"Twist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "if you breathe one line of that stuff on this journey I shall throw you into the river myself—cheerfully." She nodded vigorous approval of her own sentiments, and her contrary hair seized the opportunity to tumble down again in resentment of impatient fingers. "Oh, Robbie Belle, come and twist this up for me, won't you? We shall be late for the train. I don't believe we care for ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... two of which were quite dead, but the others kept on flapping their wings heavily, their beautiful coppery bronze plumage gleaming brightly in the sun, till a heavy blow or two gave them their quietus, when the Indians began to twist up some of the grass, to tie the birds' legs together tightly so that a couple of the fierce-looking fellows could hang them across their ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... do it a dozen times, if ye aint satisfied. There aint no Yank ever raised on pumpkin pie that can stand ag'in that grapevine twist." ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... young is completed in a few days or weeks, to have been spread over thousands of generations during the development of these fish, those usually surviving whose eyes retained more and more of the position into which the young fish tried to twist them [italics mine], the change becomes intelligible." {261} When it was said by Professor Ray Lankester—who knows as well as most people what Lamarck taught— that this was "flat Lamarckism," ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... was a weary set-out for that. Go thy ways, Avena, and stand not staring at me. I'm neither a lovesome young damsel nor a hobgoblin, that thou shouldst set eyes on me thus. Three ells of red samitelle, and two ounces of violet silk this hue—and a bit of gold twist shall harm no man. Amphillis, my maid, thou art not glued to the chamber floor like thy mistress; go thou and take thy pleasure to see the pedlars' packs. Thou hast ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... social hints and glimpses, with many a covert wise suggestion, like Miss Austin's "Emma." It may shew up a vital truth or a life-long mistake, like Miss Edgeworth's "Helen," or open out new natural scenes like the "Adventures of a Phaeton"; or life scenes, like "Oliver Twist"; or be so full of frolic and fun and sharp common sense, that the mere laughter of it does you good "like a medicine." Witness "Christie Johnstone," and Miss Carlen's "John." All such books are utterly helpful, and leave you ...
— Tired Church Members • Anne Warner
... apostles should slander him and misconstrue his letter to his disadvantage and to their own advantage. Such snakes in the grass are equal to anything. They will pervert words spoken from a sincere heart and twist them to mean just the opposite of what they were intended to convey. They are like spiders that suck venom out of sweet and fragrant flowers. The poison is not in the flowers, but it is the nature of the spider to turn what is good and wholesome ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... figures they work in those small webs, are generally uniform, but sometimes they diversify them on both sides. The Choktah weave shot-pouches which have raised work inside and outside. They likewise make turkey feather blankets with the long feathers of the neck and breast of that large fowl—they twist the inner end of the feathers very fast into a strong double thread of hemp, or the inner bark of the mulberry tree, of the size and strength of coarse twine, as the fibres are sufficiently fine, and they work it in manner of ...
— Prehistoric Textile Art of Eastern United States • William Henry Holmes
... said Trevelyan, when the third twist up the mountain had been overcome, "that people talk about me and my wife. It is a part of the punishment for ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... Perhaps that may have been one of the reasons why, by Jowett's advice, the See of Southminster was offered to its present occupant. The Bishop's mouth, though it spoke of an indomitable will, had a certain twist of the lip, his deep-set, benevolent eyes had a certain twinkle which made persons like Lord Newhaven and Hester hail him at once as an ally, but which ought to have been a danger-signal to some of his clerical brethren—to ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... to trifle wid a poor man's feelin's in that way, especially in regard to his stummick, which, wid me, is a tinder point. Howsever, it's all right, so I'll light another o' thim cigarettes. They're not bad things after all, though small an' waik at the best for a man as was used to twist an' a black pipe since he ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... one of her hands, but she put both behind her back. At this repulse the young gentleman winced, then smiled gravely, then pleasantly,—and then with a whimsical upward twist to ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... that experience I confess that I'm a little suspicious of all kinds of mud banks. They're the easiest things to strike up an acquaintance with, and a little the hardest to say goodbye to, of anything I ever met. Give her a little twist to the left, Gusty. That place dead ahead don't strike me as the channel. That's the ticket. I guess we missed another slam into a waiting mud bank. Now I'll take the wheel ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... their bags and take out gold and silver. They twist it up in a handkerchief which they give ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... compass in the other one. It's going to rain, too. Here, let me do it," he added rather tactlessly, as he closed the little telescope and forced its smaller end down into the longest of the big glove fingers. "Twist the top of it and turn the edges over, see?" he added, doing it himself, "and it's watertight. I can make a watertight stopple for a bottle with a long strip of paper, but you got to know how to wind it," he added, with clumsy ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... Sir Harry, giving a meditative twist to his black moustache, 'that missionary fellow. I was going to ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... all the workings of his peculiar mania. He thinks everybody is plotting to keep him from Mrs. Robinson. Faced at every turn with the evidence of this lady's complete indifference, he gives it all a lunatic twist to prove the contrary. He takes the strangest people into his confidence, John Brown, the sexton, and the Robinsons' coachman. Queer flames of lucidity dart here and there through this madness: "The probability of her becoming free to give me herself ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... read the newly-arrived volume. The winds of this uncertain season were snarling in the chimneys, and drops of rain spat themselves into the fire, revealing plainly that the young man's room was not far enough from the top of the house to admit of a twist in the flue, and revealing darkly a little more, if that social rule-of-three inverse, the higher in lodgings the lower in pocket, were applicable here. However, the aspect of the room, though homely, was cheerful, a somewhat contradictory group of furniture ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... And he made the hell of a rumpus, and sent away Kit to prison in a twinky; and I believe he would have been hanged: for when two squires lay their heads together, they do not much matter law, you know; or else they twist the law to their own ends, I cannot exactly say which; but it is much at one when the poor fellow's breath is out ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... gate she dismounted without ever missing a note, gave the warped stake a certain twist and jerk which loosened the wire loop so that she could slip it easily over the post, passed through and dragged the gate with her, dropping it flat upon the ground beside the trail. There was no stock anywhere in the coulee, and she would save a little ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... substance, fashion a duck with ducklings on a pond, a lamb curled up asleep, and a couched lion with shaggy head resting upon his fore-paws. We watched her press beads of proper size and color into the eye sockets; skilfully finish the base upon which each figure lay; then twist a lump of butter into a square of fine muslin, and deftly squeeze, until it crinkled through the meshes in form of fleece for the lamb's coat, then use a different mesh to produce the strands for the lion's mane and the tuft for the ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... work in tranquillity." He knew that he was fighting the battle which every artist of his type had had to fight since time began. In his intellectual life he passed through a period of storm and stress, when he felt "the twist and cross of life", but he emerged into a state where belief overmasters doubt and he knew that he knew. He was cheerful in the presence of death, which he held off for eight years by sheer force of will; at last, when he had ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... upon the stove with a little crash, and, looking at him in a desperate anxiety, began to twist her dainty apron between her fingers without any consciousness ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... slotting, and shaping tools, twist drills, mill picks, scythes, circular cutters, engravers' tools, surgical cutlery, circular saws for cutting metals, bevel and other sections for turret lathes. ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... long serpents twist And twine, twist and twine, A riotously beautiful design Whose elements consist Of eloquent spirals, fair and fine, Embracing cranes and lions, who exist Seemingly free, yet tangled in that ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Marjorie Allen Seiffert
... found it no easy matter to secure him. With his long sinewy arms and his wiry frame, he shook himself clear of them again and again, and it was only when his breath had failed him that the two, torn and panting, were able to twist round his wrists, and so secure him. They had hardly won their pitiful victory, however, before a stern voice and a sword flashing before their eyes, compelled them to release their ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of the head, making the two faces yet more distinct from each other. He has quickly arranged the back of his dress to look like the front of a person, and he acts, first presenting the one person to his spectators, then the other. He makes you even imagine he has four arms, so cleverly can he twist round his arm and gracefully fan what is in reality the back of ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton
... you'll take to the work. If you do you ought to stand a good chance of dying a rich man, and you'll be comfortably off the day you hand that paper to my partner. Not a word now, not a word. I know what you want to say. Twist your lips into a smile again. Look as if you were happy whatever you feel, and when all's said and done you ought to be happy. Whatever the end of it may be we'll get our bellies full of fighting to-day, and what has life got to give a man better ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... the marriage took place at La Rochelle on the 24th of March, 1571. "Madame Jacqueline wore, on this occasion," says a contemporary chronicler, "a skirt in the Spanish fashion, of black gold-tissue, with bands of embroidery in gold and silver twist, and, above, a doublet of white silver-tissue embroidered in gold, with large diamond-buttons." She was, nevertheless, at that moment almost as poor as the German arquebusiers who escorted her litter; for an edict issued by the Duke of Savoy on the 31st of January, 1569, caused her the loss of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... moment the canoes appeared, a long, unbroken string, led by Haukemah. In the bow sat the chief's son, a lad of nine, wielding his little paddle skilfully, already intelligent to twist the prow sharply away from submerged rocks, learning to be a canoe-man so that in the time to come he might go on the ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... its very nature odious to me. I know that much may be said in its favor—that drainage and gas- pipes come easier to such a shape, and that ground can be better economized. Nevertheless, I prefer a street that is forced to twist itself about. I enjoy the narrowness of Temple Bar and the misshapen curvature of Picket Street. The disreputable dinginess of Hollowell Street is dear to me, and I love to thread my way up the Olympic into Covent Garden. Fifth Avenue in New York is as grand as paint and glass can make ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... his head, whose venom falls upon his face drop by drop. His wife Siguna sits by his side and catches the drops as they fall, in a cup; but when she carries it away to empty it, the venom falls upon Loki, which makes him howl with horror, and twist his body about so violently that the whole earth shakes, and this ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... their paddles straight down into the water with a strong backward twist. The stout wood bent and cracked. The canoe stopped short and the voyageurs leaped ashore to be swallowed up in the crowd that swarmed ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... leash. Quiet! Quiet, puppy! Everything is coming your way; that's the beauty of patience; great thing, patience!" He took the leader; the dog sprang from the rumble. "Now, my friend, look at me! No, don't twist and squirm and scramble; look me square in the eye; so! ... Now we know each ether and we respect each other—because you are going to be a good puppy ... ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... in 1794, Vol. VI, page 111, I find an account of one Quackensalber, who gave a new twist to the fire-eating industry by making a "High Pitch" at the fairs and on street corners and exhibiting feats of fire-resistance, washing his hands and face in melted tar, pitch and brimstone, in order to attract a crowd. He then strove to sell ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... the introduction; now for the speech. From this point forward I shall draw largely upon the book but shall so turn and twist what the doctor says as to make it seem my own. With something of a flourish, I shall tell how in the year 1856 a young chemist, named Perkin, while trying to produce quinine synthetically, hit upon the ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... of another person, we naturally shrink and draw back our own leg or our own arm; and when it does fall, we feel it in some measure and are hurt by it as well as the sufferer. The mob, when they are gazing at a dancer on the slack rope, naturally writhe and twist and balance their own bodies as they see him do, and as they feel that they themselves must do if in his situation. Persons of delicate fibers and a weak constitution of body complain that in looking on the sores and ulcers ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... next letter, in November of the same year, Newman complains of temporary paralysis in his left-hand fingers and stiffness in that arm "as though it had a muscular twist." ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... much. She was a deal handsomer than your aunt is or ever could have been. She was the handsomest woman, I think, that ever I set eyes upon; and a sweet, gentle, lovely creature. You'll never match her," said Mr. Ringgan, with a curious twist of his head and sly laughing twist of his eyes at Fleda;—"you may be as good as she was, but you'll ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... snatch it out of his hand. He did not do anything that I was aware of, but at once I began falling. The faint luminosity beneath me grew, and then the lights of London seemed shooting up to meet me. I was coming down on the clock tower at Westminster. I gave myself a convulsive twist, hoping to escape it, ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... a clear field to start with, and was well out of touch before the advance guard of the enemy bore down on him. Then it was a sight to see him wriggle and dodge, and twist and turn in and out among them, threading them like a needle through a string of beads, and slipping through ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... itself consists of small bead-like bodies, eleven of which interpose between the larger brilliant spots. On raising these bodies to E 3 the snakes break up, each bright spot carrying with it six beads on one side and five on the other; these twist and writhe about still with the same extraordinary activity, reminding one of fire-flies stimulated to wild gyrations. It can been seen that the larger brilliant bodies each enclose seven ultimate atoms, while the beads each enclose two. (Each bright spot with its eleven beads is enclosed ...
— Occult Chemistry - Clairvoyant Observations on the Chemical Elements • Annie Besant and Charles W. Leadbeater
... admonish. We trace in him some real desire to be wise, to do and learn what is useful if he can here. But the grand problem, which is reality itself to him, is always, To regain favor with Papa. And this, Papa being what he is, gives a twist to all other problems the young man may have, for they must all shape themselves by this; and introduces something of artificial,—not properly of hypocritical, for that too is fatal if found out,—but of calculated, reticent, of half-sincere, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... morning he went with a full purse into the city, returning elegantly dressed, and with neatly-arranged locks. The peinador had given his budding moustache a bold twist upward. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Radicals with a large R; he alone is radical with a small one. He encounters evil with that beautiful surprise which, as it is the beginning of all real pleasure, is also the beginning of all righteous indignation. He enters the workhouse just as Oliver Twist enters it, as a ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... stop it and be a man," said Brennan. He put a hand on Jimmy's shoulder. Jimmy flung it aside with a quick twist and a turn. "Please, Jimmy," pleaded Brennan. Jimmy left his chair and buried his face in a corner of ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... rapid twist of the hand he threw the lighted cigarette into Thor's face, where it struck with a little smarting burn below the eye. Thor held himself in check by clenching his fists more tightly and standing with bowed head. It was a minute or more ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... apparently regretted they were not back in the barracks, following the noblest of occupations as soldiers for the supreme War Lord. The army represented admitted perfection. Foreign observers were united in naively attesting its impeccableness. It was ready to the last shoe button, to the last twist of its waxed mustache. But ready for what? Few outside of Germany appeared to think of asking. The army was taken to be simply Teuton life and of no more ulterior significance ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... sprung upon the parapet, and stood trying so to twist himself as to catch a glimpse of the religious procession which he supposed to be approaching, when suddenly he slipped and fell backwards. A wild cry for "Help!" rang through the startled air. Where was he going? Down, down, plunging overhead into some ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... Jameson and Aders, No. 7, Laurence-Pountney-Lane, London, according to the information which Crabius with his parting breath left me. Crabius is gone to Paris. I prophesy he and the Parisians will part with mutual contempt. His head has a twist Alemagne, like thine, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... runs so freely over hedges and thickets in the southern counties, adorning the country in winter with snowy tufts of feathers, formed by its seed-vessels—a part of the stalk between two pair of the leaflets forms this twist; whilst in the sweet-scented garden-clematis, other parts of the stem give the support: but it is always by means of some portion or other of this member, that plants of this tribe are sustained in their rapid and extensive ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... part of the merit of Vaucluse, indeed, that it is as much as possible a surprise. The place has a right to its name, for the valley appears impenetrable until you get fairly into it. One perverse twist follows another, until the omnibus suddenly deposits you in front of the "cabinet" of Petrarch. After that you have only to walk along the left bank of the river. The cabinet of Petrarch is to-day a hideous little cafe, bedizened, like a sign- board, with extracts from the ingenious "Rime." ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... care for the horses and prepare for the trip to Verdun," decided Fritz, with a twist of the keen ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... am sorry I disturbed you, General. I merely wanted to strangle your understrapper there. (Breaking out violently at Swindon) Why do you raise the devil in me by bullying the woman like that? You oatmeal faced dog, I'd twist your cursed head off with the greatest satisfaction. (He puts out his hands to the sergeant) Here: handcuff me, will you; or I'll not undertake to keep my ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... door; only his moving crest was as white as that of a cockatoo. Father Fromm, too, was waiting at the door, but could no longer run to meet his guests, for his left arm and leg were paralyzed: he leaned upon a long bony young man, who had spent much pains in trying to twist into a moustache by the aid of cunning unguents the few hairs on his upper lip, that would not under any circumstances consent to grow. It was easy to recognize Henrik in the young fellow who would have loved so much to ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... and the Yellow Sweet Clover put their leaves to sleep at night in a remarkable manner: the three leaflets of each leaf twist through an angle of 90 degrees, until one edge of each vertical blade is uppermost. The two side leaflets, Darwin found, always tend to face the north with their upper surface, one facing north-northwest and the other north-northeast, ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... just what was the reason for this attitude. Sanford Embury was not a miser. He was not penurious or stingy. He subscribed liberally to charities, many of them unknown to the public, or even to his wife, but some trick of nature, some twist in his brain, made this peculiarity of his persistent ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... less than half a second this was very respectable. Well, she clawed the flower-pot noiselessly, put her other hand on the door, cast a hasty glance at the means of retreat, and—things took another twist: she heard the rustle of a coming gown, and drew back again, and out came Lucy, and nearly ran over David, who was not on his knees after all, but down on his nose, prostrate Orientally. The fact is, ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... then I'll turn you up, and give you sich a switching as ye never had in your born days! for I won't be trampled on by you any longer! you little black willyan, you! 'Scat! you hussy! get out o' my way, before I twist your ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... "He'll twist himself up pretty short that's my sense of it; and he wont take long to do it, nother," said ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... they are solid, as well, with the everyday life of fourteenth-century England. They have the naivete and garrulity which are marks of mediaeval work, but not the quaintness and grotesquerie which are held to be marks of romantic work. Not archaic speech, but a certain mental twist constitutes quaintness. Herbert and Fuller are quaint; Blake is grotesque; Donne and Charles Lamb are willfully quaint, subtle, and paradoxical. But Chaucer is always straight-grained, broad, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... flash on the knife as it flew over the bulwark, then I heard it splash. Kipping got away by a quick twist and vanished. The cook remained alone to face the mate, for you can be very sure that I had every discreet intention not to reveal my presence in the ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... and only by her tone he read the guilty little rejoicing in her heart, marvelling at jealousy that could twist so straight a stem as his sister's spirit. This had taught her, who knew nothing of love, that a man loving does not pity in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... at the idea of such a doll, but was a little disappointed when her hostess took from a drawer a fine lady, whose hair was done up in a French twist, and whose silk gown was made with a train. She was certainly very elegant, however, and her muff and collar were sure enough sealskin, as ...
— The Spectacle Man - A Story of the Missing Bridge • Mary F. Leonard
... chief dies bravely, We bind with green one wrist— Green for the brave, for heroes One crimson thread we twist. Say ye, oh gallant Hillmen, For these, whose life has fled, Which is the fitting colour, The green ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... mother turned as if surprised by an unexpected twist of the situation. "Oh, why she'll mend all right, the doctor says; but it will be slow. Her arm had an ugly slithering break, and she suffers with it all the time." A pause followed, in which she met ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... meat from the left breast is released. Return to the back and continue to separate the meat from the bone, always keeping the edge of the knife pressed close to the latter, until the leg is reached; twist it round, which will enable you to get the skin over it, and cut the joint from the body bone. Proceed with the right side in the same way, using your left hand for cutting and your right to free the meat (to some this would be very awkward, and when it is so turn the bird ...
— Choice Cookery • Catherine Owen
... winced as Marjorie tossed her own hair over her shoulders and began to twist it slowly into two long blond braids until in her cream-colored negligee she looked like a delicate painting of some Saxon princess. Fascinated, Bernice watched the braids grow. Heavy and luxurious ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... for footing, but he was too near the edge, and he went down straight into a little rocky nook where ferns and violets were growing, and a sharp jagged rock stuck up and bit him viciously as he slid and struggled for a firm footing again. Then an ugly twist of his ankle, and he lay in a humiliating heap in the shadow of the vines on the lawn, crying out and beginning to curse with the pain that gripped him in sharp teeth, and stung through his whole ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... lob-worm; each leech seized the worm, the one took the head, the other the tail. As the worm got gradually swallowed the two leeches came to very close quarters, and at last touched. What was to happen? would they twist and writhe about and break the worm, and so share the "grub" between them? No; the one fellow quickly proceeded to swallow his antagonist. I watched him carefully, and he succeeded in getting down the red lane about an inch of his companion; but whether he did not like ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... frock you had on for lunch. Twist up that yellow mop of yours, and come along down, now. I want you to take a stroll around the domain while there's a scrap ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... passengers, is lost to view half a dozen times in the tortuous descent, turning up unexpectedly in out-of-the-way places, and vanishing altogether within a hundred yards of the town. It is probably owing to this sudden twist in the road that the advent of a stranger at Smith's Pocket is usually attended with a peculiar circumstance. Dismounting from the vehicle at the stage office the too-confident traveler is apt to walk straight out of town under the impression that it lies in quite another direction. It is related ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... well worth following; so he immediately began to work his short legs violently until he found that he could, as Rob suggested, twist them around ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... Valenciennes, when it is made of four threads throughout (hence its durability). In Brussels, it will be noted, the threads are twisted twice to commence the mesh. These meet two other threads, and are plaited four times, dividing into two again, and performing the same twist, the whole making a hexagon rather longer than round. Mechlin has precisely the same ground, only that the threads are plaited twice instead of four times, as in Brussels, making the hexagon ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... it, or meddle with it in any way at all. Even to-day —right here in the beginning—she is the sole person who, in the matter of Christian Science exegesis, is privileged to exploit the Spiral Twist. The Christian world has two ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Taken off her guard, she had even hinted confession of her crime, and nothing but intrigue could have saved her gentle neck from the gallows. Briscoe, hungry for her money-bags, promised assistance. He bribed, he threatened, he cajoled, he twisted the law as only he could twist it, he suppressed honest testimony, he procured false; in fine, he weakened the case against her with so resistless an effrontery, that not the Hanging Judge himself could convict the ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... has a great Interest in her Parish; she recommends Mr. Trott for the prettiest Master in Town, that no Man teaches a Jigg like him, that she has seen him rise six or seven Capers together with the greatest Ease imaginable, and that his Scholars twist themselves more ways than the Scholars of any Master in Town: besides there is Madam Prim, an Alderman's Lady, recommends a Master of her own Name, but she declares he is not of their Family, yet a very extraordinary Man in his way; for besides ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... present at every turn and twist of the dance an idea that he was there for other work than that. He was tracking a head of game after which there would be many hunters. He had his advantages, and so would they have theirs. One of his was this,—that he had her there with him now, and he must use it. She would not fall into ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... finding himself in an unpleasant predicament, tried to better himself, and set resolutely to work, but we overpowered him. We contrived to make him twist himself round the shaft of the lance, and then prepared to convey him out of the forest. I stood at his head, and held it firm under my arm, one negro supporting the belly and the other the tail. In this order we began to move slowly toward ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... all their boast, The nous collective of the elder host; And PHARAOH, when his "wise men" vainly schemed, Found statesmanship in a young man who dreamed. You will not let them die? Well, as you list! The words, Sir, with a Machiavellian twist, Tickle the ears of those smart word-fence blinds, And garbled catch-words win unwary minds, And, maybe, witless votes. Poor London dreams Of—many things most horrible to WEMYSS! The nightmare-incubus of old abuse Propertied privilege, expense profuse Of many lives for one, the dead-hand's ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 12, 1892 • Various
... what it is, mates," said the latter, sitting up, "that twist I gave my leg yesterday troubles me a little. I shall remain ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne
... into the romantic. O, listening to her one must believe her, for she has all that obvious lack of fancy only to be found among rarely good people. Her face is quite open and classic, unbroken by the slightest hint of imagination. A lie couldn't possibly twist ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange
... wasn't but just husband-high; turned sixteen and her hair only put up a week before, she having begged her mother's leave to twist it in plaits for the Christmas courants. And Abe and Billy each knew the other's secret almost before he knew his own, for each, as you may say, kept his heart like a window and looked ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... are havin' a nice time now, ennyhow— Don't have nothing to do but lay oph. And etc kats and rabbits, and stic Out yure tung and twist yur tale. I wunder if yu ever swollered a man Without takin oph his butes. If there was Brass buttins on his kote, I spose Yu had ter swaller a lot of buttin- Wholes, and a shu—hamer to nock The soals oph of the boots and drive in The tax, so that ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... Lavender said to him suddenly after he had been exhibiting some of his paternal forbearance and consideration: "you will get a dreadful twist some day, my boy. You have been doing nothing but dreaming about women, but some day or other you will wake up to find yourself captured and fascinated beyond anything you have ever seen in other people, and then you will discover what a desperately real ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... unravel that old skein? Twist it up rather. Twist it up. Do you think I'm always so merry? Only when I meet ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... whereby peradventure Allah Almighty shall deliver us and help us to escape from this island." They asked, "And how wilt thou do?"; and he answered, "Let us cut some of these long pieces of wood, and twist ropes of their bark and bind them one with another, and make of them a raft[FN406] which we will launch and load with these fruits: then we will fashion us paddles and embark on the raft after breaking our bonds with the axe. It may be that ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... off the toboggan and with an agile twist of her small body sprang face downward on the board. In an instant she was off, lying along it light as a feather, but holding the runners in a grip of steel. In a moment more she was nothing but a traveling black dot far down the valley, lifting to the banks, swirling lightning ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... breakers that reached forth licking tongues of destruction. Then the river opened, the cliffs fell away, and the torrent spewed itself out into an expanse of whirlpools—a lake of gyrating funnels that warred with one another and threatened to twist the keel ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... hollows; and below this again, under a narrow sloping covering, is the deep arch of the Cathedral's porch. This, in its prime, must have been the church's ornamental glory. Beneath the outer arch, which is continued to the buttresses by half-arches, are the great roll-mouldings that twist backward to a plain tympanum. Capitals still support these massive curves of stone, but the niches in which the columns formerly stood are empty, and grinning lions, lying on the ground, no longer support the larger columns of the plain arch. ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... change in woman's position. Though familiar with "the designs of God," trained in Biblical research and higher criticism, interpreters of signs and symbols and Egyptian hieroglyphics, learned astronomers and astrologers, yet they cannot twist out of the Old or New Testaments a message of justice, liberty or equality from God to the women of ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... effort to resist its motion. As regards (1), see the letter from the President of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall on p. 219,[61] who states that the Clerk of his Parish Council, on finding the rod suddenly twist in his hands, called out—'It is alive, sir, it is alive!' Mr. Enys adds: 'This exactly describes the sensation when the rod moves.' ... Mr. Bennett, of Oxford, on p. 176, refers to the frantic motion and the ultimate breaking of the twig 'held firmly' in ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... was past master in the art of putting a knife at his victim's throat and of giving it just the necessary twist with his ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... secrets of all revolutions in the Peninsula. They are caused by a constant and universal struggle for office. No one will work, and everybody wants to live luxuriously; and this can only be done at the expense of the State, which all attempt to turn and twist to their own ends. Shortly after the expulsion of Isabella, an alcalde's appointment has been known to have been given away three times in one ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... He might possibly escape them: For the fate the most fastidious, For the impulse the most powerful. Even the planets most malicious Only make free will incline, But can force not human wishes. And thus 'twist these different causes Vacillating and unfixed, I a remedy have thought of Which will with new wonder fill you. I to-morrow morning purpose, Without letting it be hinted That he is my son, and therefore Your true King, at once to fix him As King Sigismund ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... will dance before the door, and their masters and mistresses will have the drawing-room door opened a little, the better to hear the music, and the clatter of plates and the smell of the roast float out through the chink, and the young misses at table well-nigh twist their necks off to see the musicians outside." "That's true!" exclaimed the cornetist, with sparkling eyes. "Let who will pore over their compendiums, we choose to study in the vast picture-book which the dear God spreads open before us! Yes, the gentleman may believe me, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... to remove himself, but no man worthy of the name can decline to come to the rescue of womanhood in distress. To twist the lady's upper lid back and peer into it and jab at it with the corner of his handkerchief was the only course open to him. His conduct may be classed as not merely blameless but definitely praiseworthy. King Arthur's knights used to ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... my writing by her cry that I am making strange faces again. It is my contemptible weakness that if I say a character smiled vacuously, I must smile vacuously; if he frowns or leers, I frown or leer; if he is a coward or given to contortions, I cringe, or twist my legs until I have to stop writing to undo the knot. I bow with him, eat with him, and gnaw my moustache with him. If the character be a lady with an exquisite laugh, I suddenly terrify you by laughing exquisitely. One reads of the astounding versatility of an actor who is stout ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... all, at night, when the children are abed, and even grown people are snoring under quilts, does it not seem impertinent to leave these ginger-bread figures winking and tinkling to the stars and the rolling moon? The gargoyles may fitly enough twist their ape-like heads; fitly enough may the potentate bestride his charger, like a centurion in an old German print of the Via Dolorosa; but the toys should be put away in a box among some cotton, until the ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I could," said May candidly, shaking her head, with the brown hair which had till recently hung loose on her shoulders, now combed smoothly back, and twisted into as "grown-up" a twist as she could accomplish the feat; while to keep the tucked-up hair in company, her skirt was let down to the regulation length for young ladies. "Indeed, I am almost certain I could not refuse anything to a dear little ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... would that cry be of doubtful effect, but experience proves that a concert audience will not raise it. If the audience were left to itself, it would permit late arrivals, and all the disturbance of chatter and movement. To twist the line of Goldsmith, those who came to pray would be at the mercy of those who came to scoff; and such mercy is merciless. The conductor stands in loco parentis. He is the advocatus angeli. He does for the audience what it would not do for itself. He protects it against its ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... sighing of the wind resembles the moans of a dying man; a storm was brewing, and between the splashes of rain on the windows there was the silence of death. All nature suffers in such moments; the trees writhe in pain and twist their heads; the birds of the fields cower under the bushes; the streets of cities are deserted. I was suffering from my wound. But a short time before I had a mistress and a friend. The mistress had deceived me and the friend had stretched me on ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... safari boys, who love to show off. We had acquired fourteen more small boys, or totos, ranging in age from eight to twelve years. These had been fitted out by their masters to alleviate their original shenzi appearance of savagery. Some had ragged blankets, which they had already learned to twist turban wise around their heads; others had ragged old jerseys reaching to their knees, or the wrecks of full-grown undershirts; one or two even sported baggy breeches a dozen sizes too large. Each carried his little load, proudly, atop his head like a real porter, ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... shrifts, Their memories, their singings, and their gifts. Now all those needlesse works are laid away; Now once a weeke, upon the Sabbath day, It is enough to doo our small devotion, And then to follow any merrie motion. Ne are we tyde to fast, but when we list; Ne to weare garments base of wollen twist, But with the finest silkes us to aray, That before God we may appeare more gay, Resembling Aarons glorie in his place: For farre unfit it is, that person bace Should with vile cloaths approach Gods majestie, ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... him; they gnashed their teeth as if they would seize him, and gaped with their jaws as they would swallow him. It seemed to him as if they were even at his heels, and he saw the snakes and dragons all twist themselves upwards. "And as I was thus fearful the step brake beneath me, and I fell downwards." From his great discomfort and his fear of the dragons he awoke, and slept ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston
... rebounded. But she had again caught a glimpse of dark underhand domination, running its secret lines this time into her own household. Like a spider in the blackness of night an unseen hand had begun to run these dark lines, to turn and twist them about her life, to plait and weave a web. Jane Withersteen knew it now, and in the realization further coolness and sureness came to her, and the fighting ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... yonder and around through that cleft in the rocks. And see; on the other side of the cleft there is a little tableland which juts out, and the road would wind over that, where carriages would once more be seen from the hotel porch. Then they'd twist in through the trees again down the winding driveway, and once more, for the very last glimpse, come into view as they went across our new road in front of the lake; and there the last flutter of handkerchiefs would be seen. You know it's ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... a mighty nice, careful mother who used to shudder when slang was used in her presence. So she vowed she'd give her son a name that the boys couldn't twist into any low, vulgar nick-name. She called him Algernon, but the kid had a pretty big nose, and the first day he was sent to school with his long lace collar and his short velvet pants the boys christened him Snooty, and now his ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... more. We follow them downstairs again, where, after being carefully washed, the combatants are seated in a chair one after the other, their friends crowd around and count the stitches as the surgeon works, and comment upon what particular twist of the wrist produced such and such ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... furnish them wassail and solace. And all that stood between him and the coveted dollar was his wife, once a little girl whom he could—aha!—why not again? Once with soft words he could, as they say, twist her around his little finger. Why not again? Not for years had he tried it. Grim poverty and mutual hatred had killed all that. But Ragsy and Kidd were waiting for him to bring ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... where we stand. The contrast, the range from the minute to the gigantic, is prodigious yet exhilarating, and strangely grateful. How many millions of years did it take to form those rocks (many of them are stratified, water-laid deposits) in the depths of the ocean? How many more to twist and bend them and raise them to their present height? And what inconceivably long persistence of the wear and tear of frost and snow and torrent has it required to excavate in their hard bosoms these deep, broad valleys thousands of feet below us, and to leave these strangely moulded mountain ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... Even in dead water it takes some time before a novice can send the canoe straight ahead when paddling on one side only. As the paddle goes aft the bow naturally tends to turn towards the other side. The trick of it consists in counteracting this tendency by a twist of the blade which brings the inner edge round, aftwise beside the canoe, till the blade becomes a rectifying rudder as well as a thrusting propeller at the end of every stroke. When a fall or impassable rapid is reached, {35} the 'bowman' jumps out before the canoe touches bottom ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... with aquiline noses, remarkably taper waists, and wonderfully long ringlets, Mr. Cruikshank has a special predilection. The tribe of Israelites he has studied with amazing gusto; witness the Jew in Mr. Ainsworth's "Jack Sheppard," and the immortal Fagin of "Oliver Twist." Whereabouts lies the comic vis in these persons and things? Why should a beadle be comic, and his opposite a charity boy? Why should a tall life-guardsman have something in him essentially absurd? Why are short breeches ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a clean towel round my neck, barber fashion, and pulling the pins out of my hair, shook it down over my shoulders. But before I could twist it up again, there came a light tap, ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... with thread. You have to draw it out until every portion of it is as strong as every other—a pretty little conundrum! It is the drawing, twisting, and doubling which makes the thread first uniform and then strong. Try working-out devices that shall do all these things—devices that shall twist and then double without untwisting, for example. You'll find it ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... Boat he sail and row all night, an' we t'ink he very far. Den we run for dat man, an' in one hour—two, mebbe—we come here. I t'ink dat ribber he twist, sar." ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... knuckles renewed their assault upon the dark-room door; and Pocket wavered between its Yale lock, which opened on this side with a mere twist of the handle, and the broken red window behind the drawn red blind. Escape that way was easy enough; and if ever one could take the streets in pyjamas and overcoat, with the rest of one's clothes in a bundle under one's arm, it was before ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... says, "and fond of experimenting. We worked on a self-adjusting telegraph relay, which would have been very valuable if we could have got it. I soon became the possessor of a second-hand Ruhmkorff induction coil, which, although it would only give a small spark, would twist the arms and clutch the hands of a man so that he could not let go of the apparatus. One day we went down to the round-house of the Cincinnati & Indianapolis Railroad and connected up the long wash-tank in the room with the coil, one electrode being connected to earth. Above this wash-room ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... themselves seem alive," said Hans to his friend. "You men know just how to bind the logs together with those willow bands, so they twist and turn about like living creatures as they ...
— Bertha • Mary Hazelton Wade
... climate, a blade, a leaf, a root, a sprig, a peppercorn, which will grow to maturity under conditions more certain than those that have produced this horror. Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... and Shaggy each took an arm of the beautiful Rose Princess and a little twist of her feet set her free of the branch upon which she grew. Very gracefully she stepped down from the bush to the ground, where she bowed low to Betsy and Shaggy and said in a delightfully sweet voice: "I ...
— Tik-Tok of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... body, surrounded by eight arms, which are many times the length of the body, and which it can twist or turn in any direction. The mouth is in the centre of these arms. Professor Winchell describes this ugly creature for us. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 16, February 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... due to the first glance you get at the hard, realistic England of to-day. You have noticed a machine clutch its raw material and twist and turn it through its relentless bowels. That is the way the habits of England seize you when you land, and begin to appropriate your personality. This is the first offence of England in the eyes of an American, whose favorite phrase, "the largest liberty," is too synonymous with the absence ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... exclamation of dismay, for Merriwell seemed to twist about in the air, and they fell side by side on the ground. In a twinkling they were at it again, and over and over they went, till they finally stopped and got upon their ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... such weary little lines about the mouth of you, Such tragic little mirthless lines—they mock at dreams come true, And twist your lips when you would smile, until all joy is dead, And I, who want to laugh with you, am fain to ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... his hand up, gave his moustache ends a twist, and turned to walk on. He was still on the same side, and there was a sort of emphasis about his being there which made her want to laugh, even while she recognized the fact that the under-current of the minute ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... far older. Older than Stonehenge. This used to run all the way to Canfleet—that's where Kerith Island touches the mainland—but it's all gone but this part here...." She disliked the road when it took a disclaiming twist and left the houses out of sight and travelled between low oaks, because it was the road home, and she would never have chosen a home in this strange place, whose lack of meaning for herself could be measured by its plentitude of meaning for this ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... the Hound, following every twist and turn which Granny Fox made, just as she wanted him to. Back and forth across the old pasture and way up among the rocks on the edge of the mountain Granny Fox led Bowser the Hound. It was a long, long, long way from the Green Meadows and the Green Forest. Granny Fox ...
— The Adventures of Reddy Fox • Thornton W. Burgess
... you make conversation?" she asked, with a little cynical twist of the lips. "I thought you had a ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... cravats as white as old sail; That I'm a strange creature, a know-nothing ninny, But fit for the planks for to walk in foul weather; That I ha'n't e'er a notion of the worth of a guinea, And that you, Poll, can twist me about as a feather— Lord ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... horrible execution. It was only after death that the broken body was placed on a wheel, which was turned round on a pivot. Sometimes, however, the sentence ordered that the condemned should be strangled before being broken, which was done in such cases by the instantaneous twist of a rope ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... the floor, and called the names of his three pages, Prig, Prim, and Pricker. As at other times, these infernal spirits were before him, exclaiming, "Work, master, work; what work now?" "Look at that mountain yclept the hill of Eildon. Go and twist me it into three." The imps looked with Satanic glare. "The hill is granite," said one. "And five arrows' flight high," said another. "And seventy round the base," said the first. "All the power of earth and hell to boot are unmeet to ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... Twist, writhe, disguise you, as you will, I know you, You were too honest, knight, to be more civil; A girl all feeling, and a she-attendant All complaisance, a father at a distance - You valued her good name, and would not see her. You ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... the squad of soldiers with their bayonets, and into the salon, where we were delivered into the hands of two women spies. They undressed us, and we waited while our clothes were passed out to the secret-service men outside. Panna Lolla tried to twist herself up in the window curtains. Marie and I grew hysterical at her modesty, looking at her big, knobby feet and her fiery face, with her top-knot of disheveled red hair. We were given our clothes again, and ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... to me, had got a stubborn twist, and wouldn't open; just then the conductor came along, and I ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... lack persistency, do you?" she said, with a sweetness which gave the words a pleasant twist. "But don't come, please. I'm used to taking care of myself; but—before I go let me write my note also." She went to the desk and scratched a line, and folding it, handed it to him. "There," she said; "read Mrs. White's note and then that, but wait ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... twist of my brain that reminds me of a story told me the other day which brings an old legend very prettily to this country. It is said that when Joseph of Arimathea was hounded from place to place by the Jews, he fled to England taking ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... for his gifts in this direction in the political squibs of William Hone, a faculty he exercised at length over a wide area; the works illustrated by him include, among hundreds of others, "Grimm's Stories," "Peter Schlemihl," Scott's "Demonology," Dickens's "Oliver Twist," and Ainsworth's "Jack Shepherd"; like Hogarth, he was a moralist as well as an artist, and as a total abstainer he consecrated his art at length to dramatise the fearful downward career of the drunkard; his greatest work, done in oil, is in the National Gallery, the "Worship of Bacchus," which ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... your prices, darky, and are making a fortune out of us," Vincent said as he took the cucumber, which was a very large and straight one. He had no difficulty with this, as with the melon; a sharp twist broke it in two as he reached the corner he had used the day previously. It had been cut in half, one end had been scooped out for the reception of the handle of the screw-driver and the metal been driven in to the head in the other half. Hiding ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... twist of his body, the savage flung himself upon it, and holding it down with one hand, with the other beat the life out with a heavy stick. The creature was killed by the first stroke, but he continued to rain vindictive blows upon it until it was mashed to a pulp. Then, with a serenely ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... laughed at them had they been written by any one else, and she still would have been vastly amused, even now, were it not for the revelations contained in his letter. And the postscript,—how like him to have added that whimsical twist! He wanted her to smile, even though his heart ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... replied the patron of the bark, changing the sail, and impressing upon the rudder a twist which turned the boat in the direction of a pretty little port, quite coquettish, ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... ferocity of his mind threw him into an eager anticipation: he took pride in his proficiency as a strangler; his coarse heavy hands, like those of a Punjabi wrestler, were suited to the task. Grasping the cloth at the base of a victim's skull, tight to the throat, a side-twist inward and the trick was done, the spine snapped like a pipe-stem. And he had been somewhat out of practice—he had regretted that; he was fearful of losing ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... sake, my brother,' shrieked the little creature, 'help me, and put me back into the river, and I will repay you some day. Take one of my scales, and when you are in danger twist it in your fingers, and I ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... you! They'd twist me round their little finger. I'm not a fool, but I'm not very clever—I know that. I shouldn't know whether I was standing on my head or my heels by the time they'd done with me. I've tried to face them ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... myself—O, what?— A most conspicuous monster! Crown my head, Pile Caesar's purple on me—and what then? My hump shall shorten the imperial robe, My leg peep out beneath the scanty hem, My broken hip shall twist the gown awry; And pomp, instead of dignifying me, Shall be by me made quite ridiculous. The faintest coward would not bear all this: Prodigious courage must be mine, to live; To die asks nothing but weak will, and I Feel ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... of Oxford, once said that a false anecdote may be good history; it may be sound evidence for character, for, to obtain currency, a false anecdote has also to true; it must be, in our proverbial phrase, "if not true, well invented." Even if exaggeration and humour contribute to give it a twist, the essence of parody is that it parodies—it must conform to the original even where it leaves it. A good story-teller will hardly tell the same story of Mr. Roosevelt and the Archbishop of Canterbury—unless ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... much astonished; 'we're just under the Twins. Why, turn and twist you ever so much, you do ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... messages from one army to another by means of a roll of parchment twisted spirally round a baton, and then written on. It was perfectly unintelligible when it fell into a man's hands that had not a corresponding baton to twist it upon. Many of Christ's messages to us are like that. You can only understand the utterances when life gives you the frame round which to wrap them, and then they flash up into meaning, and we ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... leave me alone? You're not one of those who let go! Oh, I don't know what restrains me! In half a dozen turns of the wrist, I could have you bound and gagged—and, in two hours, safe under lock and key, for some months to come. And then I could twist my thumbs in all security, withdraw to the peaceful retreat prepared for me by my ancestors, the Kings of France, and enjoy the treasures which they have been good enough to accumulate for me. But no, it is doomed ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... indifferent, or repelled us, in art delights us. Why? Simply because the artist has made us see the idea that resides in it. Let not the novelists, then, endeavor to add anything to reality, to turn it and twist it, to restrict it. Since nature has endowed them with this precious gift of discovering ideas in things, their work will be beautiful if they paint these as they appear. But if the reality does not impress them, in vain will they strive to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... filled with sea water, while the pressure became enormous. Locke tried to hold his breath, while his hand searched for the liberating knob. He gave it one twist. It worked perfectly. Locke's suit, including the helmet, simply opened ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... indeed must be our hearts if we can feel no love for the God of whom the Gospel speaks! And perverse, indeed, must be our minds if we can twist the good news of Christ's salvation into the bad news of condemnation! What says St. Paul,—That God is against us? No. But—'If God be for us, who can ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... to move. "Zuleika!" he whispered. She was too angry to speak, but with a sudden twist she freed her ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... you felt when you first tried to ride a wheel and when you first tried to swim. You got excited, didn't you? And when you thought the wheel was going over you gave it a wild twist that did send you over, and when you thought you were going to drown you thrashed around in a way that only made matters worse. Well, that's a lesson to remember in running a flying machine. Don't ...
— The Rover Boys in the Air - From College Campus to the Clouds • Edward Stratemeyer |
