"Wriggling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... To her they would have looked just what some of my readers will pronounce them, not in the least knowing what they are. She was suddenly roused from her painful reverie by the pulling up of Helen's ponies, with much clatter and wriggling recoil, close beside her, making more fuss with their toy-carriage than the mightiest of tractive steeds with the ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... kneeling, standing, or lying; to bring their backsights and foresights into an undeviating straight line with the base of the bull's-eye; and to press the trigger in the manner laid down in the Musketry Regulations—without wriggling the body ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... about. They are all quite transparent and colourless, and move about like galleys by means of a lot of minute oars that stick out all over them. Never a moment's rest. And, presently, one sees that even the green plant threads are wriggling across the field. The dabbler tries to moralise on this in the vein of Charles Kingsley, and infer we have much to learn from these ridiculous creatures; but, so far as I can see, it's a direct incentive to sloth to think how low in the scale of creation these things are, in spite ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... Mrs. King. "I'd run a mile before I'd face one. There is nothing, to my mind, more disgusting than a wriggling snake." ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... club and have a bite first?" said the adjutant-general, rising and wriggling out of his uniform coat as he did so. "I won't keep you ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... "I can see with the Gardener's lost eye," was a claim to glory no one could dispute, for no one could deny it. Its chief duty, however, was to watch the "froot and vegebles" at night and to keep all robbers— two-foot, four-foot, winged, or wriggling robbers—from what Aunt ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... Douglas hated it! I can see him wriggling now. Do you remember that just a week after that, Douglas broke his hunting-whip beating a labourer's boy, whom he found trespassing in one of the coverts, and how Sir Arthur paid fifty pounds to get ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... somewhat amazing to stand and watch what happens along the sunny breakwater. Every three minutes one of the poles jerks out of the water with a wriggling ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... Macumazana think this poor business and he right. Very poor business, any conjurer do better. All common trick"—here his eye fell upon Mr. Savage who was wriggling uneasily in the background. "What matter with that gentleman? Brother ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... of sixty years of Sovereignty, I venture to ask your advice in the following delicate matter. Mr. Enoch Soames, whose poems you may or may not know—" Was there NO way of helping him, saving him? A bargain was a bargain, and I was the last man to aid or abet any one in wriggling out of a reasonable obligation. I wouldn't have lifted a little finger to save Faust. But poor Soames! Doomed to pay without respite an eternal price for nothing but a fruitless ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm
... ever and anon picked up a crab. A blue heron flapped down beside him, and the curlew skipped off to another rock. In a minute the heron straightened his neck, poised its long beak for striking, and brought up a wriggling fish, which with a jerk of its head it turned end for end and swallowed. Another actor came within the field of the glass—the mate of the heron, alighting on the stone beside her lord and master. He was in a peckish humour, and ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... Sign. He must go away and think it out, though where his thoughts would lead him he did not know. This was a more difficult problem than he had ever dreamed of facing. There was no one to ask advice of. Only himself and The Rat, who was nervously wriggling and ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... fair. I reckon you better go on home—you two—an' yo' mean dawg," he said to Daws; and the two Dillons—the one sullen and the other crying with rage—moved away with Whizzer slinking close to the ground after them. But at the top of the hill both turned with bantering yells, derisive wriggling of their fingers at their noses, and with other rude gestures. And, thereupon, Dolph and Rube wanted to go after them, but the tall brother stopped them with ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... on a recovered basis of pure health, we have the world at the dawn and know we are young in it, with great riches, great things gained and greater to achieve. Personally I behold a queer little wriggling worm for myself; but as one, of the active world I stand high and shapely; and the very thought of doing work, is like a draught of the desert-springs to me. Instead of which, I have once more to go about presenting my face to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the peculiar form of the bill enabling it to work them easily out of the sand. When feeding, it puts its head under the water to seize the insect at the bottom, then lifts it up quickly, making a rapid gobbling, as if swallowing a wriggling worm. ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... nothing was able to tempt them; they persisted in forming, with the egg-skins, a powdery heap of speckled black and white. It was only by drawing the point of a needle through this pinch of living dust that I was able to provoke an active wriggling. Apart from this, all was still. If I forcibly removed a few larvae from the common heap, they at once hurried back to it, in order to hide themselves among the rest. Perhaps they had less reason to fear the cold when thus collected and sheltered beneath the egg-skins. Whatever ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... "Yes, yes!" said Satan, wriggling uncomfortably, but still not thinking of Jurgen entirely: "yes, all this is excellent oratory, and not for a moment would I decry the authority of Livonius. And your quotation is uncommonly apropos and all that sort of thing. But with what are ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... mighty beast advanced into the room. Jav had fallen to the floor, and was wriggling his body in the same servile manner that he had adopted toward Tario. He spoke to the fierce beast as he would have spoken to a human being, pleading ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... would be a good thing to know all about them, I decided to ask the Colonel for permission to creep off one afternoon and explore the whole thing; incidentally I might by good luck find a table. It was possible, by wriggling up a mud valley and crawling over a few scattered remnants of houses and bygone trenches to reach the Colonel's headquarter dug-out in daytime. So I did it, and asked leave to go off back to have a look at the chateau and the land about it. He gave me permission, so armed ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... the point of my knife in between two of his coils twice over, gave a sharp push, and he dropped down wriggling at once." ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... emancipation, and is only puzzling how to carry it into effect. After all, it seems to be a law of Providence, that progress should be by a spiral movement; so that when it seems most tortuous, we may perhaps be going ahead. I am firm in the faith that slavery is now wriggling itself to death. With slavery in its pristine vigor, I should think the restored Union neither possible nor desirable. Don't understand me as not taking into account all the strategical considerations against premature governmental ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... corporal," answered the man, as lying flat on the boat, he peered intently into the water. "The bottom is covered with weeds, and I can just see the tails of two large pikes wriggling among them. By Gemini, I think if I had my rod here, ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... straight out, working on a sort of elbow-shaped lever, and at the same time revealed at its extremity a pair of powerful mandibles. These mandibles snapped firm hold of the victim at the base of its wriggling tail. The elbow-shaped lever drew back, till the squirming prize was held close against its captor's face. Then with swift jets from the turbine arrangement of its abdominal gills, the strange monster darted back ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... placed at safe distances; for, if near, they would surely hook each other, if never a fin. Silence was enjoined, and there was a breathless hush for the space of two minutes; then began whispers more resonant than those of the stage, followed by acclamations as Johnnie pulled up a wriggling eel, of which she was in mortal terror. They all had good sport, however, for the smaller fry of the finny tribes that haunted the vicinity of the old bridge suffered from the well-known tendency of extreme youth to take everything into its mouth. Indeed, at that season, an immature sun-fish ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... right man at last. A day will come soon when I shall take Chum from his present home to his new one. That will be a great day for him. I can see him in the train, wiping his boots effusively on every new passenger, wriggling under the seat and out again from sheer joy of life; I can see him in the taxi, taking his one brief impression of a world that means nothing to him; I can see him in another train joyous, eager, putting his paws on ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... flat as buckwheat cakes, and my train will go home with various gentlemen, clinging in scraps to their boot-heels! Were you ever at the seashore? If you have ever chanced to walk into a settlement of fiddlers, and seen them squirming, wriggling, backward, forward, sideways, you may understand that I am going into a similar promiscuous scramble. Human ingenuity is vastly fertile in the production of fashionable tortures; and when that outraged and indignant poet savagely ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... picture of some blood so infected. Notice that worm- like sheath of undulating membrane terminating in a slender whip- like process by which it moves about. That thing wriggling about like a minute electric eel, always in motion, is ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... quite weary, when he one day strolled down to the esplanade. He seated himself on a bench and observed, with a contemptuous air, a squad of soldiers engaged in the invigorating exercise of standing on one leg in the full sunshine, and wriggling their bodies so as to ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... strapped on his saddle-bow and shakes a little sprawling kitten from its folds when he opens it, or goes out to dinner and finds a little blind kitten under his chair, or stays at home and finds a writhing kitten under the quilt, or wriggling among his boots, or hanging, head downward, in his tobacco jar, or being mangled by his terrier in the veranda—when such a man finds one kitten, neither more nor less, once a day in a place where no kitten rightly could or should be, he is naturally upset. When he dare not murder his daily trove ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... on under the blazing sunshine, and where they could under the shade of trees, starting crabs running in all directions, fish which had been basking on the wet sand by the water's edge wriggling and flopping back into the lagoon, and birds of brilliant colours from the trees they passed; all of which excited a desire in Jack to begin trying his skill with his double gun; but it was an understood thing that shooting was not to commence that day, but every ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... at last," exclaimed Mary Louise after wriggling and squirming about for a few minutes longer. "Isn't it awful hard ...
— The Iceberg Express • David Magie Cory
... waterfront turmoil, an infinitesimal human atom added to it. His tiny craft fixed itself upon the outer edge of the wriggling river life like a coral cell attaching itself to a slow growing atoll. From there he worked his way inshore, crawling over the craft that stretched out from the low banks as a water beetle might move over the flotsam and jetsam caught in the back-water of ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... water, which was evidently the recognised drinking place for most of the game in the neighbourhood. And at length, when I had been standing there for about twenty minutes, two pairs of lambent orbs loomed up through the long grass, and Thunder and Juno came wriggling apologetically to my feet, having apparently made their way back to the spot where they had deserted me, and tracked me thence ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... canyon in the creek nearby and the water rushed down over a bed of bare rock at an angle of about twenty degrees. We were surprised to discover hundreds of fish six to nine inches long wriggling up the stream along one edge where the water was very shallow. They formed a line ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... hand and, as it stroked his soft fur, the animal crowded closer. The baby laughed delightedly and thrust her hand through the bars as far as possible. Then she worked at the fastening of the cage door until she succeeded in wriggling her small body through. There she was, inside the cage with her ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... the gleam of dawn penetrating the smoke-hole and dimly illuminating the recumbent form of Kaatje, which to me looked most unattractive. Presently I heard a discreet tapping on the doorboard of the hut which I at once removed, wriggling swiftly through the hole, careless in my misery as to whether I met an assegai the other side of it or not. Without a guard of eight soldiers was standing, and with them Goza, who asked me if I were ready ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... been well, indeed, had Harry kept his eyes turned oftener toward the shore end of the wall. In that case he might more speedily have detected the wriggling, snake-like movement of the big negro moving ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... stuff out into tumblers, and were just tossing them off, when in an instant without warning there came the roar of muskets in our ears, and the saloon was so full of smoke that we could not see across the table. When it cleared again the place was a shambles. Wilson and eight others were wriggling on the top of each other on the floor, and the blood and the brown sherry on that table turn me sick now when I think of it. We were so cowed by the sight that I think we should have given the job up if it had not been for Prendergast. ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... her own vexation, dipped the rod into the water, and immediately saw another gleaming fish wriggling at its end. A basket, delicately woven of flowers, stood beside her, half filled with clear water. The fish dropped into it of themselves. The wee companion beat meanwhile with his feet upon the wings of the lady's nose, played ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... darkest person on the canvas of Mongolian events! Formerly a mechanician, afterwards a gendarme, he had gained quick promotion under the Czar's regime. He was always nervously jerking and wriggling his body and talking ceaselessly, making most unattractive sounds in his throat and sputtering with saliva all over his lips, his whole face often contracted with spasms. He was mad and Baron Ungern twice appointed a commission of surgeons to examine him and ordered him to rest in the ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... or is it an evolution far away and ahead of us? Were there first of all billiard-balls; and did they acquire a trick of coalescing and running together; this one and that one, in the combination, becoming subordinate to another; until soon you had a little wriggling creature of a word, with his head of prefix, and his tail of suffix, to look or flicker this way or that according to the direction in which he wished to steer himself, the meaning to be expressed;—from ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... develop under the lower jaw ("poverty jaw"). If the fourth stomach of a dead animal is cut open and the contents carefully examined, the parasites, which are from 1/2 inch to 1-1/4 inches in length and about as thick as an ordinary pin, may be seen, if present in any considerable number, actively wriggling ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... it is a fact. One moment he saw the thick twisted trunk of a mulga tree with a few broken branches, standing out on an otherwise treeless plain; the next it had gone completely. But, instead of the tree, three wriggling black forms glided between the bushes with the stealth of snakes, making for their lives towards the scrub. They were three warragul blacks, who had crept out into the plain and had used this wonderful but ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... fish darted away in great fright, but Mr. Heron didn't mind. He settled himself in great contentment, for now he was less hungry. By and by some foolish tadpoles came wriggling along. 'I'll just try catching one of them for practice. Maybe they are good to eat,' thought Mr. Heron, and just as before darted his head and great bill ...
— Mother West Wind "How" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... toward the woodpile—what difference did dry kindling make now? At the side of the house he stooped down and softly called Buck. The hound came to him, wriggling along under the beams, and he leaned against the house and lovingly pulled the briar-torn ears. A long time he stayed there, feeling on his face already the fine mist of snow. To-morrow the ground would be white; it didn't snow often in that ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... and so it slept contentedly for about an hour in a stranger's arms; it then began to cry and the temporary nurse said: "Will you feel down and see if the baby's feet are out of the blanket! I don't know much about babies but I think their feet must be kept warm." Wriggling down as well as I could, I found its toes exposed to the air and wrapped them well up, when it ceased crying at once: it was evidently a successful diagnosis! Having recognized the lady by her voice,—it was much too dark to see faces,—as one of my vis—vis at the purser's ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... coasted until the machine came to a standstill within a few yards of his own gate. This point of cessation was never twice in a week at the same spot; and Sabre found great interest in seeing every day exactly where it would be, and by intense wriggling of his front wheel and prodigious feats of balancing, squeezing out of the machine's momentum the last possible fraction of an inch. There was a magnificent distance record when, on one single occasion only, he had been deposited plumb in line with his own gate; and there was a divertingly ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... space for maneuvering or for wriggling free. Clear from the ground Brice's feet were swung. The breath was squeezed out of him. His elastic strength was cramped and made useless. His lungs seemed bursting. The pressure on his ribs was unbearable. ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... as they marched together. Their heavy footsteps were accompanied by a kind of grunt, by beating their clubs and spears together, and by various other gesticulations, such as extending their arms and wriggling their bodies. It was a most rude, barbarous scene, and, to our ideas, without any sort of meaning; but we observed that the black women and children watched it with the greatest pleasure. Perhaps ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... minutes, wave their wands and chant some unintelligible words. Suddenly one Antelope and one Snake man rush to the kisi, and the priest who is presiding over the serpents presents them with a snake. The Snake man immediately places the wriggling reptile in his mouth, and holds it by the centre of its body between his teeth, as he marches around the little plaza, taking high steps. Meantime the, Antelope man accompanies him, stroking the snake continually ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... That's all right," said Lingard, stretching his arms above his head and wriggling his shoulders. "My word! I do wish a breeze would come to let us get away from here. I am rather in a ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... to hoe out society plats as one hoes garden beds, and thin out the flaunting weeds so that the lilies may find room to grow; to turn the strong light of discerning truth upon hypocrites until, as the microscope changes a globule of dew into the abode of 10,000 wriggling abominations, so the deceitful heart shall stand revealed for what it actually is, rather than for what it seems ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... seize one or more of the monsters, who, it was evident, would, if they attempted it, clear a passage for themselves through the meshes. Desmond had fixed upon two, and down he went upon hands and knees, endeavouring to kill the creatures leaping, wriggling, and struggling to get free. As he did so, one of them, making a bolt between his legs, toppled him over on his nose, where he lay kicking and plunging, scarcely to be distinguished from the fish surrounding him. He quickly, however, got his head above water, as he did so, spluttering out, ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... down. Peter clambered down, caught the little struggling animal in his arms, and restored it to its mistress. And now followed an immense deal of kissing and embracing. The dog was buried in red hair and only once and again a wriggling paw might be observed—also these exclamations—"Oh, the umpty-rumpty—was it nearly falling down the great horrid pit, the darling—oh, the little darling, and was it scratched, the pet? But it was a wicked little dog—yes, it was, to go down that nasty place when it was told not to"—more ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... from whose book the foregoing items are gleaned, in telling of a fight which took place at one stage of the service, describes it as "a mass of wriggling, struggling, shrieking priests and soldiers, each apparently endeavoring to do all the possible injury to whomever he could reach. * * * But the fight went on. Greek trampled on Armenian, and Armenian on Greek, and Turk ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes
... true Westphalian grace and accents. The four Mesdames, who are clumsy plump old wenches, with a bad likeness to their father, stand in a bedchamber in a row, with black cloaks and knotting-bags, looking good-humoured, not knowing what to say, and wriggling as if they wanted to make water. This ceremony too is very short; then you are carried to the Dauphin's three boys, who you may be sure only bow and stare. The Duke of Berry[1] looks weak and weak-eyed: the Count de Provence is a fine boy; the Count d'Artois ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... ceased wriggling for the moment and lay there shaking violently, as though he had malaria. Then the paroxysm passed and he took up ...
— Droozle • Frank Banta
... intent on watching a parcel of white ducks leaving a little pond, all walking a-row and quacking, and wriggling their fat tails. How absurd a thing to suddenly close my throat so that I could not find my voice to answer Boyd; for ever before me grew the almost forgotten vision of Guy Park, and of our white waterfowl on the river behind the house, where I had ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... the presbytery which, in the memory of living people, was the refuge of a murderer whom the gendarmes were afraid to follow underground, because it was believed that he would knock them on the head one after the other while they were wriggling through the passage, and then quietly walk out by a back way unknown to anyone but himself, I felt a strong desire to explore this cave of evil repute. The idea was all the more enticing because I was ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... McKenzie is still writing the Committee's business calendar, of course, and he didn't like it a bit, but he couldn't find any solid reason why it shouldn't be set ahead. And I think our good friend Senator Rinehart is probably wriggling on the stick about now, just on the shock value of the switch. Always figure in the shock value of everything you do, my boy—it pays off more than ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse
... a lively struggle before Billy was gripped. He chattered furiously and bit Mr. Britling twice. Then Mr. Britling was out in the passage with the wriggling lump of warm fur in his hand, and paddling along in the darkness to the door of Herr Heinrich. He ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... happened. Four "ushers" moved silently down the side-aisle, halted at the end of the sixth row from the rear, laid hands upon an angry and wriggling little man who screamed to high heaven that he hadn't done nothing, and dropped him out of the open window, which was just five feet ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... at elbows and wrists, the young lieutenant's fingers were free. Wriggling slightly nearer, Hal fingered at the cords that bound Simm's wrists. That soldier felt and understood. Wriggling slightly nearer, and doing it so easily and gradually as not to attract the attention of the Mexican ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock
... you're choking me," I gasped out, wriggling violently and kicking out behind. "I'll hurt you if you don't loose ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... second cobra was there, wriggling and squirming in a way to show that he had received some of the bullets intended for his companion. The revolver was reloaded and a fusillade opened, standing off a few paces, the marksman waited for the head to come forth that ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... thrilled with expectation as the boy took the wriggling bag on his knee and started to open it. The moment there was an opening, out came a sharp little black nose pushing and twisting eagerly for freedom. The nose was followed in an instant by a pair of dark, intelligent, mischievous eyes. Then a long-tailed young ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... glare they had exchanged for their native gloom—uncouth creatures bedight with tasselled fringes like weed-growths waving around them, fathom-long, medusae with coloured spots like eyes clustering all over their transparent substance, wriggling worm-like forms of such elusive matter that the smallest exposure to the sun melted them, and they were not. Lower down, vast pale shadows creep sluggishly along, happily undistinguishable as yet, but adding ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... for the group to disperse can not be indicated by any word in the English language. They were there and then they were not there. As Pee-wee stood amid scattered coins and dice he was conscious of distant forms scaling fences, wriggling through holes, and of one pair of legs disappearing majestically over a dilapidated roof. As a disorderly retreat ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... you know, with the roots all wriggling about in the darkness, but you can take a risk when you catch an occasional glimpse of the pack running with a breast-high scent; so in and out they dodged until the wood began to thin at the edges, and they ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the long hours in which they forged slowly ahead had the line gone taut as the boy fell in the snow, but each time it was followed by a wriggling and tugging, and the youngster scrambled gamely to his feet and floundered on in the wake ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... minutes later he looked around to see if they were all concealed, and, to his despair, observed something wriggling behind the small mound. Even as he watched the ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... was rolling and twisting around on the floor in a most remarkable manner, for Papa No-Tail inside was wriggling and twisting, and trying his best to get out. But the paper was wound around him too tightly, and he ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... gave Stefan almost a stab of satisfaction, it was so gravely sweet, so fitted to her person. She stooped lower to speak to the baby, and the artist saw the free, rhythmic motion which meant developed, and untrammeled muscles. Presently the children, wriggling with joy, squatted in a circle, and the girl sank to the deck in their midst with one quick and easy movement, curling her feet under her. There proceeded an absurd game, involving a slipper and much squealing, whose intricacies she directed with ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... luscious, tropical colour, he is a sober narrator of facts. Ay, but he is a big chap, this amiable little Valencian with a big heart and a hand that reaches out and grabs down clouds, skies, scoops up the sea, and sets running, wriggling, screaming a joyful band of naked boys and girls over the golden summer sands in a sort of ecstatic symphony ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... did so, and felt the wriggling form underneath him, it began to melt and slip away like air or water. The wood of the arm-chair somehow disentangled itself from between his own arms and those of Mudge. The phenomenon known as the passage of matter through matter took ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... would or not,' exclaimed Mr. Daffy, panting and wriggling, 'it's as plain as plain could be that there's no other course for a man who respects himself. I couldn't live a day with such a burden as that on my mind. A bookmaker! A blackguard bookmaker! To think my son should come to that! You know very well, Mr. Lott, that there's ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... him with my eye for about three seconds, as he sat groaning and wriggling in his chair. When I'd done fixing him, I gave another rap with my paper-knife on the table to startle him up a bit. ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... player like Mustin of the Navy, or Arnold of West Point, souvenirs of the dash they put into their play. Maybe there comes to your mind a recollection of the Navy's fast offense; their snappy play; the military precision with which their work is done. Possibly you dream of the wriggling open field running of Snake Izard, or the bulwark defense of Nichols; or in your West Point experiences you are reminded of the tussle you had in suppressing the brilliant Kromer, that clever little quarterback and field general, or the task ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... and the jockeys trooped into the paddock, followed by the roustabouts with the tackle. Old Man Curry, waiting quietly in the far corner of Elisha's stall, saw the Bald-faced Kid wriggling his way through the crowd. He came straight to ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... amiable. The long and short of it is that when it became dark my good lads began to try to rescue my body. Four or five times that one-twentieth of eye saw a wriggling form work through sand-bags and start slowly, flat to the earth, toward me. But the ground was snow-covered and the Germans saw too the dark uniform. Each time a fusillade of shots broke out, and the moving figure dropped hastily behind ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... spoken promise—leads him into sin, if he does not fulfil it (comp. Deut. xxiii, 21, 22). He asks release from his promise on the ground that it is a sin of weakness. The 'angel' is best understood as the priest (messenger), as in Malachi ii.7. Such a wriggling out of a vow will bring God's anger; for the 'voice' which promised what the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... burn Lazy Eights on wriggling, blatting calves for two or three hours at a stretch before yuh talk about the joys uh branding." Park rubbed eloquently ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... bosom of Nature herself, its own peculiar serpent, having its own peculiar stare, but always hungry and bloody-fanged, which follows the delinquent’s feet whithersoever they go, gliding through the dewy grass on the brightest morning, dodging round the trees on the calmest eve, wriggling across the brook where the wrongdoer would fain linger on the stepping-stones to soothe his soul with the sight of the happy minnows shooting between the water-weeds—following him everywhere, in short, till at last, in sheer desperation, ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... have been wriggling out of his coat when he found you wouldn't let go," surmised Frank. "I could see him threshing around just as I came up to the top of the bank. Then you fell and held on tight and the coat was pulled ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... dinner; and Henley made me go dine with him and one Colonel Bragg(22) at a tavern; cost me money, faith. Congreve was to be there, but came not. I came with Henley to the Coffee-house, where Lord Salisbury(23) seemed mighty desirous to talk with me; and, while he was wriggling himself into my favour, that dog Henley asked me aloud, whether I would go to see Lord Somers as I had promised (which was a lie); and all to vex poor Lord Salisbury, who is a high Tory. He played two or three other ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... it was somewhat alarming to see the hand of an apparently drowning man with the fingers wriggling violently, but ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... Delia's baby want it?" she asked enticingly. The General waved his arms and legs wildly; wreathed in smiles, he opened and shut his mouth in quick alternation, chirping and clucking, as she held it up before him; an ecstatic wriggling pervaded him, and he chuckled unctuously. A moment later only his deep-drawn, nozzling breaths could be heard in the room. They watched him in hushed satisfaction; once, as he smiled gratefully at Delia, Ellis ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... the general entered the hallway, the spaniel, wriggling free from the hound's onslaught, fled upstairs, closely pursued by the other dog, and after the two stamped the officer. On the second floor the fugitive faltered, to cast an agonised glance behind him, but sight of ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... and steadfast, Looked for long within the tankard, And within it frogs were spawning, At the sides the worms were wriggling, And he spoke the words which follow: "Surely I have not come hither, Thus to drink from Mana's goblets, Or to drink from Tuoni's tankards. 300 Those who drink this beer are drunken, Drinking from such cans ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... and cool. There she sat, with twenty miles of view behind her, and he placed the dripping baby on her knee. It shone now with health and beauty: it seemed to reflect light, like a copper vessel. Just such a baby Bellini sets languid on his mother's lap, or Signorelli flings wriggling on pavements of marble, or Lorenzo di Credi, more reverent but less divine, lays carefully among flowers, with his head upon a wisp of golden straw. For a time Gino contemplated them standing. Then, ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... colour. It struck its head into the grass, endeavouring to hide itself. It was too late. The kite swooped gently downward; and, with open claw, poised himself a moment over the spot. As he rose again, the reptile was seen wriggling in his talons! ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... message. When, however, peace had been concluded, and the loyalists, amazed and heartbroken at their threatened desertion, reminded him of his pledges and implored him to respect them, he answered them in a letter which is surely without parallel in the record of self-respecting Governments. The wriggling, the equivocation, the distortion of phrases, the shameless 'explaining away,' are of a character that would again justify the remark of Lord Salisbury (then Lord Robert Cecil) in another matter many years before, that they were 'tactics ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... taken the highest tree in the wood," continued the Pigeon, raising its voice to a shriek, "and just as I was thinking I should be free of them at last, they must needs come wriggling down from ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... species of dragon. It is, indeed, difficult to imagine what hideous beings these three sisters were. Why, instead of locks of hair, if you can believe me, they had each of them a hundred enormous snakes growing on their heads, all alive, twisting, wriggling, curling, and thrusting out their venomous tongues, with forked stings at the end! The teeth of the Gorgons were terribly long tusks; their hands were made of brass; and their bodies were all over scales, which, if not ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... nothing more of the performance in the rocky chamber. The repulsive masks and the backward wriggling of the six upon the floor had upset his fighting stomach for the time being, and we could ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... to Harlan's troubled sight first appeared to be an infant in arms, was violently ejected from the stage and added to the human pile which was wriggling and weeping upon the gravelled walk. A cub of seven next leaped out, whistling shrilly, then came a querulous, wailing, ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... this (how wildly will ambition steer), A vermin wriggling in the usurper's ear, Bartering his venal wit for sums of gold, He cast himself into the saint-like mould; Groaned, sighed, and prayed, while godliness was gain, The loudest bagpipe of the ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... meantime an effort was made to get at the suction of the pumps; and by 10 P.M. on Friday evening a hole in the engine-room bulkhead had been completed. Then E. R. Evans, wriggling over the coal, found his way to the pump shaft and down it, and cleared the suction of the coal balls (a mixture of coal and oil) which were choking it. Soon afterwards a good stream of water came from the pump, and it was evident that the main difficulty had been overcome. Slowly the water ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... millimetres in length by nine in thickness (1.17 x.35 inch.—Translator's Note.), whence follows that its bulk is six or seven hundred times as great as that of the newly-hatched grub of the Scolia. Here certainly is a quarry which, were it active and capable of wriggling and biting, would expose the nurseling to terrible attacks. The danger has been averted by the mother's stiletto; and the fragile grub attacks the monster's paunch with as little hesitation as though it were ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... smoke-wreaths. "Heard anything more?" he asked. "Nothing since," answered the Snipe. With his shoulder Long Ede pushed up the trap. They saw his head framed in a panel of moonlight, with one frosty star above it. He was wriggling through. "Pitch him up a sleeping-bag, somebody," the Gaffer ordered, and Cooney ran with one. "Thank 'ee, mate," said Long Ede, and closed ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... hadn't been with him, and I reached the pack and hoisted it on my shoulders without either of us striking any of the victims of the fight. The sting of the wound in my shoulder made the pack an uncomfortable burden, but I bore it as best I could, for I was afraid that Moira would notice me if I kept wriggling it into an easier position. So I fought the pain all the way to the cave, which we reached in something under five minutes. Moira did not speak a word all the way, and somehow I hadn't the heart to break the news of Cumshaw's death to her. It had to ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... tried to sleep among the dry seaweed. First, there was that d-d fellow there, with his broken back, sprawling as he did when I hurled the rock over a-top on him, ha, ha! You would have sworn he was lying on the floor where you stand, wriggling like ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... excessive thirst, paleness of the skin and mucous membranes of the mouth and eyes, and dropsical swelling, especially that of the lower jaw. Diarrhoea always accompanies this condition and if the feces is carefully examined the small worms may be seen wriggling about like little snakes, or when an animal dies; and the fourth stomach is opened, these worms can ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... month or so, a tadpole comes out of the egg. There are swarms of them wriggling about the water, with heads and bodies and tails, but no legs. In about six weeks more the legs begin to grow, and gradually the tadpole changes into a frog. See what a number of young frogs there are hopping about here on the edge of the pond! They are just out of their tadpole stage. They'll ...
— Woodside - or, Look, Listen, and Learn. • Caroline Hadley
... cannot destroy all organic refuse, we may and should render it unfit for the multiplication of these vermin. We have, indeed, in most of our large towns and in their suburbs, abolished cesspools, which are admirable breeding-places for many kinds of Diptera, and which sometimes presented one wriggling mass of larvae. We have drained many marshes, ditches, and unclean pools, rich in decomposing vegetable matter, and have thus notably checked the propagation of gnats and midges. I know an instance of a country mansion, situate in one of the best wooded parts of the home counties, which ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... had put her, and it was Heaven's mercy that she had not fallen. But her frock was a stout blue gingham, fortunately, and a projecting branch-stump was thrust through it, holding her in a horizontal position along the bough. She was crying and wriggling, and in another minute or so she might have fallen to the ground. There was a slight chance that she would have struck ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... splendid prospects, came forward with his demand for the millions required to complete the projects already under way. This was the signal. From all the stock-market sub-cellars and rat-holes of State, Broad, and Wall streets crept those wriggling, slimy snakes of bastard rumors which, seemingly fatherless and motherless, have in reality multi-parents who beget them with a deviltry of intention: "George Westinghouse had mismanaged his companies"; "George Westinghouse, because of gross extravagance, had spread himself and his companies ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... pull myself up to the ledge on which it grew. I confess it needed all my courage, for I did not know but that the tree might be loose, and that it and I might go rattling down four hundred feet. It was my only hope, however, so I set my teeth, and wriggling up a few inches, made a grab at it. Thank God it held, and with a great effort I pulled my shoulder over ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... about the stegomyia mosquito, and what a pity it was that the annual danger of contagion and death from the bite of that insect had to be faced all over again. Pools of water all over town, simply swarming with little wriggling things, soon to emerge as full-armed stegomyias, merely because the city authorities hadn't the money, or said they hadn't, to cover the pools ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... reason further. Wriggling close to the hawser, he opened his jack-knife and went to work, The blade was not very sharp, and he sawed away, rope-yarn by rope-yarn, the awful picture of the solitary Siberian exile he must endure growing clearer and more terrible ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... of got on my imagination for a couple of twists. He told me more in one minute with those eyes of his than I could read in the books in a thousand years. His eyes were acrawl with the secrets of life. They were just squirming and wriggling there. The trouble is I almost got them, and then I didn't. I'm no wiser than I was before, but I was near them." He paused and then added, "I can't tell you, but that dog's eyes were just spilling over with cues to what life is, and evolution, and star-dust, and cosmic sap, ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... starboard counter, which served the Fane family as a sort of sitting-room or day nursery. It had two circular port-holes, brass-rimmed, of fairly generous proportions. Under the spur of verbal taunts from Fred, and passive challenges from Nelly's dark eyes, I positively succeeded in wriggling my entire body out through one of those port-holes, feet first, until I hung by my hands outside, my feet almost touching the water-line. And then it seemed I could ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... picked up his tiny assailant; and the puppy, suspended by its neck, gurgled and slobbered; then, wriggling desperately round, made its teeth meet in its adversary's shirt. At which M'Adam shook it gently and laughed. Then ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... that skulks away to hide in the nearest bushes as you approach, or with the hermit thrush, that pours out its heavenly song in the solitude of the forest, how gracious and full of gentle confidence it seems! Every gesture is graceful and elegant; even a wriggling beetle is eaten as daintily as caviare at the king's table. It is only when its confidence in you is abused, and you pass too near the nest, that might easily be mistaken for a robin's, just above your head in a sapling, that the wood thrush so far forgets itself ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... vipers, scorpions, spiders, and similar creatures, were dropped, Chicory holding the stopper, and throwing back his head and grinning with delight as some wriggling little poisonous creature was popped in. In fact, Chicory was an indefatigable hunter of great things and small, taking readily to natural history pursuits; but he had his drawbacks, one of which was a belief that the little snakes and tiny lizards dropped ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... leap. There was a flurry of action behind the bush screen and he reappeared, dragging into the gray light of the rainy day a wriggling captive, whom he bumped without ceremony onto the beaten earth ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... is to regulate the position of the diamond so that it cuts. In order to do this, carefully note its cutting angle by preliminary trials on sheet glass, and then adjust the diamond by clamps, or by wriggling it in a fork, as shown. Weight the board very slightly, so as to give the small necessary pressure, and produce the cut by rotating the tube by hand. When a cut is nearly completed take great care that the two ends join, or irregularity will ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... as a polite intimation that his hand need not rest there any longer, but he seemed to misinterpret the movement, and drew her an inch or so nearer, whereupon the wriggling ceased. ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... a moment Clotilde paused in alarm, Then she rolled up her sleeve and stretched out her arm. She thought she heard steps, she must be quick. She darted her hand out, and seized the thick Wriggling ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... Such was the unbroken scene from the Big Barracks to Tompkins Square; ay, to Harlem and to the East River, and almost to Broadway. In the park, as if the street scenes had been merely preliminary, the paths were alive, wriggling, with babies of every age, from the new-born to the children in pigtails and knickerbockers—and, lo! these were already paired and practising at courtship. The walk that Cordelia was taking was amid a fever, a delirium, ...
— Different Girls • Various
... time or other, I mean," he said, wriggling his head and twisting his feet, as he did when he felt embarrassed. Miss Pickering made him feel embarrassed because she asked so many direct personal questions, seemed so interested and surprised at everything, and volunteered ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... verse, written in story or sculptured on stone, none are more remarkable than those where the serpent appears. Old divines imagined that the creature whose shape Satan borrowed for the temptation had originally no malignant aspect; neither the poisoned fangs, nor eyes of fire, nor cold, scaly, wriggling form which man and beast recoil from with instinctive horror. They fancied that the curse, "Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat," was followed by a sudden metamorphosis, and that till then the appearance of the ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie
... Jerry understood Frank's strategy. The bed-clothes began to heave; they had piled them all atop Dave as he lay on the floor. Frank began on the chorus. A wriggling leg emerged from beneath the comforts. Jerry joined in, his voice a villainous imitation of Frank's discords. Another ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... enough, seeing that there is scarcely any fall of water from the lower quarters of the city to the lake. I never saw water-snakes in numbers to compare with those in the canal, and by the side of it. They were swimming in the water, wriggling in and out; and on the banks they were writhing in heaps, like our passengers forward. Two of our crew tow us along, and we are soon clear of the canal, and of the salt-swamp that extends on both sides of it, where the bottom ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... embedded deep in his shoulder. Just before the coming of dawn, Hampton, without uttering a word, calmly turned up the collar of his tightly buttoned coat, so as better to conceal the white collar he wore, gripped his revolver between his teeth, and crept like some wriggling snake among the black rocks and through the dense underbrush in search after water. By some miracle of divine mercy he was permitted to pass unscathed, and came crawling back, a dozen hastily filled canteens dangling across his shoulders. It was like ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... he took his book and struck at them. And they all scattered, wriggling and crawling out of the door. He followed them and dug up the earth in the place where they had disappeared. And there he found an ants' nest as large as a barrel, in which countless green ants were wriggling around. So he built a large fire ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... quiet, and the rags tight on him for fear he'd screech. (He goes back to their camp.) Hurry with the things, Sarah Casey. The peelers aren't coming this way, and maybe we'll get off from them now. [They bundle the things together in wild haste, the priest wriggling and struggling about on the ground, with old Mary trying to keep him quiet. MARY — patting his head. — Be quiet, your reverence. What is it ails you, with your wrigglings now? Is it choking maybe? (She puts her hand under the sack, and feels his mouth, patting him on the ...
— The Tinker's Wedding • J. M. Synge
... and therefore the crime of thrusting such a fate on a single child, with the unasked gift of being, is a crime admitting of no just comparison. Rather than populate an everlasting hell with human vipers and worms, a hell whose fires, alive and wriggling with ghastly shapes of iniquity and anguish, shall swell with a vast accession of fresh recruits from every generation, rather than this, let the sacred lights on the marriage altar go out, no more bounding forms of childhood be seen in cottage ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... gray ear-wig wriggling away to the westward until we were surfeited, and then we set about finding a place where we might rest our dizzy heads. We could not get near the principal hotels. These already were filled with high officers and ringed about with sentries; but half a mile away, on the plaza ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... difficulty. Poulett Thomson wants it, but they will not dare commit the finances of the country to him, so we go scrambling on 'du jour la journee.' Nobody knows what is to happen next—no confidence, no security, great talk of a property tax, to which, I suppose, after wriggling about, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... little ravines that offer shelter to the mariner on this exposed portion of the coast. The antiquary Leland describes it as "a little fischar towne with a peere". It is an extraordinary jumble of habitations which press upon each other so closely that it is only by wriggling through the narrow streets and turnings that one can make any progress ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath
... Morley sauntered across Union Square with a pitying look at the hundreds that lolled upon the park benches. They were a motley lot, he thought; the men with stolid, animal, unshaven faces; the women wriggling and self-conscious, twining and untwining their feet that hung four inches above the ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... heard a sound in the entrance. Cain was coming toward him, with many genuflexions, and much stomach wriggling. He stopped, straightened himself. There was a look of singular ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... compact little mass; but now they were bent nearly double, and were stripped to the red blankets about their waists. Before them writhed Sulimani, close to earth, darting irregularly now to right, now to left, wriggling, spreading his arms abroad. He was repeating over and over two phrases; or rather the same phrase in two such different intonations that they seemed ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... heard her: she was so astonished at the babel of small voices that started up about her feet. She had been so startled at the appearance and the disappearance of that strange little creature that she had not noticed that all the dolls were wriggling out of her arms and sliding down her skirts and legs like schoolboys escaping from a burning dormitory. Not that they were afraid of anything: it was only that they were so glad to be able at last to ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... was sounded, and Polly and Dilsey pounced upon Tot, who had become tired of lying still, and was wriggling about so that she had been discovered; and now all the travellers were captured except Diddie. The injuns looked everywhere for her ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... Presently the other dropped in too, and both disappeared for some moments. Then, in the midst of a violent commotion in the water a few yards away, they rose to the surface of the water, the larger with a wriggling, eel-like fish ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... light revealed the water-washed deck. A coil of rope, all uncoiled by the waves, was wriggling like a serpent ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell
... my coat, Nannie,' gasped Harry, bursting into the nursery like a whirlwind; and as she buttoned it across his wriggling little body, he put his arms round her neck and whispered, 'I expect I am going to see the present with the four legs! Oh, I wonder if it ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... melancholy shot across with a tender pride. His subdued "Good morning" was accompanied with much strenuous exertion directed, apparently, to the removal and exhibition of a portion of his spine. After much wriggling he paused long enough ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... are the rainbow colors of the skies, That Heav'n has shed upon me con amore— A Bird of Paradise?—a pretty story! I am that Saintly Fowl, thou paltry chick! Look at my crown of glory! Thou dingy, dirty, drabbled, draggled jill!" And off goes Partlet, wriggling from a kick, With bleeding scalp laid ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... carriage descended the man with the bag, who also awaited the Martigues train. Presently—the two happening to come together in their saunterings up and down the platform—the Major's interest was aroused by observing that within the bag went on a persistent wriggling; and his interest was quickened into characteristic action when he heard from its interior, faintly but quite distinctly, a ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... fool, an awful fool. Hang Morabita and her voice and the golden houses of the gods, and beastly, showy omnipotence to which her voice carries one away! To talk sense—mother—just brutal common sense. My fate is fixed, you know. There's no earthly use in wriggling. I am condemned to live a cow's life and die a cow's death. The pride of life may call, but I can't answer. The great prizes are not for me. I'm too heavily handicapped. I was looking at that young fellow, Decies, to-night and considering his chances as against my own—— Oh! I know there's wealth ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... into a circus menagerie, and Margaret MacLean and her assistant were turned into keepers. Together they set about the duties for the day with great good-humor. Two seals, a wriggling hippopotamus, a roaring polar bear, a sea-serpent of surprising activities, two teeth-grinding alligators, a walrus, and a baby elephant were bathed with considerable difficulty and excitement. It was Sandy who insisted on being ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... the manuscript sort in Teufelsdrockh's repositories that would suit you well; nothing at all in a completed state, except a long rigmarole dissertation (in a crabbed sardonic vein) about the early history of the Teutonic Kindred, wriggling itself along not in the best style through Proverb lore, and I know not what, till it end (if my memory serve) in a kind of Essay on the Minnesingers. It was written almost ten years ago, and never contented me well. It formed part of a lucklessly projected History of ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the forehead, then touched on the nose and eyes and chin. Between the dippings, the aged man read from his book, and the assistant responded. To Hinchcliffe, standing at a little distance, the group made a strange picture—"Pervyse" wriggling and sometimes weeping; Hilda "Shsh, Shysh, Shshing"; Rene nudging the Flemish girl, and giggling; the soldiers peeping from the straw; the children, attracted by the outcries of "Pervyse," drawing closer; aged worshippers continuing their droning. ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... the knife did part wi' life And three the bullet took O, But three times three died plaguily A-wriggling on a hook O. A hook both strong and bright and long, They died by gash o' ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... to an imaginary door halfway between them and where Virgie sat on the steps, wriggling with delight. "You kin look in ev'ry room in de house—castle, I means—'cept in des dat one. Orn'estan me? Des dat one! But ef yo' looks in dar,—Gawd he'p you. I gwine cut yo' haid off," and the fearful sword whizzed threateningly through the ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... outlet but its awkward mouth—a case-bottle which has no thoroughfare, and a short and narrow neck—and in this respect it may be typical of the fate of some few among its more adventurous residents, who, after wriggling themselves into Parliament by violent efforts and contortions, find that it, too, is no thoroughfare for them; that, like Manchester Buildings, it leads to nothing beyond itself; and that they are fain at ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... longer he should scream. What possible pleasure, he marvelled, could Aunt Charlotte find in such a vapid form of dissipation? Even the garden irritated him, for it was laid out in the silly Early Victorian style, with wriggling paths, and ribbon borders, and shrubs planted meaninglessly here and there about the lawn, and a dreadful piece of sham rockwork in one corner. Of course the vicar's wife thought it quite perfect, and always snubbed Austin in a very lofty way if he ever ventured to express his own views ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... turn of affairs, she hurried out of the room, and going to her private chamber, lost no time to setting her enchantments to work. In a few moments, she heard a great noise of hissing snakes outside of the chamber window; and behold! there was her fiery chariot, and four huge winged serpents, wriggling and twisting in the air, flourishing their tails higher than the top of the palace, and all ready to set off on an aerial journey. Medea staid only long enough to take her son with her, and to steal the crown jewels, together with the king's best robes, and whatever ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... somewhere, and the light that frightened him from it.... 'One of the Chinese knifed me, but he died.'... That big 'X' of the Truxton flung stern up, as she sank; ... and about the old Captain wriggling his shoulder bashfully for his young friend's arm at the last.... It is altogether enticing, in the light of what you have brought to-day. Really you must take him away. Red-haired spinsters mustn't be bothered, nor imprisoned ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... from the wash-stand and scrutinized it once more. Then he lit his pipe again, and, finally, wriggling himself into the depths of ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... to be endowed with life, so extraordinary was its power of wriggling itself under the legs of the passers by. It had to be constantly wrenched out, with many apologies, by its owner; while the person who had been nearly tripped up by it, ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... "But I think you need not be over-anxious," he added, with a kindly smile. "Nick is one of those clever people who always manage to win through somehow. They always used to say of him on the Frontier that he bore a charmed life. He has a positive genius for wriggling ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... night in the week when Auld Licht young men fell in love. Sam'l Dickie, wearing a blue Glengarry bonnet with a red ball on the top, came to the door of a one-story house in the Tenements, and stood there wriggling, for he was in a suit of tweeds for the first time that week, and did not feel at one with them. When his feeling of being a stranger to himself wore off, he looked up and down the road, which straggles between houses and gardens, and then, picking his way over the puddles, crossed ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... capital since the submergence of James Town in 1680, are the remains of large town houses and fine old stone walls, which one can hardly see from the roadstead, so thick are the royal palms and the cocoanut trees among the ruins, wriggling their slender bodies through every crevice and flaunting their glittering luxuriance above ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... was necessary for us to go. The snow was so deep and so soft that I dismounted and put on my snowshoes and started to lead Midget across. She followed willingly. After a few steps, a flounder and a snort caused me to look back, and all I could see of Midget was her two little ears wriggling in the snow. When we reached the other side, Midget came out breathing heavily, and at once shook her head to dislodge the snow from her forehead and her ears. She was impatient to go on, and before I could take off my ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... and I shall never let you go,' he said. But the words were hardly out of his mouth when he found that it was a hare that he was holding by the paw. Then the hare changed into a fish, and the fish into a bird, and the bird into a slimy wriggling snake. This time the prince's hand nearly opened of itself, but with a strong effort he kept his fingers shut, and drawing his sword cut off its head, when the spell was broken, and the girl stood before him as he had seen her first, the wreath upon her head and ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... her. Women were in a great majority, a man scattered forlornly amongst them once and again. She discovered at once the alert eyes of young Mr. Warlock. He was seated in the side aisle with a thin, severe-looking woman beside him. He stared straight in front of him, wriggling sometimes his broad back as though he were a dog tied by a chain. Some one else very quickly claimed Maggie's attention; this was a girl who, in the seat behind Mr. Warlock, was as noticeable in that congregation as a bird-of-paradise ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole |
