"Topsy-turvy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... attitude toward this public firebrand who lives in their vicinity and used to be a village boy under the care of his uncle, the shoemaker. Is he on their visiting-list? I rather suspect not. The world must be turning topsy-turvy for them when they allow themselves to reflect, as they must at times, that this upstart has the entry to royal palaces and is one of the principal advisers of the King of England. I have an idea that something more potent than gall and wormwood is ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... Lincoln said that this nation could not survive half-slave and half-free. The human race cannot forever exist half-exploiter and half-exploited. Until we become buyers and sellers alike, producers and consumers alike, keeping the balance not for profit but for service, we are going to have topsy-turvy conditions. ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... had a nibble at thy carcase. Let us be off—let us take our departure!—for we shall find our delicate modern ears unable to endure the vast uproar which is about to commence in celebration of the king's escape! Listen! it has already commenced. See!—the whole town is topsy-turvy. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... River, some of the band stopped in places that seemed inviting. But Bob and the rest of the company went on till they crossed the Paraguay River; and there, in the western part of that country, they made themselves at home. A strange, topsy-turvy land it is—as queer in some ways as the Wonderland Alice entered when she went through the Looking-Glass; for in Paraguay January comes in the middle of summer; and the hot, muggy winds blow from the north; and the cool, refreshing breezes ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... as a matter of course; brilliant flashes of imbecility passed for cool well-balanced argument; until often I would suddenly gasp, wondering into what impossible world I had strayed after him. And he would tell the most extravagant tales, he would confide the most paradoxical philosophy, the most topsy-turvy ethics, with a fantastic seriousness, never approached except in the Arabian Nights of Prince Florizel for the puppets of whose adventures, as for Spring-Heeled Jack, he was the sitter. It was a delightful accomplishment, but dangerous when applied to actual life. ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... sigh of perplexity. There rose up in his mind a sort of uncomfortable feeling that everything was going topsy-turvy. Somehow or another he seemed to see Robbie's mother sitting by the side of Elsie's bed when she had the fever last winter, and bustling about to get nice things for her, hushing the others with a strange look in her eyes that made them quiet at once, for they could see she was troubled. Or he seemed ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... lines of land traffic, perpetually moving from place to place, and leaving wherever they went abundant proofs of their diligence and capacity for hard work. From Thasos in the East, where Herodotus saw "a large mountain turned topsy-turvy by the Phoenicians in their search for gold,"[315] to the Scilly Islands in the West, where workings attributable to them are still to be seen, all the metalliferous islands and coast tracts bear traces of Phoenician industry in tunnels, adits, and air-shafts, while manufactured vessels ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... beard matted and flying; now one helped himself to a louder yell by tossing in air the dirty garment he had torn from his body, hirsute as a goat's; now one leaped up agile as a panther; now one turned topsy-turvy; now groups of them swirled together like whimsical eddies in a pool. Some went slowly, their arms outspread in silent ecstasy; some stalked on with parted lips and staring eyes, trance-like or in dead drunkenness of soul; nevertheless the great majority of them, too weary and far spent ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... least possible use. If a man is called a genius, it means that he is to be thrust out of all the good things in this life. He is not fit for anything but a garret! Put a genius into office! make a genius a bishop! or a lord chancellor!—the world would be turned topsy-turvy! You see that you are quite astonished that a genius can be even a county magistrate, and know the difference between a spade and a poker! In fact, a genius is supposed to be the most ignorant, impracticable, ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the "savages." Suppose you give him a box of bottles to carry, or a desk, or anything else that requires great care, and you caution him of its contents, the first thing he does is to commence swinging it round and round, or putting it topsy-turvy on the top of his head, when he will run off at a jog-trot, singing and laughing in the most provoking manner, and thinking no more about it than if it were an old stone; even if rain were falling, he would put it in the best place to get wet through. Economy, care, ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... not tumbled the bed topsy-turvy. I am glad to see thou hast yet some grace and manners in thy vocation. Now, Sir Messenger, to requite thee for this thy courtesy and forbearance, I will show thee a secret tabernacle, which all thy prying has ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... is she whose square answereth to the square of her figure, and to the character which her Lord hath given of his own, and so the game began. For so soon as this mistress became a dame in the world, and found that she had her stout abettors, she attempts to turn all things topsy-turvy, and to set them and to make of them what she lists. And now she will have an altar like that which was Tiglath-pileser's. Now must the Lord's brazen altar be removed from its place, the borders of the basis must be cut off, and the laver removed from off them; the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Wirtemberg; in having kept back from his knowledge many facts in the administration of the country, and destroying documents addressed to him. Also in having been untrue to him in word and deed. Almost comic this last—a sort of topsy-turvy ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... world turned topsy-turvy, where Cordelia and Isabella and Juliet were mannerless, the other sex might be eulogized by distinction as mannerly. But in this world is the gentle Bayard as truly the type of the average man as Jeanie Deans of the ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... no topsy-turvy straining after new effects, which is so wearisome to those who love the racy naturalism of Parson Adams and Edie Ochiltree. But let us have no pessimism also. The age is against the romance of colour, movement, passion, and jollity. But it is full of the romance of subtle and ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... for fear of injury to their constitutions. So the rich Aldermen's daughters were actually out in the fields herding sheep, and their sons sweeping chimneys or carrying newspapers; while the poor charwomen's and coal-heavers' children spent their time like princesses and fairies. Such a topsy-turvy state of society was shocking. Why, the Mayor's little daughter was tending geese out in the meadow like any common goose-girl! Her pretty elder sister, Violetta, felt very sad about it, and used often to cast about in her mind for some ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... wrong way; if you have been jilted or hen-pecked—no matter which—or if you find yourself growing poorer every hour, and all your wisest plans, and best-considered projects for getting rich in a hurry turned topsy-turvy by a change in the market-value of bubbles warranted never to burst; or if you have a note to pay for a man you never saw but once in your life, and hope never to see again—to the window with you! and lean back in your chair ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... upon. Time passed dreary enough for a month, at the end of which time his reverence came to me, leaving the porter just outside the door in older to come to his help should I be violent, and then he read me a very purty lecture on my conduct, saying I had turned the religious house topsy-turvy, and corrupted the scholars, and that I was the cheat of the world, for that on inspecting the pack he had discovered the dirty marks which I had made upon the trump cards for to know them by. He said ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... disturbed by men seeking that young scoundrel? Look at this place, fairly topsy-turvy with their hunt! Faith! The room is before you. Look and see!" and with a great indifference he went on with ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... beg your pardon, Master Edward, for the good switching you so kindly gave me; I beg your pardon for the damage you did to the garden; you will oblige me by continuing to tumble everything topsy-turvy, and break all ...
— The Two Story Mittens and the Little Play Mittens - Being the Fourth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... came out; and people began to think that topsy-turvy Louisa would amount to something after all, since she could do so well as housemaid, teacher, seamstress, and story-teller. Perhaps ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... another look round," suggested Fisher. So once more the study was turned topsy-turvy, and every nook and cranny searched. But no money was there, nor ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... heliotrope and carnations were set everywhere; violets and primroses, gold-hearted brown auriculas, spikes of veronica, all the zones and all the seasons, combining to make the Christmas-tide sweet, and to turn winter topsy-turvy in the ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... "Anti-Eternitarians," scandal bearing, and other petty sins and sinners. For political readers a gentleman contributes a conversation between a Hanoverian and an English lady, in which the latter has the best of the argument. An account of Topsy-Turvy Land satirizes illogical practices in a manner familiar to the readers of "The Bab Ballads." The few literary papers are concerned with true and false taste, the delights of reading, Mr. Akenside's "Pleasures of the Imagination" and the horrors of the same, ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... first four numbers they used an I, which naturally represents them. To mark the fifth, they chose a V, which is made out by bending inwards the three middle fingers, and stretching out only the thumb and the little finger; and for the tenth they used an X, which is a double V, one placed topsy-turvy under the other. From this the progression of these numbers is always from one to five, and from five to ten. The hundred was signified by the capital letter of that word in Latin, C—centum. The other letters, D for 500, and M for a 1000, were afterwards added. They subsequently ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... it go:—it will one day be found With other relics of 'a former world,' When this world shall be former, underground, Thrown topsy-turvy, twisted, crisp'd, and curl'd, Baked, fried, or burnt, turn'd inside-out, or drown'd, Like all the worlds before, which have been hurl'd First out of, and then back again to chaos, The superstratum which ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... turn all our barricadoes and bulwarks topsy-turvy, I find that, by divers causes, indigence is as frequently seen to inhabit with those who have estates as with those that have none; and that, peradventure, it is then far less grievous when alone than when accompanied with riches. These flow more from ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... and Mrs. Elder both started from the room and ran up-stairs. Here they found Henry, a boy two years older than Mary, who was between three and four, lying on the carpet with a bureau drawer upon him, which he had, while turning topsy-turvy after something or other, accidentally pulled out upon him. He was more frightened than ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... River Seine are the wonder and amusement of the idle. It is true that through some miscalculation they have chosen the wrong branch of the river. As for the Prince, that sublime person, having now served his turn, may go, along with the ARABIAN AUTHOR, topsy-turvy into space. But if the reader insists on more specific information, I am happy to say that a recent revolution hurled him from the throne of Bohemia, in consequence of his continued absence and edifying neglect of public business; and that his Highness now keeps a cigar store in Rupert Street, ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ideas interest us less than his art and humor. We have seen the nature of his plots. In such a topsy-turvy world there is little opportunity for nice delineation of character. His personages are mainly symbols or caricatures. Yet they are vividly if broadly sketched, and genuine touches of human nature lend verisimilitude to their most improbable ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... lustre and more great opinion, A larger dare to our great enterprise, Than if the earl were here; for men must think, If we, without his help, can make a head To push against the kingdom, with his help We shall o'erturn it topsy-turvy down. Yet all goes well, yet all our joints ...
— King Henry IV, The First Part • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... wife, he thinks how happy he will be, and how pleasant it will be keeping house on his own account; but, before the bottom of the family kettle has been scorched black, he will be like a man learning to swim in a field, with his ideas all turned topsy-turvy, and, contrary to all his expectations, he will find the pleasures of housekeeping to be all a delusion. Look at that woman there. Haunted by her cares, she takes no heed of her hair, nor of her personal appearance. With her head all untidy, her apron tied round her as a girdle, with a baby twisted ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... that, When everything's been said— May I offer this mat If you will stand on your head? I suppose I look to be upside down From your present point of view. It's a giddy old world, from king to clown, And a topsy-turvy, too. But, worthy and now uninverted old man, You're built, at least, on a normal plan If ever a truth I spoke. Smoke? Your air and conversation Are a liberal education, And your clothes, including the metal hat And ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... been in that boat, dear," she said sweetly, "you would realize the topsy-turvy condition of our brains. Even Mr. Gray himself, the coolest man on board, imagined we might sink any moment. So what can you expect of those excitable Chileans? Besides, the thing was done so quickly that we were swept away by the tide before ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... "it is about Professor Lancaster. I am sure you will agree with me that it will not do for him to come back here. I am just going to start housekeeping again. I've got the supper on my mind this minute. You can't imagine how everything has turned topsy-turvy since I left. I suppose he will be wanting to go North, anyway. In fact, he told ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... I was urged to pledge my friend in a glass of punch; I did so; my friend's friend, and his friend, and all the rest, in succession, begged to have the same honor; I complied, again and again, till at last, the punch having fairly turned my head topsy-turvy, righted my understanding; and I found ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... to think that after Hector the title would go to Evermond Le Mesurier, the unmarried and dissolute uncle, if he survived his nephew, and then would die out altogether. There would be no more Baron Bracondales of Bracondale, unless Hector chose to marry and have sons. Oh, life was a topsy-turvy affair at the best of times, ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... in the matter of your visit to us you cannot alter your plans, which have already been turned topsy-turvy once to suit ours, we will go at some other time to Belvoir, and my sister must e'en give it up, as in my professional days I had to forego Stoke, Chatsworth, and, hardest by ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... were cast together into the basket. The last fragment of all that we saw tumble down was the head, and no sooner had that touched the ground than he who had snatched up all the limbs and put them in the basket turned them all out again topsy-turvy. Then straightway we saw with these eyes all those limbs creep together again, and in short, form a whole man, who at once could stand and go just as before, without showing the least damage! Never in my life was I so astonished as when I beheld this wonderful performance, and I doubted ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... must have been that moving picture that set Tom off," said Dick, during the course of the conversation. "And that gives us something like a clue to work on. The main scenes took place in Alaska, and he may be just topsy-turvy enough in his mind to want to find those places. Talking about golden nuggets, and about being on the trail of Bill Stiger, ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield
... Lady Daphne, does he?" she said to herself, as she realised that she would be forced to speak out now if he was to be saved from such an alliance. "Then he must marry her, that's all! I can't and won't turn all Maerchenland topsy-turvy on his account! I've done all I could for him, and I shall leave him to go his own way. I'll go up to bed before he arrives, and I expect it will be a long time before I'm able to come down, for I feel sure I am going to ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... and Taste Had turned our parish topsy-turvy, When Darnel Park was Darnel Waste, And roads as little known as scurvy, The man who lost his way between St. Mary's Hill and Sandy Thicket, Was always shown across the Green, And guided to ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... for ever attempted and missed. The best thing in it is a Sermon, oddly coupled with a good deal of coarseness, and both the composition of a clergyman. The man's head, indeed, was a little turned before, now topsy-turvy with his success and fame. Dodsley has given him six hundred and fifty pounds for the second edition and two more volumes (which I suppose will reach backwards to his great-great-grandfather); Lord Fauconberg, a donative ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... after the exercises of the day just where they had first stopped. This was at McLean's rooms, dismantled and topsy-turvy with the business of packing. The pipes were going and the talk kept pace. Old men smoke slowly and in great whiffs with long intervals of silence between their observations. Young men draw fast and say many and bright things, for young men ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... I got from the hotel to the hill in a wagon. The sight from our eminence was one that I shall never forget—that I can never fully describe. The whole world appeared to be topsy-turvy and at the mercy of an angry and destroying demon of the elements. People were floating about on housetops and in wagons, and hundreds were clinging to tree-trunks, logs and furniture of ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... but a week to Jim Hardy's wedding day. Preparations were in full swing, and the Clays' house was, so to speak, turned topsy-turvy. Jim was considered a most lucky man. He was to get five hundred pounds with his bride. With that five hundred pounds Louisa proposed that Jim should set up in business for himself. He and she would own a small haberdasher's shop. They could stock it well, ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... good," I said; "everything seems topsy-turvy up here. Why, to-day I saw a man come in with a box of apples which the crowd begged him to open. He was selling those apples at a dollar apiece, and the folks were ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... Mrs Widger was distributing the school bank-cards and Monday morning pennies. (By the time the children leave school, they will have saved thus, penny by penny, enough to provide them with a new rig-out for service—or Sunday wear.) There was a frizzling in the topsy-turvy little kitchen. ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... your coat; and, Eph, see you to that trunk," said Mr. Garie. "You see everything is topsy-turvy with us, uncle John. We look like ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... longer," said Katharine, as she opened it. "She is the best of them all to write, and her letters sound just like her funny, topsy-turvy self." ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... rainy afternoon, came in with a flat basket full of newly cut wood on his head, respectfully saluted the Padrona, and, after throwing down his load in a corner of the kitchen, leisurely turned his basket topsy-turvy, seated himself upon it, and prepared to take his part in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... a copy of some celebrated poseur—I'll tell you those! Speaking as a man of liberal—or lax—morality, you surprise me. You are godly and cleanly men; yet, when you saw in me a gem of purest ray serene, did you appeal to my better nature? Nary! In a wild and topsy-turvy world, did you implore me to devote my splendid and unwasted energies in the service of Good, with a capital G? Nix! You appealed to ambition, egotism, and greed.... Fie! A fie upon each ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... little brown house turned all topsy-turvy in the whirl of preparation that followed, and the next thing, she was standing on the platform at the station, with her new steamer trunk beside her. Half the town was there to bid her good-by. In the excitement of finding herself a person of such importance she forgot how much she was leaving ...
— The Gate of the Giant Scissors • Annie Fellows Johnston
... goal of his desires as I was at that moment. The regions around the North Pole — well, yes, the North Pole itself — had attracted me from childhood, and here I was at the South Pole. Can anything more topsy-turvy be imagined? ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... barefaced crazy unreason, the negation of intelligibility and law? And if the slightest particle of it exist anywhere, what is to prevent the whole fabric from falling together, the stars from going out, and chaos from recommencing her topsy-turvy reign? ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... having brought the Bear to the Stake, unrings him, and turns him about, so that he may see the Dog, that's to play at him; the Challenger lets fly his Dog, which being a cruel strong Cur rises up to the Bears nose, fastens and turns him topsy-turvy; there's no small joy and an eccho of Shouts that makes the very earth tremble; then there's pulling and hawling to get him off from the Bear: Then the Adversary let's fly his Dog, who coming to fasten, the Bear being furious and angry that he was so plagu'd with the first Dog, claps ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... know what it rightly is to faint, but I do know that for the next little while the whole world swam away from before me in a whirling mist; Silver and the birds and the tall Spy-glass hilltop going round and round and topsy-turvy before my eyes, and all manner of bells ringing, and distant voices shouting in ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it! Life was going on: perhaps other little Christophes were dreaming, suffering, struggling, in the shabby houses in the street that was called after him.—At a concert in the gigantic Tonhalle he heard some of his music played, all topsy-turvy: he hardly recognized it.... So be it! Though it were misunderstood it might perhaps arouse new energy. We sowed the seed. Do what you will with it: feed on us.—At nightfall Christophe walked through the fields outside the city; great mists were rolling over them, and he thought of the ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... water, the air, mountains, forests, and vallies, are no dead lifeless dogs, as you mayhap think them. All sorts of things dwell and bustle about in them, things that you call powers and the like: these can't endure to have their old quiet abodes turned topsy-turvy in this manner, and dug away and blown up with gunpowder under their very feet. The whole country for miles and miles round is smoking and steaming, and clattering, and hammering; people are shovelling and poking, and digging, and ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... old," he remarked. "No, I'm more, to be exact. I shall be eighty-two come February. When you've lived as long as that, young Mr. Pratt, you'll know that this life is a game of topsy-turvy—to some folks, at any ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... this morning, and I meant to tell it at dinner, but I forgot," said Beth, putting Jo's topsy-turvy basket in order as she talked. "When I went to get some oysters for Hannah, Mr. Laurence was in the fish shop, but he didn't see me, for I kept behind the fish barrel, and he was busy with Mr. Cutter the fishman. A poor woman ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... too doddery For gallivanting; as most folk are by the time They've done their duty by others. Who'd have dreamt I'd make the model mother, after all? It seems as though a woman can't escape, Once she has any truck with men. But, carties! Something's gone topsy-turvy with creation, When the cuckoo's turned domestic, and starts to rear The young housesparrow. Granddad, Peter's home To mind the sheep: and you'll not be turned out, If you behave yourself: and when you're lifted, There'll be a grandson ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... man who is too topsy-turvy; Nothing is quite as it should be with Jones, Angular just where he ought to be curvy, Padded with flesh where ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... he asked himself, and simple as the question was, it was not so simple to answer, for the world seemed suddenly topsy-turvy. ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... situation where I now am, I see a scene of ambition beyond all my former suspicions or imaginations; an emulation which will turn our government topsy-turvy. Jealousies and rivalries have been my theme, and checks and balances as their antidotes, till I am ashamed to repeat the words; but they never stared me in the face in such horrid forms as at present. I see how the thing is going. At the next election England will set up Jay or Hamilton, and ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... at one time thought of writing an Epic Poem upon Friedrich the Great, 'upon some action of Friedrich's,' Schiller says. Happily Schiller did not do it. By oversetting fact, disregarding reality, and tumbling time and space topsy-turvy, Schiller with his fine gifts might no doubt have written a temporary 'epic poem,' of the kind read an admired by many simple persons. But that would have helped little, and could not have lasted long. It is not the untrue imaginary Picture of a man and his life ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... 7' of M. Ferry. M. Ferry is the true, though more or less occult, head of the present Administration in France. 'M. Ferry,' said a caustic French Radical to me in Paris, 'ought to be the mask of M. Carnot. Nature gave him a Carnival nose for that purpose. Everything is topsy-turvy now in France, and so M. Carnot is the mask of M. Ferry. But the nose will come through ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... and their officers were again in attendance at their infernal Eisteddfod. The first thing done was to change the officers, and to order a place to be made round the mouth of the pit for the Swaggerer and the Huntress, linked face to face, and for the other rebels, bound topsy-turvy together; and a law was published that whosoever of the demons or of the damned thenceforth transgressed his duty should be thrown into their midst till doomsday. At these words all the fiends and even Lucifer himself trembled and ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... presents a strange appearance. It is full of young spruce trees, and the lower branches have been lopped down, but not cut through or killed. Under each tree there is now a grand hiding-place for foxes and rabbits—a sort of big umbrella turned topsy-turvy. The rabbits appreciate the pains we have been at; but I fear the foxes, for whom it was intended, at present look on the shelter with suspicion. They dislike the gum which oozes continually from the gashes in the bark; ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... that Mr. Long has to lose his happiness just because he's done right and been kind," she said finally, with a little sigh at the topsy-turvy ways of this wilful world. "He's saving Danny Sneath from growing up a horrid worthless man like his father—that's plain from Danny coming back on the sly to see him—and he's doing splendidly with Red Top, and yet he doesn't get ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... the young men who have turned the house topsy-turvy with their tableaux, their Revolution celebration, their banner, and carousing generally," said Mrs. Jeffrey, rather pleased than otherwise at being the first ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... broomstick, perhaps you will say, is an emblem of a tree standing on its head; and pray what is man but a topsy-turvy creature, his animal faculties perpetually mounted on his rational, his head where his heels should be, groveling on the earth! and yet, with all his faults, he sets up to be a universal reformer and corrector of abuses, ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... could I even promise to return to it: in concession to which weakness, it was agreed that I should call in about an hour at the office of the lawyer, whom (as he left the library) Uncle Adam should waylay and inform of the arrangement. I suppose there was never a more topsy-turvy situation: you would have thought it was I who had suffered some rebuff, and that iron-sided Adam was a generous conqueror who ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... series, and doubtless that night the Cleveland second baseman was the most envied baseball player in the world. For one man to do, alone, what thousands of onlookers could not do, was enough to turn all fandom topsy-turvy ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... had been turned completely topsy-turvy, while Juve and Marie Pascal were searching anxiously and nervously through all ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... the masses are to understand the line of action that is necessary, we must work hard and continuously to bring it home to them. That, indeed, is what we are now engaged upon, and our success is driving our opponents to despair. The irony of destiny is turning everything topsy-turvy. We, the 'revolutionaries,' are profiting more by lawful than by unlawful and revolutionary means. The parties of order, as they call themselves, are being slowly destroyed by their own weapons. Their ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... has been made, we are met with, 'I cannot think what you mean by all this disturbance; nobody else among the clergy sees these things, and I have no wish to be the first to begin turning everything topsy-turvy.' And then people call him a sensible man. I have no patience with them. However, we know what we want, and, as I wrote to Dawson the other day, have a scheme on foot which will, I think, fairly meet the requirements of the case. ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... point of view of the mere systematist, seems as far removed from those that wear hoofs as it could be, but the philosopher, considering the point at which it has arrived, rather than the route by which it got there, will class it with them, for its idea of life is just theirs turned topsy-turvy. The nails of the sloth, instead of being hammered into hoofs on the hard ground, have grown long and curved, like those of a caged bird, and become hooks by which it can hang, without effort, in the midst of the leaves ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... determined. retumbar tremble. retorcer twist; —se writhe, be wrung. retrato m. portrait, picture. retumbar resound, recho. reunir unite, gather. reventar burst forth. revs m. reverse; al —— contrariwise. revestir clothe, robe. revuelto, -a agitated, restless, disordered, topsy-turvy, winding, wrapped, clad. rey m. king, monarch. rezar pray, recite. rezo m. prayer, devotions. rico, -a rich, abundant, plentiful, fine. ridculo, -a ridiculous, strange, absurd. rielar shimmer, glisten. rienda f. rein; a —— suelta at full ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... omens and portentous sights and sounds in the air, which prevailed in the earlier times of Connecticut; and would frighten them woefully with speculations upon comets and shooting stars; and with the alarming fact that the world did absolutely turn round, and that they were half the time topsy-turvy! ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... altogether, and started for the head of a gorge, down which I thought it would be possible to climb to the nearest timber. Nothing definite could be seen. The clouds on the snowy surface and the light electrified air gave the eye only optical illusions. The outline of every object was topsy-turvy and dim. The large stones that I thought to step on were not there; and, when apparently passing others, I bumped into them. Several times I fell headlong by stepping out for a drift ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... told me the whole thing—oh, but it's rich!" He chuckled again. "He got me to feel his vest; says he can lap it three inches already and she has only been here two weeks; and as for Romanzo, he's neither to have nor to hold when the girl's in sight—wits topsy-turvy, actually, oh, Lord!"—he rolled over again on the grass—"what do you think, mother! She got Roman to scour down Jim—you know, the white cart-horse, the Percheron—with Hannah's cleaning powder, and the girl helped ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... two score years since CARROLL'S art, With topsy-turvy magic, Sent ALICE wondering through ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. With a Proem by Austin Dobson • Lewis Carroll
... for them, and instinctively they dodged—all but Tom and John. These old veterans continued to gaze coolly straight ahead as though nothing had happened. Crash-h! went a clap of thunder. It seemed as if the whole heavens were being turned topsy-turvy. Even the airplane, usually so steady, heaved ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... through Nanterre, when they met a man on horseback, and in an insolent tone bid him clear the way. The poor man used his utmost endeavors to avoid the danger that threatened him, but his horse proved unmanageable. To make short of it, the coach-and-six turned them both topsy-turvy; but at the same time the coach, too, was completely overturned. In an instant the horse and the man, instead of amusing themselves with having their limbs broken, rose almost miraculously; the ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... much as if they had really been a band of gipsies. He was still young and had not seen much of the world—his English years had been properly arid; therefore the reversed conventions of the Moreens—for they had their desperate proprieties—struck him as topsy-turvy. He had encountered nothing like them at Oxford; still less had any such note been struck to his younger American ear during the four years at Yale in which he had richly supposed himself to be reacting against a Puritan strain. The reaction of the Moreens, ...
— The Pupil • Henry James
... wooded to their summits. The westernmost peak of this range was separated from the rest by a wide river, which had cut its way through in some of those forgotten ages when, if we are to believe the geologists, every thing was topsy-turvy on this now meek and ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... to my 'rising in my profession.' The piazza and second story could never be built, if you neglected your home affairs, and went cantering about the country, like those evil-spirited women, turning everything topsy-turvy, and mocking at all law and order; but I know my wife has a mind too delicate and feminine to ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... the bodies of the apes were carried into the wood, where they were buried; then the settlers busied themselves in repairing the disorder caused by the intruders, disorder but not damage, for although they had turned everything in the rooms topsy-turvy, yet they had broken nothing. Neb relighted his stove, and the stores in the larder furnished a substantial repast, to which all did ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... having a moral mission, and being no scholar to speak of, and hard up for an authority—why, it was a very great temptation for him. But some people, and I am afraid the professor was one of them, interpret that in a more strange, curious, one-sided, left-handed, topsy-turvy, inside-out, behind-before fashion than even Cousin Cramchild; for they make it mean, that you must show your respect for children, by never confessing yourself in the wrong to them, even if you know that you are so, lest they should ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... man is such a fool—and I don't say your son will not be a fool, Cousin Peter—as to be influenced by the sound of his own name, and you want the booby to turn the world topsy-turvy, you had better call him Julius Caesar or Hannibal or ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Is that you, dearest? Oh! Carroll, I'm all so topsy-turvy I don't know what I'm doing. But I just couldn't go to bed without talking ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... immigrants, and he pathetically exclaimed, "To whom but convicts could colonists look to cultivate their lands, to tend their flocks, to reap their harvests?" In the month of May, 1853, Sir William wrote that "the discovery of gold had turned him topsy-turvy altogether," and he rejoiced that no gold had been discovered in his island. Then the Legislature perversely offered a reward of five thousand pounds to any man who would discover a gold field in Tasmania, but, as a high-toned historian observes, "for many years ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... And then, sir, think of flying for debt! A set of bailiffs, mounted on bomb-shells, would not overtake an absconded debtor, only give him a fair start. Upon the whole, sir, it is a pestilential, topsy-turvy, harum-scarum whirligig. Give me the old, solemn, straightforward, regular Dutch canal—three miles an hour for expresses, and two for ordinary journeys, with a yoke of oxen for a heavy load! I go for beasts of burthen: ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... into the room, dragged the boys from the blazing bed, and splashed all the water he could find at hand on to the flames. It checked but did not quench the fire, and the children wakened on being tumbled topsy-turvy into a cold hall, began to roar at the top of their voices. Mrs. Bhaer instantly appeared, and a minute after Silas burst out of his room shouting, "Fire!" in a tone that raised the whole house. A flock of white goblins with scared faces crowded ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... exclaimed the farmer, coming in. "Highty-tighty, what ails Susan, and what ails you?" continued the farmer, turning to John. "Dang it, but everything seems to go wrong this blessed day. First there be all the apples stolen—then there be all the hives turned topsy-turvy in the garden—then there be Caesar with his flank opened by the bull—then there be the bull broken through the hedge and tumbled into the saw-pit—and now I come to get more help to drag him out, I find one woman dead like, and John ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... sufficed to save the ingenuous young man from the pitfall of so serious a social solecism. It would be fatal to accost him. For, mark you, no matter how gentlemanly and well-tailored a stranger may look, you can never be sure nowadays (in these topsy-turvy times of subversive radicalism) whether he is or is not really a gentleman. That makes acquaintanceship a dangerous luxury. If you begin by talking to a man, be it ever so casually, he may desire to thrust his company upon you, willy-nilly, in future; and ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... attractive yellow metal is within reach. It is singular that while the existence of gold was incontestably known for many years, little or no excitement was produced until 1896 and 1897, when the whole civilized world was turned almost topsy-turvy by the bewildering reports. During the first three months of the latter year more than four million dollars were taken from a space of forty square miles, where a few placer claims were worked. What ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... GRANDOLPH, looking round at the Party, to which, as he said at Liverpool the other day, he is thoroughly attached, "to see how good Conservatives enjoy CHAMBERLAIN'S Speech. They are as jubilant now as they were a few years ago, when I attacked JOSEPH in connection with Aston-Park Riots. A topsy-turvy world; most of us where we never thought to find ourselves, or be found; oddest of all, surely, is to hear CHAMBERLAIN of Birmingham enthusiastically cheered in House of Commons by great Conservative Party. They mean it, too," GRANDOLPH added, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 22, 1893 • Various
... what lovely shells and moss I've got! Such a splendid scramble over the rocks as I've had with Mrs. Duncan's boys! It seemed so like home to run and sing with a troop of topsy-turvy children that it did me good; and I wish you had all been there to see." cried Debby, running into the drawing-room, one day, where Mrs. Carroll and a circle of ladies sat enjoying a dish of highly flavored scandal, as they ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... this woman? By what measure did she weigh her love? She took off her ducal coronet, and flung it on the platform of a clown! She took from her brow the Olympian aureola, and placed it on the bristly head of a gnome! The world had turned topsy-turvy. The insects swarmed on high, the stars were scattered below, whilst the wonder-stricken Gwynplaine, overwhelmed by a falling ruin of light, and lying in the dust, was enshrined in a glory. One all-powerful, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... they might be leaders, but they have no social weight in this topsy-turvy land, and though they have been employed in clerical work for generations they have no practical knowledge of affairs. A ship's clerk is a useful person, but he is scarcely the captain; and an orderly-room writer, however smart he may be, is not the colonel. You see, the writer class ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... ridiculed him, And the maidens laughed and jeered him. In the lane he drove most strangely, Strangely to the farm came driving, Turned the sledge all topsy-turvy, At the gate he ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... dip again and again into his stolen bread and milk with a lofty indifference. It might be an earthquake that had come to Old Studley for all he knew. What if it were? There would always be a ledge of rock somewhere about where he, Mike, could hold on in safety if the earth were topsy-turvy. Besides, he had now scooped up the last scrap of Jinty's breakfast, and it behoved him to be up ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... into a highly complicated system, in which we had a settled orbit. This orbit was not susceptible of change unless we were willing to turn everything topsy-turvy. Everybody would suppose we had lost our money. And, not being brilliant or clever people, who paid their way as they went by making themselves lively and attractive, it would be assumed that we could not keep up our end; so we should ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... "Get out, you topsy-turvy old humbug," cried Tom wrathfully. "Think I don't know you?" and he ran on, and caught up to his uncle as he was ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... an Englishman would not hesitate to do, a topsy-turvy morality, let us realize that sayings such as these really give us the true values of things as nothing else could. For there are more sins "in heaven and earth than are dreamt of" in a nation's classified immoralities. Stealing a shilling is a recognized immorality, and as such the ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... at a loss; their etiquette is absolute and plenary; in every circumstance it tells them what to do and how to do it. The Gilbertines are seemingly more free, and pay for their freedom (like ourselves) in frequent perplexity. This was often the case with the topsy-turvy couple. We had once supplied them during a visit with a pipe and tobacco; and when they had smoked and were about to leave, they found themselves confronted with a problem: should they take or leave what remained of the tobacco? The piece ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... without warning, the Emperor issued an Imperial Decree raising him to the Chinese equivalent of the peerage. Henceforth he belonged to the distinguished company of Iron Hatted Dukes—at least not he but his ancestors did, for this was no ordinary father-to-son patent of nobility. The topsy-turvy honour reached backward instead of forward, diminishing one rank with ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... could hardly get the house cleaned up bright and comfortable before her brothers came home from the factory, which "loosed" early on the Saturday afternoon; and if pails of water, chairs heaped up one on the other, and tables put topsy-turvy on the dresser, were the most prominent objects in the house-place, there would be no temptation for the lads to stay at home; besides which, Mary, tired and weary (however gentle she might be), would not be able to give the life to the ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... of the humors of the camp—a practical manifestation of the facetious spirit that had found literary expression in the topsy-turvy obituary notice from the pen of Hurdy-Gurdy's great humorist. Perhaps it had some occult personal signification impenetrable to understandings uninstructed in local traditions. A more charitable hypothesis is that it was owing ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... for you, my boy," I thought. "Otherwise it wouldn't have taken me long to send you through the window to air your ironies at your ease. The law of gravity ought not to be topsy-turvy here at Ahaggar." ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... of a second before the knock had sounded at the door Dave had made a fine handspring that brought him from his topsy-turvy attitude to a position of standing on his feet. And, at the same time, he held the washbowl in his hand without having spilled a drop of the water. Like a flash Dave few across the room, depositing the bowl where it belonged. With ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... Lord Lackington. The sight of that vivacious countenance, that shock of white hair, that tall form still boasting the spareness and almost the straightness of youth, that unsuspecting complacency, confused his ideas and made him somehow feel the whole world a little topsy-turvy. ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... point where another turn intervened. The two friends were galloping over this exact section and speculating as to how soon they would strike the open prairie, when all their calculations were knocked topsy-turvy. A party of horsemen charged around the bend in front, all riding at a sweeping gallop directly toward the alarmed Mickey and Fred, who instantly halted and surveyed them. A second glance showed them to be Indians, undoubtedly Apaches, and very probably ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... "that men's heads do not grow out of their sides, or from their breasts, and that they do not walk topsy-turvy, with their feet ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... boys of Cliffwood were a wild set and how, on Hallowe'en, they turned the home town topsy-turvy. This led to an organization of a boys' department in the local Y. M. C. A. When the lads realized what was being done for them, they joined in the movement with vigor and did all they could to help the good cause. To raise funds they gave a minstrel show and other entertainments, ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... God's sake, run us into a conflagration," said Jack. "I'm ready to believe anything of this topsy-turvy old planet, and I shouldn't be surprised if the other side is all fire as this one is all frost. I can stand these hairy beasts, but I'll be hanged if I want to be introduced ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... across his path, bosom-high. From it a web swung in the wind. At the centre, where the threads met, a black and yellow spider, marked like a man of war, waited its prey. The lad brushed through it with a pang. The spider's work fell about him in ruins: he rushed for the gorse, and hung there topsy-turvy, as though heart-broken. Hard lines certainly! He had upset the spider's apple-cart, as the Almighty had upset his. But he had had to— and so no doubt ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... horses and she rejoiced in the thought that she was married to a man of learning. True, she has a tongue. That she always had, but over there it was not so bad. She has become a different woman here. Alas! America is a topsy-turvy country." ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... I saw the money; saw it in the hand of the person who hid it there. Let me look for it, constable. I will not give up the search till I have turned the place topsy-turvy." ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... they had done what they wanted—they had finished the door on the birthday, and proud enough they were of it. The griffins, cupids, and so on, were, I must own, most beautiful to behold; though so many in number, so entangled in flowers and devices, and so topsy-turvy in their actions and attitudes, that you felt them unpleasantly in your head for hours after you had done with the pleasure of looking at them. If I add that Penelope ended her part of the morning's work by being ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... known that you had no ambition, I would have put you into my own counting house; though there, that wouldn't have done either, for I know you would have blotted the ledger, and turned all the accounts topsy-turvy. ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... pleasant weather for about three days," said the Colonel, gravely. "In that time you have let out that crazy bear of yours to turn everything topsy-turvy. Only yesterday I got my hands in the paint you have put on your canoe. If you had asked my advice I would have told you that painting your canoe should not have been done for a month yet. Silas told me you fell down the creek hill; Sam said you tried to drive his team over ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... that I differ most from my compeers,—I do not believe it necessary, in order to reach equality, to turn every thing topsy-turvy. To maintain that nothing but an overturn can lead to reform is, in my judgment, to construct a syllogism, and to look for the truth in the regions of the unknown. Now, I am for generalization, induction, and progress. I regard general disappropriation as impossible: attacked from ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... very reluctant to leave the April house; but J. M. glanced at one of the many topsy-turvy clocks that hung from the ceiling (of all places!), and reminded them that it was high time to be ...
— Zodiac Town - The Rhymes of Amos and Ann • Nancy Byrd Turner
... broomstick, perhaps you will say, is an emblem of a tree standing on its head; and pray what is a man but a topsy-turvy creature, his animal faculties perpetually mounted on his rational, his head where his heels should be, groveling on the earth? And yet, with all his faults, he sets up to be a universal reformer and corrector of abuses, a remover of grievances; rakes into every slut's corner of nature, bringing ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... might fasten it more firmly in the soil, and it was impossible to judge whether there was resentment in the tone. "He's coming back of his own free will, and if he stays he'll put up with the house just as he finds it. Nothing will be turned topsy-turvy, you may be sure. His room is where it always was, and it ain't ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... turning another corner, we came on a poor bourgeois house that had had its whole front torn away. The squalid revelation of caved-in floors, smashed wardrobes, dangling bedsteads, heaped-up blankets, topsy-turvy chairs and stoves and wash-stands was far more painful than the sight of the wounded church. St. Eloi was draped in the dignity of martyrdom, but the poor little house reminded one of some shy humdrum person suddenly exposed in the ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... case, there might be some excuse for his folly. No; all this dirt and confusion, which once a week drives me nearly beside myself, is what K—— calls clearing up the ship; when he and his man Friday, as he calls Kelly, turn everything topsy-turvy, and, to make the muddle more complete, they always choose my washing-day for their frolic. Pantries and cellars are rummaged over, and everything is dragged out of its place, for the mere pleasure of making a litter, and dragging ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... that spring of little Jeanne's father from a sea voyage interested me greatly. For several days her house was topsy-turvy with preparation, and one could guess the joy they felt over his approaching arrival. The frigate that he commanded reached port a little earlier than his family expected it, and from my window I saw him, one fine evening, hurrying along the street alone, on his ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... prison, and the place closed, France is not at war with Germany, and Muller could carry on the shipping business without interruption, his own name being substituted for mine. I should instruct him to do no trade with the interior; everything will be turned topsy-turvy, and all trade of that sort would be at an end. On the other hand, with the French masters here, a considerable number of French and Italian ships will be coming in with stores of all kinds, these will often need supplies, repairs, and so on; and as we have men capable of doing ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... change wholly when they change? When I look into my heart, I find everything that was there, still there—only they are topsy-turvy. Things that were well-ordered have become jumbled up. The gems that were strung into a necklace are now rolling in the dust. And so my ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... away from the garret that long telescope, which is enough to frighten people, and a hundred other baubles which are offensive to the sight. Do not try to discover what is passing in the moon, and think a little more of what is happening at home, where we see everything going topsy-turvy. It is not right, and that too for many reasons, that a woman should study and know so much. To form the minds of her children to good manners, to make her household go well, to look after the servants, and regulate all expenses with economy, ought to be her principal study, and all her ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... but also Father Cyril himself. Each such witness appended to his signature a full list of his dignities and qualifications: one man in printed characters, another in a flowing hand, a third in topsy-turvy characters of a kind never before seen in the Russian alphabet, and so forth. Meanwhile our friend Ivan Antonovitch comported himself with not a little address; and after the indentures had been signed, ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... going topsy-turvy, and with us here the crisis will come today or tomorrow. The Hereditary Forester has already ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... with words, witty sayings, funny observations and topsy-turvy language alone that the writer works, when he constructs a vaudeville two-act. It is with clever ideas, expressed in laughable situations and actions, that his brain is busy when he begins to marshal to his ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... said the daddy-long-legs. "Supposing every animal were to wish he could do something that nature had not fitted him to do, the world would be all topsy-turvy. Supposing a robin redbreast thought he had to have a sting—a sting above everything else—or a goat wanted to fly about gathering honey. Supposing a frog were to come along and languish for my kind ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... reverse, the inverse, the converse, the antipodes, the antithesis, the other extreme. V. be contrary &c adj.; contrast with, oppose; diller toto coelo [Lat.]. invert, reverse, turn the tables; turn topsy-turvy, turn end for end, turn upside down, turn inside out. contradict, contravene; antagonize &c 708. Adj. contrary, contrarious^, contrariant^; opposite, counter, dead against; converse, reverse; opposed, antithetical, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... but the word he said was "Silence"; The aspen sang, but silence was her theme. The wind was silence, restless; and the voices Of the bright forest-creatures were as silence Made vocal in the topsy-turvy of dream. ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... a strange topsy-turvy state all that day. Sometimes she would forget herself and "cosy up" against Stair as she used to snuggle close to her Uncle Julian. Then something in the strong, clear voice, the square unyieldingness of shoulders, the body massive and forceful, caused her to ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... you not come on that occasion and have my place searched?' I did so, hah! hah! I went when you were ill in bed—but, let me tell you, not officially, not in my magisterial capacity; but go I did. We had your rooms turned topsy-turvy at our very first suspicions, but umsonst! Then I said to myself: 'That man will make me a call, he will come of his own accord, and that before very long! If he is guilty, he will be bound to come. Other kinds of men would not do so, ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... It always stuck so I had to give a jerk. Now, there it is, topsy-turvy," and Thorny looked Much disgusted at ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... never uses them for walking. It progresses on its back, always on its back, never otherwise. By means of wriggling movements and the purchase afforded by the dorsal bristles, it makes its way belly upwards, with its legs kicking the empty air. The spectator to whom these topsy-turvy gymnastics are a novelty thinks at first that the creature must have had a fright of some sort and that it is struggling as best it can in the face of danger. He puts it back on its belly; he lays it on its side. Nothing is of ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... 25th.—After dinner went over my part, dressed and set off for Bridgewater House for our dressed rehearsal of "Hernani." Found the stage in a state of unfinish, the house topsy-turvy, and every body to the right and left. Sat for an hour in the drawing-room while our very specially small and select audience arrived. Then heard Lady Francis, Henry Greville, Mrs. Bradshaw, and Mr. Mitford ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... largeness. There are, therefore, in self-sacrifice both negative and positive elements. But why select its name from the subordinate part? Why turn to the front its incidental negations? This is topsy-turvy nomenclature. Better blot the word self-sacrifice from our dictionaries. Devotion, service, love, dedication to a cause, —these words mark its real nature and are the only descriptions of it which its practicers will recognize. That damage to the abstract self which ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... expressed opinions which are calculated to make people discontented with things as they are. You rob them of the content which has made them comfortable heretofore, and yet you offer them nothing better in return for it. You would have society turned topsy-turvy, and all for what? Why, simply to make a wrong thing right for yourself! If your example were followed by all the unhappy people in the world, how would it end, do you think? There must be moral laws, and it is inevitable that they should ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... futurism preferred to The Lotus Eaters, and the first Legende des Siecles rejected as unreadable. In face of this whirlwind of doctrine the public ceases to know whether it is on its head or its feet—"its trembling tent all topsy-turvy wheels," as an Elizabethan has it. To me it seems that security can only be found in an incessant exploration of the by-ways of literary history and analysis of the vagaries of literary character. To pursue this analysis ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... people! Half an hour hence I'll be going through a mad march of the incidents of the day, turned topsy-turvy according to the way of dreams. But wae's me! wae's me! If it had all been true—if I had been really homeless and friendless and penniless, instead of having three 'goolden' pounds in my purse, and Providence in the person of Mrs. Jupe, to fall ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... me progenissors did, in Munster, before you English konkered us an' turned us topsy-turvy. But nivver mind. I don't bear no ill-will to 'ee, darlint, bekaise o' the evil deeds o' yer forefathers. I'm of a forgivin' disposition. An' it's a good quane you'll make, too, av ye don't let the men ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... the possession of which they have sacrificed the lives of so many thousand men, and have spent their own in hurry and trouble. Men have before them vast tracts of land uninhabited and uncultivated, and they turn mankind topsy-turvy for one nook of that neglected ground in dispute. The earth, if well cultivated, would feed a hundred times more men than she does now. Even the unevenness of ground, which at first seems to be a defect, turns either into ornament or profit. The mountains arose and ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... him to return home with the rich prize he had brought from the Indian seas and the coast of Africa, and meantime he lay there in the Delaware Bay waiting for a reply. Before he left he turned the whole of Tom Chist's life topsy-turvy with ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... schooners which carry on the St. Lawrence trade head up the bay. They work in close to shore, drop their anchors and wait for the tide to go out. It leaves them high and dry, and tilted sometimes at an angle which suggests that everything within must be topsy-turvy, until the vessel is afloat again. With a strong wind blowing from the north-east the bay is likely to be, at high tide, an extremely lively place for the mariner; a fact which helps perhaps to explain the sinister French name of Malbaie. The huge waves, coming with a sweep ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... jangled, out of tune and harsh." Although order is heaven's first law, it occasionally happens that it is better to break the law than to be broken by it. And so, when the young housekeeper's nicely arranged plans for each day in the week are suddenly turned topsy-turvy, let her take heart of grace, remembering that there are whole days that "ain't ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... South Island, and the mountain goats—the ibex and the thar—are to be acclimatized in the mountains, so that unnatural sport may flourish in this ancient land of quiet and of wondrous birds, turned topsy-turvy by ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... man extended thin fingers and nodded his head. Dorn entered a large room that reminded him of a tombstone factory. Figures in clay, some broken and cracked, cluttered up its floor and walls. In a corner partly hidden behind topsy-turvy busts and more figures was a cot with a blanket over it. Dorn after several minutes of silence, looked inquiringly at his friend. The works of art, despite an obvious vigor of ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht |
