"Topsy-turvy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cellar they crawl down into it. The cobwebs get on their faces, and they puff and snort. They are bored and ashamed. That's why they put on the appearance of being very wicked and very mad with us. It's dirty work, and they understand it, of course they do! Once they turned everything topsy-turvy in my place, and went away abashed, that's all. Another time they took me along with them. Well, they put me in prison, and I stayed there with them for about four months. You sit and sit, then you're called out, taken to the street under an escort of soldiers, ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... in his room, watching from behind the curtains his fellow-beings romping and shrieking over a game of baby-in-the-hat. The bottom had, indeed, dropped out of things—the universe was topsy-turvy. More keenly than in the afternoon he felt the utter hopelessness of his disgrace. If he could only get away—escape from it all. If he only had had five dollars in his pocket he could have reached Trenton and worked his way to some seaport town. He ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... when he dips his pen into the inkstand he draws it out all covered with mud, when he fancies he is sitting down on a solid chair he finds himself sprawling on the floor, in a word his actions are all topsy-turvy or mere beating the air, while in every case the effect is invariably one of momentum. Habit has given the impulse: what was wanted was to check the movement or deflect it. He did nothing of the sort, but continued like a machine in the same straight line. ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... threads met, a black and yellow spider, marked like a man of war, waited its prey. The lad brushed through it with a pang. The spider's work fell about him in ruins: he rushed for the gorse, and hung there topsy-turvy, as though heart-broken. Hard lines certainly! He had upset the spider's apple-cart, as the Almighty had upset his. But he had had to— and so no doubt had ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... your house as unlike home as possible, by turning every thing topsy-turvy, removing your furniture, and squeezing as many people into your rooms ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 358 - Vol. XIII, No. 358., Saturday, February 28, 1829 • Various
... yonder steeple wants a spire, The grey old fellow, Poet Joe,[1] The philosophic cause will show. Once on a time a western blast, At least twelve inches overcast, Reckoning roof, weathercock, and all, Which came with a prodigious fall; And, tumbling topsy-turvy round, Lit with its bottom on the ground: For, by the laws of gravitation, It fell into its proper station. This is the little strutting pile You see just by the churchyard stile; The walls in tumbling gave a knock, And thus the steeple got a shock; From whence the neighbouring farmer calls ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... were heavily wooded to their summits. The westernmost peak of this range was separated from the rest by a wide river, which had cut its way through in some of those forgotten ages when, if we are to believe the geologists, every thing was topsy-turvy on this now meek ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... resent his operations as an individual hurt, a personal affront. What business has he to be trampling among our borders and crushing our flowers with his stupid hobnails? Why cannot he carry his zeal for topsy-turvy horticulture elsewhere? He comes and lays a brutal hand on our pet growths, snips off their graces, shapes them anew according to his own ridiculous ideal, paints and varnishes them with a villainous compound of his contrivance, and then bids us admire the ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... (unconformable) 83; acephalous^, deranged; aimless; disorganized; straggling; unmethodical, immethodical^; unsymmetric^, unsystematic; untidy, slovenly; dislocated; out of sorts; promiscuous, indiscriminate; chaotic, anarchical; unarranged &c (arrange) &c 60; confused; deranged &c 61; topsy-turvy &c (inverted) 218; shapeless &c 241; disjointed, out of joint. troublous^; riotous &c (violent) 173. complex &c 59.1. Adv. irregularly &c adj.; by fits, by fits and snatches, by fits and starts; pellmell; higgledy-piggledy; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... pine spoke, but the word he said was "Silence"; The aspen sang, but silence was her theme. The wind was silence, restless; and the voices Of the bright forest-creatures were as silence Made vocal in the topsy-turvy ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... are going topsy-turvy, and with us here the crisis will come today or tomorrow. The Hereditary Forester has already ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... isn't what I said perfectly true? Don't they turn every idea topsy-turvy? Don't they make a regular hotchpotch of right and wrong? Don't they say that the things I know are true, are lies? The craziest part of it all is the fact of these "liberals," men of full age, going about in crowds imagining that they are the broad-minded party! Did you ever hear ...
— An Enemy of the People • Henrik Ibsen
... stolid Sheila, and ingenious bits of mechanism that did unbelievable things when wound up, for the clever, imaginative Hans. I was not to have the joy of seeing their wide-eyed delight, but I knew that there would follow certain laboriously scrawled letters, filled with topsy-turvy capitals and crazily leaning words of thanks to the doting old auntie who had been such ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... dreary enough for a month, at the end of which time his reverence came to me, leaving the porter just outside the door in older to come to his help should I be violent, and then he read me a very purty lecture on my conduct, saying I had turned the religious house topsy-turvy, and corrupted the scholars, and that I was the cheat of the world, for that on inspecting the pack he had discovered the dirty marks which I had made upon the trump cards for to know them by. He said a great deal more to me, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... hail, Delusion! Were it not for thee The world turned topsy-turvy we should see; For Vice, respectable with cleanly fancies, Would fly abandoned Virtue's ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... doctoress?" said Alfieri carelessly. "Oh, she's one of your prodigies of female learning, such as our topsy-turvy land produces: an incipient Laura Bassi or Gaetana Agnesi, to name the most distinguished of their tribe; though I believe that hitherto her father's good sense or her own has kept her from aspiring to academic honours. The beautiful Fulvia is a good daughter, ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... with his hero it was all up with Faust's utter damnableness: a young poet does not plan to send his own soul to perdition. At the same time, he could not very well imagine him as an out-and-out good man, since that would have been to turn the legend topsy-turvy. The league with the Devil, who would of course have to be conceived as in some sense or other an embodiment of evil, was the very heart of the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... He hated clashing and conflict above all things, and was for peace. Why should they thus rush to thrust themselves into trouble? Let matters abide as they were a little longer; surely life was pleasant enough without turning it all topsy-turvy. Then, with a sort of indignation, why should Myles, who had only come among them a month, take such service more to heart than they who had endured it for years? And, finally, with the hopefulness of so many of the rest of us, he advised Myles to let matters alone, ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... a strange topsy-turvy state all that day. Sometimes she would forget herself and "cosy up" against Stair as she used to snuggle close to her Uncle Julian. Then something in the strong, clear voice, the square unyieldingness of shoulders, the body massive and forceful, caused her to draw hastily away. She ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... life among wild nations, mining and establishing fisheries, organising lines of land traffic, perpetually moving from place to place, and leaving wherever they went abundant proofs of their diligence and capacity for hard work. From Thasos in the East, where Herodotus saw "a large mountain turned topsy-turvy by the Phoenicians in their search for gold,"[315] to the Scilly Islands in the West, where workings attributable to them are still to be seen, all the metalliferous islands and coast tracts bear traces of Phoenician industry in ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... off—let us take our departure!—for we shall find our delicate modern ears unable to endure the vast uproar which is about to commence in celebration of the king's escape! Listen! it has already commenced. See!—the whole town is topsy-turvy. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... greatest number of votes are swindlers and fools. The Commune of Paris cannot allow such abuses to exist; the Commune maintains universal suffrage—the grand basis of republican institutions—but turns it topsy-turvy. Michon has only had half a vote,—then Michon ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... what a martinet I can be you may repent, like many another who has obtained his wish. Here we shall reverse matters. Everything is topsy-turvy now, you know, so take this coffee at the beginning ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... place on the first of May, and was long cited in tradition as the grand moving. The anniversary of it was piously observed among the "sons of the pilgrims of Communipaw," by turning their houses topsy-turvy, and carrying all the furniture through the streets, in emblem of the swarming of the parent hive; and this is the real origin of the universal agitation and "moving" by which this most restless of cities is literally turned out of ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... "Persian Letters" in which two distinguished Persian travellers turn the whole existing society of France topsy-turvy and poke fun at everything from the king down to the lowest of his six hundred pastry cooks, the book immediately went through four editions and assured the writer thousands of readers for his famous ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... mother feels dreadfully because you all have been so naughty. Winthrop!—your finger! Instantly! Clemence, baby, where on earth did you acquire all that grime on your face and fists?" And to her brother: "Such a household, Phil! Everybody incompetent—including me; everything topsy-turvy; and all five dogs perfectly possessed to lie on that pink rug in the music room.—Have they been there to-day, Drina?—while you ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... human industry would suddenly stop, as if by enchantment, and in the course of a very few years the poor little framework of human society, of which we are now so proud, would totally change its aspect, and the whole world would be turned topsy-turvy. ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... people who think drama ought to be educational, and preach moral lessons, and so on. Well, the popular drama is pretty moral, except, perhaps, musical comedy, which does seem a little topsy-turvy in its lessons; and the Censor prevents politics being introduced or religion being attacked. Every attempt to teach what you would call moral lessons must fall because we know that after all the play is not real. I confess that ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... to the Kempt family now and then, if they will let me. I must get away for a time and think. My life has suddenly become all topsy-turvy, and I need to get my bearings, as does a ship that has been through a storm ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... "that you seem to delight in taking a topsy-turvy view of life. It arises, I think, from an over developed sense of humour. You would find things to laugh ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... which contained no less than twenty-seven millions of people, there were not above five-and-twenty servants altogether! They were so lofty about it, too, that instead of discussing whether they should hire themselves as servants to Prince Bull, they turned things topsy-turvy, and considered whether as a favour they should hire Prince Bull to be their master! While they were arguing this point among themselves quite at their leisure, the wicked old red Fairy was incessantly going up and down, knocking at the doors ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... of no possible use downstairs, and you had better be treated like a visitor. Miss Cecilia was so distressed at your missing your breakfast that she spoke to the housekeeper, and I was sent up to you. Please to excuse it if the tea's cold. This is Grand Day, and we are all topsy-turvy in consequence." ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... the desire for the impossible (since few can tell what seems impossible, and fewer care for what indubitably is so) so much as the desire for the topsy-turvy. Baudelaire, who admired persons thus afflicted, has ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... the limb to a point where he felt sure that it would hold his weight, and as he did so it moved slowly up into place. What the little householder thought of all this topsy-turvy business it might be amusing to know. For surely, if the world war changed the map of Europe, the little neighborhood of leaf and branch where this timid denizen of the woods lived and had its being, had been subject to jolts and changes quite as sweeping. Now and again ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... leave to indulge in a few reflections on the effect of this mental explosion in the noddles of John and James and Richard, upon reviewers, publishers, and the world in general. This change of lodging in the author will turn many things topsy-turvy, and conjure the spirit out of much long-established facetiousness. Pictures of poets in garrets will soon not be understood; bathos will be at a premium! the bard will be known, not by the brownness of his beaver, but by the gold band that encircles it. The historian shall go about ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... I could not at first well guess, so completely was my scale of character turned topsy-turvy. But revolving the subject afterward, I perceived that WE was the multiple of Festus, and THOSE MEN of Paul. All the circumstances seemed the same as in that Syrian hall; for the persons in question were they who cared more for doing good than for ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... absence make this use: It lends a lustre and more great opinion, A larger dare to our great enterprise, Than if the earl were here; for men must think, If we, without his help, can make a head To push against the kingdom, with his help We shall o'erturn it topsy-turvy down. Yet all goes well, yet ...
— King Henry IV, The First Part • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... Merry Chuckle, "Old Witchy Crosspatch is always waiting for children to get out of bed backwards. And when they do, she catches them by the heels and turns everything topsy-turvy all day long; but when you get out of bed toes first, I'll be there to start you on a pleasant day and Witchy Crosspatch will have to return to Make-Believe Land and hide her head!" "Sure enough, I did crawl out of bed backwards this morning!" ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle
... the fire, quietly, and took no notice of the request. "People's heads," continued the medical gentleman, "seem turned topsy-turvy. Dear me, how different it was in my time! What men are about, I can't think. The very last newspaper I read had an advertisement that I should as soon have expected to see there when my father was alive, as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... that it was meant to be comic. It was only a nonsense lecture, like Edward Lear's nonsense books. Do you see? It was a turning of everything topsy-turvy. So what we have to do is just the opposite of everything Mr. Amarinth advised. ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... of the mind, and life is all topsy-turvy, all vanity and vexation of spirit. There is no cure for individual or social disorder, except in forgetfulness and annihilation. "Let us eat, drink and be merry," says the pessimist, "for to-morrow we die." If I regarded my life from the point of view of the pessimist, I should be undone. I should ...
— Optimism - An Essay • Helen Keller
... acknowledged, though these have also been shown to lie along the path of largeness. There are, therefore, in self-sacrifice both negative and positive elements. But why select its name from the subordinate part? Why turn to the front its incidental negations? This is topsy-turvy nomenclature. Better blot the word self-sacrifice from our dictionaries. Devotion, service, love, dedication to a cause, —these words mark its real nature and are the only descriptions of it which its practicers will recognize. That damage to ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... brother has ever followed his fancies, allowed his passions to run riot, and never done a thing to exercise any check over himself? His temperament is such that he some time back created, all on account of that fellow Ch'in Chung, a rumpus that turned heaven and earth topsy-turvy; and, as a matter of course, he's now far worse than he ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... no time in making a thorough examination of the Lodge. In the bedrooms they found everything topsy-turvy, the bed clothes having been hauled near the windows where the incoming snow might fall upon them. In the kitchen they found many of their cooking utensils in the sink, and over them had been poured a mixture of flour, catsup, maple syrup, and condensed milk. In the storeroom many other things were ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... central power. Duespeptos was king only in name,—roi faineant. Gaster was the power behind the throne,—the Mayor of the Palace,—the great Grand-Vizier. Nought went merrily, for he ruled with a rod of iron. Every day his strange freaks set the empire topsy-turvy. Every day there was growling and ill-feeling at his whimsical tyranny,—but nothing more. Secession was as impossible as in the day ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... does he?" she said to herself, as she realised that she would be forced to speak out now if he was to be saved from such an alliance. "Then he must marry her, that's all! I can't and won't turn all Maerchenland topsy-turvy on his account! I've done all I could for him, and I shall leave him to go his own way. I'll go up to bed before he arrives, and I expect it will be a long time before I'm able to come down, for I feel sure I am going ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... after the exercises of the day just where they had first stopped. This was at McLean's rooms, dismantled and topsy-turvy with the business of packing. The pipes were going and the talk kept pace. Old men smoke slowly and in great whiffs with long intervals of silence between their observations. Young men draw fast and say many and bright things, for ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... enraptured at the heavenly scenery Alcides always managed to send the canoe on to some rock, which quickly brought me back, not to earth but to water. His principle in life was always to do the worst thing and then you knew that nothing worse could happen—a topsy-turvy philosophy for which we all had to suffer. Emerging from the basin, we had two channels before us, one to the N.N.E., the other N.N.W. Gigantic palm trees such as we had seen along the River Arinos were now to be seen all along the banks of the river. We saw in the water not far from us a large ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... a momentary uneasiness to see my rustic throne beneath the oak usurped by a noisy group of girls, the silence and decorum of my imaginary realm broken by music and laughter, and, in a word, my whole kingdom turned topsy-turvy with romping, fiddling, and dancing. But I am naturally, and from principle, too, a lover of all those innocent amusements which cheer the laborer's toil, and, as it were, put their shoulders to the wheel ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... all. General Clarke's movement was the result of an enterprise which was aimed against the Spaniards; and, though the facts have no real connection with the Yazoo speculation, they may be briefly told here, especially since Stevens, in his "History of Georgia," turns them all topsy-turvy. ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... had other views of it. Even when at last he was relieved from duty he never closed an eye. The blowing out of the lamp had turned his ideas and hopes all topsy-turvy. His heart sang loud and turbulent within him. He had kissed other girls indeed before at kirns and country dances. He laughed triumphantly within him at the difference. They had run into corners and screamed and ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... fellow, perhaps you had better go and ask him. If Hamilton Burton has turned things topsy-turvy to act as your savior in an eleventh-hour crisis, common sense compels me to infer that he has a reason too ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... her heart had strayed away—as it must needs stray somewhere—to the son of the third greatest man in England. As for his being an outlaw, that mattered little. He might be inlawed, and rich and powerful, any day in those uncertain, topsy-turvy times; and, for the present, his being a wolf's head only made him the more interesting to her. Women like to pity their lovers. Sometimes—may all good beings reward them for it—they love merely because they pity. And Torfrida found it pleasant to pity the insolent young ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... signals agreed upon, the separating and joining, the dispersing and collecting which will take place in the course of a battle, may give the appearance of disorder when no real disorder is possible. Your formation may be without head or tail, your dispositions all topsy-turvy, and yet a rout of your forces quite out of ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... perhaps you will say, is an emblem of a tree standing on its head; and pray what is man, but a topsy-turvy creature, his animal faculties perpetually mounted on his rational, his head where his heels should be, grovelling on the earth! And yet, with all his faults, he sets up to be an universal reformer and corrector of abuses, a remover of grievances, rakes into every sluts' corner ...
— English Satires • Various
... sure that I'm going to be married." Elsa twirled the sunshade again. "I really wish I had stayed at home. I seem all topsy-turvy. I could have screamed when I saw the man standing on the ledge above the boat that night. No; I do not believe I shall marry. Fancy marrying a man and knowing that his ghost was at the same time wandering about the earth!" She rose and the ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... having brought the Bear to the Stake, unrings him, and turns him about, so that he may see the Dog, that's to play at him; the Challenger lets fly his Dog, which being a cruel strong Cur rises up to the Bears nose, fastens and turns him topsy-turvy; there's no small joy and an eccho of Shouts that makes the very earth tremble; then there's pulling and hawling to get him off from the Bear: Then the Adversary let's fly his Dog, who coming to fasten, the Bear being furious and angry that he was so plagu'd with the first ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... men change wholly when they change? When I look into my heart, I find everything that was there, still there—only they are topsy-turvy. Things that were well-ordered have become jumbled up. The gems that were strung into a necklace are now rolling in the dust. And so my ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... in that boat, dear," she said sweetly, "you would realize the topsy-turvy condition of our brains. Even Mr. Gray himself, the coolest man on board, imagined we might sink any moment. So what can you expect of those excitable Chileans? Besides, the thing was done so quickly that we were ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... somersaults, and walking all about us on their hands, with feet in the air, to attract attention and elicit pennies. One little fellow gyrated about in a most marvelous style, keeping so persistently topsy-turvy as to grow black in the face, and we finally paid him to keep right side uppermost. Begging is reduced to a science in India, and our little party were beset, as by an ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... mean Anna. What nonsense for us to attempt to keep up the Miss Moore and Mr. Sanderson business. I used to scoff at love at first sight and say it was all the idle fancy of the poets. Then I met you and remained to pray. You've turned my world topsy-turvy. I can't think without you, and yet it would be folly to tell this to my Governor, and ask his consent to our marriage. He wants me to finish college, take the usual trip around the world and then go into the firm. Besides, he wants me to eventually marry a cousin of mine—a ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... Maud Mabel Rose Matilda very ill in the best bed, while she went down to get a poppy leaf to rub the darling's cheeks with, because she had a high fever. Jocko took a fancy to the pretty bed, and after turning the play-house topsy-turvy, he pulled poor Maud Mabel Rose Matilda out by her flaxen hair, and stuffing her into the water-pitcher upside down, got into the bed, drew the lace curtains, and prepared to doze deliciously under the ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... (which, indeed, was a very large one), and then, as fast as Dinah put what they desired into their trunk, Ellen snatched it out if it belonged to her sister, and Sally did the same unless it happened to be her own. So that, quite tired with their teasing, naughty behaviour, she turned it topsy-turvy, and declared she would not put up any one thing except their clothes, and added she wished they were gone with ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... thirty-five. Her hair was still soft and shining. She had been a pretty girl, she was a beautiful woman. But the greatest change was in her attitude toward life. In Paris her golden-rule philosophy had been turned topsy-turvy. ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... or rather Yeomanry life, its fatigues and worries, big and small, on men hitherto unaccustomed to such things, has been marvellous, and productive of a topsy-turvy dom of character, after Mr. W. S. Gilbert's own heart. To commence with, it is curious to note that in many cases men who claim to have roughed it in various parts of the world have been amongst the worst to stand the roughing here, and while ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... and not a dismal imitation of a copy of some celebrated poseur—I'll tell you those! Speaking as a man of liberal—or lax—morality, you surprise me. You are godly and cleanly men; yet, when you saw in me a gem of purest ray serene, did you appeal to my better nature? Nary! In a wild and topsy-turvy world, did you implore me to devote my splendid and unwasted energies in the service of Good, with a capital G? Nix! You appealed to ambition, egotism, and greed.... Fie! A ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... and Austria, which had occupied the passes of lower Piedmont, and blocked the way into Lombardy. By this time the law for compulsory enlistment had been enacted, but the general excitement and topsy-turvy management incident to such rapid changes in government and society, having caused the failure of the Sardinian expedition, had also prevented recruiting or equipment in either of these two divisions of the army. The ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... wrote to England for more convicts and immigrants, and he pathetically exclaimed, "To whom but convicts could colonists look to cultivate their lands, to tend their flocks, to reap their harvests?" In the month of May, 1853, Sir William wrote that "the discovery of gold had turned him topsy-turvy altogether," and he rejoiced that no gold had been discovered in his island. Then the Legislature perversely offered a reward of five thousand pounds to any man who would discover a gold field in Tasmania, but, as a high-toned historian ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... perish. The conquerors leave uncultivated the ground for the possession of which they have sacrificed the lives of so many thousand men, and have spent their own in hurry and trouble. Men have before them vast tracts of land uninhabited and uncultivated, and they turn mankind topsy-turvy for one nook of that neglected ground in dispute. The earth, if well cultivated, would feed a hundred times more men than she does now. Even the unevenness of ground, which at first seems to be a defect, turns either into ornament or profit. ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... with your topsy-turvy? Everything will be ruled like a sheet of music-paper. Have you forgotten what I have just told you about turning the staircase and hiring the first floor of the next house?—which is all settled with the umbrella-maker, Cayron. ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... darkness, Richard. One like mine, when the brain has a buzz in the middle, and everything is topsy-turvy. One, like yours, when the world is all shut out with its beauty and its flowers; and then there's another, a blacker darkness when the buzz is in the heart, making it wild with pain. Such, Richard is the darkness, which lies like a pall ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... judicious outposts all about. There lay Broglio, meditating the attack on Budweis [were co-operation once here],—when, contrariwise, altogether on the sudden, Budweis made attack on Broglio; tumbled him quite topsy-turvy, and sent him home to Prag, uncertain which end uppermost; rolling like a heap of mown stubble in the wind, rather than marching like an army!"... Take one glance ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... cleverest friend I have at Paris; but that may be my fault, for I like to start it. It is a relief to the languid small-talk of society to listen to any one thoroughly in earnest upon turning the world topsy-turvy." ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... place seems topsy-turvy," remarked Honor. "You can go where you like, and actually speak in the laboratory without forfeits! Even the library is turned ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... led to a corner of the corral, or stable yard, and tied. Then the foreman made ready to try to stay in the saddle longer than had any of his men, for when a bronco bucks it is like trying to hold on to a swing that is turning topsy-turvy. ...
— The Curlytops at Uncle Frank's Ranch • Howard R. Garis
... it, evert it, invert it, subvert it, overturn it, beat it, thwack it, bump it, batter it, knock it, thrust it, push it, jerk it, shock it, shake it, toss it, throw it, overthrow it, upside down, topsy-turvy, arsiturvy, tread it, trample it, stamp it, tap it, ting it, ring it, tingle it, towl it, sound it, resound it, stop it, shut it, unbung it, close it, unstopple it. And then again in a mighty bustle ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... possible to climb to the nearest timber. Nothing definite could be seen. The clouds on the snowy surface and the light electrified air gave the eye only optical illusions. The outline of every object was topsy-turvy and dim. The large stones that I thought to step on were not there; and, when apparently passing others, I bumped into them. Several times I fell headlong by stepping out for a drift and finding ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... time in going to sleep. It seemed to her as she lay there, staring wide awake, that everything in the world was unsettled and topsy-turvy. Nothing could ever be right again. What with the fiasco of the night just gone, the appearance of the mysterious brother, the counterbalancing of resolve and remorse within her troubled self, the report of Barry's lapse from rectitude, ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... if in the matter of your visit to us you cannot alter your plans, which have already been turned topsy-turvy once to suit ours, we will go at some other time to Belvoir, and my sister must e'en give it up, as in my professional days I had to forego Stoke, Chatsworth, and, hardest by far ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... who have everything, expect them to be grateful; and when I know that every one of them has done more useful work in a year of their life than I shall ever do in the whole of mine, then I feel that the whole state of things is somehow wrong and topsy-turvy and wicked." Her voice rose a little, every emphasis grew more passionate. "And if I don't do something—the little such a person as I can—to alter it before I die, I might ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a wife, he thinks how happy he will be, and how pleasant it will be keeping house on his own account; but, before the bottom of the family kettle has been scorched black, he will be like a man learning to swim in a field, with his ideas all turned topsy-turvy, and, contrary to all his expectations, he will find the pleasures of housekeeping to be all a delusion. Look at that woman there. Haunted by her cares, she takes no heed of her hair, nor of her personal appearance. With her head all untidy, her apron tied round her as a girdle, with a baby ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... of reach of the wrath of the Count of Biaucaire. The vessel, however, is soon overtaken by a terrible tempest, which, after tossing it about for seven days, drives it into the harbor of Torelore. This is the mediaeval "topsy-turvy land," for on entering the castle Aucassin learns that the king is lying abed, because a son has been born to him, while the queen is at the head of the army fighting! This state of affairs so incenses ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... wanted—they had finished the door on the birthday, and proud enough they were of it. The griffins, cupids, and so on, were, I must own, most beautiful to behold; though so many in number, so entangled in flowers and devices, and so topsy-turvy in their actions and attitudes, that you felt them unpleasantly in your head for hours after you had done with the pleasure of looking at them. If I add that Penelope ended her part of the morning's work by being ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... everything is done with us, all topsy-turvy!" said the Russian officers and generals after the Tarutino battle, letting it be understood that some fool there is doing things all wrong but that we ourselves should not have done so, just as people speak today. But people who talk like ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... know that in my absence you could have behaved badly! Another in your place would have turned the house topsy-turvy, but you have only broken a pane of glass! God bless you for your considerateness. Go on in the same way and you will ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... topsy-turvy scene ever came to be tolerated in the colonel's office, of all places, was afterward a puzzle in the memory of many, including the colonel. They recalled it like a sort of nightmare, like something they could not control. Perhaps ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... could I even promise to return to it: in concession to which weakness, it was agreed that I should call in about an hour at the office of the lawyer, whom (as he left the library) Uncle Adam should waylay and inform of the arrangement. I suppose there was never a more topsy-turvy situation: you would have thought it was I who had suffered some rebuff, and that iron-sided Adam was a generous conqueror who scorned ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... that the world had suddenly turned topsy-turvy," he said, smiling at the mystified and distraught Evelyn, as though the whirl of events outside the station were part and parcel of the humdrum routine of life. "When Mr. Theydon regains his speech he will tell us how he came to suspect ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... my topsy-turvy Close, and, I reckon, rather true. Some are fine fellows: some, right scurvy; Most, a dash between the two. But it's a woman, old girl, that makes me Think more kindly of the race, And it's a woman, old girl, that shakes me When the ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... manner of mischief.[62] She hath been known to come at the head of these rascals, and beat her lover until he was sore from head to foot, and then force him to pay for the trouble she was at. Once, attended with a crew of ragamuffins, she broke into his house, turned all things topsy-turvy, and then set it on fire. At the same time she told so many lies among his servants, that it set them all by the ears, and his poor Steward was knocked on the head;[63] for which I think, and so doth all the Country, that she ought to be answerable. To conclude her character; she ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... things were all topsy-turvy once more. The seventh Janissary regiment, when the two-and-thirty Janissaries returned to them with bloody swords boasting of their deed, rushed upon them and cut them to pieces. The new Janissary Aga was shot dead within his own gates. Kabakulak retired within ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... pity, the pity that time should ever annul The wearers of skirts who mended shirts, And never thought nurseries dull. For everything's topsy-turvy now, the men are bedded at ten, While the women sit up, and smoke and sup In the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 18, 1892 • Various
... period Socratic every dining-room was Attic (Which suggests an architecture of a topsy-turvy kind), There they'd satisfy their twist on a RECHERCHE cold [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], Which is what they called their lunch - and so may you, if you're inclined. As they gradually got on, they'd [Greek text which cannot be reproduced] (Which is Attic for a steady and a conscientious ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... thou hast not tumbled the bed topsy-turvy. I am glad to see thou hast yet some grace and manners in thy vocation. Now, Sir Messenger, to requite thee for this thy courtesy and forbearance, I will show thee a secret tabernacle, which all thy prying has not been able ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... wisdom the sages preach Who never have learnt what they try to teach. We are the lights of the age, they say! We are the men, and the thinkers we! So we build up guess-work the livelong day, In a topsy-turvy sort of way, Some with and some wanting a plus b. Let the British Association fuss; What are theirs to the feats to be wrought by us? {354} Shall the earth stand still? Will the round come square? Must Isaac's book be the nest of a mare? Ought the moon to be taught by the laws ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... things"—was from the first his endeavour in literature, nay more, it was the main passion of his life: and the instrument that should serve his purpose could not be forged in haste. Neither was it easy for this past master of the random, the unexpected, the brilliantly back-foremost and topsy-turvy in talk, to learn in writing the habit of orderly arrangement and organic sequence which even the lightest forms of literature ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... title would go to Evermond Le Mesurier, the unmarried and dissolute uncle, if he survived his nephew, and then would die out altogether. There would be no more Baron Bracondales of Bracondale, unless Hector chose to marry and have sons. Oh, life was a topsy-turvy affair at the best of times, she ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... dazed and bewildered, as though she were moving in a dream. Was it really true that she had run away from the man she was to marry and was being brought back by the man who loved her? The whole affair appeared topsy-turvy and absurd. She supposed she ought to feel ashamed and overwhelmed, but somehow the only thing that seemed to her to matter was that she had failed of that high ideal of love which Peter had expected of her. She knew ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... fashion by way of expressing a (then) modern spirit, a Georgian idiosyncrasy, or anything of that sort; he was content with the language of the best writers and the thoughts of the best men. He was no amateur of the topsy-turvy, and had not the very slightest desire to show how a literary head could grow beneath the shoulders. He was satisfied that his genius should flow naturally. And the consequence is that it was never checked, that it flows still for us with all ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... warning, the Emperor issued an Imperial Decree raising him to the Chinese equivalent of the peerage. Henceforth he belonged to the distinguished company of Iron Hatted Dukes—at least not he but his ancestors did, for this was no ordinary father-to-son patent of nobility. The topsy-turvy honour reached backward instead of forward, diminishing one rank with ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... two score years since CARROLL'S art, With topsy-turvy magic, Sent ALICE wondering through a part ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. With a Proem by Austin Dobson • Lewis Carroll
... the door had closed behind Mrs. Warren, Nancy, singing lustily, yet with a certain nervousness, as if to drown all power of thought, bustled about the room, peering into topsy-turvy bureau drawers and ransacking inconsequent-looking boxes, with a half-feverish energy, as though upon the unearthing of that particular piece of lace depended her ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... that's what he hasn't, for he never will have a child round the house that he don't turn everything topsy-turvy for them," said ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Hellenic sky and hills of Hymettus, with its paradoxical antitheses: of flowers and flannels; strawberries and sealskin sacks; open fires with open windows; snow-capped mountains and orange blossoms; winter looking down upon summer—a topsy-turvy land, where you dig for your wood and climb for your coal; where water-pipes are laid above ground, with no fear of Jack Frost, and your principal rivers flow bottom side up and invisible most of the time; where the boys climb up hill ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... brains to imagine how he could ever find such a good place for his book-case as the gallery in the old maid's house. Fancying he saw his books scattered about, his furniture defaced, his regular life turned topsy-turvy, he asked himself for the thousandth time why the first year spent in Mademoiselle Gamard's house had been so sweet, the second so cruel. His troubles were a pit in which his reason floundered. The canonry seemed to him small compensation for ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... "Get out, you topsy-turvy old humbug," cried Tom wrathfully. "Think I don't know you?" and he ran on, and caught up to his uncle as he was passing through ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... thirty-first of August, everything in the Rostovs' house seemed topsy-turvy. All the doors were open, all the furniture was being carried out or moved about, and the mirrors and pictures had been taken down. There were trunks in the rooms, and hay, wrapping paper, and ropes were scattered about. The peasants and house serfs carrying ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... "that men's heads do not grow out of their sides, or from their breasts, and that they do not walk topsy-turvy, with their feet ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... impossible to be executed, so frightful is the strain on the energies of her who is to present the heroine. Compared with this character, Beethoven's Leonora, Weber's Euryanthe, are only so much child's play." This is topsy-turvy reasoning, of course, but at the same time it ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... rains have been terrific, blinding, tropical in their almost ceaseless roar and fury. Surely only madmen or fiends would fight in such an elemental maelstrom. We may be both, and perhaps we are, now that the whole world is topsy-turvy; for we are going savagely on at this dread business, half blind and wholly desperate. If the furious sky were to rain red-hot pitchforks the contending armies would still be undismayed and would crawl, if not fly, at one ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... On the other hand, suppose I try this thing secretly. How can I prevent any one from learning my trade secret, leaving me, and making gold on his own account? Men will desert as fast as I educate them. Think of the economic result of that; it would turn the world topsy-turvy. I am looking for some one who can be trusted to the last limit to join with me, furnish the influence and standing while I furnish the brains and the invention. Either we must get the government interested and sell the invention ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... be strictly forbidden. They fabricate systems, they recast society, they demolish the monarchy, they fling all laws to the earth, they put the attic in the cellar's place and my porter in the place of the King, they turn Europe topsy-turvy, they reconstruct the world, and all their love affairs consist in staring slily at the ankles of the laundresses as these women climb into their carts. Ah! Marius! Ah! you blackguard! to go and vociferate on the public place! to discuss, to debate, to take measures! ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... skipper made no reply, but, passing upstairs, turned the bed-room topsy-turvy in a wild search for his property. It was unsuccessful, and he came down with a look in his face which made his respected host ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... the women ridiculed him, And the maidens laughed and jeered him. In the lane he drove most strangely, Strangely to the farm came driving, Turned the sledge all topsy-turvy, At the ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... opening; had no pretext, and he waited for some fortunate circumstance, with his heart ravaged, and his mind topsy-turvy. The night passed, and the pretty girl still slept, while Morin was meditating his own fall. The day broke and soon the first ray of sunlight appeared in the sky, a long, clear ray which shone on the face of the sleeping girl, and woke her, so she sat up, looked at the country, then at Morin and ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... simpletons, I trow, And often did the thing we should not; But all is turning topsy-turvy now, And if we tried to stem ...
— Faust • Goethe
... the Allied forces:[1]— "the managers of several factories agreed that the occupation of the territory was the best thing that could have happened. On the other side of the Rhine, labour refused to work, and demanded unheard-of pay—everything was topsy-turvy. In fact, before the Allied armies arrived, revolutionary notions were growing rapidly along the Rhine. One director of a well-known chemical plant is said to have escaped by night with his life ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... no topsy-turvy straining after new effects, which is so wearisome to those who love the racy naturalism of Parson Adams and Edie Ochiltree. But let us have no pessimism also. The age is against the romance of colour, movement, passion, and jollity. But it is full of the romance ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... of straw; it had neither heart, entrals, nor any thing, for the fairies belike had stollen him out of his cradle, and left that of straw instead of him. Give me credit, I beseech ye, women are craftier than we are, play their tricks by night, and turn every thing topsy-turvy. After this our tall fellow never came to his colour again, but in a ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... the farmer, coming in. "Highty-tighty, what ails Susan, and what ails you?" continued the farmer, turning to John. "Dang it, but everything seems to go wrong this blessed day. First there be all the apples stolen—then there be all the hives turned topsy-turvy in the garden—then there be Caesar with his flank opened by the bull—then there be the bull broken through the hedge and tumbled into the saw-pit—and now I come to get more help to drag him out, I find ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Dresden barracks were never so full of soldiers, and the German bases of military supplies are crammed. The munition factories are running on extra-time schedules. Has the world turned topsy-turvy or have I? Does what one actually see and hear have ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... house topsy-turvy in her zeal to sail by the next boat, the very next day. She succeeded; and when she left the house I left it, too; to come here; to the General; to a house that would two months ago have seemed a palace such as I could never ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... Here's Topsy-Turvy, upside down, The ceiling seems the base: Reverse the ground and 'twill be found The things are ...
— The Royal Picture Alphabet • Luke Limner
... feed for horses and she rejoiced in the thought that she was married to a man of learning. True, she has a tongue. That she always had, but over there it was not so bad. She has become a different woman here. Alas! America is a topsy-turvy country." ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... at one time thought of writing an Epic Poem upon Friedrich the Great, 'upon some action of Friedrich's,' Schiller says. Happily Schiller did not do it. By oversetting fact, disregarding reality, and tumbling time and space topsy-turvy, Schiller with his fine gifts might no doubt have written a temporary 'epic poem,' of the kind read an admired by many simple persons. But that would have helped little, and could not have lasted long. It is not the untrue imaginary Picture of a man and his life that ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... say the whole question demands much more anxious thought than you seem to have given it. You say that he is a gentleman. He knows how to behave, I admit; but if his morals are as topsy-turvy as his tastes and—er—politics, as I've no doubt they are (rising and moving to L.), then-er—In short, I do not approve of Brian Strange as a husband for my niece and ward. ...
— Mr. Pim Passes By • Alan Alexander Milne
... mysterious and inscrutable. John Dounce had led this life for twenty years and upwards, without wish for change, or care for variety, when his whole social system was suddenly upset and turned completely topsy-turvy—not by an earthquake, or some other dreadful convulsion of nature, as the reader would be inclined to suppose, but by the simple agency of an oyster; and ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... strange and unnatural—so unlike the good old Douglas that she loved, in moleskin trousers and pea-jacket or adicky—that she felt he was somehow different, and that the world was going all topsy-turvy. ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... that the war would knock some of this topsy-turvy nonsense out of us. Maybe it has. Sometimes I see on the faces of our commuters the unaccustomed agitation of thought. At least we still have the grace to call ourselves a suburb, and not (what we fancy ourselves) ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... harsh." Although order is heaven's first law, it occasionally happens that it is better to break the law than to be broken by it. And so, when the young housekeeper's nicely arranged plans for each day in the week are suddenly turned topsy-turvy, let her take heart of grace, remembering that there are whole days that "ain't teched yet," and ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... variegated atmosphere around them. This is a fair specimen of the whole establishment, with the exception of the travelers' room. The beds in these cabins are the chief articles of luxury. Feathers being abundant, they are sewed up in prodigious ticks, which are tumbled topsy-turvy into big boxes on legs that serve for bedsteads, and then covered over with piles of all the loose blankets, petticoats, and cast-off rags possible to be gathered up about the premises. Into these comfortable nests the sleepers dive every night, and, whether in summer or winter, cover ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... return home with the rich prize he had brought from the Indian seas and the coast of Africa, and meantime he lay there in the Delaware Bay waiting for a reply. Before he left he turned the whole of Tom Chist's life topsy-turvy with something that ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... wedding clothes, so I had to "do up" what I did have. Isn't it queer how sometimes, do what you can, work will keep getting in the way until you can't get anything done? That is how it was with me those few days before the wedding; so much so that when Wednesday dawned everything was topsy-turvy and I had a very strong desire to run away. But I always did hate a "piker," so I stood pat. Well, I had most of the dinner cooked, but it kept me hustling to get the house into anything like decent order before ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... tablespoonful. Saki is the Japanese wine made of rice, and is taken in liberal quantities. At each serving some one drank to some one else, then a return of the compliment was necessary. Having always heard that Orientals turned menus topsy-turvy we were not at all surprised when the little serving women brought to each of us two silver plates and set them on our trays. These plates contained what appeared to be cake, one seeming to be angel food with icing, and the other fruit cake with the ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... the topsy-turvy worlds, this is the topsy-turviest, I am sure. What do they want me to do, and which do they want me to be? Oh, I wish I was just a plain Susie or Bessie, and not a cross-current and a contradiction, with a father that wants me to be one thing and a mother that wants me to ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter
... landscape through it. Everything became grotesquely transfigured. A cabbage in the foreground became opalescent, and an ear of corn a mass of jewels, but the whole atmosphere above and beyond was lurid, and the chimneys and church spires were topsy-turvy. ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... troubled in spirit; if the wind is the wrong way; if you have been jilted or hen-pecked—no matter which—or if you find yourself growing poorer every hour, and all your wisest plans, and best-considered projects for getting rich in a hurry turned topsy-turvy by a change in the market-value of bubbles warranted never to burst; or if you have a note to pay for a man you never saw but once in your life, and hope never to see again—to the window with you! and lean back ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... even if she had been born of middle-class parentage. He laughed bitterly. Middle class. A homeless, countryless derelict, and he had the impudence to revert to comparisons that no longer existed in this topsy-turvy old world. He was an upstart. The final curtain had dropped between him and his world, and he was still thinking in the ancient make-up. Middle class! He was no better than a troglodyte, set down in a ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... Verner's Pride, was holding one of those periodical visitations that she was pleased to call, when in familiar colloquy with her female assistants, a "rout out." It appeared to consist of turning a room and its contents topsy-turvy, and then putting them straight again. The chamber this time subjected to the ordeal was that of her late master, Mr. Verner. His drawers, closets, and other places consecrated to clothes, had not been meddled with since his death. Mrs. Verner, in ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood |
