"Twisting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the giant cactus stretched mutilated hands across the desert sand, and she believed that Nogales was near, Jean carried her suit-case to the cramped dressing-room and took out her six-shooter and buckled it around her. Then she pulled her coat down over it with a good deal of twisting and turning before the dirty mirror to see that it looked all right, and not in the least as though a perfect lady ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... does not feel quite well,—at least, he suspects himself of indisposition. Nothing serious,—let us just rub our fore-feet together, as the enormous creature who provides for us rubs his hands, and all will be right. He rubs them with that peculiar twisting movement of his, and pauses for the effect. No! all is not quite right yet. Ah! it is our head that is not set on just as it ought to be. Let us settle that where it should be, and then we shall certainly be in good trim again. So he pulls his head about as an old lady adjusts her cap, and passes ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the first ten remain entire. Dionysius wrote for the Greeks, and his object was to relieve them from the mortification which they felt at being conquered by a race of barbarians, as they considered the Romans to be. And this he endeavored to effect by twisting and forging testimonies, and botching up the old legends, so as to make out a prima facie proof of the Greek origin of the city of Rome. Valuable additions were made in 1816, by Mai, from an ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... him instantly, saw a human fantastic, struggling, writhing, twisting with maniacal might, the while the horrible quicksand held him by the legs, and swallowed him, inch ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... passed females riding on donkeys, the Old Testament beast of burden, with panniers on each side, as was the custom hundreds of years since. We saw ancient dames sitting at their doors with distaffs, twisting the thread by twirling the spindle between the thumb and finger, as they did in the days of Homer. A flock of sheep was grazing on the side of a hill; they were attended by a shepherd, and a brace of prick-eared dogs, which kept them from straying, as was done thousands of ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... diversion, Tarzan took up his way along the corridor which led upward from the jewel-room by a steep incline. Winding and twisting, but always tending upward, the tunnel led him nearer and nearer to the surface, ending finally in a low-ceiled room, lighter than any that he ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... match to the first and lit the others in succession one by one until a charred chain of memories stretched across the tiling of the grate. The last 'Doreen' straggled scarlet across a black and twisting ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... bottom the snout-like appendage wavered off to one side as though the amazing velocity of the upper part was twisting it loose. A similar formation appeared a few minutes after a ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... characteristic of the best type of Englishmen. He had been led into scrapes, he had done things for which he was sorry, and he was even now suffering the consequences of doing what was wrong, but instead of attempting to get out of the difficulty by twisting and turning and prevarication and falsehood, he always endeavoured to escape by going straightforward, boldly telling the truth, and, if needs be, doubling his fist, or drawing his sword and fighting his way out. Thus ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... rather jolly at supper, and Daisy made herself very agreeable, especially in the earlier part of the evening, when she sang. At supper, however, she said: "Can you make tee-to-tums with bread?" and she commenced rolling up pieces of bread, and twisting them round on the table. I felt this to be bad manners, but of course said nothing. Presently Daisy and Lupin, to my disgust, began throwing bread-pills at each other. Frank followed suit, and so did Cummings and Gowing, to my astonishment. They then commenced throwing hard pieces of crust, one ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... reluctance on the horse's part to being bitted or mounted, dancing and twisting about and the rest, (9) you will get a more exact idea on this score, if, when he has gone through his work, you will try and repeat the precise operations which he went through before you began your ride. Any horse ...
— On Horsemanship • Xenophon
... mocked his wife. "It's philosophical to the last degree. Be as philosophical as you please, Owen; I shall love you still the same." She came up to him where he sat, and twisting her arm round his face, patronizingly kissed him on top of the head. Then she released him, and left him ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... respectable appearance, what had supported one family now answered for two. I don't think our wives were reduced to the straits of the Irish family, whose little boy reported to his schoolmates: 'There's a great twisting and turning going on at our house. I'm having a new shirt made out of daddy's old one, and daddy's having a new shirt made out of the old sheet, and mammy's making a new sheet out of the old table-cloth.' But 'twistings and turnings' of a marvellous kind there must have been, which the male ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... happiness. "You were Aunt Louise's best friend here, and you'll know just how she'd feel. I got my criticism!" She paused, choking with emotion. "He came up behind me, and he stood there so long I was afraid to go on working; and when I stopped, he spoke out loud, twisting his moustache and ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... up a boat which she was twisting into a gendarme's hat. "You would need to get mamma's ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... out a single one. With an awl she pierced the buckskin, and skillfully threaded it with the white sinew. Picking up the tiny beads one by one, she strung them with the point of her thread, always twisting it carefully ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... the westering desert, beyond the valley, Pringle saw a white feather of smoke from a toiling train; beyond that a twisting gap in the blue of ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... catch a glimpse of our pilot standing up on the boards very much like a circus rider, for the wagon wheels were twisting around over the roots of trees and stones, in a way that required careful balancing on his part. We got along very well until about noon, when a soldier came splashing up on a mule and told Faye that one of the wagons ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... his stubborn hair and whiskers for some quarter of an hour; afterwards combing and brushing his hair into half a dozen different dispositions—so fastidious in that matter was Mr. Titmouse. Then he dipped the end of a towel into a little water, and twisting it round his right forefinger, passed it gently over his face, carefully avoiding his eyebrows, and the hair at the top, sides, and bottom of his face, which he then wiped with a dry corner of the towel; and no farther did Mr. Tittlebat ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... to have your advice," said Giovanni, twisting his brown hands together and fixing his bright ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... is so sudden!" he spoke in shy reproof, twisting his neckerchief in mock embarrassment, and again Merced looked toward the house because of peals ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... Billy, who, with his tongue in one cheek and his face twisting into all sorts of contortions, was sitting writing an exercise in a copy-book, "you don't know what you're ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... Twisting his head slightly around Toby could see his chum calmly turning the film so as to bring another blank in line for a second shot. Jack believed in making sure of such an important picture. Far better to waste good films than to ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... need to be thought of. If I yield to an impulse of which I know I shall be ashamed, is it not the act of a madman? And may not the act lead to a habit, and at length to a despised, perhaps feared and hated, old age, twisting at the ragged ends of ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... any nayre to assume arms, or to enter into any combat, till he has been armed as a knight. When a nayre becomes seven years old, he is set to learn the use of all kinds of weapons, their masters first pulling and twisting their joints to make them supple, and then teaching them to fence and handle their arms adroitly. Their principal weapons are swords and targets; and these teachers, who are graduates in the use ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... is too bad, Manly! I'd as lief had a monkey screwing and twisting about in my lap. It was as much as I could do to be civil to either his father or mother for suffering their brat to tease me as he did. First, I must be kissed by his bread and butter mouth; and then he made me suffer a kind of martyrdom in fear of my elegant lever. ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... of squirrels and the moaning of the wind in the tree tops. How near was freedom and yet how difficult of attainment! She wriggled gently in her bonds but each motion seemed to make them tighter, until they began to cut more and more cruelly into her tender flesh. She tried by twisting her hands and bending her body to touch the knots at her knees but her elbows were fastened securely and she couldn't reach them. And at last she gave up the attempt, half stifled from her exertions and suffering acutely. Then she lay ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... are generally situated at the sides or back; and either open upon flower-beds, grounds of the above description, or some kind of enclosure, shaded by peach or pear-trees, trained trellis-fashion overhead; or by cedars, with one solitary bough twisting fantastically over the ground, showing, in its unnatural contortions, the skill of the artist, the other branches having been lopped off, or stunted, to facilitate the growth ...
— Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs • J. M. W. Silver
... first brought his ingenuity into exercise, but after several unsuccessful efforts, he relinquished the achievement, as a thing altogether impracticable. Mr. Coleridge now tried his hand, but showed no more grooming skill than his predecessors; for after twisting the poor horse's neck almost to strangulation, and to the great danger of his eyes, he gave up the useless task, pronouncing that the horse's head must have grown, (gout or dropsy!) since the collar was put on! 'for,' he said 'It was a downright impossibility ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... happened often—Zociya the housekeeper would walk up to him under cover of the hubbub and would say, twisting her lips: ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... the philosopher, whose brain was always twisting and turning the universe and taking it to pieces, started wandering about Germany with the beggar whose thoughts were bounded by his paunch. They exploited but a small area, and with smaller success than either had anticipated. Though now and then they were flush, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... many superstitious causes for this strange phenomenon, the naturalist could assign no physical one, that was in any degree satisfactory. Some thought it was owing to the twisting and friction of the roots: others thought that it proceeded from water, which had collected in the body of the tree; or, perhaps, from pent air: but the cause that was alleged appeared unequal to the effect. In the mean time, the tree did not always groan; sometimes disappointing its visitants; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 554, Saturday, June 30, 1832 • Various
... crack of a door, and stumbled over a three-legged chair, as I pitched my last cigar-stump to one of the dogs chained to the wall, who caught it in his mouth. When the door was opened by my guide, I saw a big blaze like a prairie fire, red and gloomy; and big black smoke was curling and twisting and spreading, and the flames a-licking the walls, going up to a point, and breaking into a wide blaze, with white and green ends. There was bells a-tolling, and chains a-clinking, and mad howls and screams; but the old gentleman's medicine made me ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... "and I know no more about the campaign than my two eyes have seen. I was saying only yesterday that, unless you have a staff billet, it's wonderful how little the ordinary soldier picks up as to what is going on. As a matter of fact, though," he went on, twisting the fox terrier's ear a little, "no one has called here at all except yourself, during the last hour or two. There aren't many of my pals ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... when sight is lost the sense of touch and hearing increase to almost unbelievable acuteness—Rush knew that. The blind often also develop a sense almost like radar which allows them to perceive an object ahead of them and gives them the ability to follow twisting paths. ...
— Now We Are Three • Joe L. Hensley
... plunged down the hill-side on a twisting path, past the bank of hydrangeas and through a grove of shiny-leaved escallonias to where the garage, a large building with a corrugated-iron roof, stood on a natural platform of rock close to the steep high road that flanked the hotel. The yard was full of visitors' cars ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... see an aeronaut, when he has risen high above the earth, scatter, with lavish hand, a host of little cards, which flutter down upon us, twisting and turning, in showers of glittering colors? He but typifies the hand of Fate, which deals to us, brilliant with the hopes that tint them in rainbow beauty, the cards of life's eager game. We gather them up joyfully; but, alas! how rapidly their fictitious beauty ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... Willow Creek. In these forbidding rocks the Devil's Corkscrew Trail has been cut, winding and twisting down, down, twelve hundred feet, passing by a split in the rocks where the waters of Willow Creek make a waterfall of ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... service of Cocksmoor. He sent a sovereign at once, to aid in a case of the sudden death of a pig; and when securely established in his brotherly right, he begged Ethel to let him know what would help her most. She stood colouring, twisting her hands, and wondering what to say, whereupon he relieved her by a proposal to leave an order for ten pounds, to be yearly paid into her hands, as a fixed ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... beneath the moon the poison might yet stir. The moon silvered the edge of things, drew illusion like a veil across the haunted ring; below, what hidden foulness!... Did the life there know its hideousness? Those lengths and coils, those twisting locks of Medusa, might think themselves desirable. These pulpy, starkly branching cacti, these shrubs that bred poignards, these fibrous ropes, dark and knotted lianas, binding all together like monstrous exaggerations of the tenants of the place, like serpents seen of a drunkard, ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... carpenter. Enid Mardon went off the stage with the massive dressmaker in almost amicable conversation. Meroni, the Milanese conductor, mounted up from his place in the subterranean regions, smiling brilliantly and twisting his black moustaches. Alston Lake had got rid of his nervousness. He knew he had done well and was more "mad" about the ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... other side, that air all." With deft fingers he rolled the baby boy over, placed the sugar rag between the twisting lips, and ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... Mount, a small island nearly 300 feet high, situated in the bay, at a distance of about three miles from Penzance. The granite of Dartmoor, in Devonshire, says Sir H. De la Beche, has intruded itself into the Carboniferous slate and slaty sandstone, twisting and contorting the strata, and sending veins into them. Hence some of the slate rocks have become "micaceous; others more indurated, and with the characters of mica-slate and gneiss; while others again appear converted into a hard zoned rock strongly impregnated ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... will," said Lucy, twisting up her other hand in the curtains. "Good-night, Cecil. Good-bye. That's all right. I'm sorry about it. Thank you very much for ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... a little hand-span cloud. Nora had done built him a house three stories high. Dat little cloud busted. Water riz in de second story of de wicked king's palace. He sont fer de northern lady. When she come a-shaking and a-twisting in de room de king fell back in his chair. He say dat he give her anything she want, all she got to do is ask fer it. She say to cut off John Wesley's head and bring it to her. De king had done got so suluctious dat he done it. Dat king and all of dem ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... only destined to facilitate their dispersion from the parent nest, which takes place at dusk; and almost as quickly as they leave it they divest themselves of their ineffectual wings, waving them impatiently and twisting them in every direction till they become detached and drop off, and the swarm, within a few hours of their emancipation, become a prey to the night-jars and bats, which are instantly attracted to them as they issue in a cloud from the ground. I am not prepared to say that the other insectivorous ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... were continually among wild and vicious and wide-horned steers. In many instances they owed their lives to their horses. The danger came mostly when the cowboy leaped off to tie and brand a calf he had thrown. Some of the cows charged with lowered, twisting horns. Time and again Madeline's heart leaped to her throat for fear a man would be gored. One cowboy roped a calf that bawled loudly. Its mother dashed in and just missed the kneeling cowboy as he rolled over. Then he had to run, and he could not run very fast. He was bow-legged and appeared awkward. ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... figures. Among other things, in a scene where St Jerome is receiving his earliest instruction, he represented a master who has caused one boy to mount upon the back of another and strikes him with the whip in such a manner that the poor child is twisting his legs with pain and appears to be crying out and trying to bite the ear of the boy who is holding him. The whole is executed with much grace and lightness, and Gherardo appears to have delighted in these touches of nature. In like manner, when St Jerome, ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... experience, the cultivator soon learns to make many deft applications of ingrafting. Sometimes a piece of bark may be used as a patch. In the bracing of crotches in young trees, the two trunks may be joined by uniting a small branch from either one, twisting them together to form a bridge like a bolt; they can be made to grow together, forming a solid union. Bolting the parts with iron rods, or holding them together by means of chains, is the usual and commonly the better method. The iron is not to ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... wash led its twisting way to one side of him, and he saw that by following its course he could reach the trees about the water ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... and we can bear it so. But no man could live in the Marsh for a day without that gesture of human life that is there to be seen upon every side. Lonely as it is, difficult as it is to cross, because of its chains and twisting lines of runnels, man is more visibly our comrade there than anywhere else in England I think, and this though there be but few men through all the Marsh. He and his beasts, his work too, and his songs, redeem the Marsh for us from fear, a fear not quite explicable, perhaps, to the ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... She was perfectly frank about being utterly bored with it. When she had anything to say, she liked to say it straight out, she explained, without twisting it about to make it rhyme with something just shoved in to fill up the line; and she preferred other people ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... blistered it; but what of those? A vine covered with thorns and stemmed with cords had wreathed about it and bound it closely in serpent-coils. I stayed and tore apart the fetters till my hands bled, cut away the twisting branches, and set the god free from his bonds. Triumph rose to my lips, for I said, "So will I free my country!" Ah, there was my error,—the shackling vines would grow again, and infold the marble image that had consecrated ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... imitators showed none of their master's sublime force, none of that terribilita which made him unapproachable in social intercourse and inimitable in art. They merely fancied that dignity and beauty were to be achieved by placing figures in difficult postures, exaggerated muscular anatomy, and twisting the limbs of their models upon sections of ellipses in uncomfortable attitudes, till the whole of their work was writhen into uncouth lines. Buonarroti himself was not responsible for these results. He wrought out his own ideal with the ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... doing up to the time they went to bed. In the morning they found the hook gone from the other line. Frank said they must have caught a shark, or else another large bass, which, in twisting about, had broken the tackle. Still, they were not sorry, for they would not have known what ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... course. I just stood there twisting my handkerchief in my fingers; and, of course, right away he saw me. He had sat ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter
... lines of widely extended companies, they marched to within sight of Frederickstadt before they returned. Imagine exaggerated Pyramids of Cheops; imagine each block of stone carved by stress of weather into a thousand needle-points and ankle-twisting crevices; plant a dense growth of mimosa and other thorny scrub in every cranny and interstice. Take a dozen such pyramids, and do your morning constitutional over them, after the scrappiest of breakfasts at 5 a.m., and you will find twelve or fourteen miles quite as much as you care about. ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... the origin of their institution in those dispositions which connect man with the tiger and the wolf. Accordingly they discourage, with true democratic humility, all genealogical inquiries into the ancestry of their system, substitute generalization for analysis, and, twisting the maxims of religion into a philosophy of servitude, bear down all arguments with the sounding proposition, that Slavery is included in the plan of God's providence, and therefore cannot be wrong. Certain thinkers ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... end of the humerus to be divided, turned out through the incision, and smoothed across at right angles to the line of the shaft by means of the saw, whereby (6.) room might be afforded, so that partly by twisting and partly by dissection the external condyle and capitulum are removed without any division of the skin on the outer side of the arm.[56] Six cases ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... went to bed she found her little dog strangled on her pillow. The little thing was dead, but still warm; she stooped to lift it, and her distress turned to horror when she discovered that it had been strangled by twisting twice round its throat the necklet she ...
— Kerfol - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... artificial light in the court; from the distance its undulations were invisible, and it resembled a cap of some heavy and handsome material drawn carefully down over his head. Hadi Bey retained his vivid, alert and martial demeanor. He was twisting his mustaches with a muscular brown hand, not nervously, but with a careless and almost a lively air. Many women gazed at him as if hypnotized; they found the fez very alluring. It carried their thoughts to the East; it made them feel that the romance of the East was not very ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... unaccountable phenomenon had preceded Mr. Hooper into the meeting-house and set all the congregation astir. Few could refrain from twisting their heads toward the door; many stood upright and turned directly about; while several little boys clambered upon the seats, and came down again with a terrible racket. There was a general bustle, a rustling of the women's gowns and shuffling of the men's feet, greatly at variance with ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... his head nearer to her and to comb one queue after another, and as when he stayed at home he wore no hat, nor had, in fact, any tufted horns, she merely took the short surrounding hair from all four sides, and twisting it into small tufts, she collected it together over the hair on the crown of the head, and plaited a large queue, binding it fast with red ribbon; while from the root of the hair to the end of the queue, were four pearls in a row, below which, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... from ledge to ledge like the steps of a colossal staircase. Fortunately I struck the deep channel—my only safe course. I was covered with foam and spray and could not see. All I could do was to trust to Providence and the depth of water, and I shortly found myself twisting around in a great pool below. Half stunned and almost smothered by frequent submerging and the weight of the volume of water that had fallen on me, I drifted helplessly toward the bank. The next thing I remembered was hearing sounds ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... I believed had wrecked my tail. They burst with a terrific rending sound in clouds of coal-black smoke. A few days before I had been watching without emotion the bombardment of a German plane. I had seen it twisting and turning through the eclatements, and had heard the shells popping faintly, with a sound like the bursting of seed-pods in ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... Suddenly the character of the motion changes,—from being principally stool, it becomes almost entirely blood and mucus; he is dreadfully griped, which causes him to strain violently, as though his inside would come away every time he has a motion,—screaming and twisting about, evidently being in the greatest pain, drawing his legs up to his belly and writhing in agony. Sickness and vomiting are always present, which still more robs him of his little remaining strength, and prevents ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... like of the gale this night, Barbara?" asked Blanche, as she stood twisting up her hair before the mirror, one morning towards ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... rails; and, as her stern sank down and her bow tossed skyward, all the miserable dunnage of life and luggage poured aft. It was a human torrent. They came head first, feet first, sidewise, rolling over and over, twisting, squirming, writhing, and crumpling up. Now and again one caught a grip on a stanchion or a rope; but the weight of the bodies behind ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... through tortuous lanes down towards the abandoned Customs Inspectorate and the Austrian Legation. We reached the rear of the Customs compounds without a sound being heard or a living thing seen. All along hundreds of yards of twisting alleyways the native houses stood empty and silent, abandoned by their owners just as they are. Even the Peking dog, a cur of great ferocity, who in peaceful times abounds everywhere and is the terror of our riding-parties, had fled, as if driven away by the fear of the coming storm. ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... on a business footing, went, and, carelessly twisting his small moustache, slowly approached the schooner, on the deck of which was a ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... rings danced before his eyes, and the impression of those voices and faces and a sense of loneliness merged with the physical pain. It was they, these soldiers—wounded and unwounded—it was they who were crushing, weighing down, and twisting the sinews and scorching the flesh of his sprained arm and shoulder. To rid himself of ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... spare mattresses to carouse upon, the big trunks to hide in, the old white coats and hats hanging in obscure corners, like ghosts,—are great! And it is so far away from the old lady who keeps rule in the nursery, that there is no possible risk of a scolding for twisting off the fringe of the rug. There is no baby in the garret to wake up. There is no "company" in the garret to be disturbed by the noise. There is no crotchety old Uncle, or Grand-Ma, with their everlasting "Boys, boys!" and then a look ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... the table, raised his head and gazed calmly at his wife. In spite of all his efforts, his face had assumed an expression which would have frightened her if she had noticed it, but her eyes were fastened upon the cup which he was twisting in his hand as if it were ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... pupil would remark, twisting round on the music stool; "I can play nearly all of ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... experiment which proves that the "earth do move" by letting the observer actually see it twisting underneath his feet, an experiment invented by the French mathematician Jean B. L. Foucault nearly a century ago was repeated recently under unusually impressive circumstances before an international scientific congress at Florence, Italy, the same city where Galileo once was persecuted ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... Commines. What we have here is rather an apology for King Francis, against the Emperor Charles V., than history. I will not believe that they have falsified anything, as to matter of fact; but they make a common practice of twisting the judgment of events, very often contrary to reason, to our advantage, and of omitting whatsoever is ticklish to be handled in the life of their master; witness the proceedings of Messieurs de Montmorency and de Biron, which are here omitted: nay, so much as the very ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... variety has fruit so like, both externally and internally, the fruit of a perfectly distinct species, namely, the cucumber, as hardly to be distinguished from it; another has long cylindrical fruit twisting about like a serpent; in another the seeds adhere to portions of the pulp; in another the fruit, when ripe, suddenly cracks and falls into pieces; and all these highly remarkable peculiarities are characteristic of species belonging to allied genera. We can hardly ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... obdurate. "Tell it to the Lieutenant," they rejoined grimly forcing him to go before them by twisting his arms, "Our orders were to seize any ...
— The Romance of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... that Ramblethorne, the spy, might have been instrumental in getting him into this predicament. More than likely the Captain of the submarine had been informed of the fact that his unconscious passengers were well acquainted with the tongue-twisting language of the Fatherland. ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... we determined to run around to the river front of Weyanoke. We were yet charmed with the idea of being back-door neighbours of the old plantation; but not at quite such long range. When the tide served, Gadabout dropped down the twisting Kittewan. Though she paused involuntarily in trying to round the island where the sweet gum flamed against the pines, and caught her propeller on a cypress stump as she sighted the dormer windows of the old house on the hill, ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... really think well of him? But, then, he is an editor, and authors always have a sort of affinity for gentlemen of the press," says a pert young creature, twisting her head on one side, and coming up ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... which was coming out of the chimney, and the longish darkish shadow was moving up the side of the old man's woodshed out there, and on up the slant of the snow-covered roof, making me think of a great big long darkish worm twisting and squirming and crawling up a stick in the summer-time.... There must have been almost a foot of snow on the roof of that woodshed, I thought, and that reminded me of the snow man at the bottom of Bumblebee hill, and when I noticed that the shadows of the trees out there were ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens
... independent, and decidedly lacking in "that repose which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere". Gwen could never keep still for five seconds, her restless hands were always fidgeting or her feet shuffling, or she was twisting in her chair, or shaking back a loose untidy lock that had escaped from her ribbon. Gwen often did her hair without the aid of a looking-glass, but when she happened to use one the reflection of her own face gave her little cause ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... Ah that these evils were the worst! The parlour still is farther curst. To enter there if you advance, If in you get, it is by chance. How oft by turns have you and I Said thus—"Let me—no—let me try— This turn will open it, I'll engage"— You push me from it in a rage. Turning, twisting, forcing, fumbling, Stamping, staring, fuming, grumbling, At length it opens—in we go— How glad are we to find it so! Conquests through pains and dangers please, Much more than those attain'd with ease. Are you disposed to take a seat; ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... dropped as he stood staring for some moments at the corporal—as if he could not quite believe his ears. It seemed to him that this had something to do with the explosion, and that his hearing apparatus was still wrong, twisting and distorting matters, or else that the excitement of the past night and his exertions had combined with the aforesaid explosion to make him ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... that floral gable;[200] you don't suppose the man who built Stonehenge could have built that, or that the man who built that, would have built Stonehenge? Do you think an old Roman would have liked such a piece of filigree work? or that Michael Angelo would have spent his time in twisting these stems of roses in and out? Or, of modern handicraftsmen, do you think a burglar, or a brute, or a pickpocket could have carved it? Could Bill Sykes have done it? or the Dodger, dexterous with finger ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... the man, and some thought he was a maniac and laughed. On and on, at a deadly pace, he rode, and shrilly rang out his awful cry. In a few moments, however, there came a cloud of ruin down the broad streets, down the narrow alleys, grinding, twisting, hurling, overturning, crashing—annihilating the weak and the strong. It was the charge of the flood, wearing its coronet of ruin and devastation, which grew at every instant of its progress. Forty feet high, some say, thirty according to others, was ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... three or four trout out of this best half mile of the lower brook? Yet I had no luck I tried one fly after another, and then, as a forlorn hope,—though it sometimes has a magic of its own,—I combined a brown hackle for the tail fly with a twisting worm on the dropper. Not a rise! I thought of E. sitting patiently in the saw mill, and I ...
— Fishing with a Worm • Bliss Perry
... doorway—a shrinking, timid, brown-eyed young Oriental, very dark of skin, very white of teeth, very black of hair—a slim youth of eighteen, possibly twenty, in a shabby blue suit, broken shoes, and a celluloid collar. Twisting between nervous brown fingers, not as clean as they might have been, was ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... cord, a thick, brown, tarry cord, and twisting it around the arm above the wound, tightened it with all their might. The blood ceased to spurt by slow ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... while the flute-man walked straight into a pool of water, and had to be pulled out by the triangle. But the rest of them got through somehow with that infernal idiot of a conducting keeper, still backing and twisting and waving like mad in the front. That was WHICHELLO'S idea of beating his coverts. 'Combining aesthetic pleasure with sporting pursuits,' he called it. Somehow we had managed to bring down a brace ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 11, 1893 • Various
... hit, and which seems to be flying away from the adversary, who will presently find himself knocked down by it. It is not like the irony of Timon, which is but the wilful refraction of a clear mind twisting awry whatever enters it,—or of Iago, which is the slime that a nature essentially evil loves to trail over all beauty and goodness to taint them with distrust: it is the half-jest, half-earnest of an inactive temperament that ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... and—Out there where that dry ditch runs, we'll back-fire. You take this sack and come and watch out my fire don't jump the ditch. We'll carry it around the house, just the other side the trail." He was pulling a handful of grass for a torch, and while he was twisting it and feeling in his pocket for a match, he looked at her keenly. "You aren't going to get hysterics and leave me to fight it alone, ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... do," Mr. Carter hastened to say. "I'll take the milk, give you a receipt, and you can fight it out with the claim agent. I believe," added Mr. Carter, his lips twisting into a grim smile, "that you are the farmer whose cow was killed by this very ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... go off to get pearls, mother-of-pearl, etc. They are very expert in this occupation, and dive as deep as 100 feet. Prior to the plunge they go through a grotesque performance of waving their arms in the air and twisting their bodies, in order—as they say—to frighten away the sharks; then with a whoop they leap over the edge of the prahu, and continue to throw their arms and legs about for the purpose mentioned. They often dive for the shark and rip ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... indefatigable. Yet Ranke, the great German historian, said of Macaulay that he could hardly be called a historian at all, judged by the strict tests of German criticism. And Freeman, the English historian, brought violent charges against Froude of deliberately twisting his facts and misquoting his authorities; though I believe that Freeman's bitter jealousies led him into grave exaggerations. Then take Carlyle. His Cromwell is a fine portrait by an eminent literary artist. But is it a genuine delineation of the man himself, of his motives, of the working ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... of the dancers could close his eyes no longer! It was a Skiska who peeped the least tiny blink at Iktomi within the center of the circle. "Oh! oh!" squawked he in awful terror! "Run! fly! Iktomi is twisting your heads and breaking your necks! Run out and fly! fly!" he cried. Hereupon the ducks opened their eyes. There beside Iktomi's bundle of songs lay half of their ...
— Old Indian Legends • Zitkala-Sa
... murmured, twisting the front of her gown in her fingers. Her lips began to twitch ominously. Julian felt uncomfortable. He thought she was ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... come of it all?" She dared not hope or anticipate. She dared not think at all; and, throwing her graceful form on a sofa, she commenced tearing some water-color paintings she had lately been executing, into strips, and twisting them into gas-lighters. ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... child I did not need to look at, so well did I know how every shore was bent, and the place of every island. My first adventures began on that long yellow strand; I did not need to turn my head to see it, for I knew that trees intervened and I knew the twisting path through the wood. That yellow strand speckled with tufts of rushes was my first playground. But when my brother proposed that we should walk there, I found some excuse; why go? The reality would destroy ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... results of war, as they now lie about us, that would lead us to trust to them for help. War takes a splendid youth willing to serve the will of God in his generation before he falls on sleep and teaches him the skilful trick of twisting a bayonet into the abdomen of an enemy. War takes a loyal-spirited man who is not afraid of anything under heaven and teaches him to drop bombs on undefended towns, to kill perchance the baby suckled at her mother's breast. The father of one of our young men, ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... to the door and listened, but all was perfectly still; so he set down the boots, rolled his apron into what he called a cow's tail, the process consisting in twisting it up very tightly and tucking ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... passion for the chase strives to climb untrodden mountains, and attains the coveted ground at the cost of a slippery circuit. For no crag juts out so high, but they can reach its crest by fetching a cunning compass. For when they first leave the deep valleys, they glide twisting and circling among the bases of the rocks, thus making the route very roundabout by dint of continually swerving aside, until, passing along the winding curves of the tracks, they conquer the appointed summit. This same people is wont ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... posted in the passage. The witnesses' room, which had been gradually emptying during the chat of the two schoolfellows, now contained only Freydet and the caretaker, who, scared at having to appear in court, was twisting the strings of her cap like a lunatic. The worthy candidate, on the contrary, thought he had an unparalleled opportunity of burning incense at the shrine of the Academie Francaise and its Permanent Secretary. Left alone, when the good woman's ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... few hundred steps in the direction opposite to that which I finally take; in addition, three rotations on the road; a fifth rotation at the place where they are set free. If they do not lose their bearings this time, it will not be for lack of twisting and turning. I begin to open my screws of paper at twenty minutes past nine. It is rather early, for which reason my Bees, on recovering their liberty, remain for a moment undecided and lazy; but, after a short sunbath on a stone where I place them, they take wing. I am ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... was addressed to Raikes. He neither replied nor turned around. He went steadily on, twisting to right and left through the tortuous ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon
... raise they chillun; they drags 'em up. God knows if dat Daisy wuz mine, I'd throw her down an' put a hundred lashes on her back wid a plow-line. Here she come in de store Sat'day night (Acts coy and coquettish, burlesques DAISY'S walk) a wringing and a twisting! ...
— The Mule-Bone: - A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts • Zora Hurston and Langston Hughes |
