"Crooked" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... betrayed my feelings in a way I am ashamed to remember, especially as the signs of my trouble were afterward used against Miss Sullivan, the only person of all the kind friends I had there, who could make the crooked straight and the rough ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... at her with a queer look on her face. I shut my eyes and waited for the crash, but nothing came, and when I opened them again there were the two women holding hands and Miss Summers smiling a sort of crooked ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... brilliant sunset sky with his gaze. He stopped, stared a moment intently, then turned with a slow grin. "Well, Nancy, it do look like as if she'd tried ter get as nigh Heaven as she could, and that's a fact," he agreed, pointing with a crooked finger to where, sharply outlined against the reddening sky, a slender, wind-blown figure was poised on top of a ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... Saturn. Jupiter was always thought of by the Greeks as a majestic-looking man in his full strength, with thick hair and beard, and with lightnings in his hand and an eagle by his side. These lightnings or thunderbolts were forged by his crooked son Vulcan (Hephaestion), the god of fire, the smith and armourer of Olympus, whose smithies were in the volcanoes (so called from his name), and whose workmen were the Cyclops or Round Eyes—giants, each with one eye in the middle of his forehead. Once, indeed, Jupiter had ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that not by chance but designedly, and according to each one's peculiarity, as was the custom among the ancient Romans. Wherefore one is called Beautiful (Pulcher), another the Big-nosed (Naso), another the Fat-legged (Cranipes) another Crooked (Torvus) another Lean (Macer) and so on. But when they have become very skilled in their professions and done any great deed in war or in time of peace, a cognomen from art is given to them, such as Beautiful, the great painter ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... rustle. Percy saw more than one cardinal lean forward with hand crooked at ear to hear the better. It was evident that ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... still and hearken to the words of others that are thy betters; but thou art no warrior, and a weakling, never reckoned whether in battle or in council. In no wise can we Achaians all be kings here. A multitude of masters is no good thing; let there be one master, one king, to whom the son of crooked-counselling Kronos hath granted it, [even the sceptre and judgments, that he may ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... lighted, she turned to see if her mother needed her help again. The crooked blaze ran up unexpectedly and blacked the cracked chimney on one side with a soot so thick that one half of the room was soon in semi-darkness. Mrs. Farnshaw ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... there were blocks of banisters so smooth and wide and beautiful that the attraction between them and the seats of the little boy's trousers was like the attraction of a magnet for a nail. Yet not a leg, crooked or straight, fat or thin, was ever to be ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... perhaps have said, Donald, that that tree resembled the course of the Christian. His early progress has turns and twists in it, just like the lower part of that tree; one temptation draws him to the left—another to the right: his upward course is a crooked one; but it is an upward course for all that; for he has, like the tree, the principle of sky-directed growth within him: the disturbing influences weaken as grace strengthens, and appetite and passion decay; and so the early part of his career is not ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... and Crooked Islands, Bimini, Cat Island, Exuma, Freeport, Fresh Creek, Governor's Harbour, Green Turtle Cay, Harbour Island, High Rock, Inagua, Kemps Bay, Long Island, Marsh Harbour, Mayaguana, New Providence, Nichollstown and Berry Islands, Ragged Island, Rock Sound, Sandy Point, ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... labor required, and which her kind-natured, but restless grandmother prevented. She never could understand how 'speaking one word to Letty, just one word, and not keeping her five minutes away from that desk, where she would certainly grow humped or crooked,' could interfere with her work! She was one of those stolid persons who are the bane of authors, who think nothing of the lost idea, and the unravelling of the web, when a train of thought is broken by the 'only one word,' 'only a moment,' which scatters thoughts to the wind,—thoughts that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... He thinks man's crooked course to travel. Go straight ahead, or, by the devil, I'll blow your flickering ...
— Faust • Goethe
... Sydney, and were also employed in erecting a house for the master boat-builder. The timber carriages drawn by oxen were employed in bringing in the beams and joists for the new granary; and a gang was sent up the harbour to cut crooked timber for the boat-builder. The maize granary at Parramatta was also in a ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... powerful adversary. The evil of obstructions to streams and rivers, is by no means limited to the land visibly flowed, nor to land at the level of the dam. Running water is never level, or it could not flow; and in crooked streams, which flow through meadows, obstructed by grass and bushes, the water raised by a dam, often stands many feet higher, at a mile or two back, than at the dam. It is extremely difficult to set limits to the effect of such a flowage. ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... of your rivals who had discovered a method of placing you in a position of extreme absurdity before the eyes of those who were dearest to you—for instance, while you had your mouth crooked like that of a theatrical mask, or while your eloquent lips, like the copper faucet of a scanty fountain, dripped pure water—you would probably stab him. This rival is sleep. Is there a man in the world who knows how he appears to others, and what he ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... you if he can or that he's always ridin' any one that will stand to be picked on. Joe's sure a bully. But then he's game enough, too, for that matter. I've seen him fight like a pack of catamounts. Outside of that I've got a hunch that he's crooked as a dog's hind leg. Mebbe I'm wrong, I'm tellin' you how he strikes me. If I was Homer Webb, right now when trouble is comin' up with the Snaith-McRobert outfit, I'd feel some dubious about Joe. He's a sulky, revengeful brute, an' the old ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... prolonged and acute discussion. Napoleon had surprised people so often, that no wonder need be felt at those who thought his words might bear a double meaning. The late President, who did not lack sagacity, had once written to his successor, "Bonaparte's policy is so crooked that it eludes conjecture. I fear his first object now is to dry up the sources of British prosperity, by excluding her manufactures from the Continent. He may fear that opening the ports of Europe to our vessels ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... whatever game you like. It is immaterial to me whether straight or crooked. I don't know anything about what you have been talking, and you have only wasted your breath and got ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... continued: "Look at me! Just look at me! If that there God of your'n is so all-fired good, what did He go an' let my pap git drunk for, an' beat me like he done when I was a baby, an' make me grow up all crooked like what I be? 'Good'? Hell! A dad burned ornery kind of ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... or so later, after a straight, swift drop, Carse landed on the hill, close to a particular, gnarled oxi-tree stump. The nearby ranch-house looked deserted, the whole place seemed desolate. The Hawk waddled over to the stump, pressed a crooked little twig sticking out from it, and a section of the seeming-bark slid down, revealing the hollow, metal-sided interior of a ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore
... get out of a game where everything is crooked—a game of who can steal the most and every ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... expressed that the earth's surface could contain the resurrected host, but Apostle Orson Pratt had removed this. He cited the prophet who had foretold that the hills should be laid low, the valleys exalted, and the crooked places made straight. With the earth thus free of mountains and waste places, he had demonstrated that there would be an acre and a quarter of ground for each Saint that had ever lived from the morning of creation to the day of doom. And, lest some carping ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... impressions must exist in nature, that is, in experience, before their relations can be perceived. Form and number are mere names for certain relations between matters of fact; unless a man had seen or felt the difference between a straight line and a crooked one, straight and crooked would have no more meaning to him, than red ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... of making hay at Christmas, you yourself seem sensible of: you say your sister will laugh; and so indeed she well may! The Latins have an expression for a contemptuous sort of laughter, 'Naso contemnere adunco'; that is, to laugh with a crooked nose. She may laugh at you in the manner of the ancients if she thinks fit. But now I come to the most extraordinary of all extraordinary propositions, which is, to take your and your sister's advice in playing at loo. The presumption of the offer raises ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... nothing against your going around so much with Gretzinger," he said one evening, "except that I don't like the fellow and believe he's crooked, and it may, under the circumstances, ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... country are described as of a diminutive size, ill fed, ill shaped, and yielding but a scanty return in milk. They were mostly of a black color, with large stripes of white along the chine and ridge of their backs, about the flanks, and on their faces. Their horns were high and crooked, having deep ringlets at the root—the surest proof that they were but scantily fed; the chine of their backs stood up high and narrow; their sides were lank, short, and thin; their hides thick and adhering to the bones; their pile was coarse ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... comprehend the chilling contrast between the ideal aim and the material fulfilment, and looked askance on the strenuous reign of Oliver,—that rugged boulder of primitive manhood lying lonely there on the dead level of the century,—as if some crooked changeling had been laid in the cradle instead of that fair babe of the Commonwealth they had dreamed. Truly there is a tide in the affairs of men, but there is no gulf-stream setting forever in one direction; and those waves of enthusiasm on whose crumbling ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... No. 41 Rue des Bons Enfants is a capital example of the Fifteenth Century Timbered inn. To the right of the inner yard a gallery juts out on crooked pillars, the "avant-soliers" so common in mediaeval streets, and shown in Lelieur's drawings. Queer gables rise into the air at odd corners, and if you are sufficiently hardened to mediaeval atmospheres you may discover other stables ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... crossed the square and were walking down a narrow crooked street as gray as if the dust of ages were in its old walls. Alexina looked at him curiously. He had never had what might be called a soft and tender countenance, but now it looked like cast-iron covered with red rust, and his eyes were more like bits of the same metal, blackened ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... council of Placentia, his ambassadors had solicited a moderate succor, perhaps of ten thousand soldiers, but he was astonished by the approach of so many potent chiefs and fanatic nations. The emperor fluctuated between hope and fear, between timidity and courage; but in the crooked policy which he mistook for wisdom, I cannot believe, I cannot discern, that he maliciously conspired against the life or honor of the French heroes. The promiscuous multitudes of Peter the Hermit were savage ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... want of borrowers. Each filled the tin dish at the water filter opposite the stove, and retired with the whole stock in trade to the platform of the car. There he knelt down, supporting himself by a shoulder against the woodwork, or one elbow crooked about the railing, and made a shift to wash his face and neck and hands,—a cold, an insufficient, and, if the train is moving rapidly, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... however, was a success, as far as it went. I retired from the business with no fewer than fifteen hundred pins, after deducting the headless, the pointless, and the crooked pins with which our doorkeeper frequently got "stuck." From first to last we took in a great deal of this counterfeit money. The price of admission to the "Rivermouth Theater" was twenty pins. I played all the principal characters myself—not ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... compound of folly, nonsense, and impertinence, are to blame to exhibit them to the contempt of the world, or the pity of their friends. To write a letter with negligence, without proper stops, with crooked lines and great, flourishing dashes, is inelegant; it argues either great ignorance of what is proper, or great indifference towards the person to whom it is addressed, and is consequently disrespectful." Memoirs, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... and another—and then suddenly a blind will blow out and almost up to the ceiling, and through it you will catch a glimpse that makes you gasp, of a black night crossed with bladed searchlights, of a moon behind a crooked tree. ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... of truth is straight; that of imposture is crooked and dark. Truth, ever necessary to man, must necessarily be felt by all upright minds; the lessons of reason are to be followed by all honest men. Men are unhappy, only because they are ignorant; they are ignorant, only because every thing conspires ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... another. But it won't do to stay palaverin hyar any longer. Let's go up to my bedroom. We'll be safe there; and I've got a bottle of whisky, the best stuff for a nightcap. Over that we can talk things straight, without any one havin' the chance to set them crooked. Come along!" ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... by the balance of experience, it was found that the astronomer, looking to the stars, might fall in a ditch; that the enquiring philosopher might be blind in himself; and the mathematician might draw forth a straight line with a crooked heart; then lo! did proof, the over-ruler of opinions, make manifest that all these are but serving sciences, which, as they have a private end in themselves, so yet are they all directed to the highest end of the ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... sharp, and stood out of his mouth, which was as deep as that of a horse. His upper lip hung down upon his breast. His ears resembled those of an elephant, and covered his shoulders; and his nails were as long and crooked as the talons of the greatest birds. At the sight of so frightful a genie we became insensible, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... adventure of Tom Betts in the river," interrupted Jud. "Tell me how you did it. A crooked little mark would show the river; but I'm blessed if I can see how you made out the ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... it was just this way: Aunt Sally and I were on the porch, and we found Elsa's ring, all crooked. We couldn't guess how it came there, and I'd just been made pretty angry about the way you felt toward 'Forty-niner.' Oh! it was dreadful, dreadful of you all, and I never was so ashamed of my 'boys,' ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... astonished, and thinking over what he had seen, goes forward. Soon afterwards, he sees in a stony valley a short manikin, with crooked nose and brow rough with horns, whose lower parts ended in goat's feet. Undismayed by this spectacle likewise, Antony seized, like a good warrior, the shield of faith and habergeon of hope; the animal, however, was ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... him. "I give you this one chance!" he muttered, while his eyes blazed into hers. "Go to your room, or sit down somewhere till I am free. I shall come to you, and put things straight that now seem crooked. You are wrong, horribly wrong, in your suspicions. Wait my explanation, or by all that I hold sacred, you will regret ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... earth sufficiently for the moral training of every individual. In all these cases, the world's part of the work has been to pervert the truth, not to disengage it from obscurity. The new ways are the crooked ones. The nearer we mount up to the time of Adam, or Noah, or Abraham, or Job, the purer light of truth we gain; as we recede from it we meet with superstitions, fanatical excesses, idolatries, and immoralities. ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... forward and peered at the mirror held out to him, cleft by a crooked crack. Hair on end. As he and others see me. Who chose this face for me? This dogsbody to rid of vermin. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... situation, I saw an old man approaching me. His head was bald—his beard white—in his right hand he carried a crooked scythe, and in his left an hour-glass—whilst two immense flapping wings nearly concealed his body. "Thou," said he to me in a terrible voice, "who art still dazzled by the dignities and honours which mankind pursue with such reckless eagerness, see whether you perceive any difference ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 354, Saturday, January 31, 1829. • Various
... the other, again turning his face quickly toward his companion. "Am I not distinguished enough in appearance? Do I look like the mob? True, I am a scrawny, humpbacked crooked-faced, scarecrow of a man—but what matters that, if I do not look like the mob? What is called fame is as scrawny and humpbacked and crooked-faced as my body—but what matters that? Famous or infamous—to not look like the mob ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... fortunate than our proceeding by sea. On the fourth day we were lying to, at a quarter of a mile from the shore, exactly under the parallel of 39 degrees north latitude, and at the southern point of a mountain called the Crooked Back-bone. The Indians first landed in a small canoe we had provided ourselves with, to see if the coast was clear; and in the evening the schooner was far on her way back, while we were digging a cachette to conceal the baggage ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... the very refuse among those which served to no use, being a crooked piece of wood, and full of knots, hath carved it diligently, when he had nothing else to do, and formed it by the skill of his understanding, and fashioned it to ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... mine, and a youth who she said was her cousin, and to whom I introduced myself as a relation with words of great urbanity. Such, indeed, were all those which hitherto I had bestowed on my bride—with how crooked and treacherous an intention I would rather not say; for though I am telling truths, they are not truths under confession which ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... sister!—both cold and still, and whiter than the white light that showed them to me. The demons at my side stretched out their crooked talons, and forbade me to kneel before my father, or to kiss Clara's wan face, before I went to torment. They struck me motionless where I stood—and unveiled their hideous faces once more, jeering at me in triumph. Anon, the lake of black waters heaved up and overflowed, ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... to the bright-plumaged bird when flying about. On horseback, Tom was a cockey, wiry-looking, keen-eyed, grim-visaged, hard-bitten little fellow, sitting as though he and his horse were all one, while on foot he was the most shambling, scambling, crooked-going crab that ever was seen. He was a complete mash of a man. He had been scalped by the branch of a tree, his nose knocked into a thing like a button by the kick of a horse, his teeth sent down his throat by a fall, his collar-bone fractured, his left leg ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... 513. There is a disease frequently affects the rye in France, and sometimes in England in moist seasons, which is called Ergot, or horn seed; the grain becomes considerably elongated and is either straight or crooked, containing black meal along with the white, and appears to be pierced by insects, which were probably the cause of the disease. Mr. Duhamel ascribes it to this cause, and compares it to galls on oak-leaves. By the use of this bad grain amongst the poor diseases ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... grateful memory of some timely service at human hands! In these highland villages the tradition of celestial visitants clung fondly, of god or hero, belated or misled on long journeys, yet pleased to be among the sons of men, as their way led them up the steep, narrow, crooked street, condescending to rest a little, as one, under some sudden stress not clearly ascertained, had done here, in this very house, thereafter for ever sacred. The place and its inhabitants, of course, had been something bigger in the days of those old mythic hospitalities, ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... good manager in his private affairs, which were in disorder when his father died, and is a stanch countryman, fair complexioned, low stature, and 30 years old.—Swift. He is crooked; he seemed to me to be a gentleman of good ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... each other at the same time, and I did not like the expression in his eye as he crooked a finger at me. I went over to his table. He was pleasant looking, as Builders go, with blue eyes less dull than most, and a brown, unruly topknot of hair such as is universally affected ...
— B-12's Moon Glow • Charles A. Stearns
... inhospitable even in the sunlight. The rock walls rose sheer, the roofs slanted rakishly, the signs scratched on the rock by facetious riders were pointless and inane. Lone picked his way through the crooked defile that was marked MAIN STREET on the corner of the first huge boulder and came abruptly into the road. Here he turned north and shook his horse ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... onwards they press with eager spirit, disentangling the line, double or treble, as the case may be. (23) To and fro they weave a curious web, (24) now across, now parallel with the line, (25) whose threads are interlaced, here overlapped, and here revolving in a circle; now straight, now crooked; here close, there rare; at one time clear enough, at another dimly owned. Past one another the hounds jostle—tails waving fast, ears dropt, ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... me, a chip of the old block. Ha! thou'rt melancholic, old Prognostication; as melancholic as if thou hadst spilt the salt, or pared thy nails on a Sunday. Come, cheer up, look about thee: look up, old stargazer. Now is he poring upon the ground for a crooked pin, or an old horse-nail, with the head ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... Mesopotamia, called Bagdad. In Babylon no sound is heard but the howlings of wild beasts; in Bagdad men may be heard screaming and hallooing from morning to night. The drivers of the camels and the mules shout as they press through the narrow crooked streets, and even the ladies riding on white donkeys, and attended by black slaves, ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... shrub, with hooked thorns, leaves alternate, petiolate, coriaceous, entire, 3-nerved, 2 thorny stipules, one of them crooked. Flowers small, greenish, axillary. Calyx, 5 oval divisions. Corolla, 5 petals. Stamens 5, free. Ovary bilocular, situated on the disc. Styles 2-3, divergent; small papillary stigmas. Drupe pulpy, globose, resembling ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... of all intellectual occupations. Few employments which can be called intellectual are easier than that of devising panaceas for the ills of society, of demonstrating on paper how the rough places of life may be made plain and its crooked ones made straight. And it is not a vain and fruitless waste of effort and of time, as things so easy of achievement often are. Many of the noblest minds of all lands and all ages have found pleasure and satisfaction in the imagining of ideal commonwealths ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... Chamber, we crawled along the rocks overhanging a narrow fissure, to reach a ladder at the end, by which we descended to another part of the Catacombs. Here, after traveling a long distance over uneven floors covered with sharp crystals, as were all surfaces, through large, low rooms, and narrow, crooked passages, constantly assisting the difficult advance with our hands, like monkeys, we finally came to The Grotto, which is probably the most remarkable room in this very remarkable cave. It is a large room, with much of the irregular ceiling so low that even the ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... nature gave you a straight one," cried a jeering voice from the other side of the thoroughfare. "If it be crooked, a blind man and a ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... himself, and the fact that none of them was to rent kept Mrs. March true to her ideal of a fiat. Nothing prevented its realization so much as its difference from the New York ideal of a flat, which was inflexibly seven rooms and a bath. One or two rooms might be at the front, the rest crooked and cornered backward through in creasing and then decreasing darkness till they reached a light bedroom or kitchen at the rear. It might be the one or the other, but it was always the seventh room with the bath; or if, as sometimes happened, it was the eighth, it was so after ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... to the ocean would be easy and quick. This happened in front of the tent and in the presence of the crowd, so old M'Rua, seeing a jumping Mzimu, began at once to leap as high as he could with his crooked shanks in the conviction that through that act he gave proof of his piety. In emulation of their superior "the ministers" started to leap, and after them the warriors, and later the women and children; in a word, ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... competent to dispel the doubts of others, show themselves in this respect to be of weak understanding and feel great misery in consequence of this passion. Covetous men are wedded to envy and anger. They are outside the pale of good behaviour. Of crooked hearts, the speeches they utter are sweet. They resemble, therefore, dark pits whose mouths are covered with grass. They attire themselves in the hypocritical cloak of religion. Of low minds, they rob the world, setting up (if need be) the standard of religion ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... what there is about a sweep that makes little rascals of boys throw stones at him, and call names after him, but that's the curious fact. As soon as ever a sweep begins to call out in the street, there's a crowd of little rascals round him at once. I've seen Joe sometimes, a little crooked man with a lame leg and a black face, and a tail of little ragamuffins shouting ''Weep, 'weep!' behind him, going about his earthly business in the dirty streets round about where he lived. 'Eh! never mind 'em, Mr Charter,' ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... wide; the current was very strong. At eleven we came to a rapid which had been the theme of discourse with the Indians for many days, and which they had described to us as impassable in canoes. The river here descends for three quarters of a mile, in a deep, but narrow and crooked, channel, which it has cut through the foot of a hill of five hundred or six hundred feet high. It is confined between perpendicular cliffs, resembling stone walls, varying in height from eighty to one hundred and fifty feet, on which lies a mass of fine sand. The ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... Bachelor says, "Mrs. Worldly, may I present Mr. Struthers?" Mrs. Worldly says, "How do you do?" Struthers bows, and says nothing. To sweetly echo "Mr. Struthers?" with a rising inflection on "—thers?" is not good form. Saccharine chirpings should be classed with crooked little fingers, high hand-shaking and other affectations. All affectations are ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... Keno My Jew Partner My First Love Marked Cards My Crooked Partner My Partner Alexander Married His Money My Cards My Little Partner Mules for Luck My Visit to Old Bill Monumental Gall Mule Thieves My Partner Won McCoole ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... complexion (maintained by a Spartan regimen), the fresh, bright color in her face, which spoke of an engaging modesty, became overspread with blotches and pimples; her figure, which had seemed so straight, grew crooked, the angel became a suspicious and shrewish creature who drove Castanier frantic. Then the fortune took to itself wings. At length the dragoon, no longer recognizing the woman whom he had wedded, left her to live on a little property at Strasbourg, until the time ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... the table and gazed rapturously down. Never in her life, as the cattleman truly said, had she seen anything like it. No horse, on a prairie overrunning with horses, could compare with it. She put out her hand and touched its crooked head, almost reverently, ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... way up the narrow, secluded valley, but had met not a soul. All was delightful and picturesque, the profusion of wild flowers, the huge grey moss-grown boulders, the overhanging ilexes and olives, and the music of the tumbling current through a crooked course worn deep by the waters of ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... are so wise and discerning, you can tell whether his course across the field, was straight or crooked?" ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... the Indians made their appearance on Crooked run, in Monongalia county. Mr. Thomas Pindall, having been one day at Harrison's fort, at a time when a greater part of the neighbourhood had gone thither for safety, prevailed on three young men, (Harrison, Crawford and Wright, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... to have followed faithfully in the footsteps of his leader in the path marked out by the Abolition confederates in their manifesto, which I took occasion to expose on a former occasion. You have seen them on their winding way, meandering the narrow and crooked path in Indian file, each treading close upon the heels of the other, and neither venturing to take a step to the right or left, or to occupy one inch of ground which did not bear the footprint of the Abolition champion. To answer one, therefore, is to answer the whole. The statement ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... It was early June now; the theatrical season was closed for two months, with no prospects in the booking agencies until August. In the mean time she had eight dollars, seventy-six cents, and a crooked sixpence as available collateral; and an unpaid ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... lane as I pursu'd my journey, I spy'd a wrinkled Hag, with age grown double, Picking dry sticks, and mumbling to herself. Her eyes with scalding rheum were gall'd and red; Cold palsy shook her head; her hands seem'd withered; And on her crooked shoulders had she wrapped The tatter'd remnants of an old strip'd hanging, Which serv'd to keep her carcase from the cold: So there was nothing of a piece about her. Her lower weeds were all o'er coarsly patch'd ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... there was never a volume that had not been defaced out of all knowledge by crooked marks of the most inquisitive interrogation, and straight marks of the most indignant astonishment, by the reading-public in the shadows of the breakwaters. It really read, that public did; and, what's more, it often tore out the interesting ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... study of Professor John Phinn's vocabulary of Shakespeare, be willing to go on and tell who Richard and Richmond were in their day, and how Richard got the stuffin' knocked out of him because he was crooked and a tyrant and a monopolist. And, moreover, as all lawyers like to show off in the spouting line, when they get the chance, he might say a good word or two for the immortal Bard of Avon. Not that Shakespeare wants it, but merely as an evidence ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... Lord's vast dominions to the other, we find the same Divine Providence everywhere operating and operative. The angels of heaven, from the highest to the lowest, are continually led by the Lord in paths that they have not known; darkness is made light before them, and crooked things straight. Nevertheless they are not led into infinite good nor infinite delight. For this would be impossible. But constantly they are led into a higher degree of good than they would naturally choose; and they are defended from evil into which they would naturally subside. So ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... soft curtains; there were golden glittering bands on the roof beams, and above them all had become black, impenetrable, mysterious. When one glanced up one might have had the night sky over one's head, for all one could see of the roof. The light shone bright on crooked backs, slightly distorted limbs, the pallor of sickness, the stains of rough weather; on girls meekly folding hands that daily scrub and scour; on laboring men stooping the shoulders that habitually carry ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... there is really in it, and extract from it more than it can contain. You must look for and make too much of allusions and hints; squeeze allegories too closely; interpret examples too circumstantially; press too much upon words. This gives the child a petty, crooked, hair splitting understanding: it makes him full of mysteries, superstitions; full of contempt for all that ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... A slender, crooked, shrivelled-limbed, cantankerous little man, with dishevelled hair and haggard countenance, bad-tempered and irritable, penurious and dishonest, at least in his claims for priority in discoveries—this is the picture usually drawn, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... then in mere boyish sports, and begged him not to engage in such rough games with his childish playmates. And Shelley, the little man, let her talk on, still believing he was like little Paul McNamara, that had a crooked foot. He wasn't going to shame his mother as ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... tips of the female flowers have now begun to appear. In the hedge there are still the remains of old man's beard that, in one light, looks like dirty wool, but, with the sun shining on it, seems at a distance to be hawthorn in the full glory of blossom. Every now and then a crooked caterpillar of down is detached from it by the wind and sails off vaguely over a field. A few weeks ago sparrows were singing choruses as they gorged themselves upon it, but lately they have been scraping ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... all the courage of knighthood in defending his inoffensive wife. Under cover of this fiction, so flattering to the vanity of an overawed husband, she had managed at one time or another to embroil him with almost all the neighbors, and his refusal to join fences had resulted in that crooked arrangement known as a "devil's lane" on three ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... dragoman, "a suit for divorce may be brought, which may or may not be defended. Now, the 'rig,' which is always brought by the wife, is not so simple, for it must be subdivided into two sections: 'Ye straight rig' and 'Ye crooked rig.' 'Ye straight rig' is where the wife cannot induce her husband to remain with her, and discovering from him that he has been in the close company of another, wishes to be free of him. She therefore tells the Court ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... waving his wing politely. "Good evening, Miss Heron. Fine weather we are having, eh? But how horribly moist it is down here! I should think that your nice straight legs would grow crooked with rheumatism. Now I have a comfortable, dry house on ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... office and departed in the direction of the Deputy Commissioner's house. That day at noon I had occasion to go down the blinding hot Mall, and I saw a crooked man crawling along the white dust of the roadside, his hat in his hand, quavering dolorously after the fashion of street-singers at Home. There was not a soul in sight, and he was out of all possible earshot of the houses. ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... voice his long crooked nose his white hair falling over the shoulders of his faded blue coat his shuffling shambling gait as he hobbled up to Carletons Grocery with his basket all this I shall remember ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... edge of the bluff, just where the pines and the bayberry bushes were thickest, where the narrow, crooked little footpath dipped over the rise and down to the pasture land and the salt meadow, John Ellery and Grace had halted in their walk. It was full tide and the miniature breakers plashed amid the seaweed on the beach. ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... this time at least, the animal seemed to perform an automatic action, and it seemed to me that we had guessed subconsciously what the horse intended to do. This may appear a crooked hypothesis, but it is less difficult for me than to think that the horse had read in my mind the number which I had there. It certainly did nothing on most occasions to upset the fairly clear and precise impression ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... to creep in to delay him. For one thing, the Happy Family had only a comedy acquaintance with grease paint, and their make-up reminded Luck unpleasantly of Bently Brown's stories. As they appeared one by one, with their comically crooked eyebrows and their rouge-widened lips and staring, deep-shadowed eyes, Luck sent them back to take it all off and start over again under his supervision. The outcome was that he gave a full hour to making up the faces of his characters and telling them how to do it themselves. Even Rosemary ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... 'Why, hello, frien's! an' howdy, too, kaze I aint seed you-all sence de last time! Whar de name er goodness is you been deze odd-come-shorts? an' how did you far' at de bobbycue? Ef my two eyeballs aint gone an' got crooked, dar's ol' Brer B'ar, him er de short tail an' sharp tush—de ve'y one I'm a-huntin' fer! An' dar's Brer Coon! I sho is in big luck. Dar's gwineter be a big frolic at Miss Meadows', an' her an' de gals want Brer B'ar fer ter show um de roas'n'-y'ar ...
— Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit • Joel Chandler Harris
... ten times as great a mystery as the labyrinth of Crete. Theseus had not taken five steps before he lost sight of Ariadne; and in five more his head was growing dizzy. But still he went on, now creeping through a low arch, now ascending a flight of steps, now in one crooked passage and now in another, with here a door opening before him, and there one banging behind, until it really seemed as if the walls spun round, and whirled him round along with them. And all the while, through these hollow avenues, now nearer, now farther off again, resounded ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to John Russell and his Boke. He describes himself at the beginning and end of his treatise as Usher and Marshal to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, delighting in his work in youth, quitting it only when compelled by crooked age, and then anxious to train up worthy successors in the art and mystery of managing a well-appointed household. Aman evidently who knew his work in every detail, and did it all with pride; not boastful, though upholding his office against rebellious ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... blessin dat Mary had, She had de blessin of two, To think dat her son, Jesus, Could bring de crooked to straight, Could bring ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... all that for the present, dear Mollie,' replied Audrey, rather sorrowfully. 'One needs a great deal of faith when things go crooked. Keep up by yourself as well as you can, and leave the music alone for a little. By and by, when you think he can bear it, you might speak to your brother; but ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... gentlemen, nor was the tail of the y such as Mrs. Edmonstone was wont to make. It had even a resemblance to Amabel's own writing that startled him. He opened it at last, and within found the hand he could not doubt—Charles's, namely—much more crooked than usual, and the ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... their language, originarius civis vel ingenuus. Stukeley's opinion, in which he is joined by Whitaker, the Manchester historian, is, that it was the Guetheling road—Sarn Guethelin, or the road of the Irish, the G being pronounced as a W. Dr. Wilkes says, that it is more indented and crooked than other Roman Roads usually are, and supposes that it was formed of Wattles, which was the idea also of Pointer. Mr. Duff is not pleased with the opinion of Camden, that it derives its name from an unknown Vitellianus, but conjectures ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 381 Saturday, July 18, 1829 • Various
... thrilled to the voice and gesture of the artists who had played to please her. There had been "Wang" and "The Wizard of Oz"; "Robin Hood"; the tall comedian of "Casey at the Bat"; the short comedian who had danced to fame on his crooked legs; Mrs. Fiske, most incomparable Becky; Mansfield, Sothern—some of them, alas, ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... brown pop, an' have ye'er second fan ye with a towel. Afther this ye'd dhress, an' here ye've got to be dam particklar or ye'll be stuck f'r th' dhrinks. If ye'er necktie is not on sthraight, that counts ye'er opponent wan. If both ye an' ye'er opponent have ye'er neckties on crooked, th' first man that sees it gets th' stakes. ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... Helen's parlor, and in as crooked an attitude as a man ever compassed. He had so managed to dispose of himself over three chairs as to give the general effect of having been suddenly arrested in the midst of an acrobatic feat of unusual difficulty, ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... this? A close palkee, with a passenger; the bearers, with elbows sharply crooked, and calves all varicose, trotting to a monotonous, jerking ditty, which the sirdar, or leader, is impudently improvising, to the refrain of Putterum, ("Easy now!") at the expense of their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... have never known a gondola or a Luigi! A vile-smelling, chuggity-chug is forcing its way up every crooked canal, no matter how narrow. Two Venetian shipyards are hammering away on their hulls or polishing their motors. Soon the cost of production will drop to that of a gondola. Then look out! There are eight thousand machinists in the Arsenal ...
— The Parthenon By Way Of Papendrecht - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Respectable State officials, even when on sick leave, do not call at empty houses and stay at hotels within a stone's throw of their own residences unknown to their families. No! Mr. Prohack saw that he had been steering a crooked course. Error existed and must be corrected. He decided to walk direct to Manchester Square. If Eve wanted the car at twelve fifteen she would be out of the house at twelve thirty, and probably out for lunch. ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... that, because they know so little about our faith, they therefore are unable to appreciate or enjoy any of its spiritual blessings. I have often been surprised to see how many very ignorant Christians, and those who greatly try our patience at times, both by their stupidity and their crooked lives, nevertheless often reveal beautiful touches of a genuine faith and of a most direct and simple trust; and they stand nobly firm under the most trying and worrying persecution which Hinduism knows too well how to inflict upon those who desert ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... gave my heart to God, but I do feel the need of a deeper work of grace." Another will say, "Pray for me that I may have a clean heart." Another will request prayer for perfect love; another will confess to having been overcome by sin, and having made some crooked paths, and feels sorry and wants to get nearer to God and ...
— Sanctification • J. W. Byers
... black horse I'm riding — if you'll notice what's his brand, He wears the crooked R, you see — none better in the land. He takes a lot of beatin', and the other day we tried, For a bit of a joke, with a racing bloke, for twenty pounds ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... my mind to injure him—to strike off one of his legs, which would not be missed much, as they were many—so as to make him go away and return no more to so inhospitable a place. But courage failed me. He might come stealthily back at night to plunge his long, crooked farces into my throat, poisoning my blood with fever and delirium and black death. So I left him alone, and glanced furtively and fearfully at him, hoping that he had not divined any thoughts; thus we lived on unsocially together. More companionable, but still ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... resident at the court of Wenceslaus of Bohemia (A. D. 1368 to 1419,) appears to great advantage in the annals of these humbugs. He was a homely, crooked creature, with an immense mouth. He had a collision once in public on a question of skill with a brother conjuror, and becoming a little excited, opened his big mouth and swallowed the other magician, ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... perpetrated. The younger man's efforts were directed towards a deeper, more significant purpose, and perhaps less cruel. He could have blinded in a twinkling. But he refrained. Instead, he pressed up mightily with a fore-arm crooked under the back of the man's neck, his smothering hand pressed down with all his ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... pass over the incidents of the journey. It was towards evening when the towers of Vernon, situated on the banks of the Seine, appeared in sight, and, passing across the boulevards which surrounded the town, I entered the narrow, crooked streets, with timber-framed houses on either side, and kept clean by running streams. On my way I inquired for the house of Monsieur Planterre, which I found situated at the entrance of an avenue which leads to the Chateau de Bizy, belonging to the ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... It sees as God sees! What is it that the Bible says?—'And I will bring them by a way that they knew not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known: I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight.' I must know that—always! And Padre Jose said he would remember ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... He found a crooked sixpence under the hearth-rug; and upon Christmas Eve he and Hunca Munca stuffed it into one of the ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter
... Theodore Roosevelt visited Santiago and the forts at the entrance to the harbor, and with the pen of a skilled author he has, in one of his books, given us vivid pictures of the sights to be seen there at that time—the crooked streets with their queer shops, the wretched inhabitants, the grim and frowning forts, all hemmed in by the towering mountains and the sea. He likewise tells of his trips to the mountains, and how his companions were usually exhausted by the climbing done. For one who in his youth ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... found that he had turned a hearth-stone upside down. On the edge of the hole stood a little crooked old man, brandishing a mop-stick in a tremendous rage, and hesitating only where to strike him. But Richard put him out of his difficulty by springing up and taking the stick from him. Then, having lifted Alice out, he returned it with a bow, and, heedless of the maledictions of the old man, proceeded ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald
... Wonderland to Yea-or-Nay The junks of Weal-and-Woe Dream on the purple water-way Nor ever meet a foe; Though still, with stiff mustachio And crooked ataghan, Their pirates guard with pomp and show The ships of ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... in the city, they passed through the crooked streets, sometimes so narrow that the geese were packed from wall to wall. Oft some jovial soldier sent a jest or a query to them across the now gray backs of the geese. But Gretchen looked on ahead, purely ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... for she seemed unable to control this vagary, which was perhaps a little bit of babyhood that had forgotten to grow up with the rest of her. At those moments the essence of all that was characteristic and delicious about her seemed to have run to her mouth; so that to kiss Grizel on her crooked smile would have been to kiss the whole of her at once. She had a quaint way of nodding her head at you when she was talking. It made you forget what she was saying, though it was really meant to have precisely the ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... and smiled significantly. "I saw the lad last night at poker with a crowd that's not above a crooked deal.... Someone should stop him." In ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... bill upon Major-General Maggot, cheesemonger in Thames Street. Crabtree draws this upon Mr. William Maggot and Company. A country lad received this bill, and not understanding the word "company," used in drawing bills on men in partnership, carried it to Mr. Jeffry Stick of Crooked Lane (lieutenant of the major-general's company) whom he had the day before seen march by the door in all the pomp of his commission. The lieutenant accepts it, for the honour of the company, since it had come ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... Knights in that ship, till at length they saw before them the city of Sarras. Then they took from the ship the table of silver, and Sir Percivale and Sir Bors went first, and Sir Galahad followed after to the gate of the city, where sat an old man that was crooked. At the sight of the old man Sir Galahad called to him to help them carry the table, for it was heavy. 'Truly,' answered the old man, 'it is ten years since I have gone without crutches.' 'Care not for that,' said Galahad, 'but rise up and show your good will.' So he arose ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... number of hooks, some of which were very good, others remarkably bad. Some of these hooks were made of iron-wood, which did pretty well, the wood being extremely hard, and Jack made them very thick and large. Fish there are not particular. Some of the crooked bones in fish-heads also answered for this purpose pretty well. But that which formed our best and most serviceable hook was the brass finger-ring belonging to Jack. It gave him not a little trouble to manufacture it. First he cut it ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... turned, through St. Clement's Lane into Crooked Lane, and the ever-growing mob clattered noisily after them, shouting and laughing a gleeful chorus to ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... for help and protection which rose from the solitary occupant of the place—a wild, bloodshot-eyed, athletic man in torn and ragged half-open shirt and trousers, who cowered on the rough bed trying to force himself closer into the corner, his crooked fingers scratching at the wall, while all the time his head was wrenched round so that he stared wildly at imaginary dangers, evidently vividly seen, and kept on shrieking ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... silk for his neighbours, he himself was very, very poor—a little old man in spectacles, with a pinched face, old crooked fingers, and a ...
— The Tailor of Gloucester • Beatrix Potter
... getting into trouble, Mr. Crooked McMurdo of Chicago," said he. "Can't keep out of it, can you? Take your hat and ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... his bedroom gloom, And saw, hair-poised, a naked, thirsting knife, A gaunt and hairy man with eyes of doom — And then the blade plunged down to drink his life . . . So that he woke, wrenched back his robe, and looked, And saw beside his dying fire upstart A gaunt and hairy man with finger crooked — A rifle rang, a bullet searched ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... Meinherr Friedrich, comes to-morrow,' said Otto. 'I am so glad. I was weary of that old Master Hoffman, with his crooked problems ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... gone through. Upon my word, for the last two months I have been ashamed to call myself an Englishman. However, there is an end of it now. I knew that they would never give in and desert us," and the old man straightened his crooked back and slapped his chest, looking as proud and gallant as though he were five-and-twenty instead of ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... had made some big mistakes—how many, I wondered? A relief, scarcely less deep because it was unconfessed, stole in on me with the suspicion that, little as I deserved it, the patient fates were offering me a golden chance of repairing at least one. And yet, I mused, the patient fates have crooked methods, besides a certain mischievous humour, for it was Davies who had asked me out—though now he scarcely seemed to need me—almost tricked me into coming out, for he might have known I was not suited to such a life; yet trickery and Davies ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... the serpent meeting, Fooled and beguiled; by him thou, I by thee To trust thee from my side; imagined wise, Constant, mature, proof against all assaults; And understood not all was but a show, Rather than solid virtue; all but a rib Crooked by nature, bent, as now appears, More to the part sinister, from me drawn; Well if thrown out, as supernumerary To my just number found. O! why did God, Creator wise, that peopled highest Heaven With Spirits masculine, create at last ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... for these animals. This, of course, necessitated the gathering of grass or other material for their food. They also cultivated wheat, barley, flax, and a number of other vegetable products. Their methods of cultivation were no doubt very rude, consisting of a mere scratching of the ground with crooked branches of trees or with simple instruments made of stags' horn; but, nevertheless, they succeeded in getting very good results. Among the relics which they have left are found stones for crushing corn, the grain which they used, and even the very cakes ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... the axils of branches. Calyx 4-parted; 4 very narrow curving petals about 3/4 in. long; 4 short stamens, also 4 that are scale-like; 2 styles. Stem: A tall, crooked shrub. Leaves: Broadly oval, thick, wavy-toothed, mostly fallen at flowering time. Fruit: Woody capsules maturing the next season and remaining with flowers of the succeeding year (Hama together with; mela ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... muscles of the legs and body; come again into standing position without swaying the body backward out of the perfect line. Repeat this same exercise, first on one foot, then on the other. It is wonderful what a straightening-out power this exercise has upon round shoulders and crooked backs, and one will be surprised to note how soon the lungs begin to show the ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... marched in first, more shy than I ever have been before in my life. Lady Charlotte had two gentlemen with her. She evidently did not know me in the least; she stood staring at me with her eyeglass on, and her cap so crooked I could think of nothing but a wish to put it straight. Then Rose followed, and in a few minutes it seemed to me as though it were Rose who were hostess, talking to the two gentlemen and being kind to Lady Charlotte. I am sure everybody in the room was amused by her self-possession, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... foolish, silly life, if you will, but mine own. And I have missed it. This serving society business is theoretically admirable and compelling and interesting, but deadly stupid in its working details. I am afraid I was never born to set the crooked straight. ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... and Montagu took the first turn at the oars, while Wildney steered. Graham's "crabs," and Wildney's rather crooked steering, gave plenty of opportunity for chaff, and they were full of fun as the oar-blades splashed and sparkled in the waves. Then they made Jim sing them some of his old sailor songs as they rowed, and joined vigorously in the choruses. They ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... guide your doubtful steps within the maze My sister would have arm'd you with the clue. But no, therein would Phaedra have forestall'd her, Love would have first inspired me with the thought; And I it would have been whose timely aid Had taught you all the labyrinth's crooked ways. What anxious care a life so dear had cost me! No thread had satisfied your lover's fears: I would myself have wish'd to lead the way, And share the peril you were bound to face; Phaedra with you would have explored ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine
... became dissatisfied with old methods and old implements and old ideas and customs and old attainments that they have toiled in painful research, that they have labored night and day to invent new things. In some places, people still plow with a crooked stick and grind their flour in hand-mills. What their fathers had is good enough for them. Some people are like that about religion. What their fathers had is good enough for them, and they are indignant if we even suggest something better; they are satisfied. ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... all done, we may hope that crooked spines, pimpled faces, sallow complexions, stooping shoulders, and all other signs indicating an undeveloped physical vitality, will, in the course of a few generations, disappear from the earth, and men will have bodies which will ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... passenger train, so that he would have only one train to meet and pass before reaching the Resaca River, where he intended to burn the bridge. This done, it would have been an easy matter to burn the bridges over the Chickamauga. This crooked stream winds about the valleys so unexpectedly, and in such curious fashion, that the railroad crosses it eleven times within a few miles. These eleven bridges Andrews intended to burn as he went along, ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... BETA}) Against the logic of this argument some Thomist theologians defend themselves by a simile. The soul of a lame man, they say, enables him indeed to move his disabled limb; however, the cause of limping is not the soul but a crooked shinbone. Father Pesch wittily disposes of such reasoning as follows: "The will of Adam before the fall was not a crooked shinbone, but it was absolutely straight, and became ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... water supply, I heard the young man's voice in the distance, singing his song as he wended his way home. The old woman heard it, too. She straightened up and looked steadily in the direction of the singer, slowly shook her head, picked up her water vessel, and turned away, her crooked figure disappearing in the shadows. Then I arose and followed the singer, trying to forget the warning shake of the ...
— Indian Story and Song - from North America • Alice C. Fletcher
... Tirpitz and General von Heeringen came next. The Admiral is typical of the German sailor, a big man, six feet, wide of shoulder, blue-eyed, and full bearded. His manner I found genial and courteous. His exact opposite was von Heeringen, thin, almost crooked of body, stoop shouldered, unusually taciturn, and possessing deep-sunken, smoldering black eyes. He struck me as an animated mummy of the Rameses dynasty—come to think of it, he ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... some time. It was a place of singular beauty. A dozen immense rocks had fallen from the cliff on the left, almost completely blocking the channel—or so it seemed from one point of view. But there was a crooked channel, not more than twelve wide in places, through which the water shot like a stream ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... addressed the convention, some of the members called on me to discuss the points of my speech. All the gentlemen were serious and respectful with one exception. A man with an unusually small head, diminutive form, and crooked legs tried, at my expense, to be witty and facetious. During a brief pause in the conversation he brought his chair directly before me and said, in a mocking tone, "Don't you think that the best thing a woman can do is to perform well her part in the role of wife and mother? My wife has presented ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... Hori, Liliha, Taema, Ui, Hono'ura—they are the best in the water. Me ... you, Gordon, Ross. That makes ten with keen eyes to look, and always there are Tino-rau and Taua. We will take supplies and camp here on this island which looks so much like a finger crooked to beckon. Yes, somehow that beckoning finger seems to me to promise better fortune. Shall we plan ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... so much prettier leaning every which way," declared Polly. "We can see plenty of straight houses at home, so it's nice to see crooked ones over here. Oh, Jasper, ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... slowly, the thing, whatever it was, took shape. Legs—crooked, misshapen, human legs. A body—tawny and hunched. Arms—long and spidery, with crooked, knotted fingers. A head—large and bestial, and covered with a tangled mass of grey hair that hung around its protruding forehead and pointed ears in ghastly mockery of curls. A face—and herein ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... freight lines gloom, with their black, capacious hulks, among the lighter sailing-craft, and among the white, green-shuttered passenger-boats; and behind them those desperate and grimy sheds assume a picturesqueness, their sagging roofs and crooked gables harmonizing agreeably with the shipping; and then growing up from all, rises the mellow-tinted brick-built city, roof, and spire, and dome,—a fair and noble sight, indeed, and one not surpassed for a certain quiet ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... Wolfhart from Augsburg. Luther, notwithstanding his suffering, now discussed with them this matter, so important in his eyes. As an honest man, to whom nothing was so distasteful as 'dissimulation,' he earnestly warned them against all 'crooked ways.' The Swiss, in case he died, should be referred to his letter to Meyer; should God allow him to live and become strong, he would send them a written ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... of the group. So spicy a variety of folk cheek-by-jowl (Parthians and Elamites, Medes, Jews and Persians,) begets contrast. Nose-bridges of all styles show their peculiar architecture, Roman or Grecian; while straight, crooked, bottle, snub, pug; some flat and with no bridge at all, others very much abridged; are brought together in an amicable jostling, 'comparing themselves by themselves,' and setting off one another as a rose sets off a geranium. While I point out these peculiarities to my friend PHIZ, a coral ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... heavy eyebrows. His post was in as solitary and dismal a place as ever I saw. On either side, a dripping-wet wall of jagged stone, excluding all view but a strip of sky; the perspective one way only a crooked prolongation of this great dungeon; the shorter perspective in the other direction terminating in a gloomy red light, and the gloomier entrance to a black tunnel, in whose massive architecture there was a barbarous, depressing, and forbidding air. So little sunlight ever found its ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens |
