"Deviltry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... after whom were sent the daring words about the sessions and the assizes, was a year or two older than his friend, and, as Michael Clones, his servant and friend, said, "the worst and best scamp of them all"—just up to any harmless deviltry. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Strauss and Waldteufel tingled his feet; and he whirled ambassadors' wives till they were breathless and ambassadors' daughters till they no longer knew or cared where they were. He was full of subtle deviltry this night, with an undercurrent of malice toward every one and himself in particular. This would be the last affair of the kind for him, and he wanted a full memory of it. Between times he exchanged a jest or two with the chancellor or talked battles with ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... one child, a daughter, said to have been as beautiful as the mother, and as wild and reckless as the father. Out of pure deviltry, as it would seem, this girl ran away from her boarding-school in company with an unprincipled young play-actor, who afterward abandoned her. Soon after this my dear father, who had known her parents and herself, too, met and recognized her under the most painful circumstances. ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... moment of dead silence. That big youth—the terror of Linley School—was now red and dumb with amazement. His deviltry had begun, but how had the teacher seen it ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... Hill," Casanova's Confessions, the Cena Trimalchionis of Gaius Petronius, and II Samuel. From this perusal he arises with the conviction that life amid the red lights must be one stupendous whirl of deviltry, that the clerks he sees in Broadway or Piccadilly at night are out for revels that would have caused protests in Sodom and Nineveh, that the average man who chooses hell leads an existence comparable ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... yet that the hole in the wall is thar, but ef they stay long they're boun' to run acrost it. That's why I've come out lookin' fur you, an' mighty glad I am that I've found you. I'd a notion you'd take this circuit, after doin' all the deviltry ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the factory steps,—you recall, M'sieu,—she came to you,—I saw her in the dusk as she turned at the corner, a rod away, saw her and knew with some touch of deviltry the sudden way of keeping you from her, your arms from about her, your lips from hers! Oh, that I could not bear, M'sieu! Not though I died for it! So I threw my own arms about your throat—you remember, M'sieu—and whispered that for one kiss I would go and forget. ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... crowing in announcement of the coming dawn, when Simon mounted the intractable Bunch. Both were in high spirits: our hero at the idea of unrestrained license in future; and Bunch from a mesmerical transmission to himself of a portion of his master's deviltry. Simon raised himself in the stirrups, yelled a tolerably fair imitation of the Creek war-whoop, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... Captain Prescott; "and here the noble-hearted fellow has been waiting a half-hour without saying a word, while my infernal tongue has been going all the time; that tongue will be the death of me yet. Your wife is in danger, eh? The —— Shawnees at their deviltry again here. See here, men," said he, turning around, "Oonomoo's wife is in danger, and are we going to help her out or not, eh? I want to know that. Are we going to stand by and let him do it alone, when for twenty years he has worked night and day ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... on his lips, turned to the Minister: "Play him, Dewani, as you love us. There is some rare deviltry afloat." ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... themselves "the Gang," and loafed about the room of their unofficial captain, John Terry, nicknamed "the Turk," a swarthy, large-featured youth with a loud laugh, a habit of slapping people upon the shoulder, an ingenious mind for deviltry, and considerable promise as a ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... Poui-Slam-Bang an' all the head men, and they give a big feed in our honour. Roast pig an' roast duck an' stewed chicken an' all the tropical trimmin's we had, Mac, including a little barrel o' furniture polish that Bull brought ashore, labelled Three Star Hennessy on the outside an' Three Ply Deviltry inside. ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... she broke in fiercely. "Don't dare to pretend to misunderstand me. I've saved you from my people. You shan't go back to them out of spite or dare-deviltry." ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... like a human bein' this mornin'. The kids have won him. I reckon he needs that sort of cheer. Let them have him. Then after a while you fetch him out to the wheat-field. Lenore, our harvestin' is half done. Every day I've expected some trick or deviltry. But ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... gave a forlorn and indistinguishable look to everything. A spark of ruddy light glowed deep in the valley. The rocking outlines of the hills were lost in rushing darkness. At his back sounded the pathetic clatter of a dead spruce against its living neighbor, bespeaking the deviltry of woodland demons.—It was the hour which makes all that man can do seem as nothing in the mournful darkness, causing his works to vanish and be as if ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the men came tumbling down the stairs, ripe for deviltry; but for the moment here was wine to be had for the taking, everything ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... that same editor, a praiser of Rabelais, scathingly abused it and the sender. In this episode, as in many others, Mark Twain, the "bad boy" of American literature, revealed his huge delight in blasting the shams of contemporary hypocrisy. Too, there was always the spirit of Tom Sawyer deviltry in Mark's make-up that prompted him, as he himself boasted, to see how much holy indignation he could stir up ...
— 1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors • Mark Twain
... lamented and gallant Capron's flying battery of artillery, besides others—General Miles personally assumed command, and the campaign was short, sharp, brilliant and decisive. The Indians were lambasted into a semblance of order, and that personification of deviltry, Sitting Bull, given his transportation to the happy hunting grounds, but not before a score or more of brave officers and men had passes to their long reckoning. Captain George Wallace, of the 7th Cavalry; Lieutenant Mann, of the same regiment, and Lieutenant Ned Casey, of ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... but the white dust assoils 'em! Paradise without a spice of deviltry would cloy. Heavy is my pack till I meet with Jerry Abershaw, The gay Golden Farmer and the ...
— The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes
... brick and stone divisions in its interior, like small rooms or closets, evidently added by the Chinamen tenants. My companion stopped before a long, very narrow entrance, a mere longitudinal slit in the brick wall, and with a wink of infantine deviltry motioned me to look inside. I did so, and saw a room, really a cell, of fair height but scarcely six feet square, and barely able to contain a rude, slanting couch of stone covered with matting, on which lay, at a painful angle, a richly dressed Chinaman. A single ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... before he'd finished with the Black. Ha, ha, ha, ha! I can hear him still, with the sweat running off his face like oats spilling from a feed bag. I says to Paddy, 'Rub his nose a bit,' for I could see it was more nervousness with the horse than sheer deviltry. 'With what?' says Paddy, 'the hammer? Be gor! You're right, though,' says he, and with that he tries to put a twister on Diablo's nose. Holy mother! Diablo reached for him, and lifted the shirt clean off his back. Say, there was a scared Irishman, if you ever saw one in ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... after his Saturday in town, Jack concocted a piece of deviltry which was as dangerous as it was foolish. The result was that an explosion took place, and the author of the gun-powder plot had all the skin on both hands blistered. Burnett, in escaping, fell and broke his collarbone and two ribs. The house in which the affair took place caught fire, ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... when the Devil came and saw He said: "By Thine eternal law Of growth, maturity, decay, These all must quickly pass away And leave untenanted the earth Unless Thou dost establish birth"— Then tucked his head beneath his wing To laugh—he had no sleeve—the thing With deviltry did so accord, That he'd suggested to the Lord. The Master pondered this advice, Then shook and threw the fateful dice Wherewith all matters here below Are ordered, and observed the throw; Then bent His head in awful state, Confirming the decree of Fate. From every part of ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... surmised rightly, it required no vivid imagination to picture what might happen to men crossing those wide prairies with a fortune in yellow dust. But my imagination was hardly equal to the task of reconciling the fact that the evil pair had been busy at other deviltry and yet knew I carried a large sum of money and where it was concealed about my person. That brought me back to something else Rutter had told us; something that I knew—or thought I ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the graveyard showed that the canoes were thickly infested with them. They were a light gray animal, larger than the common gray squirrel, with beautiful bushy tails, which made them strikingly resemble the squirrel, but in cunning and deviltry they were much ahead of that quick-witted rodent. I have known them to empty in one night a keg of spikes in the storehouse in Yamhill, distributing them along the stringers of the building, with apparently no other purpose than amusement. We anticipated great fun ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... for his dinner and nimbly chased an East-side ferry-bound car. He laughed in spite of himself at Emil's unflagging deviltry. "He is a credit to Leah's Polish blood and my Austrian nurture," mused Braun. "The young wretch might be dangerous, too. He must know nothing of my ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... fear of successful denial, that Roman Catholicism is a power which withers the hopes and ambitions of any nation, which is so unlucky as to fall under her tyrannical tread, as Romanism is a power for evil, unequaled by any creed of deviltry and diabolical cunning ever conceived by ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... Chiquita. "When it comes to deviltry, Don Felipe has yet to meet his match. But as I was about to say: Six months after the marriage, Don Felipe deserted Pepita, then the child was born, and knowing that he would unhesitatingly make way with it should he learn of its existence, Joaquin and I took it to Onava, where ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... time. As they passed into the lounging room Shirley led his guest past another small mahogany clock. Again the sharp, anxious glance at the progress of the minutes. He was convinced by now that some deviltry was being perfected on schedule time. He began to worry over his little assistant on the floor high above: perhaps he would not be able to cope with the plotters, after all. Yet, Chen was wiry, cunning, and needed no diagrams ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... preponderance of fat old men and vacuous looking young girls of the type designated on Broadway as "chickens." Here and there a slumming party was to be seen—elderly women and ill-at-ease men, staring curiously at the diners and dancers; young married couples who seemed to be enjoying their self-thrilled deviltry and new-found freedom. An orchestra of negro musicians were rattling away on banjos, mandolins, and singing obligatos in deep-voiced improvisations. The drummer and the cymbalist were the busiest of all; ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... was the most efficient and dreaded chief of all who have ever been at the head of the Kiowa nation. Ever restlessly active in ordering or conducting merciless forays against an exposed frontier, he was the very incarnation of deviltry in his determined hatred of the whites, and ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... spy!" thought Fandor. "Never set eyes on the fellow before, nor heard his voice, either! Now, whom shall I meet to-night at this cursed rendezvous, and what is the business? Some traitorous deviltry, of course!" ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... begins to look like it," responded Alfred. "There is some sort of deviltry around wherever we have happened to be ever since the ...
— The Boy Volunteers with the Submarine Fleet • Kenneth Ward
... Yet the advocate of Lynch Law pictures this humble fellow, this man who is afraid to attempt to defend his own home, as a reckless dare-devil, keeping the whites in constant terror. How incompatible these two traits of character. No; it is not the reckless dare deviltry of the Negro that terrorizes the South, but the conscience of the white man whose wrong treatment of a defenseless people fills him with fear and intensifies his hatred. He is determined to fill to overflow his cup of iniquity. Like Macbeth, ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... that you think you know? I'm afraid you've kinda taken it for granted I'd be mixed up in any deviltry you happened to hear about. I've got in bad with you—I know that—but just the same, I hate to be accused of everything that takes place in the country. All this is sure interesting news to me. Whereabouts was they taken from? And when, and where to? ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... exemplar of the more backward nations. Within, as well as without, the eternal rapping of knuckles and proclaiming of new austerities goes on. The American, save in moments of conscious and swiftly lamented deviltry, casts up all ponderable values, including even the values of beauty, in terms of right and wrong. He is beyond all things else, a judge and a policeman; he believes firmly that there is a mysterious power in law; he supports and embellishes ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... walls were wrapped in flames! But he held his ground and went on reading, never once looking behind him. Just before daybreak the Princess rushed to her coffin—then the fire seemed to go out immediately, and all the deviltry vanished! ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... the longshoreman. "So that's it, is it? I guessed you was up to some deviltry!"—this to Johnnie. "And let me tell you somethin': none of them crazy idears 'round here! D' y' understand?" (This was how much ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... hall. She left shortly after you went, and she means some deviltry. There's a jealous fiend in that girl. I watched her eyes when they followed you and Mary ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... of these festivals as practised by the Hos in January, when the granaries are full of wheat and the natives "full of deviltry:" ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... sweet pulp of the fruits which she loved, and which she devoured in great quantities. In one week she had grown so tremendously that she was as big as a meat platter. The Rev. Mr. Feathercock no longer dared to go near this monster, from whose eyes seemed to glisten a look of deviltry. And, always and forever, apparently devoured by a ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... apart, for the son of the Great Chief must not run away. And I marked that the North Wind had two great ornamental daubs like shutter-fastenings painted on his cheeks. I sniffed preparation, too, on his followers, and I was sure they were getting ready for some new deviltry. I handed the note to Mr. Brady through the crack of the door that he vouchsafed to me, and when he had slammed and bolted me out, I ran into the street and stood for some time behind the trunk of a big hickory, watching the followers of the North ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... said at last, under a growing deviltry, "you seem to be a favorite. Now I don't think you're worth eight hundred ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... head. "Not within a dozen leagues. But stop a bit—it is just possible that Aunt Jo can manage the matter. Aunt Jo is the sister of my wife's mother, and one of the cleverest witches in the country. She stands very high in her profession and is thoroughly schooled in every branch of deviltry; and with the exception of my wife's mother, I can think of no person whose society is less desirable. But one day in each year she takes a day off, during which she is as affable and benevolent an old dame as you can possibly imagine; really, you would ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... these hyar mountings er not, but I knows thet the Lord didn't 'low fer men ter live blind, not seein' no beauty in nothin'; ner not feelin' nothin' but hate an' meanness—ner studyin' 'bout nothin' but deviltry. There hain't no better folks nowhar then my folks, an' thar hain't no meaner folks nowhar then them damned Hollmans, but thar's times when hit 'pears ter me thet the Lord Almighty hain't plumb tickled ter death ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... false mustaches, confetti, balloons and all the noise-swelling devices ever bred of deviltry, hawked their wares along the curbs, and the furs of women glittered with atoms of ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... necks, and, and—well, Captain Tabor be not averse to somewhat of risk; it gives a savour to life." So saying, he rolled his bright-blue eyes at me and Captain Watson with such utter good-nature and dare-deviltry as I ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... was not a coward as men go; but he was feeling horribly afraid just then. The deviltry of the scene he had just witnessed had fairly unmanned him. The red and black setting of the room had a suggestion of Oriental cruelty in its very garishness. Desmond looked from Strangwise, cool and ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... had entered into her. She was luring him to pursuit; and like the whirling of a torch in a dark place, the knowledge first dazzled, and then drew him. All his pulses beat in a swift crescendo. There was a considerable mixture of Irish deviltry in Bunny Brian's veins, and anything in the nature of a challenge fired him. He uttered a wild whoop that filled the eerie place with ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... particularly hideous, being still of parent stock. But these creatures were tawny and magnificent, with the most superb figures, the most remarkable swing, that ever a man had looked upon; and glorious eyes, sparkling with deviltry. On their heads the white linen was wound to a high point and surmounted by an immense hat, caught up at one side with a flower. They wore for clothing a double skirt of coloured linen, and a white fichu, open in a point to the waist and leaving their gold-coloured arms quite bare. They moved constantly, ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... black curls were a bit dishevelled, and the excitement of the night had added to the vivid colouring of her rouged lips and cheeks. Her body was sleek and sinuous in its silken vesture; arms and shoulders were startlingly white; and when she turned, facing Aldous, her black eyes flashed fires of deviltry ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... sheer deviltry he waited until Mr. Jenkins had labored for a second time through the opening periods. Again he allowed him to get as far as "I charge and require you both-," before ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... one on board knew of his mission, not even the captain. On the passenger list he was merely Dirk Halliday, an inconspicuous commercial traveler for Interspace Products. Yet someone had manifestly penetrated his disguise and was eager to remove him from the path of whatever deviltry ...
— Pirates of the Gorm • Nat Schachner
... visits; of strolls in the dusk of evenings on unfrequented streets; of little suppers after the opera; of all the small things that deviltry can suggest and malignity distort. Wickersham cared little for having his name associated with that of any one, and he was certainly not going to be more careful for another's name than for his own. He had grown more reckless since his return, but it had not injured him with his set. It flattered ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... were possible for me to put down the gesture, the grace of language, the lightness of touch, the deliberate choice of one word over another, with which this talk was flowered; but I can, at least, state that it had to me a living kind of deviltry in it that raised me out of my surroundings, as a play or great music might have done, or the ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... the time comes for him to make a mark in the world, and then he buckles on the harness and goes to the front, and becomes successful, and then those who said he would bring up in State Prison, remember that he always was a mighty smart lad, and they never tire of telling of some of his deviltry when he was a boy, though they thought he was pretty tough at the time. This book is respectfully dedicated to boys, to the men who have been boys themselves, to the girls who like the boys, and to the mothers, bless them, who like both the boys and ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... homesickness it was all a comforting inducement to sleep and pleasant dreams. But somewhere there was a wrong note in his anticipations tonight. Stampede Smith slipped away from him, and Rossland took his place. And Keok, laughing, changed into Mary Standish with tantalizing deviltry. It was like Keok, Alan thought ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... away with it! Boys, take a long, lastin' look, for the pack o' you're goin' out o' that door inside of ten counts! God bless 'um! Just look at that there Jap get-up! Sure as God made big fish to eat the little fellows, Peter Moore's up to some newfangled deviltry, or I'm a lobster!" ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... prizes of life always come to those who press resolutely on, undaunted by fatigue and discouragement. Another of your father's failings was probably due to the fact that he was never a small boy and thus had no chance to work the deviltry out of his system. You yourselves have been abundantly blessed in this regard. I think I may say that here, in our Normal Academy, you have had an almost ideal playground to work off those boyish high spirits, to perpetrate those mischievous pranks that the world expects ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... "72 for 5,000," and got it, I saw a quick flash of pain shoot across his face, and realised that it probably meant he was nearing the end of my last order. I sized it up that there was deviltry of more than usual significance behind this selling movement; that Barry Conant must have unlimited orders to sell and smash. My final order of fifty thousand brought our total up to one hundred and fifty thousand shares, a large amount ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... a spirit of deviltry had entered once more into Long Jim and his mates. A tactless remark on the part of one of the deputies had set alight once more the smouldering fire of resentment which the cowboys had all the time felt against them. At a word from Long Jim they were taken ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... tiny bulb of incandescence in its centre. This blinding atom of white heat lit up a hand hardly moving, a pen continually poised, over a disc of snowy paper; and on the other side, something that lay handy on the table, reflecting the light in its plated parts. It was Raffles at his latest deviltry. He had not heard me, and he could not see; but for that matter he never looked up from his task. Sometimes his face bent over it, and I could watch its absolute concentration. The brow was furrowed, and the mouth pursed, yet there was a hint of the same ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... and Frank was not a little astonished to observe among them Bruce Browning, a big, strong, lazy sophomore, a fellow who was known to be a great hand to plan deviltry which was usually carried into execution by his friends. As for Browning, he was not given to exerting himself when ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... happiness consisted in knowing that he was a solid, trustworthy business man, of undoubted years and discretion, whom no human being could blackmail. Now, as he fled from the odor of respectability he yearned to wallow in deviltry, to permit his soul, so long cramped in virtue, to expand ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... the little business houses around the square were closed. There was a litter of glass on the plank sidewalk, where proprietors stood gloomily looking at broken windows, or were setting about replacing them with boards after the hurricane of deviltry that swept the town the night past. Those who were abroad in the sunlight of early morning making their purchases for the day, moved with trepidation, putting their feet down quietly, hastening on ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... or lover of beauty makes the sex emotion particularly inflammable. Other emotions also may be unwisely stimulated by art. In times of international friction, war-songs, "patriotic" speeches, or martial processions may arouse an unreasoning jingo spirit. The love of deviltry is fostered in boys by many of the penny novels, by sensational "movies" and newspaper "stories"; a famous detective has said that seventy per cent of the crimes committed by boys under twenty are traceable ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... beneath one roof to be cured of their crimes by indifferent or threatening and hostile task-masters and irresponsible discipline-mongers, and by association with one another—a regimen of hell to extirpate deviltry! The twentieth century solution of the problem of evil, unaltered in ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... late and talked. She was only a dear little child, now, with a bit of the mother in her. She was really affectionate to me, more so than ever before, and sometimes I turned cold as I thought of how her affection might have been twisted into deviltry had it not been so strangely brought home to me that she was a child, with a good deal of the mother in her. I turned cold as I thought of her playing with her doll while I had been out on the prairie laying poison plots against her innocence, ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... and a rough-looking individual broke from cover and ran away through the underbrush as fast as he could go. It was too dark to follow and Locke hastened his steps to the house, fearing some new deviltry on the part of the Automaton or ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... of the lumber business. Whereupon Mr. J. Augustus Redell, of the West Coast Trading Company, discovered the unprotected condition of the Ricks Lumber & Logging Company and promptly, in sheer wanton deviltry, proceeded to sew Cappy Ricks up on an order for ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... by the rail watching the play of the moonlight upon the gently rolling waters. He was half hidden by a davit, so that two men who approached along the deck did not see him, and as they passed Tarzan caught enough of their conversation to cause him to fall in behind them, to follow and learn what deviltry they were up to. He had recognized the voice as that of Rokoff, and had seen that ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... girl always suspecting a fellow of being up to some deviltry. Maybe you think we'll keep on feeding your old pigs if you treat us ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... as was that of India, the practice of demonology, witchcraft, etc., must have been an early factor. But, while this is true, it is clearly impossible to postulate therefrom that the hymns recording all this array of cursing, deviltry, and witchcraft are themselves early. The further forward one advances into the labyrinth of Hindu religions the more superstitions, the more devils, demons, magic, witchcraft, and uncanny things generally, does he find. Hence, while any one superstitious ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... interrupted. "I see this—that they are here, that there are a dozen or more of them, and that they are ready for any deviltry. What more can we find out by ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... looked curiously at her. "I believe you've got some deviltry in your head, Sissy. Now, you mind me and let your sister alone. There! I'm all right now. I can go all right the rest of the way when I'm once started down your infernal stairs. I ought to charge your father ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... has done it out of sheer deviltry, just to hurt the trade of Luebeck—of Luebeck, to which he owes such ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... about over; but as a matter of fact it had scarcely begun. To chronicle on paper that a certain person on a certain day rode a certain bronco for the first time sounds commonplace; but to one who has seen the deviltry lurking in those wild prairie ponies' eyes, who knows their dogged fighting disposition, the reality ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... fellers—he wouldn't to they was Greasers—breakin' through the shrubbery to the back of the house. That was while Stewart was ridin' out to the mesa. Then this lad seen your servants all runnin' down the hill toward the village. Now, heah's the way Gene figgers. There sure was some deviltry down along the railroad, an' Pat Hawe trailed bandits up to the ranch. He hunts hard an' then all to onct he quits. Stewart says Pat Hawe wasn't scared, but he discovered signs or somethin', or got wind in some strange way that there was in the gang of bandits some fellers he ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... Bud, s-t-a-y with him," shouted Parenthesis, as the first of the cowboys pitched on a bucking horse past the chuck-wagon, the rider using quirt and spurs until he got the bronco into a lope. The other boys followed, each cayuse apparently inventing some new sort of deviltry. ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... these stiffs naturally drew close together. Their common hatred and fear of the afterguard fused them into a unit. By the time we were a month at sea, the stiffs, like the squareheads, were in a most dangerous temper, and ripe for any deviltry. ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... been doing? or rather, what that he had been doing was he to be held to account for? Why should the colonel so eagerly ask where they could reach Blake? Time was when Sancho flattered himself that there was no deviltry going on in Arizona, except such as originated with the Indians, in which he had not at least the participation of full knowledge, yet here came two officials, hastening by stage instead of marching with military deliberation and escort, ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... for both, though the strength of the jaws taxed his muscles to their utmost. Finally, he strewed leaves, and bent grass, until no least gleam of metal betrayed the masked peril of the trail. Plutina, sick with the treacherous deviltry of the device, heard the grunt of satisfaction with which Hodges contemplated his finished work. Forthwith, he picked up his rifle, thrust the ax-helve within his belt, and ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... the heavy mesquite below, Sanders unfolded his proposed plan of operations. Bob listened, and as Dave talked there came into Hart's eyes dancing imps of deviltry. He gave a subdued whoop of delight, slapped his dusty white hat on his thigh, and vented his enthusiasm ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... allers is folks in every town that's jest like the Sadducees in old times: they won't believe in angel nor sperit, no way you can fix it; and ef things is seen and done in a house, why, they say, it's 'cause there's somebody there; there's some sort o' deviltry or trick about it. ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... and trenches in a half-moon from the Chain Bridge at Georgetown to Alexandria, and you'd see the seminary in its pretty park, and, belike, Gineral McClellan in the chapel cupola, a-spying through his spy-glass what deviltry them rebel batteries is hatching on the hill ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... beer to begin with, knocking the necks from the bottles as if that act alone lent the necessary air of deviltry to the whole proceedings. A small, very black Nyamwesi came with brush and pan and groped on the floor all night for the splinters of glass, sleeping between times in a corner until a fresh volley of breaking bottle necks awoke ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... ever saw. Any other tribe of Indians this side of the Rocky Mountains would not have left one of you to have told the tale, and it is just such darned fools as that man that stir up the Indians, to do so much deviltry." ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan
... more often the bird, like my nighthawk, does it to please himself. There was no mate in sight when this nighthawk did his sky coasting, nor did any appear afterward. It was after the mating season and I think the bird did it in just pure joy in his own dare-deviltry. He liked to see how near he could come to breaking his neck without actually doing it. In the same way a male woodcock will keep up his shadow-dancing antics long after the nesting season is over, ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... elder man a ferment of bitterness was working toward the ends of deranged deviltry—and its influence was all secret so that its tincture of insanity left no mark upon ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... that eye, before which the pale Senate once quailed With humour and deviltry shone, And the voice which the heart of the patriot hailed, Had mirth in its ...
— Humour of the North • Lawrence J. Burpee
... hand, was not so philosophical. As he strolled down the valley, his mind was deeply agitated. It seemed clear to him that a grave question had been propounded at the council, and it could only have originated through some deviltry on the part of the evil spirits of the Turquoise clan, Tyope and the old Naua. This made him very angry, and he vowed within himself that when the time came he would take a very active part ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... went Window-Hopping for an hour. After making Mind Purchases of about $8000 worth of washable Finery edged with Lace, a spirit of Deviltry seized them. ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... smiling, and tearing the paper in small pieces; "it is true, she is a diavolezza, but one of the most amiable and charming sort, and perhaps ere long I shall, notwithstanding her deviltry, consider her an angel, and believe her charming comedy to be entirely true and sincere. But this is no time for thinking of such things. The grave affairs of life require our exclusive attention. Kockeritz, then, has been convinced, and even ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... deviltry he braved; 'N' scores an' scores of white men's lives he saved. Just for that, his name should be engraved. But it won't be! U. S. gov'ment dreads Men who're taller ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... halfway up on the stern seat. His mouth opened. His face wrinkled. He seemed groping for the meaning of a joke at which he knew he ought to laugh. Suddenly from his lips in surprising volume, raucous, rasping, yet with a certain rollicking deviltry fit to set the head a-tilt, ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... week, and there are frequent couriers and trains, but they don't keep a lookout for pony tracks. The chances are that their crossing would not be discovered for twenty-four hours or so, and as to the news being wired to us here, those reds would never give us a chance. The first news we got of their deviltry would be that they had cut the line ten or twelve miles this side of Laramie as they came ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... a man named Havens. He had a reputation as a bad man, and I reckon he deserved it—if brand blotting, mail rustling, and shooting citizens are the credentials to win that title. Hard pressed on account of some deviltry, he drifted into this country, and was made welcome by those living here. The best we had was his. He was fed, outfitted, and kept safe from the law that was ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... Lost in ferns and fragrant grasses, Hovered o'er by timid wings, Where the wood-duck lightly passes, Where the wild bee holds her sweets,— Epicurean retreats, Fit for thee, and better than Fearful spoils of dangerous man. In thy fat-jowled deviltry Friar Tuck shall live in thee; Thou mayst levy tithe and dole; Thou shalt spread the woodland cheer, From the pilgrim taking toll; Match thy cunning with his fear; Eat, and drink, and have thy fill; Yet remain an ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... Apaches agin the world for shrewd deviltry," exclaimed Hardynge, unable to suppress his admiration even in the moment which told him of his own increased personal danger. "By some hook or crook, the Old Boy only knows what, they've found out my game, and are after me. ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... quizzing shank of a son, Jefferson, who lived upon quinine, ague and deviltry; and there were the two daughters, Fanchon and Virginia. The latter was three years older than Fanchon, as dark as Fanchon was fair, though not nearly so pretty: a small, good-natured, romping sprite of a girl, who had handed down ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... here's a soul!" he cried. "'Tis a wench o' spirit, all hell-fire spirit and deviltry, rot me! Go to't, lass, drink hearty—here's you and me agin world and damn all, says I. Let me perish!" quoth he, when he had drunk the toast and viewing Joanna with something of respect. "Here's never ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... To that remorseless creature, Steve Gillis, this was a golden opportunity for deviltry of a kind that delighted his soul. This is the story, precisely as Gillis himself told it to the writer of these annals ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... whole straight ahead, ma'am. The Lord knows it all, an' there've been times I couldn't ha' done it, an' wouldn't ha' done it if I could ha' helped it. For, you see, in spite of the deviltry I never quite got rid of the sense that God sat lookin' at me, an' that, I do suppose, came from what stuck to me, whether or no, in the school. An' you'd wonder that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... the slime lies under a clear stream running through an earthy meadow. Our careless and thoughtless English use of the word into which the Greek "Diabolos" has been shortened, blinds us in general to the meaning of "Deviltry," which, in its essence, is nothing else than slander, or traitorhood;—the accusing and giving up of good. In particular it has blinded us to the meaning of Christ's words, "Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a traitor and accuser?" and ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... from Ori-a-Ori to Matatini, had the fullest confidence that Tufetufetu had shown them a miracle, and that it was not evil; but to the American and European missionaries the Umuti was deviltry, the magic of Simon Magus and his successors, This was shown clearly in the statement of Deacon Taumihau of Raiatea, which I give in Tahitian ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... the good-natured and well-intentioned efforts of the doctor to deceive them and to cover up the shortcomings of some frail mortal. Many a poor fellow has to leave this world under a cloud of mistrust and a bad odor of past deviltry to which he is not entitled, and suffer all this in addition to all his physical ills, owing to his having been ornamented through life with an annoying prepuce,—the luckless heritage of having been born a Christian. ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... woman who called herself Madame Welstoke. She was an evil woman, and of the worst of such, because she was one who never seemed bad at first, and then, little by little, as she showed herself, you could get used to her deviltry and for each step you could find an apology or excuse, until at last the thing she had done yesterday seemed all right to-day and you were ready for some new ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... of flame and deviltry, happiest when rocketing through space, the car beneath the fugitives seemed to bound in the air as it whirred with a higher and higher hum of wheels and gears, and the air drove by in torrential force, leaving a cloud of smoke and dust in ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... general opinion, to have been born with a silver spoon in one's mouth. It was indeed to have been born to social dignity, fortune, courage, and more than the usual allowance of good looks. And though the fortune was lavishly spent, the courage sometimes betrayed into a rather theatrical dare-deviltry, and the good looks prone to deteriorate in style, there was always the social position left, and this was a matter of the deepest importance in Delisleville. The sentiments of Delisleville were ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... don't understand it. It's nothing but a piece of military deviltry. Why, my innocent sir, Armstrong's confinement is only a sham—it doesn't mean anything—Cleveland told me so himself—he will be free to-night. I shouldn't wonder if they were drinking and carousing together now. Bless you, Metcalf, it's only ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Love in '76 - An Incident of the Revolution • Oliver Bell Bunce
... the rest, flayed the dead Huguenots and draped their houses bravely with Protestant skins." Thereupon the Baron des Adrets, the Huguenot commander in that region, sent one of his lieutenants, Dupuy-Montbrun, to avenge that deviltry. At the end of a three-days' siege Mornas was conquered again, and then came the vengeance: "for which the castle of Mornas, whereof the battlements overhung a precipice falling sheer two hundred feet to broken rocks below, offered great advantages." In a grave and orderly fashion, the survivors ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... Sea can generate much deviltry to a square mile. The calm of death and the burn of perdition are in its bosom. Cholera, glutted with victims, steals to his couch in the China Sea; and since it is the pool of a thousand unclean rivers, the sins of Asia find a hiding-place there. It has ended for all time the ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... thinks I'm mad, working with such outlandish deviltry. But, curse the thing, I have set out to do it and I am not going to ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... forces have become, and can observe the lack of troops, forces, and defense from which we suffer. Thus they may dare to interfere, and can bring to these islands any enemy or enemies whatsoever, who are covetous of the islands; or they may plan some alliance and deviltry with the natives. The latter being aggrieved, querulous, and dissatisfied can be moved by their persuasions, or inclined and persuaded toward their traffic, modes, and customs of more gain, comfort, and liberty, with less subjection, oppression, and ill-treatment, than ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair
... visiting the La Rosita mine was a rather vague one. His thought had naturally associated Bill Lacy with whatever form of deviltry had brought Beaton to the neighbourhood of Haskell, and he felt convinced firmly that this special brand of deviltry had some direct connection with the disappearance of Frederick Cavendish. Just what the connection between these people might prove to be was still ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... them things from the boys and that somehow or other all those gold trinkets and contraptions got found under his closet floor, and I wanter tell you, Doctor, that this Teeny-bits didn't do it and that them two bad birds, Campbell and Bassett, was at the bottom of all this deviltry, and there ain't been two sich underhanded, reckless, good-for-nothin' fellers in this school sence I took position here twenty ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... was planning for us to use our canteens in the preserve. That is lion country and there are long distances between springs. This is jungle below us and there is a source there I think we can safely tap. But first I must find Nymani and prove to him that this is truly deviltry of a ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... started slowly, pausing, rapt, after each few works. As line followed line the room became quiet save for the click of the machine, the planters eyeing each other, waiting impatiently for disclosure of the new deviltry his whole attitude betokened. Pausing after each few lines to seek inspiration at the roots of his thick tumbled hair, he ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... Rivenoak—for so I hear 'em tarm you—This is plain English, enough, though spoken in Iroquois. I understand all you mean, now, and must say it out-devils even Mingo deviltry! No doubt, 'twould be easy enough to go back and tell the Muskrat that I had got away from you, and gain some credit, ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... What,' he broke out violently again, 'what was he doing there in a cemetery after dark? Do you think that beastly Frenchman would have played such a trick on Craik here? Would he have tried his little game on me? Deviltry be it, if you prefer the word, and all deference to you, Mrs Lawford. But I know this—a couple of hundred years ago they would have burnt a man at the stake for less than a tenth of this. Ask Craik here. I don't know how, and I don't know when: his mother, I've ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... In sheer deviltry, Cummings did likewise, followed by Cook, and gave chase to the flying horseman. It was nearly dawn. The gray light was brightening the landscape, and, observing his game more closely, Cummings saw something familiar in his form; and when he ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... you think, is the sole motive to pains and hazard, deception and deviltry, in this world. How much money did the devil ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... to know that she's up to some deviltry—her and that Maxey Melcher. They've got a photographer and witnesses. Your brother is one ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach |
