"Twisting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... handkerchief. Then aloud, and shaking his fist in the air, he uttered a most comprehensive curse upon everybody and everything, but especially upon the citizens of Leyden. After this once more he lapsed into silence, sitting, his one eye fixed upon vacancy, and twisting his waxed ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... workmen were employed to make two sails to my boat, according to my directions, by quilting thirteen folds of their strongest linen together. I was at the pains of making ropes and cables by twisting ten, twenty or thirty of the thickest and strongest of theirs. A great stone that I happened to find served me for an anchor. I had the tallow of three hundred cows for greasing my boat, and other uses. I was at incredible pains in cutting ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... It was a dismal affair little more than an elevated marsh. When the tide was out on Duck Island, its extended dreariness was potent. Its spongy, low-lying surface, sluggish, inky pools and tortuous sloughs, twisting their slimy way, eel-like, toward the open bay were all hard facts. Occasionally, here and there, could be seen a few green tussocks, with their scant blades, their amphibious flavor and unpleasant dampness. And if you chose to indulge your fancy, although the flat monotony ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... a hill. She had seen the top of Peggy Bond's head over the knoll, and now Peggy herself came entirely into view, gazing upward to the skies, and stumbling more or less, but counting the corn by touch and twisting her head about anxiously to gain advantage over her uncertain vision. Betsey made a friendly, inarticulate little sound as they passed; she was thinking that somebody said once that Peggy's eyesight might be remedied ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... early part of the night I wakened, and, after turning and twisting uneasily, I realized that I was cold. The couch in Bella's dressing room was comfortable enough, but narrow and low. I remember distinctly (that was what was so maddening; everybody thought I dreamed it)—I remember getting ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... woman accused of incendiarism was standing in front of the image, crossing herself and bowing, and repeating the same words over and over again. The deacon's daughter sat on the bedstead, looking before her, with a dull, sleepy face. Khoroshavka was twisting her black, oily, coarse hair round her fingers. The sound of slipshod feet was heard in the passage, and the door opened to let in two convicts, dressed in jackets and grey trousers that did not reach ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... as briefly and sympathetically as I knew how. The episode of Wailua caused a little flushing of lip and cheek, a little twisting of the ring, as if it were not to be worn, after all; but as I told of his sacred care of the trinket for its giver's sake, and the not unwilling forsaking of that island wife, the restless motion passed away, and she listened quietly to the end; only ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... attendance to which this selfish woman treated them during the pressure of poverty and distress? Emilie was human, and she remembered all. She knew, moreover, that Miss Webster would make a gain of her instrument, and that it might suffer from six weeks' rough use. She stood twisting some straw plait that lay on the counter, in her fingers, and then coolly saying she would consider of it, walked out of the shop with Edith, her bosom swelling with conflicting feelings. The slight had been to her father—to her dear dead father—she could not love Miss Webster, nor respect ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... had once glowed with welcome for us both. I perceived we must lose them all. I saw life like a tree in late autumn that had once been rich and splendid with friends—and now the last brave dears would be hanging on doubtfully against the frosty chill of facts, twisting and tortured in the universal gale of indignation, trying to evade the cold blast of the truth. I had betrayed my party, my intimate friend, my wife, the wife whose devotion had made me what I was. For awhile the figure of Margaret, remote, wounded, shamed, dominated my mind, and the thought of ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... a single wire about 25 feet high and about 75 feet long. This antenna will have capacity of about 0.0001 m. f. If you want an antenna of two wires spaced about three feet apart I would make it about 75 feet long. Bring down a lead from each wire, twisting them into a pigtail to act like one wire except near the horizontal ...
— Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son • John Mills
... air was cold against Ransome's cheek when he went out an hour later, surrounded by Mytor's men. Yaroto's greenish moon was overhead now, but its pale light did not help him to see more clearly. It only made shadows in every doorway and twisting alley. ...
— Bride of the Dark One • Florence Verbell Brown
... was twisting her long sleeves around her wrists. Presently she shivered slightly. "Well, really," she said, "I don't see that this place is much warmer than the ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... the man in drab, twisting at his watch-guard furiously, "if you'll tell me what's in your sealed orders—open them and see—I'll tell you what I know about Ranjoor Singh, and ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... does this mean?" Mr. Corklan indicated a twisting line of dots and dashes which began at the junction of the Isisi River and the Great River, and wound tortuously over five hundred miles of country until it struck the Sigi River, which runs through Spanish territory. "What is ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... of his complete disinterestedness, he went to the edge of alder-clump and stood there leaning on his gun. He watched keenly the twisting links of the Mays Water, a silver chain flung carelessly in the sun, cut with gun-metal coloured patches where it sulked a while in shadowy pools. Whitefoot would do his duty. Of that there was no doubt whatever. He would find Jean. He would attract ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... Manchon told me that all through the day's proceedings Cauchon had had some clerks concealed in the embrasure of a window who were to make a special report garbling Joan's answers and twisting them from their right meaning. Ah, that was surely the cruelest man and the most shameless that has lived in this world. But his scheme failed. Those clerks had human hearts in them, and their base work revolted them, and they turned to and boldly made ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... called for the violation of this part of the criminal code more than any other, and it has naturally caused a considerable increase of crime. Man in his social and political activities is ever weaving and bending and twisting back and forth. For a number of years the universal tendency, especially in America, has been toward what is called "Social Control", the idea being that more and more people should be controlled in an increasing number of ways. Of course, if people are to be controlled they ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... use of the building to the town for a public school for the colored children. The roof was patched and iron rods were used to hold together the twisting walls. These improvements being made, school was in due time opened. The building was located on the outskirts of the town, and a large open field surrounded it on ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... trail no more than Nucky feared MacDougal Street. She was deeply interested in Nucky, turning and twisting constantly in her saddle to ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... few days Patty Sinclair paid scant attention to rock ledges. Each morning she saddled her cayuse and rode into the hills to the southward, crossing divides and following creeks and valleys from their sources down their winding, twisting lengths. After the first two or three trips she left her gun at home. It was heavy and cumbersome, and she realized, in her unskilled hand, useless. Always she felt that she was being followed, but, try as she would, never could catch so much as a fleeting glimpse of ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... turning and twisting we came in sight of a small house of grey stone which, from its appearance and situation, I judged to be some gentleman's shooting lodge. We cut across the valley, on one slope of which it stood, and I caught a glimpse of cottage roofs beyond ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... and more, came ships, while others followed. Feeling their way among unsounded bars, Heaping their freights upon the groaning wharf-heads, Filling their holds with turpentines and tars, Until the little twisting streets all vanished Into a blur ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... slowly with her eyes on the red coals, then rose at length to continue her dressing. As she stood at the table twisting up her hair, her glance fell on a small ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... little vineyard Mollie could see a path winding up the hill, twisting in and out between vines and overhanging trees till it lost itself in a flower-garden, which made such a splash of rosy pink and flaming scarlet that Mollie thought it might have been spilt out ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... Of twisting vines and sturdy shrubs, Scarlet and yellow, green and brown, Falling, or swinging on their stalks, ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard
... Ellison, staring at the lean face twisting with triumphant malignancy. "I didn't think there could ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... our friend again Was out in the raging wind and rain. Swift through the twisting street he passed And came to the Market Square at last, And climbed and stood On a block of wood Where a pent-house, leant to a wall, gave shelter From the brunt of the blizzard's helter-skelter, And, waving his bow, he cried, "Ahoy! Now steady your hearts for an hour of joy!" And so to his ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... was how Cole could have unscrewed the bar, and where he could have obtained the cord. And while they were twisting this matter every way in hot discussion, Coventry quaked, for he feared his little gunscrews would be discovered. But no, they were ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... hearth to the top of the throat, where they end, it is evident that an horizontal section of the throat will not be an oblong square; but its deviation from that form is a matter of no consequence; and no attempts should ever be made, by twisting the covings above, where they approach the breast of the Chimney, to bring it to that form.—All twists, bends, prominences, excavations, and other irregularities of form, in the covings of a Chimney, ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... have been for several years past divided into two parties; the Sherifs (the real or pretended descendants of the Prophet), and the Janissaries. The former distinguish themselves by twisting a green turban round a small red cap, the latter wear high Barbary caps, with a turban of shawl, or white muslin, and a Khandjar, or long crooked knife in their girdles. There are few Turks in the city who have been able to keep aloof from ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... it up the same as usual last night," he said to Mrs. Gresley. "There's been somebody about as has tampered it off its hinges. Yet nothing hasn't been touched, the coal nor the stack. It doesn't seem natural, twisting the gate off ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... horizon's waste of rushes bend Under the flapping of the breeze's wing, Departing and revisiting The haunts of the river twisting without end. ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... well as to beauty. This is illustrated, for example, by the doubling of one series or of both warp and woof, by the introduction of pile, by wrapping filaments with strands of other colors, or by twisting in feathers. Savage nations in all parts of the world are acquainted with devices of this class and employ them with great freedom. The effects produced often correspond closely to needlework, and the materials employed are often identical in both ...
— A Study Of The Textile Art In Its Relation To The Development Of Form And Ornament • William H. Holmes
... which he had been sitting, and moved over closer to his visitor. "Look here: you know she can't love you, an' don't you want her because you think I've got a little money? Hah, ain't that it?" And slowly the old man went over to the fire-place, took down his pipe, filled it and stood twisting a piece of paper. "When you git right down to it, Lije, ain't ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... looked in chain mail; gay, velvet-clad pages carrying the silk-embroidered standards of their contrade with all the fine airs of the lads who stand about the bier of Saint Catherine in Ghirlandaio's fresco in the Duomo; lithe, slender alfieri tossing their flags, twisting them about in the carefully-concerted movements that look so easy and are so difficult, until the whole great Piazza was girdled with fluttering light and colour, while it echoed to the thrilling and disquieting beat of the drums. Each contrada had its tamburino, ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... terms, so that Hsiang-yuen had no alternative, but to draw his head nearer to her and to comb one queue after another, and as when he stayed at home he wore no hat, nor had, in fact, any tufted horns, she merely took the short surrounding hair from all four sides, and twisting it into small tufts, she collected it together over the hair on the crown of the head, and plaited a large queue, binding it fast with red ribbon; while from the root of the hair to the end of the queue, were four pearls in a row, below which, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... deeply regret that so much of his time and talents was frittered away in compiling and composing for musical collections. There is sufficient evidence that even the genius of Burns could not support him in the monotonous task of writing love-verses, on heaving bosoms and sparkling eyes, and twisting them into such rhythmical forms as might suit the capricious evolutions of Scotch reels and strathspeys." Even if Burns, instead of continual song-writing during the last eight years of his life, had concentrated his strength on "his grand plan of a dramatic composition" ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... of the knife edges on the jaws of a vise and then laying two rules across the other two edges. The rules should just touch the jaws of the vise and the two knife edges of the cross. This makes a universal joint almost free from friction and, what is most important, prevents the pendulum from twisting on its ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... Pierre had been twisting his soldierly mustache, frowning and muttering to himself. The growing danger that surrounded him and against which his courage availed nothing, was wearing out his endurance. He spat two or three times into the water, with an expression of contemptuous anger. Then, as we sank lower, he made up ...
— The Flood • Emile Zola
... variegated hues. Her hands, as swift as her thoughts, went from the table to the flower she was making, as those of an accomplished pianist fly over the keys. Her fingers seemed to be fairies, to use Perrault's expression, so infinite were the different actions of twisting, fitting, and pressure needed for the work, all hidden under grace of movement, while she adapted each motion to the result with the ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... back in your cushion seat to enjoy the trip. You marvel how he, standing at the stern, with his single oar fitted into a shallow notch of his steering post, propels the craft so swiftly and guides it so surely by those short, twisting strokes of his. Really, you reflect, it is rowing by shorthand. You are feasting your eyes on the wonderful color effects and the groupings that so enthuse the artist, and which he generally manages to botch and boggle when he seeks to commit them to canvas; and betweenwhiles you are wondering ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... wronged innocence imprisoned; but besides a glowering visage, with its thin lips parted wickedly, that surveyed all comers from above the archway of the door, there was a monstrous fantasy of rusty iron, curling and twisting like a petrifaction of an arbour over threshold, budding in spikes and corkscrew points, and bearing, one on either side, two ominous extinguishers, that seemed to say, 'Who enter here, leave light behind!' There were no talismanic characters engraven ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... and for all the earthly concerns of her father. The space between her and the body seemed peopled with spectral beings, which moved to and fro in the dimly lit room. Her father lay on his back, the flames from the fire making weird red and yellow twisting streaks on ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... and me across twisting and almost unseen paths, safer now because of the frost, though one knew that in some places a step to right or left would plunge him through the crust of hard snow into a bottomless peat bog. The alder thickets grew everywhere round dark, ice-bound pools of ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... whoever held it ruled the river. The Confederate leaders understood this very thoroughly and they had accordingly fortified the place, which was admirably adapted for defense, with great care and skill. In front of it flowed the Mississippi, twisting and turning in such snake-like conditions that it could be navigated only by boats of a certain length and build, and on either side of the city stretched wide swamp lands and bayous completely commanded by batteries well posted on the high ground occupied by the town. All this was formidable ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... howling and beating their heads, and he to whom the young man had spoken fell down with his face in the dust, and lay there twisting and writhing like ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... Ed, "but we wouldn't like to walk home from this point." He was twisting the wheel so that the launch almost turned. Then a sound like ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... knocked down and slightly stunned, Brixton was still unwounded, and, even in the act of falling, had presence of mind to draw his long knife and plunge it up to the haft in the creature's side, at the same time twisting himself violently round so as to fall on his back and ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... Rosy!" said Fred, springing from the stool and twisting it upward for her, with a hearty expectation of enjoyment. ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... way; the men about did not see it; or refused to see it. John stooped, picked it up with his bare hands, and dropped it to one side. There are but two men in the shops who can do that. But I have a horror of those great bars of twisting white iron. They terrify me. I do not understand, but the men are always sullen when I am there. ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... helper and a boy. I got a place with an old man, and so at the age of twelve I was part of the Big Show whose performance is continuous, whose fire-eaters have real flame to contend with, and whose snake-charmers risk their lives in handling great hissing, twisting ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... her off. When Ottar heard of this, he ransacked the recesses of the mountain in search of the maiden, found her, slew the giant, and bore her off. But the assiduous giant had bound back the locks of the maiden, tightly twisting her hair in such a way that the matted mass of tresses was held in a kind of curled bundle; nor was it easy for anyone to unravel their plaited tangle, without using the steel. Again, he tried with divers allurements ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... they all looked at Hester. Sure enough, it was easily to be seen that she was sorry. All her anger and rage had vanished, and she stood digging one toe into the sand, and twisting from side to side, with her eyes cast down, and two big tears rolling ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... fine linen handkerchief with a hemstitched border and a monogram on it, in the upper breast pocket of his buttoned coat. He tried to reach it. His hands went up, twisting awkwardly like crab claws. The fingers of both plucked out the handkerchief. Holding it so, Mr. Trimm mopped the sweat away. The links of the handcuffs fell in upon one another and lengthened out again at each movement, filling the room with a smart ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... fingering the seven carved brass handles, or rather buttons, which were ranged down its center. They all slid, twisted, or screwed with the greatest ease, and apparently like many another ingeniously contrived lock; but neither I nor any one else had ever yet succeeded in sliding, twisting, or screwing them after such a fashion as to open the closed doors of the cabinet. No one yet had robbed them of their secret since first it was placed there three hundred years ago by the old lady and her faithful Italian. It was a beautiful piece of workmanship, was this tantalizing ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... Rocjean, telling them to wait one moment, lit a cerina, or piece of waxed cord, an article indispensable to a Roman, and, crossing the broad courtyard, they entered a small door, and after climbing and twisting and turning, found a ticket-taker, and the next minute were ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... unaccountable phenomenon had preceded Mr. Hooper into the meeting-house and set all the congregation astir. Few could refrain from twisting their heads toward the door; many stood upright and turned directly about; while several little boys clambered upon the seats, and came down again with a terrible racket. There was a general bustle, a rustling of the women's gowns ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... smile disturbed Major Colquhoun's calm countenance for a moment, and then he stood, twisting the ends of his fair moustache slowly with his left hand, and gazing into the fire, which shone reflected in his steely blue eyes, making them glitter like pale sapphires, coldly, while ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... kittle question," said the falconer; "and if you ask it often, Master Roland, I am fain to tell you that you will be mewed up yourself in some of those castles, if they do not prefer twisting your head off, to save farther trouble with you—Adventure any thing? Lord, why, Murray has the wind in his poop now, man, and flies so high and strong, that the devil a wing of them can match him—No, no; there she is, and there she must lie, ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... she spoke—colourless, unimpassioned, melancholy. But to Dickson it was twice as terrifying as when she shouted and laughed. He looked as she directed towards the big column of smoke, which suddenly sprang up, as it were, from a bed of writhing, twisting tongues of flame. ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... be so diluted with flour, that one Measureful of each shall be a full average dose for an adult; and if the measure to which they are adopted be cylindrical, and of such a size as just to admit a common lead-pencil, and of a determined length, it can at any time be replaced by twisting up a paper cartridge. I would further suggest that the powders be differently coloured, one colour being used for ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... reddest hair of any girl I ever knew. It was quite short in front, and she had a way of twisting it, on either temple, into two little buttons, which she fastened with pins. The rest of it she brought quite far up on the top of her head, where she kept it in place with a large-sized horn comb. Her face was covered with freckles, ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... being about forty yards away from where we were sleeping, and the intervening ground a perfect rockery, the task of getting there was no particular fun. As I relieved the post every hour-and-a-half, I had four or five stumbling, ankle-twisting, shin-barking journeys. At about two we had the usual storm, and the accompanying lightning was most useful in illuminating me on my weary way. The descent of the kopje this morning was, I think, more fagging than the previous evening's ascent, though quicker as you can imagine. Then came the cause ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... dressed out with flaring lamps, and boughs of trees, attracts a group of sulky Romans round its smoky coppers of hot broth, and cauliflower stew; its trays of fried fish, and its flasks of wine. As you rattle round the sharply-twisting corner, a lumbering sound is heard. The coachman stops abruptly, and uncovers, as a van comes slowly by, preceded by a man who bears a large cross; by a torch-bearer; and a priest: the latter chaunting as he goes. It is the Dead ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... of large arteries is a common complication of machinery and railway accidents. The violence being usually of a tearing, twisting, or crushing nature, such injuries are seldom associated with much haemorrhage, as torn or crushed vessels quickly become occluded by contraction and retraction of their coats and by the formation of a clot. A whole limb even ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... knees and began twisting at his automatic, which had in some way become entangled in the lining ...
— Boy Scouts in the Coal Caverns • Major Archibald Lee Fletcher
... that which is straight and direct; and I suppose that 'wrong' has something to do with 'wrung'—that which has been forcibly diverted from a right line. We all know the conventional colloquialism about a man being 'straight,' and such-and-such a thing being 'on the straight.' All sin is a twisting of the man from his proper course. Now there underlies that metaphor the notion that there is a certain line to which we are to conform. The schoolmaster draws a firm, straight line in the child's copybook; and then ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... intentional and unintentional, of Miss Anthony's attitude. The fact of her speaking on the platforms of all political parties was something which many people could not comprehend, and the party organs could not refrain from twisting her remarks a little bit in the direction of their doctrines; then would come a storm of protests from the other side, and she would have to explain what she actually said. Thus, with the reporters constantly at her ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... this diversion, Tarzan took up his way along the corridor which led upward from the jewel-room by a steep incline. Winding and twisting, but always tending upward, the tunnel led him nearer and nearer to the surface, ending finally in a low-ceiled room, lighter than any that he had ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... she said, "when I was between three and four years old, sitting one day in my high chair at the table, and twisting one foot under the little step of the chair. The next morning I felt lame; but nobody could tell what was the matter. At last, the doctors found out that the trouble all came from that twist. It had gone too far to be cured. ...
— Child's Health Primer For Primary Classes • Jane Andrews
... the witness, with a queer, twisting grimace. "Beyond my understanding! I am a quick observer—I saw within a few seconds that here was a man who had literally been struck down in the very flush of life as if—well, to put it plainly, as if some extraordinary power had laid a blasting finger ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... evening papa often reads, and I assure you he is the best reader of poetry you ever heard—not like that actor, who made a kind of jumble between reading and acting, staring, and bending his brow, and twisting his face, and gesticulating as if he were on the stage, and dressed out in all his costume. My father's manner is quite different—it is the reading of a gentleman, who produces effect by feeling, taste, and inflection of voice, not by action or mummery. Lucy ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... with his toe in his mouth. Somewhat surprised at this, and being of a dauntless and boastful nature, he set himself down beside the child; and, picking up his own toe, he essayed to place it in his mouth after the manner of the child. He could not do it. In spite of all twisting and turning, his toe could not be brought to reach his mouth. As he was getting up in great discomfiture to get away, he heard a laugh behind him, and did no more boasting that day, for he had been outwitted by ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... over-peopled with trout, while from the crags leap full-throated streams, to be half blown away in mist before they touch the valley floor. Far down the fragrant canyons sing the green and troubled rivers, twisting their way lower and lower to the common plains, each larger stream calling to all his brooks to follow him as down they go headforemost to the sea. Even the hopeless stretches of alkali and sand, sinks of lost streams, in the southeastern ...
— California and the Californians • David Starr Jordan
... dodged as though the pocketbook had been aimed at him. A young second lieutenant picked it from the floor and stood twisting it in his hands, not knowing what to do with it. People looked uneasy and ashamed as though a door had been suddenly opened on a terrible secret thing that was customarily locked up in a closet. But the uncomfortable feeling soon passed, and they began to talk about the strange ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... for shame!" and turning about, she swept from the room, her head carried very high, leaving him crouched in his chair, his nervous fingers twisting and turning a small box in his pocket—the box that held the forgotten hair-comb. He was still sitting miserably thus when he heard a knock on the outer door and a moment later a ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... wickedly twisting spiral sixty yards, and the ends had an uncanny way of catching forward passes. Through the newspapers, through word of mouth and by letters the news arrived,—and it became increasingly disconcerting. Unless Ridgley ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... the quantity of merchandise passing, to leave behind the same result. In 1815, the export of yarn of any kind was trivial, because other countries were then unprovided with looms. In 1851 the export of mere yarn, upon which the expenditure of British labour had been only that of twisting it, was ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... What present am I to give her?" he went on. "I've been twisting and turning it over in my mind, and the long and the short of ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... tall Belgian officer took me in charge. It was necessary to work through a barbed-wire barricade, twisting and turning through its mazes. The moonlight helped. It was at once a comfort and an anxiety, for it seemed to me that my khaki-coloured suit gleamed in it. The Belgian officers in their dark blue ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... sheep always did, very promptly, with ovine unanimity. Nothing is more picturesque than to see a slow shepherd threading his way down one of the winding paths on a hillside, with his flock close be- hind him, necessarily expanded, yet keeping just at his heels, bending and twisting as it goes, and looking rather like the tail ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... air like a thing of life, twisting as gracefully and sinuously as a serpent. For an instant the wide loop hovered over the gray, swiftly running animal. Then it fell suddenly, and settled over and around the ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... you Hun!" roared someone on the front of the crowd, and three policemen at once leaped for Comrade Schneider, and grabbed him by the collar, twisting so hard that the German's face, always purple when he was excited, took on a ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... put in Mary sarcastically, twisting from Marjorie's hold. "Why, that very first day when you came to the train to meet me I could see you liked her best. You can imagine how I felt when even your friends spoke of it. If you really cared about me, you would have written to me of every single thing ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... like the man's looks, but I had no choice, and anyhow he had given me back my watch. He sidled into an alley between tall houses and I sidled after him. Then he took to his heels, and led me a twisting course through smelly courts into a tanyard and then by a narrow lane to the back-quarters of a factory. Twice we doubled back, and once we climbed a wall and followed the bank of a blue-black stream with a filthy scum on it. Then we got into a very mean quarter of the town, and emerged ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... all money. No storied fisherman of Bagdad, catching enchanted princes disguised as fishes in the sea, ever hooked such a treasure as this defendant hooked when he hooked that basket of eels! [Rustling appreciation of the jest among the jury.] If a squirming, twisting, winding, wriggling eel, gentlemen, can be said at any given moment to have a back, we may distinguish this new-found species as the greenback eel. It is a common saying that no man can hold an eel and remain a Christian. I should like to have viewed the pious equanimity ...
— Eli - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... met their death between here and London often enough before now," I pursued meditatively, twisting my glass of wine in my fingers. "But with you for his guard, M. de Fontelles should be ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... feverishly, twisting my hands together. "I have given up the fight! I have been beaten—oh, my God—beaten! Think of those raging hours in the woods, those hours of defiance, of glory! I gazed at commonplaceness and dulness—I mocked at it; and now it has conquered me! I am trampled down, beaten! It is all gone out ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... thou think of this new style of painting?' asked Botticelli. 'To me it seems but strange and unpleasing. Music and motion are delightful, but this violent twisting of limbs to show the muscles offends ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... Lucy, twisting up her other hand in the curtains. "Good-night, Cecil. Good-bye. That's all right. I'm sorry about it. Thank you ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... are talking about?" thought Mrs. Pinckney, twisting her pretty neck in all directions so she could see them from her bed. Their two heads were close together: he was speaking earnestly, and Miss Featherstone's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... This greatly favors the separation of the backbone when reached, and further allows of its being extended so that it can be divided higher up. When the backbone is reached, the knife is passed between the two bones, the prominent ridges across their ends acting as guides, and by dragging and twisting the one is easily detached from the other. With an anterior presentation the separation should, if possible, be made behind the last rib, while with a posterior presentation as many of the ribs should be brought away as can be accomplished. Having removed one half of the body, the remaining half ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... threw off his coat and vest. A few minutes later the lads were struggling on the wrestling mat, their faces dripping with perspiration, their supple young figures twisting and turning as each struggled for ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... Monsieur," said Gaudissart, twisting his watch-key. "I shall have the honor to call for you to-morrow. Meantime, send the wine at once to Paris to the address I have given you, and the price will be ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... billet of wood used for twisting the bight of a swifter round, in order to bind a raft ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... did little better. He hit, but the next man flied out. Rad was up next and hit a twisting grounder that just managed to evade the shortstop, putting Rad on first ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... all the time wondering if ye'd deserted us, sir," said Nannie, as she stood by the table twisting her apron over her finger; "and never a word of your illness did we hear, or the days would not have slipped away and we not have been to ye! Maybe ye were needing somebody to nurse ye, and ye lying alone here with no ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... climb untrodden mountains, and attains the coveted ground at the cost of a slippery circuit. For no crag juts out so high, but they can reach its crest by fetching a cunning compass. For when they first leave the deep valleys, they glide twisting and circling among the bases of the rocks, thus making the route very roundabout by dint of continually swerving aside, until, passing along the winding curves of the tracks, they conquer the appointed summit. This same people is wont to use the skins of certain beasts ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... way up a flight of dark and twisting stairs, along a musty hall. She paused before a door ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... Oline, stand up and argue with Oline! Was never a man could do it but to his cost. Never in life would she give in, and never her match for turning and twisting heaven and earth to a medley of seeming kindness and malice, poison and senseless words. This to her face now: Brede making as if 'twas himself was ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... Must ever be, the Jew. Alas, were I To fancy her a simple Christian wench, And without all that which the Jew has given, Which only such a Jew could have bestowed - Speak out my heart, what had she that would please thee? No, nothing! Little! For her very smile Shrinks to a pretty twisting of the muscles - Be that, which makes her smile, supposed unworthy Of all the charms in ambush on her lips? No, not her very smile—I've seen sweet smiles Spent on conceit, on foppery, on slander, On flatterers, ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... donga almost the whole march, scarcely for a moment leaving its shelter. Terribly rough going it was, with long high grass soaking wet, and the men tumbling about into ruts and over rocks. On they trudged, twisting and turning, up and down, falling about, with every now and then a suppressed exclamation and an imprecation on rocks and ruts in general and night marches in particular—no lights, no smoking. No one except he who ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson
... with which it began has been repeated for the sake of the slight stimulation of the skin-vessels and nerves, the muscles of the leg are treated, first by friction of the more superficially placed masses, then by careful deep kneading (petrissage) of the large muscles of the calf, twisting, pressing, and rolling them about the bone with one hand while the other supports the limb. In fat or heavily-muscled subjects it may be necessary to use both hands to get sufficient grasp of the muscles. The tibialis anticus and muscles of the outer side of the leg are operated ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... any moment YOU please,' returned Richard through his set teeth, and caught with his other hand the coverlid, dragged it from the bed, and, twisting it first round his face, flung the remainder about his body; then, threatening to knock his brains out if he made the least noise, proceeded to tie him up in it with his garters and its own corners. No sound escaped poor ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... beside her, his right hand on his hip, his left rapidly twisting his brown moustache. His slanting eyebrows showed a gloomy and strained agitation, while he softly whistled to himself, as usual. His attire, most carefully selected and in excellent taste, was a suit of quiet gray and of conservative cut. But in his work-lined brow, above which his dark hair ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... company was likewise the bearer of a toy balloon—red, yellow, blue, green or purple, as the case might be. Over the line of heads the taut rubbery globes rode on their tethers, nodding and twisting like so many big iridescent bubbles; and half a block away, at the edge of the lot, a balloon vender, whose entire stock had been disposed of in one splendid transaction, now stood, empty-handed but full-pocketed, marvelling at the stroke of luck that enabled him to take an ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... and attempted to throw him, and he was twisting and writhing out of the advantage of the other's hold. They reeled about the room, locked in each other's arms, and came down with a crash across the splintered wreckage of a wicker chair. Joe was underneath, with arms spread out and held and ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... fiercely twisting his mustache. At any other time the humorous side of the situation must have struck the lieutenant, but just then he felt little inclination for mirth. He thereupon explained to the captain that they were prisoners, and that Colonel Lopez had introduced ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... design in building a molecule was well illustrated about 1850, when Pasteur discovered that some carbon compounds—as certain sugars—can only be distinguished from one another, when in solution, by the fact of their twisting or polarizing a ray of light to the left or to the right, respectively. But no inkling of an explanation of these strange variations of molecular structure came until the discovery of the law of valency. Then much of the mystery was cleared away; for it was plain that since ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... road till we come to the open common, with its park-like trees, its beautiful stream, wandering and twisting along, and its rural bridge. Here we turn again, past that other white farmhouse, half hidden by the magnificent elms which stand before it. Ah! riches dwell not there, but there is found the next best thing—an industrious and light-hearted poverty. ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... chairs around, only yours," she continued. Then, with a quick gesture of the hand: "No, don't get up. Set right still now. One o' your friends here can get me a chair, I guess," and she looked very meaningly into the face of a foppish young courtier who stood near her, twisting ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... Jeanne's decks flush with the rails; and, as her stern sank down and her bow tossed skyward, all the miserable dunnage of life and luggage poured aft. It was a human torrent. They came head first, feet first, sidewise, rolling over and over, twisting, squirming, writhing, and crumpling up. Now and again one caught a grip on a stanchion or a rope; but the weight of the bodies behind tore such ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... muttering strange sixteenth-century curses, and ever and anon brandishing the rusty dagger in the midnight air. Finally he reached the corner of the passage that led to luckless Washington's room. For a moment he paused there, the wind blowing his long grey locks about his head, and twisting into grotesque and fantastic folds the nameless horror of the dead man's shroud. Then the clock struck the quarter, and he felt the time was come. He chuckled to himself, and turned the corner; but no sooner had he done so, than, with a ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... or not. Take that floral gable;[200] you don't suppose the man who built Stonehenge could have built that, or that the man who built that, would have built Stonehenge? Do you think an old Roman would have liked such a piece of filigree work? or that Michael Angelo would have spent his time in twisting these stems of roses in and out? Or, of modern handicraftsmen, do you think a burglar, or a brute, or a pickpocket could have carved it? Could Bill Sykes have done it? or the Dodger, dexterous with finger and tool? You will find in the end, that no man could have done it but exactly the man who ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... Davenports always untie themselves by using their hands; as they are able in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, however impossible it may seem, to release their hands by loosening the knots next their wrists. Sometimes they do this by twisting the rope between their wrists; sometimes it is by keeping their muscles as tense as possible during the tying, so that when relaxed there shall be some slack. Most "committees" know so little about tying, that anybody, by a little pulling, slipping, and wriggling, could slip ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... wonderful gift, and, like genius, triumphs over adverse circumstances, and is often enhanced by them. Even prosaic Mrs. Wheaton was compelled to pause from time to time to admire the slender, supple form whose perfect outlines were revealed by the stooping, twisting, and reaching required by the nature of the labor. But the varying expressions of her face, revealing a mind as active as the busy hands, were a richer study. The impact of her brush was vigorous, and with ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe |
