"Deuce" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was the sister who had remained within the pale; I, the rapscallion of a brother whose vagaries were trying to his relations. That was the note she struck, and she maintained it. I didn't know what the deuce she was driving at, and I didn't care. These scenes with a touch of madness appealed to me. I was going to live, and here, apparently, was a woman ready to my hand. Besides, she was making a fool of Callan, and that pleased me. His ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... the matter," said Fry, and he showed him a deuce of clubs, a five of hearts and an ace of diamonds, and so on; two or three cards of each suit. "A prisoner has been making ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... does," George said hastily in distress. He regarded the paper almost balefully. "This is the deuce of a thing!" he said. "If she didn't care for him any more than that, what's all the fuss about? I don't believe the threat about sending his ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... cried, "what a fool I am to be sure! I ought to have cut John, not Jack. However, it don't signify. Nobody ever called me John, that I recollect. So I dare say I was christened Jack. Deuce take it! I was very near spelling ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... playing cards, were all left strewed around their fires. One of the gamblers, (it is a serious truth) though shot dead, still held the cards hard gripped in his hands. Led by curiosity to inspect this strange sight, a dead gambler, we found that the cards which he held were ace, deuce, and jack. Clubs were trumps. Holding high, low, jack, and the game, in his own hand, he seemed to be in a fair way to do well; but Marion came down upon him with a trump that spoiled his sport, and non-suited him ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... Oakes is as discreet a man, in all that relates to the table, as an anchorite; and yet he has a faculty of seeming to drink, that makes him a boon companion for a four-bottle man. How the deuce he does it, is more than I can tell you; but he does it so well, that he does not more thoroughly get the better of the king's enemies, on the high seas, than he floors his friends under the table. Sir Wycherly has begun his libations in honour ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... ruffled up his neck feathers, repeating "Rubberneck, I'm cold as the deuce; what's the matter with Hannah; let ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the certificate of generosity you confer on my soul,' retorted Pigasov. 'As for my condition, there's not much amiss with it, so that even if there were an outlet from it, it might go to the deuce, ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... But there's no room for difference. She's a wild, headstrong, dissatisfied, foolish little filly. The deuce couldn't ride her—she'd shy at her own shadow—"Carmencita." Oh, very well then, I'll wager you—and I'll give you odds too—"Decorum" will come in first, and I'll lay three to one he'll beat Carmencita by five ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell
... tenant the dumb carcasses of beasts, could scarce covet shelter in the commonplace human form. No Gytrash was this,—only a traveller taking the short cut to Millcote. He passed, and I went on; a few steps, and I turned: a sliding sound and an exclamation of "What the deuce is to do now?" and a clattering tumble, arrested my attention. Man and horse were down; they had slipped on the sheet of ice which glazed the causeway. The dog came bounding back, and seeing his master in a predicament, and hearing the horse groan, barked till the evening hills echoed ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... against poor Levy. But just hear: I was sitting very ruefully, thinking over those cursed bills, and how the deuce I should renew them, when Levy walked into my rooms; and after telling me of his long friendship for my uncle Egerton, and his admiration for yourself, and (give me your hand, Randal) saying how touched he felt by your kind sympathy in my troubles, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... were evidently alarmed, "Stretch out, men: never mind the shark. He can't jump into the boat surely," said the skipper. "What the deuce are ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... darkness gathered, if there was one lonely boy in the world, languidly despairing, it was I. Many times I found myself uttering aloud such slang expressions as: "Oh, my hat! If only I had told the beastly truth for the third time! Dash it, why didn't I? Why the deuce didn't I?" I addressed myself as: "You blithering, blithering fool!" And my temples began to ache and now and then to hammer. For, always in these my early days of puberty, excitement and worry produced ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... Science, and the public says scornfully: "Of course, he WOULD. Because Smith went to the Royal College himself, all his heroes have to go there. This isn't art, this is photography." In his next novel Smith sends his hero to Cambridge, and the public says indignantly, "What the deuce does SMITH know about Cambridge? Trying to pretend he is a 'Varsity man, when everybody knows that he went to the Royal College of Science! I suppose he's been mugging it up in a book." Perhaps Brown's young couple ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... I was! What should I do with a wife I could not kiss? I wonder if Blanche will speak to me again? Maybe all this was a dodge, women have so many; but she looked in earnest. I might have frightened her by being so sudden, but why the deuce should women be frightened at proposals, when they pass their lives in trying to get them? So Mrs. Stunner said. Poor birdie!, what a soft hand she has! Maybe some women are modest: I will ask Hardcash about it. She may not have known what she was saying—agitated, and all that sort of thing. I will ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... legs when he sat alone before his own hearth for fear of being improper. An English gentlewoman, were she one of the rabid 'Saints'—that most straitest sect of Protestants that would leave their whole family to starve if the said family did anything 'improper'—may play the deuce's own delight in her own bedroom, and need not be 'improper,' but she would look on herself as lost if she received a visit from a man of her acquaintance in the aforesaid room. Thanks to propriety, London and its inhabitants will be found ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... deuce was the matter with you this evening on the Elysium road?" The suddenness of the question wrenched an answer from me before ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... is cheek!" he exclaimed. "Easton, look here; here is a beast of a native squatting in my hut. Sentry, what the deuce do you mean by letting a nigger come into my hut? Now, then, who are you? What do you want? What do you mean by it? Out you go sharp, or I will break ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... unspeakable vanity of the race. It was the death-blow to private judgment. At least, it ought to have been. But, alas! human vanity and presumption are eternal and indestructible. From the corner-boy here at my window, who asks indignantly, "Why the deuce did not Gladstone push his Bill through the House of Lords, and then force the Commons to accept it?" to the flushed statesman, whose dream is Imperialism; from the little manikin critic, who swells out his chest, and demands ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... I almost shouted it. "Why, then, it's simple enough. I'm in the wrong berth, that's all. My berth is nine. Only—where the deuce is the man who ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... said the Captain, turning over the leaves of Juliet's portfolio. "What the deuce does the girl mean? She has scribbled over all the paper. I hope she don't ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... and Exegetics with Fortsch [How the deuce did Fortsch teach these things?]; Hermeneutics and Polemics with Walch [editor of—Luther's Works,—I suppose]; Hebraics with Dr. Danz; Homiletics with Dr. Weissenborn; PASTORALE [not Pastoral Poetry, but the Art of Pastorship] and MORALE with Dr. Buddaeus.' [There, your Majesty!—what ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... indulged in by the inhabitants of other portions of the world remote from the Hub of the Universe. A Boston grumble consists of an upward movement of the eyebrow, a slight twitch of the mustache and a murmur cross-bred from "Deuce take it!" and "Scoundrelly!") "Young man," he said, "my father said that such a hazardous venture as copper should return at least thirty per cent. to be safe, and I feel if I receive but twenty per cent. ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... two regular customers of the Baker Street to Victoria route, and when they recognized him he became purple with content. A short youth was making notes near a tank in the corner. Mr. Trew, nudging Gertie, went to him and, in a gruff voice, asked what the deuce he was doing there; the youth turned to give ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... used in studying all the niceties of handwriting. He suddenly felt unnerved. "Whom is it from? This hand is familiar to me, very familiar. I must have often read its tracings, yes, very often. But this must have been a long, long time ago. Whom the deuce can it be from? Pooh! it's ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... fitted with a conductor. There was a meeting of the dignitaries some years back; some argued in favour and some against it, and it ended in neither party being persuaded, and nothing being done. I met another Englishman here, to whom the question might so properly be put, "What the deuce are you doing here?" An old worthy, nearly seventy, who, after having passed his fair allowance of life very happily in his own country, must, forsooth, come up the Rhine, without being able to speak a word of French, or any other language but ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... "The deuce, my young fellow!" cried the usurer, fiercely. "But, bah!" he added, twirling his black moustache caressingly between his fingers, "I have proved my bravery scores of times—I, an old soldier, perforated with bullets, ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... "Ah, the deuce! I had forgotten! I wanted to finish. Look at this, quite fresh, and perfectly pure this time; something to ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... hundred pounds, I couldn't fancy what the deuce and all he meant by such prattle. I was half afraid he might be having me on, as I have known him do now and again when he fancied he could get me. I fearfully wanted to ask questions. Again I saw the dark, absorbed face of the gipsy ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... Flamby's hand more firmly under his arm. "You would have made a deuce of a boy," he said. "I wonder if we should ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... devilish glad to see you, my lad. Why, my prince of charioteers, you look as hearty!—but who the deuce thought of seeing you ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... in bitter self-apostrophe. "Why didn't I jump in after Forbes? Now I am out of the hunt! I wonder what the deuce Furneaux saw ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... (to himself, for no man knew of his secret project) and grinned with a sort of amused tolerance for the sentimental side of his nature. "I'm a silly ass to have even dreamed of finding her as I passed along, and if I had found her what the deuce could I have done about it anyway? This isn't the day for mediaeval lady-snatching. I dare say I'm just as well off for not having found her. I still have the zest for hunting farther, and there's a lot in that." Then aloud: ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... center aisle and taken seats in the front pew, and all the women in the place are craning their necks toward the door. The usual electrical delay ensues. There is something the matter with the bride's train, and the two bridesmaids have a deuce of a time fixing it. Meanwhile the bride's father, in tight pantaloons and tighter gloves, fidgets and fumes in the vestibule, the six ushers crowd about him inanely, and the sexton rushes to and fro like a rat in a trap. Finally, all being ready, ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... "The deuce he has!" exclaimed Gilbert with a blank expression, as he walked away with a hasty step, leaving Reams to adjust himself to his book again. He soon collected a group of card-players and sat down to his game; while young Wayland Morris and ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... curious. He argued with himself that he had every right to feel afraid, that he ought to feel "queer." He said to himself, "Here you are, as nervous and temperamental a youth as ever stepped, with a mental laziness that amounts to moral cowardice, in the deuce of a hole that I don't expect you'll ever get out of. You ought to be in an awful state. Your cheeks ought to be white, and there they are looking like two raw beef-steaks. Your tongue ought to cleave to the roof of your mouth; and it isn't. You ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... "but her father is inclined to be a little old-fogyish, thinks we are too young for any definite engagement, and wants me to be permanently established in some business before we are married, and all that; when I can't see what in the deuce is the difference so long as I have plenty of stuff. So the upshot of it all was that he and his wife took Grace to Europe, and they're not coming back until the holidays, and if, by that time, we have neither of us changed our minds, and I am settled in business and all ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... to do with you, the man I chose for my son's father? Chose—God help us! That's how we women gammon ourselves. Deuce kens The almighty lot choice has to do ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... Citizen Nupkins, I really must say thank-you for nothing. What the deuce could I do with a servant? Now don't you trouble yourself; the council will see to your affairs. And in good time here ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris
... there before that time, even," replied his companion. "I am sure we could have played the deuce with that place, a confounded sight better than with Wyoming, for they were so scared that they were on the run and that's just the time to ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... done his prison now, and the pressing business is to keep him from going altogether to the deuce. I want him to have a good meal of meat three or four times a week, and light garden-work—all he is fit for now. And then we shall see ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... away with a dress-suit? How could he keep from feeling foolish in a low-cut vest, and what the deuce would he do with the tails? Did you part 'em or roll 'em up, when you sat down? And wouldn't everybody be able to tell from his foolish look that he didn't belong in one?" He could hear A.D.T. boys and loafers in front of pool rooms ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... What on earth has the prince got to do with it? Who the deuce is the prince?" cried the general, who could conceal his wrath ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... we tried the same manoeuvre with the same result. Now we saw them lowering a buoy from the ship—if we could only reach it we were saved; but we did not reach it. They were not exactly blessings that we poured on those on board. Why the deuce could they not bear down to us when they saw the straits we were in; or why, at any rate, could they not ease up the anchor, and let the ship drift a little in our direction? They saw how little was needed to enable us to reach them. Perhaps they ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... 'What the deuce are you taking exercise for?' the old gentleman burst out, and having unlocked his mouth, he began to puff and alter ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... friend of colonel Tamper, and the plighted hnsband of Mdlle. Florival.—G. Colman, sen., The Deuce is in ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... think to find one who measures up, and who is willing to avoid the limelight. They all want publicity, and publicity is what this job must shun. What I am working on now is big stuff across the border. I can get the news, all right—I am in touch with some of the big men over there—but the deuce of it is the going back and forth. This embargo business that has been framed lately is interfering with my work. I could get a passport, yes. Perfectly simple. I could go across, and I could get the news I want. But the bother of it, and the delay here and there is—well, it's ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... the deuce did she weather-cock round like that?" Lenox wondered, floundering in the ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... the musketeer, coolly, "the king is going to have an attack of determination of blood to the head. Where the deuce did you get hold of that idea, Monsieur ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... "Who the deuce is he, Cairn?" pursued Sir Elwin. "You must know all the circumstances of his adoption; you were with the late Sir Michael in Egypt at the time. The fellow is a mystery to me; he repels, in some way. I was glad to get away ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... appearance it was evident that I was looked upon as an interloper, for whom, small as I was, room must be found. I was received with a chorus of exclamations, such as, 'What the deuce does the little fellow want here?' 'Surely there are enough of us crammed into this beastly little hole!' 'Oh, I suppose he is some protege of ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... think. Yes, it was after; for I remember that I had a deuce of a time unbuttoning my coat to get at ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... am tired to death of it: I have heard nothing this morning but Arenta's wedding. Why the deuce! should my house be turned upside down and inside out for Arenta's wedding? Women have been married before Arenta Van Ariens, and women will be married after her. What ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... lost girl's features and dress, and her disappearance into the bargain; and I hold with the schoolmen that she who does not exist cannot disappear. Poikilus, a puffing detective. S. I., Secret Inquiry. I spell Enquiry with an E—but Poikilus is a man of the day. What the deuce can Ned Severne want of him? I suppose I ought not to object. I have established a female detective at Hillstoke. So Ned sets one up at Islip. I shall make my own secret arrangements. If Poikilus settles here, he will be drawn ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... Spanish, thought Luck, why the deuce hadn't he done it at first? But there is no fathoming the reticence of an Indian—and Luck, by a sudden impulse, hid his own knowledge of the language. He stood up and turned toward the rocks, cupped his hands around his lips and called for the Native Son. "And leave your ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... the blockade?" shouted Parrington, in a state of the greatest excitement. "You have run the blockade, man? What the deuce do you mean?" ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... make amends for the spectacles which must supply the dimness of my own. I am a little deaf, too, as you know to your sorrow when we are partners; and if I could get a nymph to marry me with all these imperfections, who the deuce would marry Janet McEvoy? and from Janet McEvoy ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... not a conscious falsehood, but just a word or two of political patter, dropped automatically, absently. In truth, Mr. Bamberger, possessed by his inspiration, was wondering why the deuce it had never occurred to him until this moment. Still more curious, too, that it had never occurred to his brother Isidore! This Isidore, after starting as a croupier at Ostend and pushing on to the post of Directeur des Fetes Periodiques to the municipality ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a run, and an infernally daring one,' said Mr Rattenbury; 'in Lealand Cove, not half an hour ago. And the deuce of it is we had warning ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... agreed on the terms. "What's the use," they say, "of dragging it out? Maybe it'll do good, maybe it won't; but just give something in cash, and deuce take you!" ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... said I, dropping my arm, which had been sticking out like a pump brake, 'that's she that just now turned about and blushed so like the deuce—do you know her?' ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... chairs all round the walls, on one end a large shining map, marked with all the colours of a rainbow. There was a vast amount of red—good to see at any time, because one knows that some real work is done in there, a deuce of a lot of blue, a little green, smears of orange, and, on the East Coast, a purple patch, to show where the jolly pioneers of progress drink the jolly lager-beer. However, I wasn't going into any of these. I was going into the yellow. Dead in the centre. And the ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... lo! the Captain, Gallant Kidd,[4] commands the crew; Passengers their berths are clapt in, Some to grumble, some to spew. "Hey day! call you that a cabin? Why't is hardly three feet square! Not enough to stow Queen Mab in— Who the deuce can harbour there?" "Who, sir? plenty— Nobles twenty Did at once my vessel fill."— "Did they? Jesus, How you squeeze us! Would to God they did so still! Then I'd 'scape the heat and racket Of the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... have an adventure which is entirely romantic," said Henri, when Paul returned. "After having shared in a certain number I have finished by finding in Paris an intrigue accompanied by serious accidents, by grave perils. The deuce! what courage danger gives a woman! To torment a woman, to try and contradict her—doesn't it give her the right and the courage to scale in one moment obstacles which it would take her years to surmount of herself? Pretty creature, jump ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... . . . To complete the illusion, I've even sprinkled myself with scent. I am over my ears in vanity! No care, no thought, nothing but a sensation of something or other . . . deuce knows what to call it . . . beatitude or something? I've never felt so ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... "Why the deuce should I let a confounded Chinaman and a pretty girl get on my nerves at this stage of the game? If it wasn't ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... at some swell joint where they all had the soup-and-fish on but me. I felt like a dirty deuce in a clean deck. He used to be a regular fellow, Jimmy Crocker, but from what you read in the papers it begins to look as if he was hitting it up too swift. It's always the way with those boys when you take them off a ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... a deuce of a hurry to satisfy that curiosity, dear man," Poppy put in. "You must contrive to exercise patience for a little while yet, please; always remembering that it is entirely superfluous to run to catch a train which is bound not to ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... "There's the deuce of a current running over there, and Ann's not an experienced enough swimmer to tackle a ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... more disinclined to fight than Neil was. In his heart he knew that Semple had a just cause of anger; "but then," he argued, "Neil is a proud, pompous fellow, for whom I never assumed a friendship. His father's hospitality I regret in any way to have abused; but who the deuce could have suspected that Neil Semple was in love with the adorable Katherine? In faith, I did not at the first, and now 'tis too late. I would not resign the girl for my life; for I am sensible that life, if she is another's, will be a very ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... said. "An excuse? What the deuce are you talking about, McPherson? You see me trudging about all day at my practise, when I'm not looking after the prisoners, and coming back every night as tired as a dog, and you talk about finding an excuse ...
— My Friend The Murderer • A. Conan Doyle
... "Come, child, compose yourself.—Deuce take it!" Crevel went on, taking Madame Hulot's hands in his own and patting them. "Why do you apply to me for two hundred thousand francs? What do you want with ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... giving any opinion on her conduct, saying that she was good or bad, or indifferent, goodness forbid! We have agreed we will not be censorious. Let us have a game at cards—at ecarte, if you please. You deal. I ask for cards. I lead the deuce of clubs.... ...
— English Satires • Various
... fashion possible. Never did he say outright, "You played the wrong card at such and such a point." No, he always employed some such phrase as, "You permitted yourself to make a slip, and thus afforded me the honour of covering your deuce." Indeed, the better to keep in accord with his antagonists, he kept offering them his silver-enamelled snuff-box (at the bottom of which lay a couple of violets, placed there for the sake of their ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... disgrace of duncehood, like Mike Lambourne on forgetting his part in the Kenilworth pageant. "For your part, you can do very well without book-learning. You've got Shakspeare, and if with that a nation can't face the literature of Europe, the deuce is in it! With Cocker's arithmetic and Shakspeare, any public that knows what it's about, may snap its fingers at ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... to Valre). Thither no coxcomb comes. (Valre again bows to him). What the deuce!... (He turns and sees Ergaste bowing on the other side). Another? ...
— The School for Husbands • Moliere
... he grumbled, bringing his horse's gait down to an amble. "There ought to be good hounds about, judging from the hang-dog look of the natives. Why in thunder did the old boy want to bury himself and his heirs forever in this god-forsaken land's end, and what in the deuce have mother and Aunt Kesiah done with themselves down here for the last twenty years? Two thousand acres? Damn it! I'd rather have six feet on the good English soil! Came to get rid of one woman, did he?—and tumbled into a pretty puddle with another as soon as he got here. By George, it's in the ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... "The deuce only knows. I told him to take a run round, but to show up at eleven. He is a thorough backwoods rooster and he may have got lost. Suppose you take a turn round the square and look him up. Don't be gone long. I have stores yet to go ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... slouched away to join the bread-line, a black deuce in the world's discard, Carl was wondering how he could get that imperial appointment as porter in a Bowery saloon. He almost forgot it while waiting in the bread-line, so occupied was he in hating two collegians who watched the line with ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... that sort of thing—detectives, and so on—will tell you that the most difficult thing in the world is to get rid of the body. I remember, as a kid, having to learn by heart a poem about a bird by the name of Eugene Aram, who had the deuce of a job in this respect. All I can recall of the actual poetry is the bit ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... said he, musing; "but the postmark is Plymouth. How the deuce—!" The two first lines of the letter were read, and the old man's countenance fell. Susan, who had been all alive at the mention of McElvina's name, perceived the alteration ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... up the lantern, and, turning it in the direction whence the voice came, found to his relief that the rays fell upon Jonathan's face. "Odds rot it, lad!" he exclaimed, "but you've gived me a turn! How the deuce did you get in here? and why didn't ye come inside to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... got a big proposition to offer you. One that will beat Mascola's like an ace beats a deuce. Because this one is on ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... it is a hard thing for me to say. I know it will sound heartless. But I am bound to say so. It is for your sake. I can't hurt myself. It does me no harm that everybody knows that I am philandering after you; but it is the very deuce for you." She was silent for a moment. Then he said again emphatically, ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... he's never done or said anything radical yet," replied the mill owner of Bremerton. "If you don't want him, we'd be delighted to have him stay. We're not forcing him on you, you know. What the deuce has got into you? You've talked to him for two hours, and you've sat looking at him at the dinner table for another two. I thought you were a judge ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... humble opinion, I tell you frankly, that on inquiry it will come out to be LOVE—don't start, my dear!—Has not your man himself had natural philosophy enough to observe already to your aunt Hervey, that love takes the deepest root in the steadiest minds? The deuce take his sly penetration, I was going to say; for this was six or seven ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... jumping in the dark a-bit, aren't we, Tit?" inquired Huckaback, while his companion was repairing the breach. "Let's look what it all means—here it is." He read it all aloud again—"'greatest possible importance!'—what can it mean? Why the deuce couldn't ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... what the deuce she hopes about," the young merchant said to himself as she closed the door behind her. "Hopes I'll marry her, I suppose. She must be of a very sanguine disposition. A girl like that might be invaluable down ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Shelley's, which never can tire. Come then, and sing to me, Sing me an ode such as Byron would sing, Passionate, love-stirring, quick to begin. Why come you not to me? Then must I write lyrics after vile rules Made by some idiot, used by worse fools— Then the deuce take you all! ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... was the deuce of a place To drink and to fight, and to gamble and race; The height of choice spirits from near and from far Were all concentrated on ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... Northamptonshire; and I'll go to neither. Let me alone, I must finish my pamphlet. I have sent a long letter to Bickerstaff:(4) let the Bishop of Clogher smoke(5) it if he can. Well, I'll write to the Bishop of Killala; but you might have told him how sudden and unexpected my journey was though. Deuce take Lady S—-; and if I know D—-y, he is a rawboned-faced fellow, not handsome, nor visibly so young as you say: she sacrifices two thousand pounds a year, and keeps only six hundred. Well, you have had all my land journey in my second letter, and so much for that. So, you have got into ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... said the half-breed, presently, in a smooth voice that penetrated the mighty vibrations of the falls, "ez how a chap on a log could paddle roun' this yere eddy fer a deuce of a while afore he'd hev to git sucked out ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... back, you scoundrel!" and then his heavy feet sounded upon the carpet. "The deuce!" he said, in an odd, low mutter, which sounded as though he was speaking half to her, half to himself. "My lady's protege, is it? The other Pamela! Rather an improvement on Pamela, too. Not ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... him," said Rosie cheerfully. "Had the deuce of a time locating him." And the Nurse, apprising in one glance his stocky figure and heavy shoulders, his ill-at-ease arrogance, his weak, and just now sullen but not bad-tempered face, smiled ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... if you will let me insist on what I have learned from my own experience. There's nothing like having a special line of work and sticking to it vigorously. I, unfortunately, shall never do anything of any account,—but I know so well the conflict between diverging tastes. It has played the deuce with me, in all sorts of ways. At Zurich I utterly wasted my time, and I've done no better since I came back to England. Don't think me presumptuous. I only mean—well, it is so important to—to ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... in a block of traffic near the Mansion House, and rain began to fall. The two occupants of the car watched each other surreptitiously, mutually suspicious, like dogs. Scraps of talk were separated by long intervals. Mr. Prohack wondered what the deuce Softly Bishop had done that Angmering should leave him a hundred thousand pounds. He tried to feel grief for the tragic and untimely death of his old friend Angmering, and failed. No doubt the failure was due to the fact that ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... the old King's mood, And a sweet Spring freshet came Into his eyes, and his heart renewed Its love for the favored dame: But often he has been heard to declare That "he never could clearly see How, in the deuce, such a strange affair Could ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... years? She is safe enough in some Sanatorium, depend upon it. And what if she did come? Do you think, my dear good woman, that I—a sensible clear-headed general practitioner, who have found out all I know for myself—would let her play the deuce with me as she did with poor HALVARD? No, general practitioners don't do ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 11, 1893 • Various
... Scott. "Sometimes they've got manners like the President of the United States, and the next time they'll do something that'd disgrace a pirate. Take 'em all around as they go, I guess Pachuca stacks up pretty well. He's educated and comes of good folks. But how the deuce did you happen——" ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... "The deuce!" said the Englishman. "You are the man that killed the fox." A terrible scowl had darkened his face. The jealousy of sportsmen is a base passion. He hated me, this Englishman, because I had been before ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... lads," said O'Shaughnessy, in a low voice. "Our fellows are at the angle of this trench. Who the deuce can ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... rig before you tackle him.' Merritt was arrayed in all his finery, and if you'd ever seen him you'd know that that meant a lot, for when he was flush he could make Solomon in all his glory, or any other swell dresser look like a dirty deuce in a new deck. He had on a light suit with checks which were so loud they drowned the music of the orchestra, and a shirt which would make a summer sunset hide its head in disappointment. Patent leather ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... him—when he'd go on a big tear they'd fire him for a few days and then take him back. But they can't git him now—not if I can help it. A better cook never throwed dishwater over a guy-rope than that same old Mose, but—" He stopped and looked at Ford hesitantly. "Say! I hate like the deuce to tie a string on you as soon as you hit the ranch, Ford, but—if you've got anything along, you won't spring it on Mose, will you? A fellow's got to ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... his hand in his pockets and whistled reflectively. "How the deuce can I help it?" he reflectively answered, "Mother and the girls go in for high society. What'll you have? You can talk French to this fellow. Now, order up the best in the house," Alan Hawke laughed ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... she was a kind girl. She's trying to pull old Charlie up a peg or two. He's had the deuce of a facer, ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... awfully poor, refuses to paint down to the public taste. What the deuce is his name—oh! I know, Collier Pratt—do you know him, Nancy? Lived in Paris always till the war. He'll appreciate Ritz cooking at ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... his hand over his forehead. "The deuce!" he said. "That is logic perhaps. Still, sir, I think it is rather hardy in you to double America and annihilate Europe, when ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... Yet he feels he has been cheated by the fat parson who stole sovereigns from his pocket to keep him out of h——! His spiritual bones fairly ache with the leagues he has travelled, hunting up the throne of God! "Where the deuce," he mutters, "is the showman?" He can't find the lake of fire ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... "The deuce! That puts a different face on the matter. Six days! Why, that's as long as the Almighty took to make the world! Too long a ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to wonder after a while where that fellow driving the hearse was takin' us to. We'd gone out the old Bullyvard Raspail a deuce of a way, and Napoleon One showed no signs of stoppin' them horses, and I ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... us all into the deuce of a mess with your confounded coolness," said the Duke after a pause, during which he had in vain searched all his pockets for his cigar-case. Barker had watched him, and pushed an open box of Havanas across the table. But the Duke was determined to be sulky, and took no notice of the attention. ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... wooer cam down the lang glen, And sair wi' his love he did deave me; I said there was naething I hated like men, The deuce gae wi'm, to believe, believe me, The deuce ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... him groan over the wire. "Hang Josie!" says he. "See here, McCabe, I've had a deuce of a time with that case. Must have been something wrong ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... rest of the table. He appeared to be kind, she thought, and on his side he was thinking that she was a nice girl, with an attractive face and remarkable eyes. On the whole, he preferred brown eyes, though his wife's were the colour of slate. "Why the deuce did she marry that fool?" ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... the growth of. She was abashed meanwhile, however, at having appeared to weigh in the balance the place to which she had been invited; and she added as quickly as possible: "It isn't to America then?" The Countess, at this, looked sharply at Beale, and Beale, airily enough, asked what the deuce it mattered when she had already given him to understand she wanted to have nothing to do with them. There followed between her companions a passage of which the sense was drowned for her in the deepening inward hum of her mere desire to get off; though she was able to guess later ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... began, "I have a deuce of a hard time to get a tete-a-tete with you. This is the first we have had for ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... afternoon," continued Stubby, confidentially. "Usually it's pretty dull here, and all we can do is ride and hunt—play cards and quarrel. But your coming has created no end of excitement and this dance will be our red-letter day for a long time to come. The deuce of if is, however, that there are only two girls to dance with thirteen men. We limit our community to fifteen, you know; but little Ford and old Rutledge have backed down and won't have anything to do with this enterprise. I don't know why," he ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne |
