"Grotesquely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... other evils among the people, "and, as a peace-offering, sacrifice one man. The man is not killed purposely, but the ceremony he undergoes often proves fatal. Grain is thrown against his head, and his face is painted half white, half black." Thus grotesquely disguised, and carrying a coat of skin on his arm, he is called the King of the Years, and sits daily in the market-place, where he helps himself to whatever he likes and goes about shaking a black yak's tail over the people, who thus transfer their ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... to her early, and coming into it very young, and overflowing with new ideas, she began rather grotesquely; but she has tamed down a good deal since, and really has done an immense deal of good in finding employment for people, making improvements and the like, though she is Sam's pet aversion, a tremendous Liberal, almost a Socialist. They are so like cat and dog that Susan and I were really glad ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... huge, but very different in proportions and character of its armor was the Ankylosaurus of the late Cretacic. This animal, a contemporary of the Tyrannosaurus and duck-billed dinosaurs was more effectively though less grotesquely armored than its more ancient relative. The body is covered with massive bony plates set close together and lying flat over the surface from head to tip of tail. While the stegosaur's body was narrow and compressed, in this animal it is exceptionally broad and the wide spreading ribs ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... case, but their stories all seemed to fit together. Nature's boundless and irrational fecundity was an exceedingly trying feature of the life of middle-class ladies. In the first place, the having of babies was a tedious and painful matter. One became grotesquely disfigured, and had to hide away and sever all social relationships. One lost one's grace and attractiveness, and hence the power to hold one's husband. And then, there were all the cares and the inconveniences of children. What was one to do ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... drip, and the dams of brooks and rivers cease to pour the arching crystal from their lips, I have always loved to explore the forsaken water-courses. An imprisoned fish, a shell with rainbow lining, a curiously-worn rock, a strangely-tinted and grotesquely-fashioned stone—these are always objects of interest. Then to sit down upon a ledge that has been planed off by ice, and smoothed by the tenuous passage of an ocean's palpitating volume, and watch the shrunken stream slipping around its feet, and hear the gurgle of the faintly-going ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... Council, before entering the Palace itself. The Hlwot-dau was a detached structure on the right front of the Palace as one entered by the eastern gate. It was the Downing Street of Mandalay. Its sides were quite open, and its fantastic roof of grotesquely carved teak plastered with gilding, painting, and tinsel, was supported on massive teak pillars painted a deep red. Taking off our shoes we ascended to the platform of the Hlwot-dau, where we found the Menghyi surrounded by a crowd of minor officials and suitors squatting on their stomachs and ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... side of these islands you may observe that the trees—when there are any trees—all bend away from the sea; and, even of bright, hot days when the wind sleeps, there is something grotesquely pathetic in their look of agonized terror. A group of oaks at Grande Isle I remember as especially suggestive: five stooping silhouettes in line against the horizon, like fleeing women with streaming garments ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... seemed to him an almost grotesquely irrelevant, inadequate word. And then, feeling that something was expected of him, "She is a wonderful woman, loyal, faithful, ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... sagacious, in accordance with the demands of his time. A Knox of the exact fashion of the sixteenth century, raised up in the middle of the nineteenth, would be but a slim, long-bearded effigy of a Knox, grotesquely attired in a Geneva cloak and cap, and with the straw and hay that stuffed him sticking out in tufts from his waistband. 'O for an hour of Knox!' The Scottish Church of the present age has already had its Knox. 'Elias hath already come.' ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... truth that Longfellow tells us: 'Things are not what they seem.' You appear disinclined to believe that I am one of those 'whited sepulchres,' outwardly fair and comely, but filled with unsavoury dust and ugly grinning skulls? Life is a huge sham, and we are all masked puppets, jumping grotesquely, just as the strongest hands pull the wires. Regina, I have gone to and fro upon the earth long enough to learn that the most acceptable present is never labelled advice; nevertheless, I would fain warn your unsophisticated young soul against some of the pitfalls into ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Scutari, that none of her fellow-workers had their hearts in the business; if they had, why did they not work as she did? She could only see slackness and stupidity around her. Dr. Sutherland, of course, was grotesquely muddle-headed; and Arthur Clough incurably lazy. Even Sidney Herbert ... oh yes, he had simplicity and candour and quickness of perception, no doubt; but he was an eclectic; and what could one hope for from a man who went away to fish in Ireland just when the Bison most needed ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... yielded to his spell. The younger Michal had been cherishing his image in secret, and now tells her love. Her father returns to his original purpose, with the strange mixture of tenacity and capricious changefulness that marks his character, and again attempts, by demanding a grotesquely savage dowry, to secure David's destruction. But that scheme, too, fails; and he becomes a ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... her pathetic gestures, gave extraordinary force to an appeal which, by contrast with her extreme agitation, was almost grotesquely inconsequent. Curtis was at his wits' end to find the line of reasoning calculated to convince this beautiful creature that she might, indeed, begin enduring "for the sake of others" by expressing her determination to give the police all ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... Roddy, when he entered Braceway's room, felt sure immediately that he would receive only kindly treatment. He had shown signs of fear on entering the room, and in his extremely black face his singularly white eyeballs had rolled around grotesquely. ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... words and the gesticulations of the grotesquely-garbed man quickly drew the attention of the passersby, and in a trice the victims of the swindlers and the policeman were the center of a curious throng ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... memories. How could these people reconstruct the torn carpets and tin cans and waste-paper of their lives into mythology? How could memories of Ladies' Entrance squalor be made into Castles in Granada or Carcassonne? The things they drank to see, and saw but grotesquely, and paid for terribly, now roll before them with no after pain or punishment. The mumbled conversation, the sociability for which they leaned over the tables, they have here in the same manner with far more to talk about. They come, they go home, men and women ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... landing craft approached that enigmatic lattice-work of structural steel and stopped. Five grotesquely armored figures wafted themselves forward on pencils of force. Their leader, whose suit bore the number "14", reached a mammoth girder and worked his way along it up to a peculiar-looking bulge. The whole immense structure vanished, leaving men and ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... bearskins: /n./ [from the Star Trek Classic episode "The City on the Edge of Forever"] A term traditionally used to describe (and deprecate) computing environments that are grotesquely primitive in light of what is known about good ways to design things. As in "Don't get too used to the facilities here. Once you leave SAIL it's stone knives and bearskins as far as the eye ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... He poised himself grotesquely, in an attitude of mirth, On a damask-covered hassock that was sitting on the hearth; And at a magic signal of his stubby little thumb, I saw the fireplace changing ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... for speech. She moved swiftly across to the what-not at the head of the bed. If he did not suffer, there could be no selfishness, surely, in trying to keep death at bay for a little space yet? But, alas, with what grotesquely paltry and inadequate weapons are all—even the most gallant—reduced to fighting death at the last! Here, on the one hand, a half wine-glass of champagne in a china feeding-cup, with a teapot-like spout to it, or a few spoonfuls of jelly, backed by the passion of a woman's heart. And, on the other ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... picturesque, but uncomfortable—the two old dower chests— the quaint three-legged stools and upright settles, were a collection that would have been precious to the art dealer and curio hunter, as would the massive eight-day clock with its grotesquely painted face, delineating not only the hours and days but the lunar months, and possessing a sonorous chime which just now struck eight with a boom as deep as that of a cathedral bell. The sound appeared to startle the old farmer ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... on the lights and immediately two long, ghostly streamers went searching out across the wall and rested lightly in the tops of some ragged trees on the slopes, bringing them grotesquely into focus, while myriads of tiny motes danced down the twin circular paths off into space. Directly there was a roar of the engine, with an occasional sputtering cough—for the night air was cool—and ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... dragged Royce away, letting Blenham lie there. Both men were naked to their waists, their shirts and undershirts in rags and strips hanging grotesquely about their hips; Royce looked like some hideously painted burlesque of a ballet-dancer in a comic skirt. Only there was nothing of burlesque or comedy in ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... houses—behold the Riviera, with groups of palms among tropical flowers, and feathery pepper-trees, graceful and large as giant willows! Then, when she had decided on Italy or Southern France as a simile, far-off, sharp mountain peaks, a dark, grotesquely branching pine in filmy distance, and a doll's house with a red pointed roof, suggested a ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... if she had been struck. She pressed her hands against her cheeks and stepped away with a look of horror and disgust as the Ramblin' Kid backed out of the stall with the Gold Dust maverick. Outside he fumbled grotesquely at the silky mane and climbed weakly ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... had committed a hideous breach of good manners and could never expect forgiveness from Miss Hawker-Sponge. She had really invited him into her home and he had preferred to hunt for a "policeman friend." Yet the tragedy of it was so grotesquely funny that Whitney Barnes laughed, and in laughing dismissed ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... which they also do very cleverly, proceeds to grate the juicy meat into fine particles. This is done by means of a piece of mother-of-pearl shell, lashed firmly to the extreme end of a heavy stick, with its straight side accurately notched like a saw. The stick is sometimes a grotesquely-formed limb of a tree, with three or four branches twisting from its body like so many shapeless legs, and sustaining it two or ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... church with hoarding and scaffolding about it, which had been under suppositious repair so long that the means of repair looked a hundred years old, and had themselves fallen into decay; a quantity of washed linen, spread to dry in the sun; a number of houses at odds with one another and grotesquely out of the perpendicular, like rotten pre-Adamite cheeses cut into fantastic shapes and full of mites; and a feverish bewilderment of windows, with their lattice-blinds all hanging askew, and something draggled and dirty dangling out of ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... all swarm around The crowd is hourly growing; Straw hatted and grotesquely gowned,— With tin horns ...
— Children of Our Town • Carolyn Wells
... Makhana. Unconscious of my approach, for my feet fell noiselessly upon the sand, he was speaking rapidly in his own language, while the man who had approached him stood listening in meek, submissive attitude. Then, for the first time, I noticed that my friend held in his hand a grotesquely carved stick that had apparently been presented by the new-comer as his credential, together with a scrap of parchment whereon some curious signs, something like Arabic, were written. While Omar addressed him he bowed low from time to time, murmuring some strange words that I could not catch, ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... pedestal suddenly declared itself, leaping out of the darkness into light. It was a terrible object, a monstrosity of indeterminate sex and nature, but surmounted by a woman's head and face of extraordinary, if devilish loveliness, sunk back between high but grotesquely small shoulders, like to those of a lizard, so that it glared upwards. The workmanship of the thing was rude yet strangely powerful. Whatever there is cruel, whatever there is devilish, whatever there is inhuman in the dark places ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... snap under the impact. Then it shot through the air toward the group of soldiers in the doorway, bowling them over and sending them shrieking right and left along the corridor. Relentlessly and with amazing speed it launched itself at each in turn, until the corpses lay grotesquely strewn about, and ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... part; ay, cosey enough, with good company well-met within, the risen wind clamoring through the night, the rain lashing the black panes, the sea rumbling upon the rocks below, and, withal, a savory smell abroad in goodly promise. My uncle, grown fat as a gnome in these days, grotesquely fashioned, miscellaneously clothed as ever, stood with legs wide upon the black wolf's-skin, his back to the fire, his great hands clasped over his paunch, lying as upon a shelf; regarding the direct importation and myself, ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... Mr. Darwin's great essay on the "Origin of Species" by Natural Selection. This solemn and mysterious subject had been either so lightly or so grotesquely treated before, that it was hardly regarded as being within the bounds of legitimate philosophical investigation. Mr. Darwin, after twenty years of the closest study and research, published his views, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... of the wildness of Armstrong's youth had evidently become a family tradition, and even, by a familiar process, an article of belief in his own mind. It reminded me grotesquely of Justice Shallow's reminiscences with Sir John Falstaff: "Ha, Cousin Silence, that thou hadst seen that, that this knight and I have seen.... Jesu, Jesu, the mad ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... got in exchange a scream and a howl of "Mercy! mercy! we surrender!" She swung clear of the quarter, all hushed, and faded into the mist and moonlight, with the head and arms of a motionless man hanging grotesquely over the bows. ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... the mirror, placed the bottle and tumbler upon the bureau. As if compelled by those burning eyes that stared so fixedly at him, he leaned forward still closer to the glass. Then, as he looked, the distorted features twitched and worked grotesquely with uncontrollable emotions, while the quivering lips formed words that were not even whispered. With trembling fingers he felt the unshaven cheeks and touched the unkempt hair questioningly. Suddenly, as if to shut out the horror of that which he saw in the mirror, the man hid his face in his ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... I set out to meet Lord Linchmere at Paddington. The whole fantastic business kept arranging and rearranging itself in kaleidoscopic forms inside my brain, until I had thought out a dozen explanations, each of them more grotesquely improbable than the last. And yet I felt that the truth must be something grotesquely improbable also. At last I gave up all attempts at finding a solution, and contented myself with exactly carrying out the instructions which I had received. ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... reproof; she had appealed to his most readily-impressible sense—his sense of humor. He rather enjoyed seeing his own prejudice against women grotesquely reflected in this flighty stranger's prejudice against men. As the best excuse for himself that he could make, he gave her all the information that she could possibly want—then tried again to pass on—and again in vain. He had recovered his place in her ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... piquancy in this unconscious grouping of the pickers and their freedom from restraint. For each artistic bit—a laughing face in an aureole of amber clusters, a statuesque chin and throat, Indians in grotesquely picturesque raiment, and the yellow visages of the Chinese—the vines make an idyllic framing with a sinking summer sun in the background lending a shimmering ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... glass to an Annunciation by an unknown Primitive. He told himself that this was a "room in a book," and became dreamily assured that he was a man in a book. Finally he stumbled upon something almost grotesquely out of place: a large, new, perfectly-appointed card-table with a sliding top, a smooth, thick, green ...
— His Own People • Booth Tarkington
... monuments which might, perhaps, throw some light on a past that now seems hopelessly lost. But the ruins thus far described are so numerous, their similarity is so evident, that we feel we have but little to hope from such undiscovered ruins. There are, doubtless, richly ornamented facades, grotesquely sculptured statues, and hieroglyphic-covered altars, but they would prove as much of an enigma as those already known. Our only hope is that some fortunate scholar will yet discover a key by whose aid the ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... fathoms deep; numerous little reefs, some of which have the most singular shapes, rise from this bank. It may be observed, respecting one of them, in latitude 23 deg 10', that if the promontory in latitude 24 deg were worn down to the level of the sea, and coated with corals, a very similar and grotesquely formed reef would be produced. Many of the reefs on this part of the coast may thus have originated; but there are some sickle, and almost atoll-formed reefs lying in deep water off the promontory in latitude 24 deg, which lead me to suppose that all these reefs are more probably allied ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... this time, were flying back to the shelter of the wagon-box, but ere they reached it—crack! crack! crack! three shots rang out in quick succession, and three lumps of quivering canine flesh sprawled grotesquely on the prairie. ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... and half-animal. Into it they went, in the obscure light stumbling across the sleeping-logs of the village bachelors and knocking their heads against strings of weird votive-offerings, dried and shrivelled, that hung from the roof-beams. On either side were rude gods, some grotesquely carved, others no more than shapeless logs swathed in rotten and indescribably filthy matting. The air was mouldy and heavy with decay, while strings of fish-tails and of half-cleaned dog and crocodile skulls did not add to the ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... till art itself became hateful at last and enthusiasm died. He came upon a Madonna by Raphael, but he was tired of Raphael; a figure by Correggio never received the glance it demanded of him. A priceless vase of antique porphyry carved round about with pictures of the most grotesquely wanton of Roman divinities, the pride of some Corinna, scarcely drew ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... women, smeared with grease and chalk, gorgeous in the skins of beasts and the bloody feathers of slain birds, playing bridge with puffy pink-nailed jeweled fingers, women who after much expenditure of labor and bad temper still grotesquely resemble their own flatulent lap-dogs? The ancient stale inequalities, or something different in history, unlike the tedious maturity of other empires? What ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... This room was grotesquely latter-day in its appointments. In the centre was a bright oval lit by shaded electric lights from above. The rest was in shadow, and the double finely fitting doors through which he came from the swarming Hall of ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... himself grotesquely in his toweling bathrobe and a pink and white couch-cover, and sat lumpishly in a wing-chair. The bedroom was uncanny in its half-light, which turned the curtains to lurking robbers, the dressing-table to a turreted castle. It smelled of ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... that the carefully combed little creature placed between us two, had been one of our neighbours. Kindly welcome my book with the same indulgent smile, without seeking therein a meaning either good or bad, in the same spirit that you would receive some quaint bit of pottery, some grotesquely carved ivory idol, or some preposterous trifle brought back for you from this singular ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... but revealed in all their delicate charm by the close-fitting plain dark net. And above them rose the head of such unsuspected loveliness of contour, which rats and puffs and pompadour had once deformed grotesquely, but which the wonderful new hair-dressing accentuated in a transfiguring degree. The poise of Mary Alice's head, the carriage of her shoulders, were fine. But she had never known, before, that those were big points of beauty. So she did took lovely, ...
— Everybody's Lonesome - A True Fairy Story • Clara E. Laughlin
... eight, sir!" said Mr. Shrig, and rising to his feet, set off briskly along the path. We had almost reached the wood I have mentioned when Mr. Shrig raised his knobbed stick to point at something that sprawled grotesquely across the path. The hat had fallen and rolled away and staring down into the horror of this face fouled with blood and blackened with powder, I recognised ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... stupidity and salubrity, its cold dulness and dim brightness, were there before him. Meanwhile within him strange things took place. It was literally true that his impression began again, after a lull, to make him nervous and anxious, and for reasons peculiarly confused, almost grotesquely mingled, or at least comically sharp. He was distinctly an agitation and a new taste—that he could see; and he saw quite as much therefore the excitement she already drew from the vision of Addie, an image intensified ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... air—and on their way back they went into Saint Mark's for a hushed ten minutes. Later they took up and kept up the fun of it to the very end; and it seemed to Pemberton a part of that fun that Mrs. Moreen, who was very angry when he had announced her his intention, should charge him, grotesquely and vulgarly and in reference to the loan she had vainly endeavoured to effect, with bolting lest they should "get something out" of him. On the other hand he had to do Mr. Moreen and Ulick the justice to recognise that when ...
— The Pupil • Henry James
... imprudence; every part of my face which my mask touched in the position in which I fell asleep has been stung a thousand times through the meshes of hair by thousands of probosces and suckers athirst for my blood—forehead and chest and chin are grotesquely swollen. I do not know myself. My wrist, exposed between the glove and the edge of the sleeve, is ornamented with a regular swelling like a bracelet all round the arm; in a word, wherever the enemy has been able to penetrate, he has wrought ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... I arose at daybreak and went for a walk. There was a heavy fog and I lost myself in it. I went down into the plains and returned to the hills, and everywhere the fog was as a wall before me. Out of it trees sprang suddenly, grotesquely, as in a city street late at night people come suddenly out of the darkness into the circle of light under a street lamp. Above there was the light of day forcing itself slowly into the fog. The fog moved slowly. The tops of trees moved ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... character showed plainly in his dim blue eyes, which twinkled merrily. Moreover, there was a sure witness of worth in the empty sleeve, pinned to his left breast, on which showed the cross of honor. The humor lurking in the eyes was grotesquely manifested in his ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... "Mister!" He looked up and saw Rozsi. She was leaning her round chin on her round hand, gazing down at him with her deepset, clever eyes. When Swithin removed his hat, she clapped her hands. Again he had the sense of being admired, caressed. With a careless air, that sat grotesquely on his tall square person, he walked up to the door; both girls stood in the passage. Swithin felt a confused desire to speak in some foreign tongue. "Maam'selles," he began, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... I am acquainted with the details of several instances of such loss. And in every case the loss has been the result of gambling on the part of the publisher. I do not hesitate to say that the terms offered in late years by some publishers to some popular favourites have been grotesquely inflated. Publishers compete among themselves, and then, when the moment comes for paying the gambler's penalty, they complain of having been swindled. Note that the losses of publishers are nearly always on the works of the idols of the crowd. They want the ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... Hutchinson and Little Ann and the table set for the oyster stew. It is true that he had never been in such a place in his life, that for many reasons he was appalled, and that he was beset by a fear that he might be grotesquely compelled by existing circumstances to accept these people's invitation, if they insisted upon his sitting down with them and sharing their oyster stew. One could not calculate on what would happen among these unknown quantities. It might be their ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... lengthy and necessarily deficient. In general, it may be said that the designs are executed in longitudinal panels, of which there are several lateral and one central, all of which run parallel and warpwise. The main figures are four, two grotesquely suggestive of a crocodile but more nearly portraying a turtle, and two that delineate the fanciful figure of a woman. The intermediate parts of the panels consist of reticulations whose general design depends upon the skill and ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... some satisfaction from this, when, turning a bend of the path within two hundred yards of the castle, behold an unmistakable enemy barred his way!—an ugly, hoggish, obese man, with bare legs most grotesquely like pillars of granite, and a protuberant paunch; but the devil must have been in his legs to carry him more swiftly than thoroughbred limbs had borne Count Victor. He stood sneering in the path, turning up the right sleeve of a soiled and ragged saffron shirt ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... The emblem of the fecundity of nature; it consisted of a representation, generally grotesquely exaggerated, of the male genital organs; the phallophori crowned with violets and ivy and their faces shaded with green foliage, sang improvised airs, call 'Phallics,' full of ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... anxious bray from the fourth member of the party. The mule bearing the trail pack was in ludicrous contrast to his own aristocratic companions. His long head, with one entirely limp and flopping ear, was grotesquely ugly, the carcass beneath the pack a bone rack, all sharp angles and dusty hide. Looks, however, as his master could have ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... with dark old-coloured glass, a font, some half-dozen pews, and perhaps a dozen seats for the poor; and also a vestry. The roof is high pitched, and of black old oak, and the three large beams which support it run down to the side walls, and terminate in grotesquely carved faces,—two devils and an angel on one side, two angels and a devil on the other. Such is the church of St Cuthbert at Barchester, of which Mr Harding became rector, with a clear income of ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... was a muscular little deformity and a wonder of good nature. His head looked unnaturally large, nestling grotesquely between the points of his lifted and distorted shoulders, like a shaggy black animal in the fork of a broken tree. He was bellicose in his amiable way and never knew just when to acknowledge defeat. How long he might have kept up the hopeless struggle with ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... off grotesquely through the leafless orchard but the silent group, intent upon the energetic digger, watched only the spot where the fan-like rays converged upon the spade. The wind, sharp, intermittent and bringing with it now and then a flurry of snow, flapped their clothes ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... theirs far off on Asian shores. The ceremonies which approximate in time to our New Year's Day and Christmas show the importance they attach to concentrated thought. Early in the morning of what corresponds to our New Year's Day, two young men, one of them grotesquely dressed in women's garments, visit every igloo and blow out each seal-oil lamp. The lights are afterwards renewed from a freshly-kindled fire. The chief, asked the meaning of the ceremony, replied, "New light, new sun," showing his belief that the sun was yearly renewed at this time. This ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... and stained with the dirt which was characteristic everywhere of the foul den; but there was nothing but boards beneath one's feet; and the wretched bar at the uppermost end of the chamber was no more than a plain deal bin with a high stool behind it for the serving man; he being a great negro, grotesquely attired as a man of fashion. Indeed, had not the whole place been so threatening, I should have paused to laugh at this dusky scoundrel, whose white hat sat jauntily on the side of his woolly head, and whose well-cut ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... had lost consciousness some moments before Lanyard's intervention. Released, she had fallen positively inert, and lay semi-prostrate on a shoulder, with limbs grotesquely slack and awry, as if in unpleasant mimicry of a broken doll. Only the whites of bloodshot eyes showed in her livid and distorted countenance. Arms and legs twitched spasmodically, the ample torso was violently shaken by ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... moments of this painful silence, the chief with the long white hair deliberately lighted a large pipe drawn from his belt. It was curiously and grotesquely fashioned, the huge bowl carved to resemble the head of a bear. He drew from the stem a single thick volume of smoke, breathed it out into the air, and solemnly passed the pipe to the warrior seated upon his right. With slow deliberation, the symbol moved around the impassive and ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... greenstone sandals, they walk with knees extremely wide apart, as having sat cross-legged for centuries, their right arms and right forefingers point upwards, right elbows resting on left hands: they stoop grotesquely: halfway to the footlights they wheel left. They pass in front of the seven beggars, now in terrified attitudes and six of them sit down in the attitude described, with their backs to the audience. The leader stands, still stooping. Just as they wheel ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany
... might say that to other men, but not to him, for he was in love with her. He swore it; he would say it on his knees, to make her believe it. Madly in love with her! But she mimicked him grotesquely, raising one hand to ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... a loud boom and the sound of falling masonry as a shell struck the far end of the building. We hurried to the hotel, the shells screaming overhead. We saw the buildings tumbling into ruins, glass falling in fine powder and remnants of furniture hanging grotesquely from ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... face was a shock to him. If he was pale, the dust and grime of his fight in the cavern concealed his pallor. But the face that stared at him from out of the glass was haggard, wildly and almost grotesquely haggard, and he turned from it with a grim laugh, and set his jaws hard. He returned to the table, and bit by bit tore the photograph into thin shreds, and then piled the shreds on his ash-tray and burned them. He opened a window to let out ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... after by the Germans and Danes (whose activity soon subsided), and by the French. The German company, under whose protection stood Ziegenbalg, was one of the last to enter India, and first to leave it (1717-1726). The most grotesquely hideous era in India's history is that which was inaugurated by the supremacy of the Christian British. Major Munroe's barbaric punishment of the Sepoys took place, however, in Clive's absence (1760-1765). ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... Nadir were dated from the day that Lewis went away. Late that night mammy and Mrs. Leighton, aided by trembling Natalie, had had to carry the Reverend Orme from his chair in the school-room to his bed. The left side of his face was drawn grotesquely out of line, but despite the disfigurement, there was a look of peace in his ravaged countenance, as of one who welcomes night joyfully and ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... There was no fly that hummed in the forbidden air, but instead a deep stillness; no grass grew from the earth, no weed peered through the void sand; but in mockery of all life there were trees borne down by Jordan in some ancient flood, and these, grotesquely planted upon the forlorn shore, spread out their grim skeleton arms, all scorched and charred to blackness by the heats ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... Grotesquely combined with this terrific but majestic confusion of sound were the screams of innocent citizens hanging out of the windows, waving their arms, staring distraught at the sky, convinced, in so far as they could think at ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... stages of his foolishness and, as he deemed it, of his dishonour. But he had lost the power to understand that phantasm of himself which pranked so grotesquely in the retrospect. Was it true that he had reasoned and taken deliberate step after step in the wooing of Lady Ogram's niece? Might he not urge in his excuse, to cloak him from his own and the world's contempt, some unsuspected calenture, for which, had he known, ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... his three sisters. The result was an invitation to go back and have lunch at Mrs. Bevis's lodgings; they accepted it, and remained with their acquaintances till dusk. The young man's holiday was at an end; next morning he would face the voyage which he had depicted so grotesquely. ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... find that Chalmers was on what should have been the pack animal, and that two thickly-quilted cotton "spreads" had been disposed of under my saddle, making it broad, high, and uncomfortable. Any human being must have laughed to see an expedition start so grotesquely "ill found." I had a very old iron-grey horse, whose lower lip hung down feebly, showing his few teeth, while his fore-legs stuck out forwards, and matter ran from both his nearly-blind eyes. It is kindness to bring him up to abundant pasture. My saddle ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... observed him to recognise, fitted it like a glove. The remarkable thing was that these elements of their common consciousness had rapidly gathered into an indestructible link, formed the ground of a happy relation; being by this time, strangely, grotesquely, delightfully, what most kept up confidence between them and what ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... identically accused. Once grotesquely accused; once, on the surface, rightly accused. Both times aware how poignant and pathetic was the cry; not moved the first time, not moved the second. Recurring to her now, she knew again how broken-hearted sad it was, and knew again it ought to move, but did not. Well, not strange now. She ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... due to them in such cases stand these Lesdiguieres, these King's Lieutenants; not instruments of justice, but walls erected for the shelter of Privilege and Abuse whenever it exceeds its grotesquely excessive rights. ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... the dusky face of his antagonist had vanished, and, with it, the whole scene. In place of the foreshore with its flat grey stones, his eye travelled down a steep green slope. The hissing sound continued in his ears, louder than ever, but it came with violent jets of steam from a locomotive, grotesquely overturned some twenty yards below him. Fainting, he saw and sank across the body of Sir John Crang, which lay with face upturned among the June grasses, staring at ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... perilous self-possession while she stood talking to those two men. Of me there was nothing left but the eyes. I had no mind, no thoughts. I saw the three figures go through the attitudes of conversation—she very animated, de Mersch grotesquely empresse, Gurnard undisguisedly saturnine. He repelled me exactly as grossly vulgar men had the power of doing, but he, himself, was not that—there was something ... something. I could not quite make out his face, I never could. I never did, any more than I could ever quite visualise hers. I ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... and walks on two halves of a coconut shell, which are fastened like sandals to her feet by creeping plants. During her seclusion she is in charge of her aunts or other female relatives. At the end of the time she bathes, her person is loaded with ornaments, her face is grotesquely painted with red stripes on a white ground, and thus adorned she is brought forth in public to be admired by everybody. She is now marriageable.[95] Among the Ot Danoms of Borneo girls at the age of eight ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... admirably rendered in this style. In front of the royal palace an immense transparent screen, mounted on great poles, is drawn across the esplanade, and behind this, at a moderate distance, great fires are lighted. Between the screen and the fire masked figures, grotesquely costumed, enact the story of Rama and Sita and the giant Rawuna, with Hanuman and his army of apes bridging the Gulf of Manaar and piling up the Himalayas, while the bards, in measured ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... is a question of instinctive language and self-expression. Whether a man chooses to tell the truth in long sentences or short jokes is a problem analogous to whether he chooses to tell the truth in French or German. Whether a man preaches his gospel grotesquely or gravely is merely like the question of whether he preaches it in prose or verse. The question of whether Swift was funny in his irony is quite another sort of question to the question of whether Swift was serious in his pessimism. Surely even Mr. McCabe would not maintain that ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... had been stalking about picking up insects, drew near. Opening his large slate-coloured wings, and dancing grotesquely, the interesting bird approached his young mistress, bowing gracefully from side to side as he hopped lightly along; then running up, he laid his heron-like head lovingly ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... flakelets, idling hither and yon, astatic and aimless, settling in a hollow. They sensed a thrill and rustle to the air, though never a breath had touched them; then, as they mounted higher, a draught fanned them, icy as interstellar space. The view from the summit was grotesquely distorted, and glancing upward they found the guardian peaks had gone a-smoke with clouds of snow that whirled confusedly, while an increasing breath sucked over the summit, stronger each second. ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... It seems monstrous to you, but that, I believe, is the kind of thing I shall always be doing. But it does not mean that I feel no real remorse. They were greetin' eyes before I knew it, and though I may pose grotesquely as a fine fellow for finding Grizel a home where there is no child and can never be a child, I shall not cease, night nor day, from tending her. It will be a grim business, Gemmell, as you know, and if I am Sentimental Tommy ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... of the sixteenth century was conducive to imperial expansion. The feudal fragments of kingdoms were being fused into a true nationalism. It was the day of the mercantilists, when gold and silver were given a grotesquely exaggerated place in the national economy and self-sufficiency was deemed to be the goal of every great nation. Freed from the restraint of rivals, the nation sought to produce its own raw material, control its own trade, and carry its own goods in its own ships ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... never governed; it is always the ruling and Divine power: and the rest of the man is to it only as an instrument which it sounds, or a tablet on which it writes; clearly and sublimely if the wax be smooth and the strings true, grotesquely and wildly if they are stained and broken. And thus the "Iliad," the "Inferno," the "Pilgrim's Progress," the "Faerie Queen," are all of them true dreams; only the sleep of the men to whom they came was the deep, living sleep which ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... death; For death were bliss, and the convulsive wrath Of living torture peace, to the dread weight That pressed upon sensation, while the light Of reason gleamed but horror, and strange hosts Of hideous phantasies, like threatening ghosts. Grotesquely mingled, preyed upon his brain: Then would he dream of yesterdays again, Or view to-morrow's terrors thick surround His fancy with forebodings. While the sound Of his own breath broke frightful on his ear, He, bathed in icy sweat, would start in fear, Trembling and pale; then did ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... to my room I came suddenly upon the Prince, in a recess of the upper hall, addressing somebody through an open door with a querulous protest, whose wild extravagance of statement was grotesquely balanced by its utter feeble timidity of manner. "It is," said the Prince, "indeed a grave affair. We have here hundreds of socialists, emissaries from lawless countries and impossible places, who travel thousands of miles to fall upon our hearts ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... light Burberry on his arm, and he held it open for her. "Slip this on, Flamby," he said, in the same low, steady voice, "and sit there on the ledge for a moment." He helped her to put on the coat, which enveloped her grotesquely, led her to the low parapet which surrounded the figure of the dancing faun and stepped toward ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... hours Anderson tramped the streets in impotent anger, striving to master himself, for that trifling episode had so upset him that he could not concentrate his mind upon the subject in hand. When he tried to do so his conclusions seemed grotesquely fanciful and farfetched. This delay was all the more annoying because on the morrow the girl was to be buried, and, therefore, the precious hours were slipping away. He tried repeatedly to attain that abstract, subconscious mood ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... speedily directed to the bird-like creatures he had seen so abundantly present in each of his earlier visions. His first impression was soon corrected, and he considered for a time that they might represent a diurnal species of bat. Then he thought, grotesquely enough, that they might be cherubs. Their heads were round and curiously human, and it was the eyes of one of them that had so startled him on his second observation. They had broad, silvery wings, not feathered, ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... at all hours. And this is a custom which the gentlemanly and quiet proprietor, much as he evidently dislikes it, cannot possibly prevent. Some of these expressions, were they not so fearfully blasphemous, would be grotesquely sublime. For instance, not five minutes ago I heard two men quarreling in the street, and one said to the other, "Only let me get hold of your beggarly carcass once, and I will use you up so small that God Almighty himself cannot ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... religion these barbarians may previously have had is beyond our accurate knowledge. They handed down a mythology not radically different from the Graeco-Roman, though more vaguely and grotesquely conceived; and they recognised tribal duties and glories from which religious sanctions could hardly have been absent. But a barbarian mind, like a child's, is easy to convert and to people with what stories you will. The Northmen drank in with pleased astonishment what the monks ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... his assistant warden and saw that the man was deadly serious. Then the general looked at Clarens sprawled grotesquely on his back, with his shattered head resting against the dead night watchman's feet, with his right hand still gripping ...
— Take the Reason Prisoner • John Joseph McGuire
... who already had paid the penalty. And so two of them, done with pack-drill, goose-step, half rations and forced marches, lay under the straw the priests had heaped upon them. The toes of their boots were pointed grotesquely upward. Their gray hands were clasped rigidly ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... throng of polite society went hundreds of copper-coloured braves; some of them more than half-naked; most of them ready, after a victory, to be cannibals who revelled in stews of white man's flesh; all of them decked in waving plumes, all of them grotesquely painted, like demons in a nightmare, and all of them ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood
... lurks the squalor of the Faubourg Saint-Marceau. The imposing cupola of the Pantheon, and the grim melancholy dome of the Val-du-Grace, tower proudly up above a whole town in itself, built amphitheatre-wise; every tier being grotesquely represented by a crooked line of street, so that the two public monuments look like a huge pair of giants dwarfing into insignificance the poor little houses and the tallest poplars in the valley. To your left behold the observatory, the daylight, pouring athwart its windows and ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... a moment wonderingly as it lay absurdly curled in the palm of her hand, and then she burst into tears. The thing was so grotesquely trivial. It meant so much. It was a sign and a token falling, as it were, from the sky into the midst of her despairing mood, rebuking her, summoning her, declaring an unknown mission which she was bound to execute. It lay in her hand like ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... the elderly man struggled to release his arm from the grip of a wedging timber. The body of the porter, doubled grotesquely, partially protruded ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... remarkable for its eccentricity than its richness. This person wore a coat with tails a yard long, enormous boots, a battered hat, and a red wig. A close observer would have doubted whether his nose was real or artificial. The strangely-garbed intruder bowed grotesquely. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 4, 1890 • Various
... therefore seem, was a picture-writing as rude as that of the Mexicans. Objects were themselves represented, but coarsely and grotesquely—and, which is especially remarkable, without any curved lines. This would seem to indicate that the system grew up where a hard material, probably stone, was alone used. The cuneiform writing arose when clay ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... square document, grotesquely sealed and carefully folded. A small man with a pockmarked face, he wore the uniform of an ordinary gendarme and aped that role to perfection. Saluting gravely, he permitted the letter to pass from his hands. Then he closed the door and ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... go to jail, no doubt, For a year, or maybe two; Then as soon as she gets out Start her bawdy life anew. He will lie within a ward, Harmless as a man can be, With his face grotesquely scarred, And his eyes ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... remains of a quadrangle. A handsome modern church, likewise of the same red freestone, has been built on part of the site occupied by the Priory; and the organ was sounding within, while we walked about the premises. On some of the ancient arches, there were grotesquely carved stone faces. The old walls have been sufficiently restored to make them secure, without destroying their venerable aspect. It is a very interesting spot; and so much the more so because a modern town, with its brick and stone houses, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... schamir appears strangely and grotesquely metamorphosed. The hand of a man that has been hanged, when dried and prepared with certain weird unguents and set on fire, is known as the Hand of Glory; and as it not only bursts open all safe-locks, but also lulls to sleep all persons within the circle of its influence, it is of course invaluable ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... for the sunshine, limped off toward Woosung Road, grotesquely but incredibly fast for a man with only one sound leg. He never used a cane, having the odd fancy that a stick would only emphasize his affliction. He might have taken a 'ricksha this morning, but he never thought of it until he had crossed ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... heights which commanded a view of this pass, some old trees, grotesquely twisted, seemed to have mounted with painful efforts, like scouts sent in advance of the multitude in the rear. When we turned round, we saw the entire forest stretched beneath our feet, like a gigantic basin of verdure, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... their left were the Iroquois converts from the missions of Saut St. Louis and the Mountain of Montreal, fighting under the influence of their ghostly prompters against their own countrymen. On the right were the pagan Indians from the west. The woods were full of these painted spectres, grotesquely horrible in horns and tail; and among them flitted the black robe of Father Engelran, the Jesuit of Michillimackinac. Nicolas Perrot and two other bush-ranging Frenchmen were assigned to command them, but in fact they obeyed no man. These formed the vanguard, ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... these incomprehensible remarks. A peasant soon appeared on the road; he was dancing grotesquely and flinging his arms about with meaningless gestures. Almost paralyzed with curiosity, I glued my eyes on the hilarious spectacle. As the man reached a point in the road where he would vanish from our view, Sri Yukteswar ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... members. One tree is harsh and crabbed, another mild; one is churlish and illiberal, another exhausts itself with its free-hearted bounties. Even the shapes of apple-trees have great individuality, into such strange postures do they put themselves, and thrust their contorted branches so grotesquely in all directions. And when they have stood around a house for many years, and held converse with successive dynasties of occupants, and gladdened their hearts so often in the fruitful autumn, then it would seem almost ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... up grotesquely, weaving in and out. There were voices of expostulation and strong words of anger; but the new serious business that had materialized had most effectually put a stop to reflections upon the innocent girl ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... sullenly and suspiciously. Where she was going God knows: to camp, I suppose, in some dingle, with ugly company; to beg, to lie, to purloin, perhaps to drink; but by the perambulator walked a little boy, seven or eight years old, grotesquely clothed in patched and clumsy garments; he held on to the rim, dirty, unkempt; but he was happy too; he was with his mother, of whom he had no fear; he had been fed as the birds are fed; he had no anxious ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... been very content to remain where we were. The night had fallen; the streets, as they lost themselves in dim turnings, in mysterious alleyways, and arches that seemed grotesquely high in the vague blur of things, were filled for us with the charm of a new and lovely beauty. At one end the street ended in a towering mass of stone; that doubtless was the cathedral. At the right, the narrow houses ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... wearily padded for days; now a sleepy negro on a load of hay, an organ grinder with a chattering monkey or a clumsy bear, another sleepy negro with another load of hay, and a picturesque minstrel with an elaborate musical contrivance drawn by a horse. Now a capering Italian with a bagpipe, who danced grotesquely to his own piping, and piped the pennies out of rural pockets as if they had been so many copper rats ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... brother of the same craft, was quite ready for an affair that could only increase his popularity. Catching up his jharroo, or broom, he began to shower blows upon the unfortunate Piroo, yet never ceasing to dance round him so grotesquely that the fight was too much of a farce for any one to think of interfering. Yet the blows went home pretty hard, and as the broom was a sort of besom made of the springy ribs of the palm-leaf it stung sharply where ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... a little space from high-water mark. What outlandish beings are these? Erect as men, but hardly as symmetrical, they stand all round the rock like sculptured caryatides, supporting the next range of eaves above. Their bodies are grotesquely misshapen; their bills short; their feet seemingly legless; while the members at their sides are neither fin, wing, nor arm. And truly neither fish, flesh, nor fowl is the penguin; as an edible, pertaining neither to Carnival nor Lent; without exception the ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... heavens was giving way to a faint purple. Up from the mystic spaces of the east rays of deep purple, of burnt umber, vermilion, scarlet and flame were leaping into the sky. Black dots began to appear on the horizon, keys and trees silhouetted against the rising light. A huge heron flapped grotesquely up from the top of a mangrove bush as the sun struck it; a flamingo flapped by, matching its dainty pink with the sun's best tints; a dolphin's fin broke the ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... coat. 'No, no,' says the young gentleman; 'he means Brown, King, and Gibson, at the 'Delphi.' Now, with great deference both to the first-named gentleman with the dirty face, and the last-named gentleman in the non-existing shirt-collar, we do not mean either the performer who so grotesquely burlesqued the Popish conspirator, or the three unchangeables who have been dancing the same dance under different imposing titles, and doing the same thing under various high-sounding names for some five or ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... the harbor a smile played over Uncle William's face grotesquely. He gave a shove to the boat and sprang in. "I guess you'll go, Andrew," he said; "you wouldn't want a man ...
— Uncle William - The Man Who Was Shif'less • Jennette Lee
... streak of orange stabbed between Venusian and Earthling; sparks hissed out where it struck the tip of the helmet; and for an instant life and strength seemed to leave the grotesquely clad figure. Carse slumped down under a quick crushing weight. Weight! It bent him low, and it was only with a great effort that he was able to straighten again. For the suit's full load of metal and fabric was upon him now, its enormous boots binding him to the ...
— The Bluff of the Hawk • Anthony Gilmore
... failed entirely to dissipate the impression of meanness in the face of the stricken man. The lips were set in a little sneer, the half-closed eyes were small, the clean-shaven jaw was long and underhung, the ears were large and grotesquely prominent. ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... shadows wavered in the room which he had made a place of murder, there rose out of them taunting, accusing figures. He seemed to see Hagan, the detective, grotesquely converted into an executioner clad in red and Sam Haymond launching against him the anathema of the Church. There were shapes of strange things neither human, animal nor reptile—but wholly monstrous—emerging greedily from filthy lairs and creeping ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... Jessica sought pardon was easy to forgive; not so, however, the impertinent rebuke, which struck at a weak place in Nancy's conscience. Just when the course of time and favour of circumstances seemed to have completely healed that old wound, Jessica, with her crazy malice grotesquely disguised, came to revive the half-forgotten pangs, the shame and the doubt that had seemed to be things gone by. It would have become her, Nancy felt, to treat her hapless friend of years ago in a spirit of gentle tolerance; that she could not do so proved her—and she recognised ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... big, broad-shouldered man, tanned to the very limit of brownness, painfully clean shaven, and grotesquely clean in dress; a white shirt, innocent of bluing in its laundry, a glistening celluloid collar, a black necktie (the last two features evidently just added to the toilet, and neither as yet set to their service), ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... the people had vaguely feared had not come upon them; though at first they paused, half-hearted, when they passed the house of the Tintoret, where the quaint figure of "Ser-Robia," the Pasquino of Venice, had often a bit of news that the people cared to hear, grotesquely placarded over his broad mouth. He was a good friend to the people, Ser-Robia, and gave them many a pleasant bit of gossip to cheer their evening stroll; but it was wise not to laugh until one had heard the words, and there was ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... ghostly at all, nor did it fly. It was, from the royal box, only too plainly a ship which had length and height, without thickness. And instead of flying, after dreary aeons of singing, it was moved off on creaky rollers by men whose shadows were thrown grotesquely on the sea backing. ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Titian received from the brother of this princess, his patron and admirer Federigo Gonzaga, the commission for the famous series of the Twelve Caesars, now only known to the world by stray copies here and there, and by the grotesquely exaggerated engravings of AEgidius Sadeler. Giulio Romano having in 1536[20] completed the Sala di Troja in the Castello of Mantua, and made considerable progress with the apartments round about it, Federigo ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... "Ancient Mariner," sitting back and apart with washed eyes of such palest blue that they seemed a faded white. Long thin wisps of silvery, unkempt hair framed his face like an aureole. He was slender to emaciation, cavernously checked, roll after roll of skin, no longer encasing flesh or muscle, hanging grotesquely down his neck and swathing the Adam's apple so that only occasionally, with queer swallowing motions, did it peep out of the mummy-wrappings of skin and sink ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... dreamer, and half-pitying wonder at such lofty claims from such a helpless enthusiast, prompted his question, 'Art Thou a king then?' One can fancy the scornful emphasis on that 'Thou.' and can understand how grotesquely absurd the notion of his prisoner's being a ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... all of them, their barbaric headdresses and grotesquely painted faces, together with their many metal ornaments and gorgeously coloured feathers, adding to ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... mercy." And he let the corpse fall gently back and closed the glassy eyes. The bystanders had a momentary thrill. Death had lent dignity even to the old Jew. He lay there, felled by an apoplectic stroke, due to the forced heavy meal, the tinsel gleaming grotesquely on his white sodden cloak, his naked legs rigid and cold. From afar the rumors of revelry, the brouhaha of a mad population, saluted his deaf ears, the distant music of lutes and viols. The captain of the soldiers went hot and cold. He had harried the heels of the rotund runner in special amusement, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... into the broken turret room. We passed the body of that steward who just at the end had appealed to me and I had left dying. The legs of the forward look-out still poked grotesquely up from the wreckage of the observatory tower where it lay smashed down against ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... in the pictographic painting is a wolf grotesquely drawn. Within her body four young wolves are seen. Above the wolf is a killer whale surmounted by a second picture of the Thunder Bird, and in the left top corner of the pictograph is seen the ...
— Indian Legends of Vancouver Island • Alfred Carmichael
... iron bar; then he set fire to the wood with his torch. Marie saw with terror that the man was the same Pille-Miche to whom her rival had delivered her, and whose figure, illuminated by the flame, was like that of the little boxwood men so grotesquely carved in Germany. The moans of his prisoner produced a broad grin upon features that were ribbed with wrinkles and ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... exceptions. That there is no accounting for tastes is extraordinarily true. I once met a man, journeying, who told me he liked living in a sleeping-car; than which to me a dozen gales, with their abounding fresh air, would be preferable. Yet this ditty does grotesquely reproduce the lazy satisfaction and security of the old-timers under ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... always, by preference, of forms of death or disease and every state of disorder and dissolution, the affectionate analysis of vice in modern novels being a part of the same science. And, to keep to my own special field of study—the order of clouds,—there is a grotesquely notable example of the connection between infidelity and the sense of ugliness in a paper in the last Contemporary Review, in which an able writer, who signs Vernon Lee, but whose personal view or purpose remains to the close of the essay inscrutable, has rendered ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... one of their men was suddenly knocked down and attacked by the crowd with sticks and lances, and lay on the ground covered with blood. What his offence had been I did not hear. The entire crowd were most grotesquely got up, being dressed in either leopard or white monkey skins, with cows' tails strapped on behind and antelopes' horns fitted upon their heads, while their chins were ornamented with false beards made of the bushy ends of cows' tails ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... own. The pleasure of being allied to a man of the Baron's high worth, and who was so much valued by his uncle Sir Everard, was also an agreeable consideration, had anything been wanting to recommend the match. His absurdities, which had appeared grotesquely ludicrous during his prosperity, seemed, in the sunset of his fortune, to be harmonised and assimilated with the noble features of his character, so as to add peculiarity without exciting ridicule. His mind occupied with such projects of future ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... unbarred. They seemed to know each other very well, as if they were some young club of genial spirits that had been organized outside of the barriers of society for a long while. What funny habiliments they sported. It had never been my experience to see old clothes thrown upon young limbs so grotesquely. The coat that would have been a fit for a corpulent youth nearly buried a skinny form the height ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... interruption was her expression. He turned to see what had startled her, and saw in the doorway of the drawing-room the grotesquely neat and stylish figure of the little general. Before either ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... sometimes for days together; and after having headed a noisy procession, decorated with bonnet rouge and one of those antique camloteen cloaks which our forefathers used to rejoice in, it would be found in the morning grotesquely propped up, either in the centre of the old Upper Town market, or in the old Picote cemetery in Couillard street [347], in that fanciful costume (a three-storied sombrero, with eye-glass and dudeen) which rendered so piquant some of the former ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... balustrade, looking at them with curious eyes. Her smile of recognition as she caught sight of Professor Burgess, gave place to an expression of half-concealed ridicule, as she glanced down at Vic Burleigh, the big, heavy-boned young fellow, so grotesquely impossible to the ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... his mouth. The shadow of the bridge was just above him. He turned on his back for a second. There were lights on the bridge. A current swept him past one barge and then another. Certainty possessed him that he was going to be drowned. A voice seemed to sob in his ears grotesquely: "And so John Andrews was drowned in the Seine, drowned in ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... how to overcome this by stretching her face, feature for feature, as a dancer goes through limbering exercises in the wings. The woman had been a trouper in the old days of one-night stands. Just before she stepped in front of the camera you saw her drawing down her face grotesquely, stretching her mouth to form an oval, dropping her jaw, twisting her lips to the right, to the left, rolling her eyes round and round. It was a perfect lesson in facial calisthenics, and Harrietta was thankful ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... stood, guns in hand, watching through the windows, while the frenzied blacks drew cautiously nearer, spreading a cordon of hundreds all around the Sky-Bird, they could see in the moonlight that the Fulbees were grotesquely painted on arms and faces, while their bodies were entirely naked except for a dirty-looking cloth wrapped around their loins in the form of a short skirt. Every one of them was armed, and as they contracted their circle, guns, spears, and bows were frequently raised in threatening position; ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... the dim starlight—it was just before dawn—he could see all of the open yard and roadway before the house, with the great barn looming like a black and sinister shadow as its farther barrier. Crossing this space, he saw the figure of Peter Creed, grotesquely stooped and old in the obscuring gloom, moving slowly, almost gropingly, and yet directly, as though impelled, toward the barn's overwhelming shadow. Slowly he unbarred the great door, swung it open, and entered the blacker ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough |
