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... draw Dicky into a corner of the playground, and with tender kisses and promises of inviolable secrecy coax him to open his little heart to you, and tell you whether he is really happy; leave such folly to women—it is a weakness to wriggle into the ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... narrow swath with one of the portable disintegrator rays; long enough to take him far away from the Kabit, and just wide enough to pass a man. I'll run along this deep groove, just below the reach of the monster. I can make good time; the serpent'll have to slash and wriggle his way over or through this slimy growth. ...
— The Terror from the Depths • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... Yet he managed to wriggle his body from under this rush of feet, and, by-and-bye, to raise himself, still grasping the sidearm. Men of the 4th were pouring thick and fast through the embrasure, and turning to the right in pursuit of the enemy now running along ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... he learnt by grim experience. When first he moved it, it drove him headlong into inky darkness. His gills crumpled in the rough embrace of the mud, and his eyes and sucker were choked with slime. It was only a desperate, convulsive, aimless wriggle that freed him. The next time he cleared his immediate surroundings, and shot a full six inches upwards, only to sink slowly to the ooze again, motionless, and exhausted. He ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... a glad light, and she took Patricia in her arms. "It's perfectly glorious, Miss Pat, darling," she said with a rapturous squeeze. "I'm so delighted I can't help kissing you on the spot," and she did it with a heartiness that made Patricia wriggle. ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... grasshoppers, rushing helter-skelter over the dry moss, leaping up to strike at the flying game with their paws like a kitten, or snapping wildly to catch it in their mouths and coming down with a back-breaking wriggle to keep themselves from tumbling over on their heads. Then on again, with a droll expression and noses sharpened like exclamation points, ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... fact that I did bring up by Doc's camp-fire shows that I am able to take care of myself. If I get into scrapes, I can wriggle out of them again," maintained the kid of the camp, with a brazen look, while his eyes showed flinty sparks, caused by the inspiring purpose hidden behind them, which had ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... everywhere,—in houses, in churches, in stores, in town, in country, on land, at sea, in public, in private,—extensive sub-orders of mammalian Invertebrata. They crouch and crawl through the world with pliant length. They wriggle through the knot-holes of fear and policy, when their stouter-boned brethren oppose them. They creep into corners and cracks when the giant, Progress, strides before them, and quake at the thunder of his tread. They cling, trembling, to the old mouldering scaffolding of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... 'He's the one, in this country, whom they consider the most perfect, isn't he?' Is it success to be the occasion of a young Englishman's having to stammer as you would have to stammer at such a moment for old England? No, no; success is to have made people wriggle to another ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... over Mason, with his hand on his collar, and his whip lifted. The whip did not look formidable. Mason received the threat as a joke, and laughed in Turkey's face. Perceiving, however, that Turkey looked dangerous, with a sudden wriggle, at which he was an adept, he broke free, and, trusting to his tried speed of foot, turned his head and made a grimace as he took to his heels. Before, however, he could widen the space between them sufficiently, ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... you some?" exclaimed aunt Corinne with a wriggle. "I had a gold dollar, but I b'lieve that little old man with a bag on ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Tall, painted carts were being harnessed to mules. Visions of men being lathered and shaved, of women having their hair dressed or their hair searched, Sicilian fashion, of youths trying to curl upward scarcely born mustaches, of children being hastily attired in clothes which made them wriggle and squint, came to the eyes from houses in which privacy was not so much scorned as unthought of, utterly unknown. Turkeys strolled in and out among the toilet-makers. Pigs accompanied their mistresses from doorway to doorway as dogs ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... can't really turn the serious-minded bird down. Besides, I have to admit to myself that it's darn interesting watching the vim that "Rus" puts into this secret practice. Some nights it's mighty chilly and with the grass wet down it's enough to make your spinal column wriggle, but "Rus" ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... that he was in danger, threw herself on the ground and tried to wriggle forward to him, but the low growth made the passage of her larger body impossible. She drew herself back and called frantically to the boy. She could hear the commotion and see the parrots one by one flying clumsily out as they escaped ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... The leopard, standing on one hind leg, for the other was broken, seemed to be boxing Scroope, whilst Scroope was driving his big hunting knife into the brute's carcase. They went down, Scroope undermost, the leopard tearing at him. I gave a wriggle and came out of that mossy bed—I recall the sucking sound my body made ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... crossing a river, was carried away by the current, but managed to wriggle on to a bundle of thorns which was floating by, and was thus carried at a great rate down-stream. A Fox caught sight of it from the bank as it went whirling along, and called out, "Gad! the passenger fits ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... the air from one swinging rope to another, and springing up the bars of the cage. The little monkey jumps, catches a rope, drops to the ground, and springs at another rope. Now he is in a corner, the others have him; but no, with a dive and a wriggle he has slipped through them, and is chattering and grimacing on the other ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... nip and tuck if we ever get out of this? You've shown yourself, from start to finish, a miserable cheat; there's no trust to be put in either your judgment or your intentions. Be still," he commanded, as she sought to wriggle out of his grasp, to avoid the direct blaze of his eyes. "I am going to do what I can for you; to see you safe through this, if I can. Not because you are anything to me, but just because you are Ben Gaynor's, and he is my ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... told off to keep an eye on outgoing trains and the docks, and the entrances to the tubes and underground railways were watched. After enclosing London, Merrington made a wider cast, and long before nightfall he had flung around England a net of fine meshes through which no man could wriggle. ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... bank and rest till dawn. In the course of time they reach the quiet upper reaches of the river or go up rivulets and drainpipes to the isolated ponds. Their impulse to go on must be very imperious, for they may wriggle up the wet moss by the side of a waterfall or even make a short excursion ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... At a table she sat, and punched the button with the air of milady ringing for her carriage. The waiter came with his large-chinned, low-voiced manner of respectful familiarity. Liz smoothed her silken skirt with a satisfied wriggle. She made the most of it. Here she could order and be waited upon. It was all that her world offered her of the ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... for her sake, as it were. Why, didst thou see, it was godly Mr. Henwick that held her head when he wriggled so, and old Madam Holbrook had herself helped upon a chair to see the better. I wonder how long I might wriggle, before great and godly folk would take so much notice of me? But, I suppose, that comes of being a pastor's daughter. She'll be so set up there'll be no speaking to her now. Faith! thinkest thou that Hota really had bewitched her? She gave me corn-cakes, the last time I was at Pastor Tappau's, ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... so, after the smallest second's hesitation,—the woman in one stifling both the child's and the substitute's hesitation,—to allow the gaudy stranger to walk beside one the length of C Street. And though the sidewalk was crowded, for stocks were up, and one had to wriggle one's way through the people packed tight in front of the brokers' offices, yet, in the very teeth of the townsfolk, to joy shamelessly in flirtation with this gorgeous, shining, flattering stranger—a social outlaw, ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... is all up with thee and us!" And, in truth, the horse's tail was already singed to a coal, for the serpent was hard behind them, blazing like fire. The horse perceived that he could do no more, so he gave one last wriggle and died; but they, poor things, were left alive. "Whom have you been listening to?" said the serpent as he flew up to them. "Don't you know that I only am your father and tsar, and have the right to carry ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... men sailed right into the heart of the pack, which all previous polar explorers had regarded as certain death. It is not merely difficult to grasp this; it is simply impossible — to us, who with a motion of the hand can set the screw going, and wriggle out of the first difficulty we encounter. These men were heroes — heroes in the highest ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... With a last swift wriggle the creeping figure was at the foot of the net which shrouded Jack. The latter looked down and saw that the man was literally covered from head to foot with masses of the swarming insects. Then, ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... nice circus, and all the boys from the camp went to it—also Edward, who managed to scramble over and wriggle under benches till he was ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... eels, we know a great deal about their childhood and youth, or, to speak more eelishly, their grigginess and elverhood. The young grigs, when they do make their appearance, leave us in no doubt at all about their presence or their reality. They wriggle up weirs, walls, and floodgates; they force there way bodily through chinks and apertures; they find out every drain, pipe, or conduit in a given plane rectilinear figure; and when all other spots have been fully occupied, they take to dry land, like veritable snakes, and cut straight ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... refuge. Buffeted by the billows, he makes shift at last frantically to clamber back into it; he snatches the small, damp towels, and attempts to dry his shivering limbs; his clothes have fallen on the wet floor; he cannot force his blue toes into his oozy socks. At the moment he is attempting to wriggle himself into his trousers the horse is hitched-to again, and the jerky and jolty journey back up the beach begins. If the hair of a boy of ten could turn white in a single morning, there would be many a hoary-headed youngster ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... hunter said contemptuously; "why, a redskin would make no more noise in cutting them holes and gashes, than you would in cutting a hunk of deer's flesh for your dinner. He would lie on the ground, and wriggle from one to another like an eel; but I reckon he didn't begin till the camp was still. The canoes wasn't hauled up till we had sarched the woods, as we thought, and then we was moving about close by them till ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... then I thought it to be; soon at its look and feel, impatience got the better of me; hurredly I covered it with my body and shed my sperm in it. Then with what curiosity I paddled my fingers in it afterwards, again to stiffen, thrust, wriggle, and spend. All this I recollect as if it occurred but yesterday, I shall recollect it to the last day of my life, for it was a honey-moon of novelty, years afterwards I often thought of it when ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... put in Jake Brewer, grasping a large pickerel and thrusting his blade into its quivering body after removing the scales, "that it hurts her insides to see the critters wriggle under the knife. ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... side to side, He never fail'd to save his tide, But got the start of ev'ry state, And at a change ne'er came too late; Cou'd turn his word, and oath, and faith, 375 As many ways as in a lath; By turning, wriggle, like a screw, Int' highest trust, and out, for new. For when h' had happily incurr'd, Instead of hemp, to be preferr'd, 380 And pass'd upon a government, He pay'd his trick, and out he went But, being out, and out of hopes To mount his ladder (more) of ropes, Wou'd ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... done," he said once to her. "I understand that you are not really a coward, Sarah—you have to fight an extra enemy called Fear. So when you do wrong and see a chance to escape blame and punishment and refuse to wriggle out, you are really braver than the girl who isn't afraid to say she did it. And every time you conquer Fear, Sarah, you've made the next conquest easier. You'll find that ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... she said gayly. "I pity you, Mr. Bower. You cannot wriggle out of your difficulty. The snow will soon be a foot deep in the valley. Goodness only knows what would have become of us up ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... quietly enjoying herself. In early life she had been accustomed to impale fools on epigrams, like flies on pins, to see them wriggle. But with advancing years she had lost in some measure the faculty of nice discrimination,—it was pleasant to see her victims squirm, whether they were fools or friends. Even one's friends, she argued, were not ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... swayed in the darkness below the hatch, then the fellow's head and shoulders appeared; but, as we reached to seize him, he evaded our outstretched fingers by a quick wriggle, flung himself safely to the deck on the far side of the hatch, and leaping to the bulwark, dove into the river with ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... Vigilance," I said familiarly, endeavoring to wriggle in a way that WOULD have shaken a tail, had it been my good fortune to be the owner of one—"Good-morrow, good Mrs. Vigilance—I'm glad to meet ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... modestly said that he was not likely to succeed where his elders had failed but he would have a try, so he went to the edge of the water and spreading out his cloth on the weeds lay down on it so that his weight was distributed; in this position the weeds supported him and he managed to wriggle himself across on his face to the ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... notice, when she asked me (in that musical voice of hers, with more volume in it, as it seemed to me, than all other voices), 'What are you doing little one? Why do you look at me?'—I used to come nearer and wriggle and bite my finger-nails, and redden and say, 'I do not know.' And if she chanced to stroke my hair with her white hand, and ask me how old I was, I would run away and ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... seemed in some way twisted. It ached with an insistence and annoyance only second to the wound. All his most determined efforts to wriggle it straight failed lamentably. Indeed, he almost fancied that ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... painted to a perfect peachiness, young—twenty-four and looking less; old as the world and wise. She was gay. She did not much care if it snowed; she knew enough to wriggle in somewhere, somehow, out of it. The years had not yet scared ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... stretched on some tree-roots while we prospected. We should have known enough by that time to leave four or five men on guard close by; as it was, when the men still on board the dhow began kicking up a babel, Fred and I came running and jumping back through the marsh just in time to see a crocodile wriggle off into the water, with the corpse in his jaws feet first. Fred fired a shotted salute, but missed, ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... himself say, "That's all right, I don't want the stuff. Take it in to that little chap in a striped suit, in the next car,—dirty little beggar, wriggled like an eel all day. This will probably make him wriggle all night. Never ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... apart, and gesticulating so vehemently, with the Hebrew stamp on every line of their dark, keen faces, are blockade-runners: they bewail their captivity more loudly than their fellows; but, be sure, they will wriggle out, soonest of all, if freedom can be purchased by hard swearing or gold. The profits of a single successful venture are simply fabulous; the smugglers are frequently captured with dollars on their persons by tens of thousands: they will part readily with a share of the plunder to any accommodating ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... observation to the corner which was nearest me. There I beheld the devils with pitchforks, tossing the damned up into the air that they might fall headlong on poisoned hatchets or barbed pikes, there to wriggle their bowels out. After a time the wretches would crawl in multitudes, one upon another, to the top of one of the burning crags, there to be broiled like mutton; from there they would be snatched afar, to the top of one of the mountains of eternal ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... cat that saved the situation and its life at the same time. Mary-'Gusta was near the edge of the pine grove and Con was close at her heels. David gave one more convulsive, desperate wriggle, slid from the girl's arms and disappeared through the pines like a ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... him, on the occasion to which we are so guardedly referring, both in a wig and out of it; he passed behind a screen without it, and immediately (as quickly as we write) popped out in it, giving it a finishing touch rather like the butler's wriggle to his coat as he goes to the door. There are the two kinds of learned brothers, those who use the screen, and those who (so far as the jury knows) sleep in their wigs. The latter are the swells, and include the judges; whom, however, we have seen in the public ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... flatten'd along the beam, scarce daring to breathe. But at length, when the man had pass'd below for the sixth time, I found heart to wriggle myself toward the doorway over which the gallows protruded. By slow degrees, and pausing whenever the fellow drew near, I crept close up to the wall: then, waiting the proper moment, cast my legs over, ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... attractive to her. Connie tried all she could to conquer her dislike, and entice the wayward thing to her heart; but nothing would do. Sometimes she would seem to soften for a moment; but all at once, with a wriggle and a backward spasm in the arms of the person who carried her, she would manifest such a fresh access of repulsion, that, for fear of an outburst of fierce and objurgatory wailing which might upset poor ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... behind the plantation. There was no sheltering cove to lie in on the river front; and besides, to make the visit at the regular pier was so hopelessly commonplace. Any of the ordinary palace yachts could do the thing that way. But it took a gypsy craft like Gadabout to wriggle up the little back-country creek and to land among the chickens and the geese and—bulls perhaps; but then all explorers ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... eel!" Bob glanced admiringly at his friend. "I believe you just wriggle by on the strength of ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... although you are changed indeed since first the colonel, your father, presented you to me at Oxford. However, I will try." The king tried, but in vain. He was stouter than Harry, although less broadly built, and had none of the lissomness which enabled the latter to wriggle through the bars. "It is useless," he said at last. "Providence is against me. It is the will of God that I should remain here. It may be the decree of Heaven that even yet I may sit again on the throne ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... scraped some snow off a nearby log, and set the baby down there while he took off his coat and wrapped it around him, buttoning it like a bag over arms and all. The baby watched him knowingly, its eyes round and dark blue and shining, and gave a contented little wriggle when Bud picked it up ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... had been ordered. He went forward, at first, with a slow waddle, and as the venomous sheep came to meet him in bounces, he then went to meet them in wriggles; so that in a while he went so fast that you could see nothing of him but a head and a wriggle. He dealt with the sheep in this way, a jump and a chop for each, and he never missed his jump and he never missed his chop. When he got his grip he swung round on it as if it was a hinge. The swing began with the chop, and it ended with the bit loose and the sheep giving its ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... preliminary having been concluded, the few jurymen who had managed to wriggle through the judicial sieve were allowed to withdraw, the balance of the calendar was adjourned, those spectators who were standing up were ordered to sit down and those already sitting down were ordered to sit somewhere else, the prisoners ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... No glow on its face, no ringlets to grace Its brow, and no ear for my song; Hush'd the caves of its breath, and the finger of death The raised features hath flatten'd along. The eyes' wonted beam, and the eyelids' quick gleam— The intelligent sight, are no more; But the worms of the soil, as they wriggle and coil, Come hither their dwellings to bore. No lineament here is left to declare If monarch or chief art thou; Alexander the Brave, as the portionless slave That on dunghill expires, is as low. Thou delver ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... mean, so don't wriggle. You met Simmonds when he was in trouble, and just offered to take his place for a day or so, thereby doing him a good turn—isn't ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... P.M. in the last week of June—the fire is carefully made and chinked. An hour later it is throwing its grateful warmth and light directly into camp, and nowhere else. The camp turns in. Not to wriggle and quarrel with obdurate stubs, but to sleep. And sleep they do. The sound, deep, restful sleep of healthy young manhood, inhaling pure mountain air on the healthiest bed yet known ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... eagerly eaten by the fish, which appear to thrive on them better than on dead meat. Having great tenacity of life, if not snapped up immediately by the fish they remain alive for a day or two, and, as they wriggle about on the bottom, are almost certain to be finally eaten; whereas the particles of dead flesh that fall to the bottom are largely neglected by the fish and begin to putrefy in a few hours. In the fish troughs there are, therefore, certain gains in both ...
— New England Salmon Hatcheries and Salmon Fisheries in the Late 19th Century • Various
... uniform ranks, like an army. Then came the Boneetas, with their flashing blue flanks. Then, like a third distinct regiment, wormed and twisted through the water like Archimedean screws, the quivering Wriggle-tails; followed in turn by the rank and file of the Trigger-fish—so called from their quaint dorsal fins being set in their backs with a comical curve, as if at half-cock. Far astern the rear was brought ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... one of his claws. That knife would never have cut Harry's jacket-tail off, though, and when Effie had tried for some time she saw that this was so and gave it up. But with her help Harry managed to wriggle quietly out of his sleeves, so that the dragon had only an Eton jacket in his other claw. Then the children crept on tiptoe to a crack in the rocks and got in. It was much too narrow for the dragon to get in also, so they stayed in there and waited to make faces at the dragon when he felt ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... progress. Without noise, the six half-nude figures were describing circles upon the smooth floor. The silence and the serpentlike motions had a peculiar hypnotic effect upon us, and in a sort of dreamlike trance we watched them wriggle by the narrow aperture to which we pressed our faces. With each circle more of the brown, sweat-polished bodies showed beneath the twisted mats. The pace was beginning to tell upon them now. Slower and slower they moved past the crevice, till at last all movement ceased, and, apparently ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... 'e 'ung on and that's not as easy as it sounds. But in about 'alf an hour the fish was seemin'ly done for and the New Yorker pulled 'im in, 'and over 'and, as easy as you please. Just as 'e got 'im to the gunwale, though, the moray gave an extra wriggle, and bein' afraid that 'e might get away agen, the fisherman gave a sudden pull and brought 'im on board ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... about the preparation of their evening meal with a plaintive quietness. Juno, too, seemed oppressed, for after a tentative wriggle of her stump of a tail she settled back on her haunches, eyes fixed on ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... blankly. Wally gave an expressive wriggle in his chair, and Jim sat up suddenly, with a ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... a speech and one could fairly see the lies wriggle out of his mouth full of defective teeth: exemplary family life; traditional friendship of all members for each other; perfect unity; the King and all the princes brave as lions; the Queen and all the princesses paragons of virtue. And the fatherly love with which the King embraces us all; ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... England throughout recent centuries. Our esquires did not win their estates till they had given up any particular fancy for winning their spurs. Esquire does not mean squire, and esq. does not mean anything. But it remains on our letters a little wriggle in pen and ink and an indecipherable hieroglyph twisted by the strange turns of our history, which have turned a military discipline into a pacific oligarchy, and that into a mere plutocracy at last. And there are similar historic riddles to be unpicked in the ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... Landell," said Tom. "He'll wriggle them loose in no time. Look here, I'll show you. Turn ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... think of you all the same first." And kneeling down by the injured man's side, he proceeded, with Ernest Wilton's assistance, to cut away Seth's shirt, and then the end of the arrow, holding it firmly the while so that it should not wriggle about, and hurt him more than they could help, after which the barbed head was drawn out of the wound—which was just between the third and fourth ribs, and not very serious, as the ex-mate had thought— stanching the ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... you going to say to me? For the last hour I have been asking you to marry me, and you have said nothing; only just 'wriggle, wriggle,' talking ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... these (Fig. 25). These "gray flies," as they are sometimes called, lay a mass of three or four hundred eggs on the surface of wounds. The larvae which in a few hours hatch from these make their way directly into the wound where they feed on the surrounding tissue until full grown when they wriggle out and drop to the ground where they transform to the pupa and later to the adult fly. Of course their presence in the wounds is very distressing to the infected animal, and great suffering results. Slight scratches that might otherwise quickly heal often become serious ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane
... found its mark on them, and at last, despairing of being able to wriggle away in good order, they rose to their feet and made ...
— A Tale of the Summer Holidays • G. Mockler
... to Peter with some nonsensical appeal when her heart was full and her voice a trifle unsteady. You could bury your head in Peter's little white sailor jacket just under his chin, at which he would dimple and gurgle and chuckle and wriggle, and when you withdrew your flushed face and presented it to the public gaze all the tears would have been wiped ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... good, I believe," said Nancy, "but I don't expect ever to be myself—I don't think I could be. You might as well teach a snake not to wriggle." ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... "Well, finding this out, you can wager I don't stay heels over head no more!" cried the Policeman. And with a wriggle and a twist and a bound, he gave a half somersault and ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... narrowest, the highest, the darkest, and the dirtiest streets of Paris, was, and is, and probably will long be, the Rue St Denis. Beginning at the bank of the Seine, and running due north, it spins out its length like a tape-worm, with every now and then a gentle wriggle, right across the capital, till it reaches the furthest barrier, and thence has a kind of suburban tail prolonged into the wide, straight road, a league in length, that stretches to the town of Sainct-Denys-en-France. This was, from time immemorial, the state-road ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... it all in two minutes by the help of the lantern. The light'll dazzle him so as he'll not be able to make any on us out; and then we must slip out of the window and be off afore he's had time to wriggle himself out of the ropes. Eh, won't he be a lovely pictur next day!—his best friends, as they say, won't know him. Won't he just look purty at the meeting! There's a model teetottaller for you! Do you think he'll have the face to say then, 'You've heard, ladies and gentlemen, what I once ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... help for it. Bobby found it impossible to move hand or foot. He could wriggle a little,—but that ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... living, the wounded untended, without dressings, food, or water, and harassed by the fire from both sides and from our artillery. It was a very painful thing to watch these poor fellows moving about feebly and trying to wriggle themselves into some position of safety, and it reminded me of the wounded Dervishes after Omdurman—only these ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... cunt, neither very long nor thick. As I looked at it, I saw the inner lips hanging out a full inch, I put my finger, two, then three fingers up her cunt easily. It was enormous. It shocked me, having never seen such a cunt before I am quite sure. She meanwhile did nothing but jerk, and wriggle her arse about, shouting out, "Fuck me,—put your prick in,—fuck ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... small that Ben could barely get his head and shoulders through it. There was no possibility of his getting on his feet or his knees to make a leap. The only course that remained for him, therefore, was to expand the umbrella, hold on tight, and then wriggle out until he should lose his balance and fall head foremost! It was an awful position. Bold though the seaman was, and desperate the circumstances, his strong frame quivered when he gazed down and felt himself gradually toppling. The height he knew to be little short of sixty feet, ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne
... after all, although unusual enough to constitute a rather curious circumstance. A crippled, tailless rat had somehow entangled its neck in a loop at the end of the dangling cord of the half-drawn shade at the side window on the opposite side of the room and, being too weak to wriggle free, was still hanging there, jerking and kicking, midway of the window opening. The glow of the pile of burning leaves and brush behind and beyond it, brought out its ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... embarrassed manner, set a fresh value on the stupidity of his remarks. I do not think I ever appreciated the meaning of two words until I knew Irvine—the verb, loaf, and the noun, oaf; between them, they complete his portrait. He could lounge, and wriggle, and rub himself against the wall, and grin, and be more in everybody's way than any other two people that I ever set my eyes on. Nothing that he did became him; and yet you were conscious that he was one of your own race, that his mind was cumbrously at work, revolving the problem of existence ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... much lower down and hidden, then I thought it to be; soon at its look and feel, impatience got the better of me; hurredly I covered it with my body and shed my sperm in it. Then with what curiosity I paddled my fingers in it afterwards, again to stiffen, thrust, wriggle, and spend. All this I recollect as if it occurred but yesterday, I shall recollect it to the last day of my life, for it was a honey-moon of novelty, years afterwards I often thought of it when ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... wishes to get at. If there is not, and especially if anything is there which he wishes to shun, a four hundred and fifty pounder cannot crash a hole large enough for you to push him through. By such a pitiful chink as that did his Infallible Highness wriggle himself out of the range of my guns, and pursue his ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... woman in the town of Bingham, not excepting the wooden Indian girl in front of the cigar-store, and not one of 'em but our Abby ever got a chance to name the day. Abby was as set as the everlastin' hills, and if she'd made up her mind to have a man he could n't wriggle away from her nohow in the world. It beats all how girls do run after these slick-haired, sweet-tongued, Miss Nancy kind o' fellers, that ain't but little good as beaux an' worth ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Pippity showed considerable anxiety, calmly remarking, however, as I translated his jargon, that he would, as on the previous day, hold fast to my shoulder with his bill. He made Grilly get down below at the same time and hold on to my feet; and when I began to crawl and wriggle along the best way I could, I was assisted very materially by the parrot above and ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... he give you some?" exclaimed aunt Corinne with a wriggle. "I had a gold dollar, but I b'lieve that little old man with a bag on his ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... that she had at first been frightened of eels; but now she had learned how to tighten her grip so that they could not slip away. From another compartment she took a smaller one, which began to wriggle both with head and tail, as she held it about the middle in her closed fist. This made her laugh. She let it go, then seized another and another, scouring the basin and stirring up the whole heap of snaky-looking creatures with her ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... hills the elvers snuggle under stones or beneath the bank and rest till dawn. In the course of time they reach the quiet upper reaches of the river or go up rivulets and drainpipes to the isolated ponds. Their impulse to go on must be very imperious, for they may wriggle up the wet moss by the side of a waterfall or even make a short excursion in a ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... "So the Secret Service net is around the place, and no suspected person can get away?" muttered the submarine boy. "Well, that's it should be. I wonder if there are any more of this strange crew—men or women spies that don't happen to have suspected so far? If there are, I don't believe they'll wriggle through the meshes of old Uncle Sam's Secret ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... people is a wonderful sight," Verisschenzko said, as he stood by her side. "Paris has lost all good taste and sense of the fitness of things. Look! the women who are the most expert in the wriggle of the tango are mostly over forty years old! Do you see that one in the skin-tight pink robe? She is a grandmother! All are painted—all are feverish—all would be young! It is ever thus when a country is on the eve of a ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... can issue complaint against both Baker and Mr. Welton on a charge of bribery, and Baker can't possibly wriggle out by turning state's evidence, because your evidence will ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... plexus is a great nerve center which lies behind your stomach. I can't be accused of impropriety or untruth, because any book of science or medicine which deals with the nerve-system of the human body will show it to you quite plainly. So don't wriggle or try to look spiritual. Because, willy-nilly, you've got a solar plexus, dear reader, among other things. I'm writing a good sound science book, which ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... all heirs to estates joy, for old Shutz is dead, and cannot wriggle himself into any more wills. The ministry is not yet hatched; the King of Prussia is conquering the world; Mr. Chute has some murmurs of the gout; and I am yours ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... shoulder when she thought I wasn't looking, and before I knew where I was half of her would be gleaming in the sun like satin. Directly I noticed it I used to frown, and then she would pretend to be ashamed of herself, hang her head, and wriggle her frock up to its place again. However, I never could teach her to keep her skirts about her knees. She was as innocent as a baby about that ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... like the sweating system, asks, is to be let alone. To uncover its atrocities is like turning over a huge stone in the meadow in springtime, that has been a hiding-place for bugs and worms that nest away in the dark. As soon as the hot, searching sunlight finds them, they will wriggle and squirm in agony until they can crawl under cover again. So I do not wonder that, when the hideous cruelty of the tenement-house sweat-shop is brought to light, the sweater and all his friends wriggle and squirm in an agony of fright ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... an advantage that also has a disadvantage, for our serpents are so lovely that even they are not easily seen by the parrots when they wriggle up ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... than a pity," jerked out Porson, with a sudden wriggle which caused him to rock up and down upon the stiff springs ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... very curious snake-skin to show you when I return. Edward, Richard's big brother, found it in the woods, and made it a present to me. A snake! What a present! and to think of a snake wanting to wriggle out of his skin! You wouldn't do such a thing, ...
— The Little Nightcap Letters. • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... sea of fancy, Genius rises, And like the rare Leviathan surprises; But the small fry of scribblers!—tiny souls! They wriggle ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... intelligent Chieftain that so soon as the woodwork had dropped he, counterfeiting an unappeasable bloodthirstiness, should fling himself headlong against the straining bars, uttering hair-raising roars. This also was the cue for Riley to wriggle nimbly through a door set in the end of the cage and slam the door behind him; then to outface the great beast and by threats, with bar and pistol both extended, to force him backward step by step, still snarling ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... by the fish, which appear to thrive on them better than on dead meat. Having great tenacity of life, if not snapped up immediately by the fish they remain alive for a day or two, and, as they wriggle about on the bottom, are almost certain to be finally eaten; whereas the particles of dead flesh that fall to the bottom are largely neglected by the fish and begin to putrefy in a few hours. In the fish troughs there are, ...
— New England Salmon Hatcheries and Salmon Fisheries in the Late 19th Century • Various
... flat-pattern live timekeepers to slide into it;) black, glossy crickets, with their long filaments sticking out like the whips of four-horse stage-coaches; motionless, slug-like creatures, larvae, perhaps, more horrible in their pulpy stillness than even in the infernal wriggle of maturity! But no sooner is the stone turned and the wholesome light of day let upon this compressed and blinded community of creeping things, than all of them that enjoy the luxury of legs—and some ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... done now? If the robber had had a knife in his pocket, Gum would have been a dead monkey in two seconds. But while he was unsuccessfully feeling for his knife, Gum suddenly came to, and with one violent wriggle shook itself free, and sprang on the highest shelf. The robber gave chase; then followed the most comical hunt you ever saw. The robber's face being now exposed (he had no idea that Donald had already recognised him), he was afraid ...
— The Monkey That Would Not Kill • Henry Drummond
... "Plague tak' thee! can thee not let the poor things be quiet? But I'll be up with thee, my gentleman: so tak' th' chamber an' be hang'd to thee, if thou wilt. Jack and little Robert shall sleep o'er the cart-house, and Boggart may rest or wriggle as he likes ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... reached a spot where a great rock rose straight up in the middle of the road. Instantly the Serpent uncoiled itself from his neck, and, as it touched the damp earth, it resumed the shape of the lovely damsel. Pointing to the rock, she showed him an opening just big enough for a man to wriggle through. Passing into it, they entered a long underground passage, which led out on to a wide field, above which spread a blue sky. In the middle of the field stood a magnificent castle, built out of porphyry, with a roof of gold and with glittering battlements. And ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... banjo and guitar," said Katy. "Oh, I do love a guitar. It always makes me think of 'Gaily the troubadour.'" Katy gave a wriggle of delight at this romantic ending to the night's festivities. She was already planning to tell the girls at home about ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... not thy knife upright but sloping, and lay it down at the right hand of plate with blade on plate. Look not earnestly at any other that is eating. When moderately satisfied leave the table. Sing not, hum not, wriggle not.... Smell not of thy Meat; make not a noise with thy Tongue, Mouth, Lips, or Breath in Thy Eating and Drinking.... When any speak to thee, stand up. Say not I have heard it before. Never endeavour to help him ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... had not always been sure that she would leave him this alternative. She had a way of involving people in her complications without their being aware of it, and Garnett had pictured himself in holes so tight that there might not be room for a wriggle. Happily in this case he could still move freely. Nothing compelled him to act as an intermediary between Mrs. Newell and her husband, and it was preposterous to suppose that, even in a life of such perpetual upheaval as hers, ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... to climb or wriggle through, A strip of meadow wet with dew To cross, and lo! before us flared The clump of yellow gorse we shared With five young blackbirds and their mother. There, close beside our partners' nest, ...
— The Flamp, The Ameliorator, and The Schoolboy's Apprentice • E. V. Lucas
... only they can disentangle it from the unrealities which have somehow got coiled up with it. All the odd little eccentricities in the form of service and the recent fashion of spicing sermons with unexpected swear-words are just pathetic efforts to wriggle out of the clothes ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... having its leading feature dislocated by my trifling experiment! The thought, again, of the mighty revolution in human beliefs and affairs that might grow out of the same insignificant little phenomenon. A wine-glassful of clear liquid growing muddy. If we had found a wriggle, or a zigzag, or a shoot from one side to the other, in this last flask, what a scare there would have been, to be sure, in the schools of the prophets! Talk about your megatherium and your megalosaurus,—what are these to the bacterium and the vibrio? These ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the eagle in a bracken stem. And somehow—I don't remember what led to it at all—I and Beatrice, two hot and ruffled creatures, crept in among the tall bracken and hid from him. The great fronds rose above us, five feet or more, and as I had learnt how to wriggle through that undergrowth with the minimum of betrayal by tossing greenery above, I led the way. The ground under bracken is beautifully clear and faintly scented in warm weather; the stems come up ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... went forward, at first, with a slow waddle, and as the venomous sheep came to meet him in bounces, he then went to meet them in wriggles; so that in a while he went so fast that you could see nothing of him but a head and a wriggle. He dealt with the sheep in this way, a jump and a chop for each, and he never missed his jump and he never missed his chop. When he got his grip he swung round on it as if it was a hinge. The swing began with the chop, ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... into the pot, took hold of the ferret, and was about to place it in the box; but it gave a wriggle and writhe, glided out of Mercer's hand, crept under the corn-bin, and, as he tried to reach it, I saw it run out at the back, and creep down a hole in the floor boards, one evidently ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... to watch them wriggle! I wanted to take them, one by one, and strip off their shams! Take that fellow Rutherford, the steel man! Or Plimpton, the coal baron, casting his eyes up to heaven, and singing psalms through his nose! The instant I laid eyes on ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair
... influence. He cannot fail to promote me for his own sake, as well as mine; and when I have once fairly got my legs in St. Stephen's, I shall soon have my hands in office: 'power,' says some one, 'is a snake that when it once finds a hole into which it can introduce its head, soon manages to wriggle in the rest of its body.'" With such meditations I endeavoured to beguile the time and cheat myself into forgetfulness of the lameness of my horse, and the dripping wetness of his rider. At last the storm ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... class—when, on the contrary, I found that all observed a marked silence on the point—I determined, COUTE QUI COUTE, to break the ice of this silly reserve. I selected Sylvie as my informant, because from her I knew that I should at least get a sensible answer, unaccompanied by wriggle, titter, or ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... Murphy, Tommy Durfey, Mrs. Trimmer's little Primer, Buckram binding, touch and try— Nothing bid—who'll buy, who'll buy? Here's Colley Cibber, Bruce the fibber, Plays of Cherry, ditto Merry, Tickle, Mickle, When I bow and when I wriggle, With a simper and a giggle, Ears regaling, bidders nailing, Ladies utter in a flutter— "Mister Smatter, how you chatter, Dear, how clever! well, I never Heard so eloquent ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... laughing down at him, leering. Double-crossed? Did Holliday think he was that credulous? But he had tested Holliday's strength and feared it more than ever. When finally he had to rise he dodged the other with a swift, sideways wriggle. The bell ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... just gone. With quick but steady movements, you make a series of deep "criss-crosses;" and when the fish is disturbed by the hooks you whip him smartly out, and put him in the basket before his magical wriggle has taken him deep into the sand again. The women stooping over the shining floor look like ghostly harvesters reaping invisible crops. They are very silent, and their steps are feline. Peggy worked out her day, and then ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... close together. Imagine Attica without you! Imagine going to bed alone, with no one to talk to about the events of the day! What does the horrid old money matter? We always have been poor, and we always shall be. As long as I can remember mother has been in despair about the bills; but we wriggle through somehow, and we shall go on wriggling. It's horrid of you to talk of ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... fiercely, like a dog worrying a rat. "You were seen carrying the body downstairs, the night of the murder. You might as well own up to it, first as last. Lies will not help you. We know too much for you to wriggle out of it. And never mind smoothing your hair down like that. We know all about that scar on your forehead, and ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... bluffly says, in the preface, that he respited Colonel Altamont almost at the foot of the gallows. Dickens took himself more in earnest, and, having so many pages to fill, conscientiously made Uriah Heap wind and wriggle through them all. ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... amends for being the fourth, was a lovely chubby baby of eight months, so full of sunshine and content and blessed good health, that although her two first teeth were just grumbling through, she would sit in her high chair by the window or roll and wriggle about on the floor, singing tuneless songs and telling herself wordless stories, an hour at a time, without making any demands on anybody, so that grandma and the aunties declared that half the time they would not know there was ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... and Laura Nelson ought to have more principle than engage in anything so dishonorable. They've managed to wriggle out of it at Marian's expense, but they have both lost caste by it. Depend upon it, a great many girls here will have their own opinion of the whole affair and it won't be complimentary to Marian, Selina ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... looks roun' fur somethin' good fur beatin' out brains, an' dar lays my ax. I grabs it up, now ready fur a cleaver, an' no mistake. Big Injun ain't, though; he ain't ready fur any sich a thing. Up he comes wid a whirl, an' down I goes wid a fling, my ax a-flyin' way out yander. But in de wriggle uf a buck's tail comes up nigger ag'in; goes down Injun ag'in. Yes, an' a leetle mo' dan dat: nigger an' Injun clean ober de turn uf de hill, an' now a-slidin', slidin' down whar it wus steep ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... can't respect the victims of your cajolery. Chesterfield's favourite author is Rochefoucauld of whom (not the Bible) his son is to read a chapter every day. Men, that is, are selfish. Happily also they are silly, and can be flattered into helping you, little as they may care for you. 'Wriggle yourself into power' he says more than once. That is especially true of women, of whom he always speaks with the true aristocratic contempt. A man of sense will humour them and flatter them; he will never consult them seriously, nor really trust them, but he will make them believe ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... folded it, and tied the girl's ankles firmly together. "Now then, Ralph, do the same with her wrists. That's right now. Wrap that shawl of hers three or four times tightly round her mouth. That's it; let her breathe through her nose. Now you keep a sharp watch over her, and see she doesn't wriggle out of these things. If you see any one coming clap your hand over her mouth, and see she doesn't make a sound. When he comes up you can let go and help me if necessary; it won't matter her giving a bit ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... Ambrose with an uneasy wriggle, "being obedient doesn't show. I want something to ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... nearby log, and set the baby down there while he took off his coat and wrapped it around him, buttoning it like a bag over arms and all. The baby watched him knowingly, its eyes round and dark blue and shining, and gave a contented little wriggle when Bud picked it up again in ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... forty-two, drawn in tightly at the waist and fashionably dressed with sleeves high on the shoulder, evidently tried to look young and was still anxious to be charming; she walked with tiny steps with a wriggle ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... as lightning his black head and forked tongue came hissing among the trees again, darting full forty feet at a stretch. As it approached, Medea tossed the contents of the gold box right down the monster's wide-open throat. Immediately, with an outrageous hiss and a tremendous wriggle—flinging his tail up to the tip-top of the tallest tree and shattering all its branches as it crashed heavily down again—the dragon fell at full length upon the ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... got fooled so you thought C. & S.C. would pay par for your stock, what do you do but go around and tell a man you know is working for me all about it! And now when I've got you just where I want you, where you can only wriggle, you come around and try to scare me. Do you know what you are? You're just ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... Bridal Ceremony in a Beleaguered City," murmured the enthusiastic journalist. Her gold fountain-pen, hanging at her chatelaine, seemed to wriggle like a thing of life, as she imagined herself aiding, planning, assisting at, and finally sitting down to describe the ceremony and the wedding-veil on the little Greek head. She babbled as her quick, bird-like ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... limitations, he contrived to wriggle along until at the beginning of his junior year he was whisked away to the hospital with scarlet fever, after which, amid sage waggings of their heads, a group of doctors congregated about his bed. He was not to be ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... good. Of course I might leave out his doubtful qualities, and describe him merely as beautiful and affectionate; I might ... but I couldn't. I think Chum's habitual smile would get larger, he would wriggle the end of himself more ecstatically than ever if he heard himself summed up as beautiful and affectionate. Anyway, I couldn't do it, for I get carried away when I speak of him and I reveal all his ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... with a shudder. "I hate things that writhe, and squirm, and wriggle. Imagine being so near those hideous creatures! Why, if I once should see them I should never dare to go in bathing again. I'd rather not know ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett
... such an eel, he may wriggle out of our clutches. But can't you give a party and invite Lord George and Hay, and then get them to play cards. Should Hay cheat, ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... sky; the uplifted finger of Fo shakes high over the heads of the worshippers through the blue fog of incense! KO-NGAI!—What a thunder tone was that! All the lacquered goblins on the palace cornices wriggle their fire-colored tongues! And after each huge shock, how wondrous the multiple echo and the great golden moan and, at last, the sudden sibilant sobbing in the ears when the immense tone faints away in broken whispers of silver,—as though a woman should whisper, ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... and heard himself say, "That's all right, I don't want the stuff. Take it in to that little chap in a striped suit, in the next car,—dirty little beggar, wriggled like an eel all day. This will probably make him wriggle all night. ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... still on the boughs, waiting for the leaves to fan them. Children are wilted into silence and slumberous nonentity; boys do not bathe to-day—they welter, hour after hour, in the dark water near the shaded rock. Even they and the tadpoles can hardly be seen to wriggle. The cow has found a shade, and, preferring repose to munching, lies contented under the one great elm mercifully left in the middle ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... that whole gang," she said. "He won't wriggle out of it, I can guarantee you." Her eyes rested on him, unsure, a little frightened. "Federal prison psychiatrists have Institute training," she murmured. "You'll see that his personality is reshaped your way, ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson
... effect upon the reptiles, for they began to wriggle and twist as they uncoiled themselves. They hissed and outspread their hoods, and instead of being charmed by the music, it seemed as though their wrath had been excited. They made an occasional dart at the human performers, who dodged them as though they had been in their native ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... worn out. This unforeseen catastrophe evidently astonished their driver. Slipping from the box, he stood resting his hands against the side of the britchka, while Chichikov tumbled and floundered about in the mud, in a vain endeavour to wriggle clear of ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... grown shorter. He looked again and it was shorter still. Every time he looked his tail had grown shorter and smaller. By and by when he looked there was nothing left but a little stub which he couldn't even wriggle. Then even that disappeared, his eyes popped out of his head and his mouth grew bigger ...
— Old Mother West Wind • Thornton W. Burgess
... further on, upon the same side, the stone becomes soft. Here on the right, in a little coppice beside the road, is found a place of refuge of which I give the plan as accurately as it was possible for me to take it where one had to crawl on hands and knees, and sometimes wriggle forward lying on one's stomach, over earth that was damp and rubble fallen from above, and in corridors completely filled by ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... be better farther back," Tignonville retorted. "Here, we are within an ace of being seen from the lane." And he began to wriggle ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... hooking the victim, and the Devil finally lost his temper. "I've heard of these San Franciscans before," he muttered. "Wait till I get hold of one, that's all!" he added malevolently, as he rebaited his hook. A sharp tug and a wriggle followed his next trial, and finally, with considerable effort, he landed a portly two-hundred-pound broker ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... grew bolder as the Squire became more complying, thinking that, in the matter of these appointments, as he had once got his hand in, it would be his own fault if he could not contrive to wriggle in his whole body. It so happened, too, that just about the very time that one of John's usherships became vacant, one of those atrabilious and hypochondriac fits came over Jack, with which, as we have said, he was periodically afflicted, and which, though they certainly unsettled his brain ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... up on my feet in such a way that I was very uncomfortable and tried to readjust matters, but the slightest wriggle of my toe was enough to make him snap at it so fiercely that nothing but thick woollen bedclothes saved me from being maimed ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... or not, don't draw Dicky into a corner of the playground, and with tender kisses and promises of inviolable secrecy coax him to open his little heart to you, and tell you whether he is really happy; leave such folly to women—it is a weakness to wriggle into the truth ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... Christian. On the other hand, it tickles me immensely to behold a plethoric commonplace Briton roar himself purple with impassioned platitude at a political meeting; but I perceive that all my neighbours take him with the utmost seriousness. Again, your literary journalist professes to wriggle in his chair over the humour of Jane Austen; to me she is the dullest lady that ever faithfully photographed the trivial. Years ago I happened to be crossing Putney Bridge, in a frock-coat and silk ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... Cornelius. How the latter had managed to exist through the troubled times I can't say. As Stein's agent, after all, he must have had Doramin's protection in a measure; and in one way or another he had managed to wriggle through all the deadly complications, while I have no doubt that his conduct, whatever line he was forced to take, was marked by that abjectness which was like the stamp of the man. That was his characteristic; he ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... sheer folly. He did not consider that he had any "call" to be a minister, still less a doctor. As there was nothing else left, he began the study of law. It is truly amusing to see how he manages to "wriggle along" until he takes his degree of LL.B. and is admitted to ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... with a persistence which took no thought of the pain she was inflicting upon herself, she began working her hands to and fro behind her until she fancied that the pressure on her wrists was not so great as before. With an effort she managed to wriggle over against the wall and so to ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... He used to give me much as a pound a day. Some days he used to give me much as five pounds." Then Eddy Carroll, after delivering himself of this statement, could not get his young, black eyes away from the fixed regard of the man's keen, blue ones, and he began to wriggle as to his body, with his eyes held firm by that unswerving gaze. "What you looking at me that way for?" he stammered. "I don't think ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... choke him to assure silence?" Phil hurriedly asked himself, and instinctively made to put his hands to the man's neck. But the body under him began to wriggle, to kick out with its legs, and to lay ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... But without paying the least homage to the image of the 'Lo' spirit, he simply kept his eyes fixed intently on it; for albeit made of clay, it actually seemed, nevertheless, to flutter as does a terror-stricken swan, and to wriggle as a dragon in motion. It looked like a lotus, peeping its head out of the green stream, or like the sun, pouring its rays upon the russet clouds in the early morn. Pao-yue's tears unwittingly ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... principle he bases an advice, dead in the teeth of all the maxims recognised by worldly prudence. He says, in effect, 'Mind very little about getting on and getting up. Do God's will wherever you are, and let the rest take care of itself.' Now, the world says, 'Struggle, wriggle, fight, do anything to better yourself.' Paul says, 'You will better yourself by getting nearer God, and if you secure that—art thou a slave? care not for it; if thou mayest be free, use it rather; art thou bound to a wife? seek not to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... boy up to his breast and hold him there, he knew not how; and he would even be careful not to restrain the little hand in his own—to hold it, yet to leave it free to withdraw at its first uneasy wriggle. ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... have lurked in it when first removed. Lay the turves out in a frame, grass side downwards, and give them a soaking with water in which a very small quantity of salt has been dissolved. This will cause the remaining bots and slugs to wriggle out, and by means of a little patient labour they can be gathered and destroyed. In January or February sow the seed rather thickly in lines along the centre of each strip of turf, and cover with ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... habit of swearing aloud in German. But I will say, for a tinker, you put a very neat West Country whipping on that bit of broken harness. I've been admiring it. Didn't know they taught you that in the German navy—don't wriggle." ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... was not Beethoven, nor Thome, nor Bach, nor Grieg that she loved, but the notes, the sounds, the fingers running over the keys, the thrills she got from the chords which tickled her nerves and made her wriggle with pleasure. ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... he saw an old board. Without really thinking, he tried to get to it, for there looked as if there might be room for him to hide under it. It was hard work, for you know his long hind-legs, which he uses for jumping, were tied together. The best he could do was to crawl and wriggle and pull himself along. Just as Farmer Brown's boy started to climb the fence back into the Long Lane, his hat in his hand, Grandfather Frog reached the old board and ...
— The Adventures of Grandfather Frog • Thornton W. Burgess
... while Mrs. Spaniel was busy trying to keep their socks on. When the curate exhorted him "to follow the innocency" of these little ones, it was disconcerting to have one of them burst into a piercing yammer, and wriggle so forcibly that it slipped quite out of its little embroidered shift and flannel band. But the actual access to the holy basin was more seemly, perhaps due to the children imagining they were going to find tadpoles there. When Mr. Poodle ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... over it. I kissed the dear red buttocks that were all covered with weals and looked like raw beef, but no blood had been drawn. We fanned her with our handkerchiefs, which she said was a delightful relief. In a very few minutes she began to wriggle her bottom in a state of excitement, and ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... watched the poor mouse wriggle with grim satisfaction. Either way, it would come to its ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... of steering do you call that? Look at your damned wake. Like an eel's wriggle. Keep her full, and ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... leader's satisfaction, they wrapped themselves like Indians in their blankets and tumbled down upon the heap of boughs; the air trembled with a chorus of strange sounds as one by one they dropped off into a drowsy sleep, with an occasional wriggle as a knot, or the end of a limb, made itself felt through the many-folded blanket, and engraved a distinct dent upon the sleeper's back; while overhead, the giant cloud crept upward slowly, slowly toward the zenith, ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... slowly—begin to open. A little wider—a little wider—and yet a little wider; but still nothing came. Ah! Letty's heart turned to ice. Another inch, and a shadowy something slipped through and began to wriggle itself stealthily over the floor. Letty tried to divert her gaze, but could not—an irresistible, magnetic attraction kept her eyes glued to the gradually approaching horror. When within a few feet of her it halted; and again ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... maternity of eels, we know a great deal about their childhood and youth, or, to speak more eelishly, their grigginess and elverhood. The young grigs, when they do make their appearance, leave us in no doubt at all about their presence or their reality. They wriggle up weirs, walls, and floodgates; they force there way bodily through chinks and apertures; they find out every drain, pipe, or conduit in a given plane rectilinear figure; and when all other spots have been fully occupied, they take to dry land, like veritable snakes, and cut straight across ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... it, Bumper began to gnaw at the lining of the muff, and pretty soon got his whole body under it, and then he began to kick and wriggle to get out. He felt he was being smothered alive, and he squealed aloud. The lady finally rescued him, but not until she had torn away half ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... and desperately endeavouring to hook themselves on to the wealthier and younger members of the male community. They poison the air round them with sickly perfumes; they assume titles, and speak of one another as "cette chere comtesse;" their walk is something between a prance and a wriggle; they prowl about the terrace whilst the music is playing, seeking whom they may devour, or rather whom they may inveigle into paying for their devouring: and, bon Dieu! how they do gorge themselves with food and drink when some silly lad or aged roue ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... gun native (we had never expected the tiger to be where we found him, and were on our way home) had seated himself on another tree. In a low tone he said to me "Load, load!" but the moment I took my eye off the tiger to do so he began to wriggle into the jungle, and I only got a snap shot at his hind leg. Now when the tiger roared, which he did as he approached me, and he lay watching me, I felt no sensation of the heart, though I felt a distinct flutter when loading and when the tiger was wriggling ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... but a few minutes' exploration to discover one particular cavern high up the face of the cliff which seemed ideal for our purpose. It opened upon a narrow ledge where we could build our cook-fire; the opening was so small that we had to lie flat and wriggle through it to gain ingress, while the interior was high-ceiled and spacious. I lighted a faggot and looked about; but as far as I could see, the chamber ran back into ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the legs pushed the abdomen and corselet on; so that a disapproving friend had to divide his sympathy, and to feel for each of the pieces. And what appeared to us worthy of remark was, that whereas, when a snake was decollated, it was only the tail that continued to wriggle—when a worm was divided, all the segments writhed in the same way, and manifested an equal irritability; showing the difference between creatures of annulated structure, according as they have or have not a brain. A new argument against ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... 'praise and pudding?' The world answers, or his biographers answer for him, that he needs to reinstate himself in his mistress's affection; which is true or not, according as we take it. If they mean thereby, as most seem to mean, that it was a mere selfish and ambitious scheme by which to wriggle into court favour once more—why, let them mean it: I shall only observe that the method which Raleigh took was a rather more dangerous and self-sacrificing one than courtiers are wont to take. But if ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... up the bits between the bushes with bracken and leaves," said Kathleen, avoiding the question; "don't wriggle, Mabel, or you'll waggle them ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... and generous Hogboom was he blundered into the story of the time Hoggy bet all of his money on a baseball game at Muggledorfer, and of how he walked home with his chum and carried the latter's coat and grip all the way. That made the Faculty wriggle, I can tell you. He illustrated the pluck of the deceased by telling how Hogboom, as a Freshman, dug all night alone to rescue a man imprisoned in a sewer, spurred on by his cries—though Rogers explained in his halting way, it afterward turned out that this was only ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
Copyright © 2025 Free Translator.org
|
|
|
