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More "Deuce" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... alongside of him, so I could look down into the deck; and when I saw white show, I would copper in the big square, and my partner would play the other end and middle open—for when the white showed, it would be an ace or deuce. In this way we got the old fellow rattled. He changed decks every deal, but had the same bad luck. We finally broke him, and then won his tools. We returned the latter, paid his passage to Shreveport, and gave him $50. After ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... withheld only enough for his own actual needs, and promising to continue reducing his indebtedness by a like amount monthly. He was surprised beyond measure to have the remittance promptly returned. The brief letter that accompanied it brought him a flush of discomfort. What the deuce had made Mrs. Cortlandt do that? For a time he was undecided whether to be offended at her conduct or gratified, and he had not settled the matter to his satisfaction when he called ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... deuce have I done to her? Why is she angry with me? Marianne did not forget my fire! Mademoiselle told her not to light it! I must be a child if I can't see, from the tone and manner she has been taking to me, that I've done something to displease her. Nothing like ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... my right hand to ride, only it wouldn't carry him. I can't make horses. Harry brought home that brown mare on Tuesday with an overreach that she won't get over this season. What the deuce they do with their horses to knock them about so, I can't understand. I've killed horses in my time, and ridden them to a stand-still, but I never bruised them and battered them about ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... soul, she never saw the girl till General Harrington took her home. He said that you had urged him to buy her; come, come, don't blush up like that, what the deuce do I care who fancied the girl, she was a ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... thrice has this been done,—thrice has constant fortune favoured the brace of prebendaries, ere the archdeacon rouses himself to the battle; but at the fourth assault he pins to the earth a prostrate king, laying low his crown and sceptre, bushy beard, and lowering brow, with a poor deuce. ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... "What the deuce is all this about?" thought Mr. Korde to himself as he peeped through the crevices of the dog's dwelling-place, "what is my colleague, the myoptic schoolmaster doing here, and why is he burying his nose ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... I,—I was still smartin' a little,—"but the deuce of the thing is that you go off at halfcock, an' then you allus expect the other feller to pay the damage. It's goin' hard with you some day, Jabez, if ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... How the deuce do their children look so fat and rosy? By eating dirt-pies, I suppose. I saw a couple making a very nice savory one, and another employed in gravely sticking strips of stick betwixt the pebbles at the house-door, and so making for herself a stately garden. The men and women don't ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... rather than lessen it. Staniford smoked with him, and told him stories; he walked up and down with him, and made a point of parading their good understanding, but his spirits seemed to sink the lower. "Deuce take him!" mused his benefactor; "he's in love with her!" But he now had the satisfaction, such as it was, of seeing that if he was in love he was quite without hope. Lydia had never relented in her abhorrence of Hicks since the day of his disgrace. There seemed no scorn in ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... though?" remarked Walter. "I've just been to walk and am tired as the deuce. What do I wish to go tramping ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... never bear its introduction into Christianity, which appears to me essentially founded upon the soul. For this reason, Priestley's 'Christian Materialism' always struck me as deadly. Believe the resurrection of the body, if you will, but not without a soul. The deuce is in it, if after having had a soul (as, surely, the mind, or whatever you call it, is) in this world, we must part with it in the next, even for an immortal materiality; and I own my ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... older man, cordially taking note of Zaidos' sunny smile and fearless eyes, "I'm thinkin' that we need such as you. We can't hope those fellows over there beyond will keep still much longer, and we will have the deuce of a time to hold our position, I believe. Of course we will do it, but it will mean a lot of work for us ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... is cheek!" he exclaimed. "Easton, look here; here is a beast of a native squatting in my hut. Sentry, what the deuce do you mean by letting a nigger come into my hut? Now, then, who are you? What do you want? What do you mean by it? Out you go sharp, or ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... "Where the deuce am I to go after them, when there are so many roads to choose from?" groaned old Purley, in ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... and the deuce is in it, if a little susceptibility will not put forth, now she receives my address; especially if I can manage it so as to be allowed to live under one roof with her. What though the sensibility be at first ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... Ain't I glad Moreland is in New Orleans; for with his notions he wouldn't hesitate to marry her if he liked her, poor as she is. Now if she only had the chink, I'd walk up to her quick. I don't see why the deuce the old man need to have got so involved just now, as to make it necessary for me either to work or have a rich wife. Such eyes too, as Mary's got! Black and fiery one minute, blue and soft the next. ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... a very good-looking young man by the name of Raymond Ironsyde wasting a deuce of a lot of his time by your spinning frame; and wasting your ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... for the ladies! Nor was this all the expense to which his expectations exposed him. A gentleman could scarcely attend these elegant festivities without devoting some little attention to his dress; and a fashionable tailor plays the deuce ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... cried our peer, pulling at his moustache in great perplexity, "I say—what the deuce are we to do with these people? Get up, little chappie, and take your ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... miscalculating in his ledgers like a Trinitarian, while I scribbled poems for the Hamburg Waechter. Yes, I would even rather learn Latin again at the Franciscan cloister, and grind law at Goettingen. For, after all, I shouldn't have to work very hard; a pretty girl passes, and to the deuce with the Pandects! Ah, those wild University days, when we used to go and sup at the 'Landwehr,' and the rosy young Kellnerin, who brought us our duck mit Apfelkompot, kissed me alone of all the Herren Studenten, because I was a poet, and already as famous ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... began, "I have a deuce of a hard time to get a tete-a-tete with you. This is the first we have had ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... religious, doesn't it—a kind of Nonconformist business? I think she's the very finest. A fellow'd hold himself up, 'd be a deuce of a swell—and, hang it all, I ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... "Why, what in the—deuce is the matter with you, old boy?" demanded the young sailor, on seeing the grave aspect of his ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... he said, after a perceptible pause. "It plays the deuce with one's nerves. I believe I need a change. This cursed country gets into one's bones if one stays out too long. I've forgotten what England looks like and I've got over the desire to go back there, and so I rot through the rains and ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... and fanning Mrs. Curwen: "There! there! Wake up, Mrs. Curwen. I didn't mean to scold you for joking. I didn't, indeed. I—I—I don't know what the deuce I'm up to." He gathers Mrs. Curwen's inanimate form in his arms, and fans her face where it lies on his shoulder. "I don't know what my wife would say ...
— The Elevator • William D. Howells
... Exegetics with Fortsch [How the deuce did Fortsch teach these things?]; Hermeneutics and Polemics with Walch [editor of—Luther's Works,—I suppose]; Hebraics with Dr. Danz; Homiletics with Dr. Weissenborn; PASTORALE [not Pastoral Poetry, but the Art of Pastorship] and MORALE with Dr. Buddaeus.' ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... vanished prey, and then composed its sleek body upon the iron rail, tail and paws tucked neatly under. Ste. Marie chirruped, and the cat turned yellow eyes upon him in mild astonishment, as one who should say, "Who the deuce are you, and what the deuce are you doing here?" He chirruped again, and the cat, after an ostentatious yawn and stretch, came to him—beating up to windward, as it were, and making the bed in three ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... he went out of town, and on his return, rummaging among the papers on his desk, he missed "The Lifted Lamp," which had been gathering dust there for half a year. What the deuce could have become of it? Betton spent a feverish hour in vainly increasing the disorder of his documents, and then bethought himself of calling the maid-servant, who first indignantly denied having touched anything ("I can see ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... the deuce are you, sir?" bawled out Mr. Stubmore, in an equal rage both with himself ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... actually did it, Steele! I thought for sure the code message was a fake." He stepped back and looked Bart over from head to foot, whistling. "Raynor Three is a genius! Claws and everything! What a deuce of a risk ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... and keep me from being so silly as to go and make myself lean with any such grief. Your heart guarantees your fidelity; besides, I have too good an opinion of myself to believe that any other could please you after me. Where the deuce could you find ...
— The Love-Tiff • Moliere
... down on the edge of his sample case and said aloud, "Well, if that isn't rotten luck! What in the deuce does ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... implied Inflates me with legitimate pride, It nevertheless can't be denied That it has its inconvenient side. For I'm not so old, and not so plain, And I'm quite prepared to marry again, But there'd be the deuce to pay in the Lords If I fell in love with one of my Wards: Which rather tries my temper, for I'm SUCH ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... pop-pop! Our point had found the enemy. Now for comfort a skirmish ought to be fought near the new camping ground: anticipation keeps us going till the fight begins, and then at the end, weary, we have but a short way to march. This was the deuce! In a moment we were turned aside into a field, and saw the white hat-bands beyond a fence in front. First deployment, then "Down, men!" and flat I threw myself into a six inch bed of clover, as wet ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... wind!" said F., pulling up his collar. "Listen to it! It's going to play the very deuce with these broken roofs and things if it blows hard. Going to be a beastly night, and a forty-mile drive in front of us. Listen to that wind! Come ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... it mercilessly drove us back. Beaten again! And again we tried the same manoeuvre with the same result. Now we saw them lowering a buoy from the ship—if we could only reach it we were saved; but we did not reach it. They were not exactly blessings that we poured on those on board. Why the deuce could they not bear down to us when they saw the straits we were in; or why, at any rate, could they not ease up the anchor, and let the ship drift a little in our direction? They saw how little was needed to enable us to reach them. Perhaps they ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... two kings among them, which is auspicious, for kings must be placed sometime at the top. There is a red queen, also auspicious, to be placed on one of the black kings. There is an ace of diamonds and its deuce. Good, again! The ace is placed above the row, beginning a row of aces to be placed there as fast as they fall, and the deuce is placed atop of it, for in that row the suits will be built up, each in its kind. In the ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... She is frightened out of her wits—that is all. These Yankee horses of yours have been playing the very deuce. Clear the way ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... named the place where they died 'Weenen', or the 'Place of Weeping'; and so it is called to this day, and always will be called. And many an elephant have I shot with that old gun. She always took a handful of black powder and a three-ounce ball, and kicked like the very deuce. ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... dunderheadedness.] But there's no room for difference. She's a wild, headstrong, dissatisfied, foolish little filly. The deuce couldn't ride her—she'd shy at her own shadow—"Carmencita." Oh, very well then, I'll wager you—and I'll give you odds too—"Decorum" will come in first, and I'll lay three to one he'll beat Carmencita by five lengths! ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell
... yelling down conscription, by millions of units belonging to the civilized nations of such social and racial divergence that the mind is staggered by the conception of them all fighting under one banner. But are we sure they are all fighting for the same thing? If they're not, there will be the deuce to pay all over the terrestrial globe, even with a crushed Central ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... lo! the Captain, Gallant Kidd,[4] commands the crew; Passengers their berths are clapt in, Some to grumble, some to spew. "Hey day! call you that a cabin? Why't is hardly three feet square! Not enough to stow Queen Mab in— Who the deuce can harbour there?" "Who, sir? plenty— Nobles twenty Did at once my vessel fill."— "Did they? Jesus, How you squeeze us! Would to God they did so still! Then I'd 'scape the heat and racket Of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... Mrs. Lowder had there said to him as if she really despised ideas—which she didn't; "and I've taken up with my own, which is to give her her head till she has had enough of it. She has had enough of it, she had that soon enough; but as she's as proud as the deuce she'll come back when she has found some reason—having nothing in common with her disgust—of which she can make a show. She calls it her holiday, which she's spending in her own way—the holiday to which, once a year or so, ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... pounding his thigh. "Larkin's men have been here and carried off all the owners. Oh, won't there be the deuce to pay?" ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... Elmsley in a whisper. "He will hear you. Ha!" he continued after a short pause, during which they moved on towards the mess-room, "you begin to find out his amiable military qualities, do you! But tell me, Ronayne, what the deuce has put this Quixotic expedition into your head? What great interest do you take in these fishermen, that you should volunteer to break your shins in the wood, this dark night, for the purpose of seeking them, and that on the very day when your ladye faire honors these walls, if I may so dignify ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... swallowed up, he is staking his little all on the play to be given this evening, and will be forced—if it does not succeed—to leave this marvellous scenery, these rich stuffs at a hundred francs the yard, unpaid for. His fourth failure is staring him in the face. But, deuce take it! our manager has confidence. Success, like all the monsters that feed on man, loves youth; and this unknown author whose name is entirely new on the posters, flatters the ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... in too great a deuce of a hurry to satisfy that curiosity, dear man," Poppy put in. "You must contrive to exercise patience for a little while yet, please; always remembering that it is entirely superfluous to run to catch a train which is bound ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... house. But he was not certain of it, and the absolute quiet reassured him so that he went up the drive, keeping on the grass border until he reached the garage. This, he told himself, was just like a woman—raising the deuce around so that a man had to sneak into his own place to get his own car out of his own garage. If Foster was up against the kind of deal Bud had been up against, he sure had Bud's sympathy, and he sure would get the best help Bud was capable of ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... say, drop it. Who the deuce are you? None of your bally nonsense. Hands off, or I'll ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... aren't likely to be going home for some time to come," said another, a seraphic-faced nudity contemplating his biceps in the small looking-glass that adorned the inside of his chest, "so I shouldn't worry. I say, I'm sweating up a deuce of an arm on me. Shouldn't wonder if I pulled off the Grand Fleet Light-weights next month," he added modestly, "if this sort of thing goes on. I just mention it in case any of you are thinking of putting your names in." He turned from the glass, laughing. "Hullo, Mally, ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... "what the deuce is that? In my opinion, he has 'turned stag' already. At all events, he'll pay deer for his night's sport, you may depend upon it. What signifies it what he says? Let me lay ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... "Deuce take it!" testily responded Val, "one can't swing a cat in these cramped hired houses. Show him ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... brow and gazed intently. Brilliant sunshine plays the deuce with tones. "My hat!" cried he, "you're right. It was this confounded yellow of the side of the house." He put in a few hasty strokes. ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... money. Deuce of a way to get married." Bob turned again to Jim, who solved the difficulty with ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... there was a photographer. He was a splendid photographer; he did profiles and full-faces, three-quarter and full-length portraits; he could develop and fix, tone and print them. He was the deuce of a fellow! But he was always discontented, for he was a philosopher, a great philosopher and a discoverer. His theory was that the world was upside down. It was plainly proved by the plate in the developer. Everything that was on the right side of the original, now appeared on ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... the squire, red and panting. 'Why the deuce couldn't you tell us you were coming home? I looked about for you everywhere, just as we were going into the ordinary. I wanted to introduce you to Grantley, and Fox, and Lord Forrest-men from ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... that the noblest and best fellow I know is going to marry the handsomest woman, saving your presence, that I ever saw. I myself have just come into an earldom, and twenty thousand a-year; and if, under these circumstances, I mayn't make that woman a handsome present, why then the deuce is in it, you know. Sam, my boy, your hand. Jim, your hand, my lad. May you be as good a soldier as ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... "Impossible! deuce a bit of it!" exclaimed the old gentleman himself; bustling into the room. "I tell you that Surbridge is the house you will take Fanny home to. I've a great mind to say you sha'n't marry her at all unless she gives you Surbridge as part ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... "Who the deuce is he, Cairn?" pursued Sir Elwin. "You must know all the circumstances of his adoption; you were with the late Sir Michael in Egypt at the time. The fellow is a mystery to me; he repels, in some way. I was glad to ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... long and hotly contested deuce set, and ended in favor of Dorothy and Alice just as Katie ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick
... my dearest Royal Highness, I had not previously noticed that there was any screw loose under your turban. Your conduct so far had led me, I trust not misled me, to believe that your head was screwed on quite safe. But what the deuce are you up to now, if you will allow me ...
— Turandot, Princess of China - A Chinoiserie in Three Acts • Karl Gustav Vollmoeller
... the neighborhood. Shall I meet her again, I wonder? I will stay here a week or a month if—What nonsense! I must have distinguished myself, staring at her like a gawk. When she said she was the Queen of Sheba, I ought instantly to have replied—what in the deuce is it I ought to have replied? How can a man be witty with a ton of ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... know it is a hard thing for me to say. I know it will sound heartless. But I am bound to say so. It is for your sake. I can't hurt myself. It does me no harm that everybody knows that I am philandering after you; but it is the very deuce for you." She was silent for a moment. Then he said again ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... a West Indiaman!' I muttered; for not otherwise could I account for the sudden illumination. 'What the deuce!' ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... before—I mean before he and I became pally, I had no idea he was really making love to you. No idea, I assure you. If I'd known, I certainly wouldn't have invited him to Auchinleven or accepted his presents. Now I don't know what the deuce to do. I'm in a frightfully ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... larceny of my heart; some massacre of liberty. I behold here a pair of eyes that seem to be very naughty boys, that insult liberty, and use a heart most barbarously. Why the deuce do they put themselves on their guard, in order to kill any one who comes near them? Upon my word! I mistrust them; I shall either scamper away, or expect very good security that they do ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... Conlon's gang, too. Why, he'd better have done anything than ignore 'em! He'd better a darn sight have stood and sung Drill, Ye Tarriers, Drill! as a political move. Now that shows a revolution in his nature. It's uncanny, and it'll play the very deuce with the slate if it ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... them from a distance counting the points. One after the other, the deep voice of the painter and the light one of the young girl, called: "Fifteen, thirty, forty, vantage, deuce, ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... and an infernally daring one,' said Mr Rattenbury; 'in Lealand Cove, not half an hour ago. And the deuce of it is we had warning of it ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... values are all right," he was careful to explain; "it's just that they are all right makes it so trying. If a fellow had a little capital now, he could do wonders. The deuce of a chap like me is that he hasn't any capital ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... again! why the deuce can't you pass over all that, and tell us what the confounded blockheads on that side did ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... a spiritual shadowland, dreaming elusive dreams, my better part stayed by the fitful vision of things unseen. Such an exquisite wild-goose-chase has never man undertaken before or since the dear Knight of La Mancha. And now I come to think of it, I don't know what the deuce I have been after, save that instead of pursuing I have all the ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... sure that it will be published, being somewhat too full of' pastime and prodigality.' I learn from some private letters of Bowles's, that you were 'the gentleman in asterisks.' Who would have dreamed it? you see what mischief that clergyman has done by printing notes without names. How the deuce was I to suppose that the first four asterisks meant 'Campbell' and not 'Pope,' and that the blank signature meant Thomas Moore[39]? You see what comes of being familiar with parsons. His answers have not yet reached me, but I understand from Hobhouse, that he (H.) ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... you good reason, Divorced her, and so it's all passed. For you, I mean; she has to bear it— Poor child—the reproach and the shame; I'm your friend—but come, hang it, old fellow, I swear you were somewhat to blame. 'What the deuce do I mean?' Well, I'll tell you, Though it's none of my business. Here! Just light a cigar, and keep quiet— You started wrong, Charley Leclear. You weren't in love when you married— 'Nor she!'—well, ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... with a suggestive shrug of his shoulders. "Blackton, I want you to do me another good turn. Tell the ladies anything you can think of—something reasonable. The truth is, I went through a window—a window with plenty of glass in it. Now how the deuce can I explain going through a window ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... the tyrant who had come to de Sigognac's rescue, and now suddenly roared out in his stentorian voice, "What the deuce is nipping me? Is it a viper? I felt two sharp fangs meet in the calf of ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... "The very deuce of a hurry, little one; why?" Bertie never was in a hurry, however, and he said this as lazily as possible, shaking the white horsehair over his helmet, and drawing in deep draughts of Turkish Latakia previous to parting ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... round score of men—in case of natives, buccaneers, or the odious French—and I had the worry of the deuce itself to find so much as half a dozen, till the most remarkable stroke of fortune brought me the very man that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... am tired to death of it: I have heard nothing this morning but Arenta's wedding. Why the deuce! should my house be turned upside down and inside out for Arenta's wedding? Women have been married before Arenta Van Ariens, and women will be married after her. What is all this ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... or two I hear about how dissipated Jeff used to be and how if it were not for his good and noble cousin he would have gone to the deuce long ago," Rawson contributed. ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... think," said he, musing; "but the postmark is Plymouth. How the deuce—!" The two first lines of the letter were read, and the old man's countenance fell. Susan, who had been all alive at the mention of McElvina's name, perceived the ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... to hear my man, Paddock, making the deuce of a row at the smoking-room door. Paddock was a fellow I had done a good turn to out on the Selakwe, and I had inspanned him as my servant as soon as I got to England. He had about as much gift of the gab as a hippopotamus, ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... The deuce is in it the way women stare. I took off my hat and jacket for a reason to stay there, and hung them up as ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... very soon,—make pause at the distance of twelve paces asunder; whirl round; and, simultaneously by the cunningest mechanism, explode one another into Dissolution; and off-hand become Air, and Non-extant! Deuce on it (verdammt), the little spitfires!—Nay, I think with old Hugo von Trimberg: "God must needs laugh outright, could such a thing be, to see ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... which circumstance greatly elated him. Dobbin, who was a friend of the general commanding the division in which their regiment was, came laughing one day to Mrs. Osborne, and displayed a similar invitation; which made Jos envious, and George wonder how the deuce he should be getting into society. Mr. and Mrs. Rawdon, finally, were of course invited, as became the friends of a general commanding a ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... they? I daresay they do the savages no harm. Ay, ay, Eau-deuce; that must mean the white brandy, which may well enough be called the deuce, for ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... said he. "What the deuce can have struck us? Us and everybody—and everything? Talk about your problems! Lucky I'm sane and ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... of the exports and imports for the current half-year, had prevented the drain of gold, had made all that matter right about the glut of the raw material, and had restored all sorts of balances with which the superseded noblemen and gentlemen had played the deuce - and all this, with wheat at so much a quarter, gold at so much an ounce, and the Bank of England discounting good bills at so much per cent.! He might be asked, he observed in a peroration of great power, what were his principles? ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... be blackmailed? and was Morris the man to do it? Grave considerations. "It's not that I'm afraid of him," Morris so far condescended to reassure himself; "but I must be very certain of my ground, and the deuce of it is, I see no way. How unlike is life to novels! I wouldn't have even begun this business in a novel, but what I'd have met a dark, slouching fellow in the Oxford Road, who'd have become my accomplice, and known all about ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... interrupted. "The deuce there is!" he exclaimed. "That's the first I've heard of any ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... quoth the fiend, "not so;—the deuce a bit. He sayeth; but, alas! not meaneth it: Ask him thyself, if thou believ'st not me; Or else be still ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... joined me mysteriously from the deuce knows where, and we staggered to the dancing-house somehow, and struggled in, blinded, our faces scored, our clothes heavy with sand, our pockets, our very boots, weighed down ...
— Desert Air - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... me in the Avenue in the Queen's Park, at three o'clock on Wednesday. Here's this brute getting down again. Only just time to kiss those dear blue eyes. Addio Leonore. How the deuce am I to get ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... far to strive with Godunov. Or play false with the Jesuits of the Court, Than with a woman. Deuce take them; they're beyond My power. She twists, and coils, and crawls, slips out Of hand, she hisses, threatens, bites. Ah, serpent! Serpent! 'Twas not for nothing that I trembled. She well-nigh ruined me; but I'm resolved; At daybreak I will ...
— Boris Godunov - A Drama in Verse • Alexander Pushkin
... one." Shy as a girl, his eyes eluded the doctor's frank stare. "You see," he explained diffidently; "you see, I'm just engaged to be married—and though business is fairly good and all that—my being away from the office six or eight weeks is going to cut like the deuce into my commissions—and roses cost such a horrid price last Fall—and there seems to be a game law on diamonds this year; they practically fine you for buying ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... did perceive something yesterday evening; what the deuce was his meaning with those stupid questions he put to her? 'Does cousin like this?' or 'Is cousin fond of that?' I don't like that at all myself. Louise is not yet full-grown, and already people ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... you ever feel That dogs were human? Well, there's Bruce, My collie—brighter than the deuce! Just talk in ordinary tones— A joke, he barks, speak sad, he moans, The other day I said to him, 'Here, Bruce, take this to Uncle Jim,' And ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... and to let the world go as it lists. It must go well, for most people are content with it. If I knew history enough, I should prove to you that evil has always come about here below through a few men of genius, but I do not know history, no more than I know anything else. The deuce take me, if I have learnt anything, or if I find myself a pin the worse for not having learnt anything. I was one day at the table of the minister of the King of——, who has brains enough for four, and he showed as plain as one and one make two, that nothing was more useful ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... people of Furseborough were devoted to the good cause, but I never expected such enthusiasm as they have displayed to-night;" i.e., Why the deuce don't they cheer all together, instead of clapping here and clapping there? Must try to stir ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 12, 1890 • Various
... think I am a shade better. But, you see, the deuce of it is I never get more than a shade better. It always stops at that. The little woman can't complain of me now, can she, Sheldon? No more late ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... is inclined to be a little old-fogyish, thinks we are too young for any definite engagement, and wants me to be permanently established in some business before we are married, and all that; when I can't see what in the deuce is the difference so long as I have plenty of stuff. So the upshot of it all was that he and his wife took Grace to Europe, and they're not coming back until the holidays, and if, by that time, we have neither of us changed our minds, and I am settled in business and all ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... all—being merely a bogey prince. Naturally, we don't care about being made to look fools. The dear old Mater, you know, is one of those simple, trusting natures that, if they once discover they have been taken in by a sham title, why, they kick up the row of a deuce! And, as for the Governor, he's the sort of old retiring chap that has a downright loathing of publicity, when it makes him ridiculous. If he came across you just now, there's really no saying what he mightn't do. He's such ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... girl's features and dress, and her disappearance into the bargain; and I hold with the schoolmen that she who does not exist cannot disappear. Poikilus, a puffing detective. S. I., Secret Inquiry. I spell Enquiry with an E—but Poikilus is a man of the day. What the deuce can Ned Severne want of him? I suppose I ought not to object. I have established a female detective at Hillstoke. So Ned sets one up at Islip. I shall make my own secret arrangements. If Poikilus settles here, he will be drawn through ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... than ever now!" he said. "Well, I've got to shovel dust,—or, rather, mud,—back to Normanstow Towers, anyhow, or the Earl will raise the deuce with me! Be sure to come out on the next train after this, Mr. Holmes, which leaves London at one-twenty-two, as the Earl will be expecting you, and what's more, he'll have a coach-and-four waiting for you at the Hedge-gutheridge station. ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... the friend of colonel Tamper, and the plighted hnsband of Mdlle. Florival.—G. Colman, sen., The Deuce is ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... wife I could not kiss? I wonder if Blanche will speak to me again? Maybe all this was a dodge, women have so many; but she looked in earnest. I might have frightened her by being so sudden, but why the deuce should women be frightened at proposals, when they pass their lives in trying to get them? So Mrs. Stunner said. Poor birdie!, what a soft hand she has! Maybe some women are modest: I will ask Hardcash about it. She may not have known what she was saying—agitated, and all that sort of thing. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... and tired of it this many a day, and care not now to see men abuse good liquor and addle their silly pates to fill my purse. And I have something, boy, put snug away in Dorchester town that will give us bread to eat and beer to drink, even if the throws run still deuce-ace. But we must seek a roof to shelter us when the Why Not? is shut, and 'tis best we leave this Moonfleet of ours for a season, till Maskew finds a rope's end long enough to hang himself withal. So, when our work is done tomorrow night, we will walk out along the cliff to Worth, and take ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... and wrung it hard. "You plucky young idiot, you've got sand in your craw. What the deuce did you ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... at once forthcoming. "What the deuce are they going to take you away for?" he said. "Is ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... repeated. "Deuce take me if I had not forgotten! Excuse me," he continued, "necessity compels ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... that?' said Wylder in my ear, with a chuckle; and, wagging his head, he added, rather loftily for him, 'Miss Brandon, I reckon, has taken your measure, Master Stanley, as well as I. I wonder what the deuce the old dowager sees in him. Old ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... distinctly. This will be the number of dioptries expressing the nearest point at which he can read. This number permits us to know whether it is necessary to add or subtract dioptries in order to allow him to read nearer by or farther off. If, for example, he sees the deuce and the ace distinctly, say 3 dioptries or 0.33 meter, and we want to allow him to read at 0.25 meter, corresponding to four dioptries, it will be necessary to increase the power of his spectacles by ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various
... you have the regiment in terrorem over him, you can do as you like with him. Once let him loose, and the lad is likely to give you the slip. Keep on promising him; promise to make him a general, if you like. What the deuce do I care? There are spies enough to be had in this town ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... thought about himself, and the whole earth Of man the wonderful, and of the stars, And how the deuce they ever could have birth; And then he thought of earthquakes, and of wars, How many miles the moon might have in girth, Of air-balloons, and of the many bars To perfect knowledge of the boundless skies;— And then he thought of ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... be against the law for any girl to look the way you do, Ri-Ri." He laughed again. "I wonder if you know how the deuce you ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... Yet he feels he has been cheated by the fat parson who stole sovereigns from his pocket to keep him out of h——! His spiritual bones fairly ache with the leagues he has travelled, hunting up the throne of God! "Where the deuce," he mutters, "is the showman?" He can't find the lake of fire and brimstone ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... afeard of you! Deuce a bit am I afeard of you! You may glare till your eyes drop out, but you'll not scare me! And you may be the Markiss of Arondelle and the Duke of Hereward, too, for aught I know, or care either! ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... pleasure in life!" said he, vaulting very nimbly through the hedge; "you shall not ask me twice or the very deuce is in it! Believe me, I—" Here he stopped, very suddenly, and stood ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... he spoke Spanish, thought Luck, why the deuce hadn't he done it at first? But there is no fathoming the reticence of an Indian—and Luck, by a sudden impulse, hid his own knowledge of the language. He stood up and turned toward the rocks, cupped his hands around his lips and called for the Native Son. "And leave your rifle at home," ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... vppon the Cater, and Trea, then any other way: And therefore it is called a Langret. Such be also cal'd bard Cater treas, because commonly, the longer end will of his owne sway drawe downewards, and turne vp to the eie, Sixe, Sincke, Deuce or Ace. The principall vse of them is at Nouum, for so longe a paire of Bard cater treas be walking on the bourd, so longe can ye not cast fiue, nor nine, vnles it be by greate chance, that the roughnes of the table, or some other ...
— The Art of Iugling or Legerdemaine • Samuel Rid
... is a wild ferocious beast. He says, it is a bargain; that the receiver is the thief, and not the bidder. He insists on having the patent for the monopoly dispatched; if not, he swears he will play the deuce. ...
— The Lawyers, A Drama in Five Acts • Augustus William Iffland
... enough to wreck Europe! I almost wish I'd never godfathered you into this blessed little stoke-hole. Why the deuce didn't you enlist at home instead ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... his hand over his forehead. "The deuce!" he said. "That is logic perhaps. Still, sir, I think it is rather hardy in you to double America and annihilate Europe, when Europe ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... in the silhouette of a cheek, and she said, "I do like to hear you say 'the deuce.' I don't believe Uncle Nicholas ever said 'the deuce' ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... he said. "I can smell in the air something has gone wrong: what the deuce is it? There's always something getting out of gear in ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... antique and courteous individual called Billali, spoke of her as "She-who-is-everlasting." What the deuce could he mean by that, I wondered? Probably that she was very old and therefore disagreeable to look on, which I confessed to myself ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... earth has the prince got to do with it? Who the deuce is the prince?" cried the general, who could conceal ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... renowned for so much beauty and so much misfortune. But as for giving any opinion on her conduct, saying that she was good or bad, or indifferent, goodness forbid! We have agreed we will not be censorious. Let us have a game at cards—at ecarte, if you please. You deal. I ask for cards. I lead the deuce of clubs.... ...
— English Satires • Various
... from France quite late. I sent your man to watch her while I went to see Froelich. I was sure he was all right, but I wanted to satisfy myself. By the time I reached our place I found the chief in the deuce of a stew. Your man had got back, and reported that she'd gone. They'd kicked up the devil's delight at Headquarters, and the chief was out for blood. He was determined to arrest somebody, and I suggested Ramsey, ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... acquaintance who lived in the neighbourhood, while the valet, as I imagined, waited for us in the alley. Well, sir, he stayed so long, that I began to be uneasy, and at length resolved to send the servant in quest of him, but when I went out for that purpose, deuce a servant was to be found; though I in person inquired for him at every alehouse within half a mile of the place. I then despatched no less than five ticket porters upon the scent after them, and I myself, by a direction from the bar-keeper, went to Signior Ratchcali's ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... doesn't it—a kind of Nonconformist business? I think she's the very finest. A fellow'd hold himself up, 'd be a deuce of a swell—and, hang it all, I ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... me what I am but Fernhurst? Two years ago I came here as innocent as Caruthers there; never knew anything. Fernhurst taught me everything; Fernhurst made me worship games, and think that they alone mattered, and everything else could go to the deuce. I heard men say about bloods whose lives were an open scandal, 'Oh, it's all right, they can play football.' I thought it was all right too. Fernhurst made me think it was. And now Fernhurst, that has made me what I am, turns round and says, 'You are not ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... things I haven't even told you, old chap! We used to go for strolls together in the summer evenings—once or twice we motored down to Richmond and went for a walk in the park ... we used to talk about all sorts of things ... women are the very deuce for leading men on to talk. They pretend to be so interested, ask such gentle little questions, are so sympathetic, so kind ... and when it comes to sport, a girl like Vivian can talk ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... to look you up immediately after my arrival. It is merely due to the respect I owe you that I haven't kept my promise. As I know that you won't tell Papa I might as well confess to you that I've scarcely been sober the whole week.—Oh, Berlin is a deuce of ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... the box beside him. It seemed a true and honest die, for it came up now an ace, now trey; now six, now deuce. He rolled it, rolled it, thinking of Hun Shanklin ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... while poor devils like himself, shorn of leave, were condemned to languish in a moth-eaten Mess in the society of such people as the Adjutant. Where was the sense in it, where the justice, and when the deuce were they, any of them, going to get a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 2, 1917 • Various
... about. At last she came home, exhausted, with her slippers worn to shreds, and despair in her heart. She sat down on the bench near Madame and was telling of her search when presently a light weight dropped on her shoulder—Loulou! What the deuce had he been doing? Perhaps he had just taken a little ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... say that this trick produced greater stupefaction than the ones preceding it: at any rate, my spectators, palsied by surprise and terror, looked round in silence, seeming to think, "Where the deuce have we got ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... horses, you'd think, would buy For the Don an easy victory; But slowly our Princess yielded. A diamond necklace caught her eye, But a wreath of pearls first made her sigh. She knew the worth of each maiden glance, And, like young colts, that curvet and prance, She led the Don a deuce of a dance, In spite ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... felt that it would be a relief to get away from his son-in-law: "If the fellow would only speak!" he exclaimed when he was alone with his wife. "What the deuce he's always ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... "Mr. Robert an' the ol' man didn't hit off, an' there was a deuce of a row between 'em the other day, Saturday it was. My niece, Mary, was a-dustin' the banisters when the two kem out from breakfast, an' she heerd the Gov'nor say: 'That's my last word on the subjec'. I mean to ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... he had that kind of fame Which sometimes plays the deuce with womankind,— A heterogeneous mass of glorious blame, Half virtues and whole vices being combined; Faults which attract because they are not tame; Follies tricked out so brightly that they blind),— These seals upon her wax made no impression, Such was ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... was to have married a Member of Parliament; what the deuce was his name? Something that reminded me of a race-horse, I remember. Was it Blair? ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... the Parson say? and after such a sermon! 'Rich man, respect the poor!' And the good widow, too; and poor Mark, who almost died in my arms. Stirn, you have a heart of stone! You confounded, lawless, merciless miscreant, who the deuce gave you the right to imprison man or boy in my parish of Hazeldean without trial, sentence, or warrant? Run and let the boy out before any one sees him: run, or I shall"—The Squire elevated his cane, and his eyes shot fire. Mr. Stirn did not ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... yourself, Master Plenippo," said Treenail. "But, Splinter, my man, now since the enemy have occupied the dike in front, how the deuce shall we get back into the river, tell ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... raining worse than ever now!" he said. "Well, I've got to shovel dust,—or, rather, mud,—back to Normanstow Towers, anyhow, or the Earl will raise the deuce with me! Be sure to come out on the next train after this, Mr. Holmes, which leaves London at one-twenty-two, as the Earl will be expecting you, and what's more, he'll have a coach-and-four waiting for you at the Hedge-gutheridge station. ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... me mysteriously from the deuce knows where, and we staggered to the dancing-house somehow, and struggled in, blinded, our faces scored, our clothes heavy with sand, our pockets, our very boots, weighed down ...
— Desert Air - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... thought her plain!" said Sir Wilfrid to himself as he moved away. "Upon my word, for a dame de compagnie that young woman is at her ease! But where the deuce have I seen her, or ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... [peeping]. The deuce! This fellow Is no fool, I see. No greenhorn In his business is this devil. I give him my bond! No, truly, Though my lodgings wanted a tenant For the space of twenty ...
— The Wonder-Working Magician • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... Sir Harry was making a deuce of a row with the soap, and he'd the wash-hand basin quite full of bubbles. Just then the King of Gee-Whiz came by, and chawnced to notice the bubbles. You ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... Mr. Woolsey declined this; for, as soon as he was gone, Walker, in a tremendous fury, began cursing his wife for dawdling three hours on the road. "Why the deuce, ma'am, didn't you take a cab?" roared he, when he heard she had walked to Bond Street. "Those writs have only been in half an hour, and I might have ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Say, you're a good one, you are? Why didn't you telegraph me at Marion? A deuce of a night I've ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... the young man, and suddenly ran his fingers through his hair with a distraught gesture. "I'm in the deuce of a jam—! Aunt ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... around the table. There was nothing more except some butter that we hadn't the nerve to tackle single-handed, and some salt and a bottle of ketchup and the toothpicks. We went at the toothpicks again; until Frosty got a splinter stuck between his teeth, and had a deuce of a time getting ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... isn't that. It is because you act as if you really cared to have me talk about my own affairs. I never met a girl before that did. Now, I want to ask you about that club business. There's going to be the deuce and all to pay in that if I'm not careful. Have you thought it over? What would you do if ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... conclusion, "but her father is inclined to be a little old-fogyish, thinks we are too young for any definite engagement, and wants me to be permanently established in some business before we are married, and all that; when I can't see what in the deuce is the difference so long as I have plenty of stuff. So the upshot of it all was that he and his wife took Grace to Europe, and they're not coming back until the holidays, and if, by that time, we have neither of us changed our minds, and I am settled in business ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... caught hold of his horns, legs, and back, to prevent him hurting himself. This he was far too clever to do. He just lay quiet, calmly regarding the fun with his upper eye, and wondering when the deuce they were going to take him "out of that." In a very few minutes his feet were buckled together by soft straps, and a saw trimmed off his antler tops, for which we felt sorry, but there was not room for them in ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... but five nights for other philanthropists to handle; and had they done their part as well, this wicked city might have become a vast Arcadian dormitory where all might snooze and snore the happy hours away, letting problem plays and the rent man and business go to the deuce. ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... it were the deuce's own scribble, and yo' axed me to read in it for yo'r sake, and th' oud gentleman's, I'd do it. Whatten's this, wench? I'm not going for to take yo'r brass, so dunnot think it. We've been great friends, 'bout the sound o' money passing ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... flatten him out, he skipped up and pulled the communicator thing and stopped the train; consequently we ran into Town five minutes behind time. There was the deuce of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... your own conclusions. Fact is, St. George, I'm in a deuce of a damned scrape, and the only bit of luck is having a sensible chap of my own colour, a friend of both sides, a gentleman and a soldier like you, to talk it out with. You'd like to help, wouldn't you, for the father's sake ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... then"—he went on, plaintively enough—"I lose the things, you know; put 'em into a drawer, or with a lot of other manuscripts and papers, and I can't lay my hands on 'em when they are sent for, and then, oh, goodness! there's the deuce and all to pay; for I can assure you that no mother thinks more of her first-born baby than a young author thinks of his first play, and if you are not of the same opinion he regards you as the biggest idiot in the world." "Well, but," I ventured to remark—"why on ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... civilized nations of such social and racial divergence that the mind is staggered by the conception of them all fighting under one banner. But are we sure they are all fighting for the same thing? If they're not, there will be the deuce to pay all over the terrestrial globe, even with a ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... beer and skittles," or the poetic substitutes therefor, for he goes on to say that their principal duties were to picket the beach, their "pleasures and sweet rewards of toil consisting in ague which played dice with our bones, and blue mass pills that played the deuce with our livers." ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... dark a-bit, aren't we, Tit?" inquired Huckaback, while his companion was repairing the breach. "Let's look what it all means—here it is." He read it all aloud again—"'greatest possible importance!'—what can it mean? Why the deuce couldn't ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... as she drew the lone nine of Clubs from the dummy, to place beside Carolyn's Ace, but Penny's fingers were quite steady as she followed with the deuce of Clubs, to which Karen added, with a trace of characteristic uncertainty, ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... narrow-eyed, puckered gaze. He was plainly a little flabbergasted. He seemed taken aback by the greatness of Philadelphia's voice. He said something to himself. On his lips it looked like "What the deuce," or something of similar purport. He sat down on a chair beside Governor Sproul. Not more than four feet away, amazed at our own audacity, we peered over the floor of ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... at Mr. Harley's alone, about some business of importance; but there were two or three gentlemen there. Mr. Secretary and I went together from his office to Mr. Harley's, and thought to have been very wise; but the deuce a bit: the company stayed, and more came, and Harley went away at seven, and the secretary and I stayed with the rest of the company till eleven; I would then have had him come away, but he was in for it; and though he swore he would come away at that flask, ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... in state, the great Lord Cardinal sat, In the great Lord Cardinal's great red hat; And he peered in the face Of his Lordship's Grace, With a satisfied look, as if he would say, "We two are the greatest folks here to-day!" And the priests with awe, as such freaks they saw, Said, "The deuce must ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... not write drivel, Peter," he said, with a note of fatigue in his voice. "He has made out a good case for this girl. Every one who reads this wants to see her. I want to see her, you want to see her—that's the deuce ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... extraordinary night I ever heard of. Here I was, feeling like a condemned criminal because I'd lost my business, afraid to tell Mary and you children, and now you all seem positively glad of it. I expected all kinds of trouble, and all at once.... What the deuce is it? ...
— Read-Aloud Plays • Horace Holley
... life!" said he, vaulting very nimbly through the hedge; "you shall not ask me twice or the very deuce is in it! Believe me, I—" Here he stopped, very suddenly, and stood looking ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... of colonel Tamper, and the plighted hnsband of Mdlle. Florival.—G. Colman, sen., The Deuce is in ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... loutish men who made game of him and sent him here to get his car fixed. There had been a man, a queer man who gave him bread and butter instead of wine—he remembered that—and he had failed to get his car fixed, but how the deuce did he get landed on this couch with a world of books about him and a thin muslin curtain blowing into the room, and fanning the cheeks of a lovely rose in a long stemmed clear glass vase? Did he try to start and have a smash up? No, he remembered going down the steps ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... my relief I almost shouted it. "Why, then, it's simple enough. I'm in the wrong berth, that's all. My berth is nine. Only—where the deuce is ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... after a moment, "I'm thinking I have played the deuce with your general routine. All the earlier performances will be in the nature of an anti-climax after this. But—perhaps, later on, when my abominable remarks are not quite so fresh in your mind, ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... came to himself, and was sure to make them some present or other—some said in proportion to his anger; so that the sexton, who was a bit of a wag (as all sextons are, I think), said that the vicar's saying, "The Devil take you," was worth a shilling any day, whereas "The Deuce" was a shabby sixpenny speech, only fit for ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... heart; some massacre of liberty. I behold here a pair of eyes that seem to be very naughty boys, that insult liberty, and use a heart most barbarously. Why the deuce do they put themselves on their guard, in order to kill any one who comes near them? Upon my word! I mistrust them; I shall either scamper away, or expect very good security that ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... to be seen," he mused; "but why the deuce isn't he more explicit?" As he spoke, a look of comprehension suddenly crossed his face and the puzzled frown between ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... the premiere classe one—any port in a storm.... Feel better now. Narrowly missed American officer but just managed to make it. Was it yesterday or day before saw the Vaterland, I mean the what deuce is it—the biggest afloat in the world boat. Damned rough. Snow falling. Almost slid through the railing that time. Snow. The snow is falling into the sea; which quietly receives it: into which it utterly and peacefully disappears. Man with a college degree returning from Spain, ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... felicitations to Mrs. Procter, and assure her I look forward with the greatest delight to our acquaintance. By the way, the deuce a bit of cake has come to hand, which hath an inauspicious look at first; but I comfort myself that that Mysterious Service hath the property of Sacramental Bread, which mice cannot nibble, ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... It doesn't much matter when I report, and the club's handy for your show. I know the A.C.G.'s office, because it's in the same house as the Base Cashier, and the club's just at the bottom of the street. But it's the deuce of a way from the station. If we can get a taxi, I ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... you or all the world knowing we're stony broke," he went on, frankly. "And everyone does know, anyhow, that we'd be in the deuce of a hole without the tourists' shillings which pour in twice a week the year round. You see, each object in the collection helps bring in those shillings; and 'loss of use' of a single one would be a real deprivation. So it's fair and above ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... have concluded the episode so briskly. He had got the strange young man where he might have "kept him going" for days and made a good income in the process. As it was, there seemed nothing more to do. And yet—and yet—how the deuce could one let the thing drop like that? If the girl was ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... as you dress," she said. What a greeting was this! Who says that a woman cannot be as cruel as a man? The dinner was not very cheerful, though Margaret did her best not to appear constrained, and Henderson rattled on about the events of the day. It had been a deuce of a day, but it was coming right; he felt sure that the upper court would dissolve the injunction; the best counsel said so; and the criminal proceedings—"Had there been criminal proceedings?" asked Margaret, with a stricture at her heart—had ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... fox-cub Curves over brambles with berries and buds, Light as a bubble that flies from the tub, Whisked by the laundry-wife out of her suds. Wavy he comes, woolly, all at his ease, Elegant, fashioned to foot with the deuce; Nature's own prince of the dance: then he sees Me, and retires as if ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in the old King's mood, And a sweet Spring freshet came Into his eyes, and his heart renewed Its love for the favored dame: But often he has been heard to declare That "he never could clearly see How, in the deuce, such a strange affair Could have ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... The discovery struck him as curious. He argued with himself that he had every right to feel afraid, that he ought to feel "queer." He said to himself, "Here you are, as nervous and temperamental a youth as ever stepped, with a mental laziness that amounts to moral cowardice, in the deuce of a hole that I don't expect you'll ever get out of. You ought to be in an awful state. Your cheeks ought to be white, and there they are looking like two raw beef-steaks. Your tongue ought to cleave to the roof of your mouth; and it isn't. You ought to feel pains in the pit of your stomach, ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... told you she was a kind girl. She's trying to pull old Charlie up a peg or two. He's had the deuce of ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... anything on earth that would nail him, and not knowing what would do it, and complicating her ignorance with meaningless worries about modesty and daringness and the freedom of her poor sex, that ain't ever even deuce-low with ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... is that it? You seem to know my dad pretty well. And so do I. He's dead nuts on having his own way—and I've been used to have my own too long. It's the deuce of a fix. ...
— One Day More - A Play In One Act • Joseph Conrad
... so original!" and he laughed again. "It commenced thus: 'It has been truly said that those whom the gods love die young!' and then on it went, dragging in memories of Chatterton and Shelley and Keats, till I found myself yawning and wondering what the deuce the writer was driving at. Presently, about the end of the second column, I came to the assertion that 'the posthumous poem of "Nourhalma" must be admitted as one of the most glorious productions in the ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... disappearance into the bargain; and I hold with the schoolmen that she who does not exist cannot disappear. Poikilus, a puffing detective. S. I., Secret Inquiry. I spell Enquiry with an E—but Poikilus is a man of the day. What the deuce can Ned Severne want of him? I suppose I ought not to object. I have established a female detective at Hillstoke. So Ned sets one up at Islip. I shall make my own secret arrangements. If Poikilus settles here, he will be drawn through the ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... Sun; and being an awkward charioteer, tumbled headlong into the Eridanus: that his sisters pined away with grief; and at last were transformed to trees, the same of which he had just spoken: and he assured them, that these trees were to be found somewhere upon the banks, weeping amber. Who the deuce, says one of the boatmen, could tell you such an idle story? We never heard of any charioteer tumbling into the river; nor have we, that I know of, a single poplar in the country. If there were any trees hereabouts dropping amber, do you ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... won't die. At any rate, there's likely to be a stir about the matter, and my name will be called into question, then, as I'm the landlord. And folks will make a handle of it, and there'll be the deuce to pay, generally." ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... his little all on the play to be given this evening, and will be forced—if it does not succeed—to leave this marvellous scenery, these rich stuffs at a hundred francs the yard, unpaid for. His fourth failure is staring him in the face. But, deuce take it! our manager has confidence. Success, like all the monsters that feed on man, loves youth; and this unknown author whose name is entirely new on the ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... there, taking notes. You can't compete with a fellow like that! He'll run across a new name somewhere—Aristotle, for instance. It's something new, and off he must go to the library to look it up. And then he'll lie awake for nights after, stuffing his head with translations from the Greek. How the deuce can any one keep up with a man who goes at things that way? There's one thing, though, ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... her, lo! the Captain, Gallant Kidd,[4] commands the crew; Passengers their berths are clapt in, Some to grumble, some to spew. "Hey day! call you that a cabin? Why't is hardly three feet square! Not enough to stow Queen Mab in— Who the deuce can harbour there?" "Who, sir? plenty— Nobles twenty Did at once my vessel fill."— "Did they? Jesus, How you squeeze us! Would to God they did so still! Then I'd 'scape the heat and racket Of the good ship, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... splendid—thick, black and glossy as satin, and her eyes,—there are not words enough either in the French or English language with which to describe her eyes—they are so bright and deep that nobody can look into them long without wincing. I should say, sir, if put on oath, there was a good deal of the deuce ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... 'Now, deuce take him that first good prologue writ: He left a kind of rent-charge upon wit, Which, if succeeding poets fail to pay, They forfeit all they're worth, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... a voluble gossip, who retails all the news and scandal of the neighborhood. He knows everybody, everybody's affairs, and everybody's intentions.—G. Colman, Sr, The Deuce is in Him (1762). ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... just it. What the deuce is a fellow to do when a woman goes on in that way? She told me down there, upon the old race-course, you know, that matrimonial bonds were made for fools and slaves. What was I to suppose that she meant by that? But, to make all sure, I asked her what sort of a fellow the general was. 'Dear old ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... is one special point I would like you to clear up for me if possible. What the deuce is the ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... way into. They bang the typewriters in our offices, they elbow us in the streets, they smile at us from the next table at our workaday luncheon, they crowd the tubes and the cars and the cabs in the streets. Why the deuce, Julien, can't we treat them like those sage Orientals, and dump them all in one place where they belong till we've finished ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... subscription paper!" interrupted the old gentleman, lifting his head and staring at him. "Why, what the deuce is it, then?" ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... "Why the deuce should I let a confounded Chinaman and a pretty girl get on my nerves at this stage of the game? If it ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... an idee," said the half-breed, presently, in a smooth voice that penetrated the mighty vibrations of the falls, "ez how a chap on a log could paddle roun' this yere eddy fer a deuce of a while afore he'd hev to git sucked out into ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... magnifying glass which he used in studying all the niceties of handwriting. He suddenly felt unnerved. "Whom is it from? This hand is familiar to me, very familiar. I must have often read its tracings, yes, very often. But this must have been a long, long time ago. Whom the deuce can it be from? Pooh! it's only somebody ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... after hearing Mobray through his lines in "The Deuce is in Him," "I'd give a finger but ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... the table grew, card by card. Fetcher got an ace, Quint a deuce. Fetcher a queen, Quint a seven. Fetcher a jack, Quint a six. Fetcher a ten, Quint a ten. Only the last card to come to each. If Fetcher paired any card, he would win. His card came first. It was a seven. He was ace, queen high. Quint had deuce, six, seven, ...
— All the Brothers Were Valiant • Ben Ames Williams
... juncture dear old Gussie broke off short, rose from his seat, and sprang with indescribable vim at an extraordinarily stout chappie who had suddenly appeared. There was the deuce of a rush for him, but Gussie had got away to a good start, and the rest of the singers, dancers, jugglers, acrobats, and refined sketch teams seemed to recognize that he had won the trick, for they ebbed back into their places again, and Gussie and ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... I don't mind saying it to you, because you understand the kind of devil she'd be. But Lord! I don't care. It's just her way. She's told me to go to the deuce half a dozen times, but she knows I won't till she comes with me. Oh, no. Evie's ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... I really must say thank-you for nothing. What the deuce could I do with a servant? Now don't you trouble yourself; the council will see to your affairs. And in good time ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris
... see!" A great light had suddenly dawned on Mr. Daney. "The Laird led trumps, but Nellie McKaye revoked and played a little deuce?" ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... Deuce take it! Was not this passion for similarity enough to madden one? Must everything be tainted by this damned, regular, grinding drill, this parade-march sort of principle? Must things everywhere run smoothly and according to rule, just ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... state of things with a sigh. "If it were but a temporary liaison," the excellent man said, "one could bear it. A young fellow must sow his wild oats, and that sort of thing. But a virtuous attachment is the deuce. It comes of the d——d romantic notions boys get from ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Bills, beasts, and men, and—no! not womankind![gp] With one good hearty curse I vent my gall, And then my Stoicism leaves nought behind Which it can either pain or evil call, And I can give my whole soul up to mind; Though what is soul, or mind, their birth or growth, Is more than I know—the deuce take them both![gq] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... Precious close she is with the money, though she earns a sight of it, I know, at that shop of her'n, and keeps Joe like a king. Wine, and all the rest of it, she's got for him, since he was ill. 'There's a knife and fork for ye, whenever ye like to come,' she says to me, in her tart way. But deuce a bit of money will she give. If it weren't for one and another friend giving me an odd sixpence now and then, Master Bywater, I should never hardly ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... on, "please put her to bed. She's had the deuce and all of a day. She'll tell you, only don't ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... comic in a tragedy. What the deuce else can you do? I wish this language of yours had a wider scope. I suppose we could not extend it from the fingers to the toes? That would involve pulling off our boots and socks during the conversation, which however ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... governess!" he repeated. "Deuce take me if I had not forgotten! Excuse me," he continued, "necessity compels me to make ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... of man, Desire is for men who are men—but Delusion, which is only for cowards, hampers them. Because delusion keeps them wrapped up in past and future, but is the very deuce for confounding their footsteps in the present. Those who are always straining their ears for the call of the remote, to the neglect of the call of the imminent, are like Sakuntala [19] absorbed in the memories of her lover. The guest comes unheeded, ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... cried, sitting up in bed, "what the deuce am I doing here? Nothing. Nothing on earth. Let's get out of it." So out he had got, and could not ask for breakfast at ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... replied Robin. "There's the deuce of a current running over there, and Ann's not an experienced enough swimmer to tackle a ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... you and Elizabeth into a deuce of an unpleasant position. I've told you what a fine woman my mother is, and how she'd welcome Elizabeth with open arms, and now I find I was all wrong. My mother isn't a fine woman; she's an ancestor-worshiping, ...
— Cupid's Understudy • Edward Salisbury Field
... if he hadn't put his cloas into bed an hung hissen ovver th' cheer back. Awm sure aw connot tell where all this marchin' is likely to lead us to at last, but aw hooap we shall be all reight, for aw do think ther's plenty o' room to mend even yet, but the deuce on it is,' ther's soa monny different notions abaat what is reight wol aw'm flamigaster'd amang it. Some say drink is the besetting sin; another says 'bacca is man's ruination. One says we're all goin' to the devil becoss we goa to church, an' another says we'st niver goa to heaven if we goa to ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, Second Series - To which is added The Cream of Wit and Humour - from his Popular Writings • John Hartley
... imaginable possibilities of politics and diplomacy, revolution or invasion. To his vexation, not less than his surprise, he found the king in dishabille, engaged with a Siamese-English vocabulary, and mentally divided between "deuce" and "devil," in the choice of an equivalent. His preposterous Majesty gravely laid the case before the consul, who, though inwardly chafing at what he termed "the confounded coolness" of the situation, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... looked unutterably bored. "Why, he gave up tryin' to talk business with me long ago. I can't get interested in it, 'pon my word. Of course I knew he thought the deuce and all of you, but I hadn't an idea they were goin' to take ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... continued that worthy, 'Morris and Levison would never have given you such a deuce of a tick unless they knowed your resources. Trust Morris and Levison for that. You done up, sir! a nob like you, that Morris and Levison have trusted for such a tick! Lord! sir, you don't know nothing about it. I could afford to give them fifteen shillings in the pound ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... doing something on the Popish and Protestant affray. I think I could do some good, and I have the sincere wish to do it. I heard the merry birds sing, reviewed my dogs, and was cheerful. I also unpacked books. Deuce take arrangement! I think it the most complete bore in the world; but I will try a little of it. I afterwards went out and walked till dinner-time. I read Reginald Heber's Journal[272] after dinner. I spent some merry days with him at Oxford when he was writing his prize poem. He was ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... grumbled, bringing his horse's gait down to an amble. "There ought to be good hounds about, judging from the hang-dog look of the natives. Why in thunder did the old boy want to bury himself and his heirs forever in this god-forsaken land's end, and what in the deuce have mother and Aunt Kesiah done with themselves down here for the last twenty years? Two thousand acres? Damn it! I'd rather have six feet on the good English soil! Came to get rid of one woman, did ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... Never did he say outright, "You played the wrong card at such and such a point." No, he always employed some such phrase as, "You permitted yourself to make a slip, and thus afforded me the honour of covering your deuce." Indeed, the better to keep in accord with his antagonists, he kept offering them his silver-enamelled snuff-box (at the bottom of which lay a couple of violets, placed there for the sake of their scent). In particular did the newcomer pay attention to ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... me thrice daily that Elsa is timid. Princess Heinrich has made no sign yet; when she frowns I must kiss. So stands the matter. I must go hence to pray her to walk in the woods with me. She will flush and flutter, but, poor child, she will come. What I ask she will not and must not refuse. But, deuce take it, I ask so little! There's the rub! I hear your upbraiding voice, 'Pooh, man, catch her up and kiss her!' Ah, my dear Varvilliers, you suffer under a confusion. She is a duty; and who is impelled by duty to these sudden ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... on, plaintively enough—"I lose the things, you know; put 'em into a drawer, or with a lot of other manuscripts and papers, and I can't lay my hands on 'em when they are sent for, and then, oh, goodness! there's the deuce and all to pay; for I can assure you that no mother thinks more of her first-born baby than a young author thinks of his first play, and if you are not of the same opinion he regards you as the biggest idiot in the world." "Well, but," I ventured to remark—"why ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... his Daddy Chip, concerning the proper care of horses. He stood with his hands upon his hips and his feet far apart, and spat into the corral dust and told Big Medicine that nobody but a pilgrim ever handled a horse the way Big Medicine was handling Deuce. Whereat Big Medicine gave a bellowing haw-haw-haw and choked it suddenly when he saw that the Kid desired him to take the ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... who are initiated, and who have raised the veil of Isis: there is no such thing as either good or evil; there is vegetation. Let us seek the real. Let us get to the bottom of it. Let us go into it thoroughly. What the deuce! let us go to the bottom of it! We must scent out the truth; dig in the earth for it, and seize it. Then it gives you exquisite joys. Then you grow strong, and you laugh. I am square on the bottom, I am. Immortality, Bishop, is a chance, a waiting for dead men's ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... say," Clancey replied. "You see, we only got the report in from France quite late. I sent your man to watch her while I went to see Froelich. I was sure he was all right, but I wanted to satisfy myself. By the time I reached our place I found the chief in the deuce of a stew. Your man had got back, and reported that she'd gone. They'd kicked up the devil's delight at Headquarters, and the chief was out for blood. He was determined to arrest somebody, and I suggested Ramsey, but he ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... "Well, deuce a much indeed," returned Doctor Mangan, equably, "but it mightn't be so bad as that altogether! I have my little girl out for the first time to-day, Major. I wonder might I ask your man, that's looking after your young ladies, to have an eye ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... commenced thus: 'It has been truly said that those whom the gods love die young!' and then on it went, dragging in memories of Chatterton and Shelley and Keats, till I found myself yawning and wondering what the deuce the writer was driving at. Presently, about the end of the second column, I came to the assertion that 'the posthumous poem of "Nourhalma" must be admitted as one of the most glorious productions in the English language.' This woke me up considerably, and I read on, groping my way through ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... a day, and care not now to see men abuse good liquor and addle their silly pates to fill my purse. And I have something, boy, put snug away in Dorchester town that will give us bread to eat and beer to drink, even if the throws run still deuce-ace. But we must seek a roof to shelter us when the Why Not? is shut, and 'tis best we leave this Moonfleet of ours for a season, till Maskew finds a rope's end long enough to hang himself withal. So, when our work is done tomorrow night, ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... to wreck Europe! I almost wish I'd never godfathered you into this blessed little stoke-hole. Why the deuce didn't you enlist at home instead of ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... bank robber, eh? Thought I'd quit a game where I hold all the aces, an' horn in on one where I don't hold even a deuce to draw to? Bitin' off more'n he c'n chaw has choked more'n one feller. Right here in Choteau County they's some several of 'em choked out on the end of a tight one, because they overplayed their hand. I'm a horse-thief—an' a damn ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... Hiram," remonstrated the motor wizard, drawing his tow-headed friend apart, "if you're convinced your father is in San Diego, what the deuce are you expecting to see ...
— Owen Clancy's Happy Trail - or, The Motor Wizard in California • Burt L. Standish
... he had the hundred pounds, I couldn't fancy what the deuce and all he meant by such prattle. I was half afraid he might be having me on, as I have known him do now and again when he fancied he could get me. I fearfully wanted to ask questions. Again I saw the dark, absorbed face of the gipsy as he studied ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... "And who the deuce is Mr. Hudson?" asked Rowland. But he was absorbed; he lost her immediate reply. The statuette, in bronze, something less than two feet high, represented a naked youth drinking from a gourd. The attitude was perfectly simple. The lad was squarely planted on his feet, with his legs a little ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... when the ever-late actor was heard coming on the run down the passage. In he tore, flinging things right and left, overturning make-ups, and knocking down precious silk hats. He grabbed his shoes, jammed his foot into one, scowled and exclaimed disgustedly, "What the deuce! there's something in this shoe. Bah," he went on, "and in this ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... "No! The deuce! We should have to explain everything to him. He knows what's what, and would find the idea too good, and want a share of the spoil. No! Sign that, and don't be alarmed. The sheep will be back in the fold before the ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... sweep inferior races from his path wherever he goes. There are few who love the Indian so deeply that they would wish this continent restored to its original condition, peopled by savage nomads instead of civilized colonists. "The Deuce and Your Add", by Melvin Ryder, is a bit of light philosophy whose allegorical case is well maintained. "To a Warbler", by Roy W. Nixon, is a meritorious piece of verse whose rhythm moves with commendable sprightliness, though the first line of the first stanza might be made to correspond ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... I know it is a hard thing for me to say. I know it will sound heartless. But I am bound to say so. It is for your sake. I can't hurt myself. It does me no harm that everybody knows that I am philandering after you; but it is the very deuce for you." She was silent for a moment. Then he said again emphatically, ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... whose portraits adorned the staircase. The type of Catholic woman which he most admired rose in his mind; compassionate, tender, infinitely soft and loving—like the saints; save where "the faith" was concerned—like the saints, again. This Protestant rigidity and self-sufficiency were the deuce! ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... stop him? If Claudia and Eugene have fixed up things it would be charitable to prevent him making a fool of himself. Why the deuce haven't I heard anything from that young rascal? ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... want to see old Rainham. It is stupid of me not to have written to him—yes, stupid! Wonder if he has heard? I mustn't give him up, at any rate. We'll—we'll ask him to dinner, and all that sort of thing. And what the deuce am I going to send to the Academy? Thank goodness, I have enough Swiss sketches to work up for the other galleries to last me for ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... 'Pooh, pooh! Deuce take it, Mr Richard, how dull you are!' cried Brass, relaxing into a smile. 'Did he say ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... wonder? I will stay here a week or a month if—What nonsense! I must have distinguished myself, staring at her like a gawk. When she said she was the Queen of Sheba, I ought instantly to have replied—what in the deuce is it I ought to have replied? How can a man be witty with a ton of sole-leather pressing on ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... and joined them. He was evidently not in the secret, for he looked intensely puzzled when Jim Goodman, who had next shot, hit his bird fairly, but it only hopped about and descended unbroken. "What the deuce!" he said. ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... What course we took I hardly remember, but we roamed slowly about for an hour, my companion delivering by snatches a sort of moon-touched aesthetic lecture. I listened in puzzled fascination, and wondered who the deuce he was. He confessed with a melancholy but all-respectful ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... current half-year, had prevented the drain of gold, had made all that matter right about the glut of the raw material, and had restored all sorts of balances with which the superseded noblemen and gentlemen had played the deuce - and all this, with wheat at so much a quarter, gold at so much an ounce, and the Bank of England discounting good bills at so much per cent.! He might be asked, he observed in a peroration of great ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... with Godunov. Or play false with the Jesuits of the Court, Than with a woman. Deuce take them; they're beyond My power. She twists, and coils, and crawls, slips out Of hand, she hisses, threatens, bites. Ah, serpent! Serpent! 'Twas not for nothing that I trembled. She well-nigh ruined me; but I'm resolved; At daybreak I will put my ...
— Boris Godunov - A Drama in Verse • Alexander Pushkin
... mine were. But, the truth is, I manage better; I know where my money goes to, and you don't; I work hard, and you don't; I spend my money on what's necessary to my style of living, you spend yours on what's not necessary. What the deuce have the fellows in Mayo and Roscommon done for you, that you should mount two or three rascals, twice a-week, to show them sport, when you're not there yourself two months in the season? I suppose you don't keep the horses and ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... dualism; duplicity; biplicity^, biformity^; polarity. two, deuce, couple, duet, brace, pair, cheeks, twins, Castor and Pollux, gemini, Siamese twins; fellows; yoke, conjugation; dispermy^, doublets, dyad, span. V. pair [unite in pairs], couple, bracket, yoke; conduplicate^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... his own situation. A bird of passage is always at its ease, having no house to build, and no responsibility. He talked freely with Philip about Ruth, an almighty fine girl, he said, but what the deuce she wanted to study ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... greatly elated him. Dobbin, who was a friend of the general commanding the division in which their regiment was, came laughing one day to Mrs. Osborne, and displayed a similar invitation; which made Jos envious, and George wonder how the deuce he should be getting into society. Mr. and Mrs. Rawdon, finally, were of course invited, as became the friends of a general commanding a ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... 'Now, the deuce is in it,' muttered Pancks, tracing out a line in her hand with his clumsy finger, 'if this isn't me in the corner here! What do I want here? ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... reached her, lo! the Captain, Gallant Kidd,[4] commands the crew; Passengers their berths are clapt in, Some to grumble, some to spew. "Hey day! call you that a cabin? Why't is hardly three feet square! Not enough to stow Queen Mab in— Who the deuce can harbour there?" "Who, sir? plenty— Nobles twenty Did at once my vessel fill."— "Did they? Jesus, How you squeeze us! Would to God they did so still! Then I'd 'scape the heat and racket Of the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... silly as to go and make myself lean with any such grief. Your heart guarantees your fidelity; besides, I have too good an opinion of myself to believe that any other could please you after me. Where the deuce could you find any ...
— The Love-Tiff • Moliere
... inhabitants of other portions of the world remote from the Hub of the Universe. A Boston grumble consists of an upward movement of the eyebrow, a slight twitch of the mustache and a murmur cross-bred from "Deuce take it!" and "Scoundrelly!") "Young man," he said, "my father said that such a hazardous venture as copper should return at least thirty per cent. to be safe, and I feel if I receive but twenty per cent. that something is radically and unpardonably ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... whispered. "Deuce knows how many more there'll be, but I know of two at least. We won't have to make much noise over them, either; down here ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... the stage, they spied at Nesta's box, during the thunder of the rounds of applause, after shaking hands with Mr. Dubbleson, Sir Abraham Quatley, Dudley Sowerby, and others; and with Beaves Urmsing—a politician 'never of the opposite party to a deuce of a funny fellow!—go anywhere to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... between her and Noel d'Arnaye; the host of the Crowned Ox had been garrulous that evening. But it was Francois whom she loved. She was well-to-do. Here for the asking was a competence, love, an ingleside of his own. The deuce of it was that Francois ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... in the deuce of a tight place," he reflected; "it's seven to one against my ever reaching Kohara, and the ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... bargain; and I hold with the schoolmen that she who does not exist cannot disappear. Poikilus, a puffing detective. S. I., Secret Inquiry. I spell Enquiry with an E—but Poikilus is a man of the day. What the deuce can Ned Severne want of him? I suppose I ought not to object. I have established a female detective at Hillstoke. So Ned sets one up at Islip. I shall make my own secret arrangements. If Poikilus settles here, he will be drawn through the horse-pond by small-minded rustics ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... looking," he philosophised (to himself, for no man knew of his secret project) and grinned with a sort of amused tolerance for the sentimental side of his nature. "I'm a silly ass to have even dreamed of finding her as I passed along, and if I had found her what the deuce could I have done about it anyway? This isn't the day for mediaeval lady-snatching. I dare say I'm just as well off for not having found her. I still have the zest for hunting farther, and there's a lot in that." Then aloud: "Hobbs, are ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... must be fitting that Cossack strength should be wasted in vain, that a man should disappear like a dog without having done a single good deed, that he should be of no use to his country or to Christianity! Why, then, do we live? What the deuce do we live for? just tell me that. You are a sensible man, you were not chosen as Koschevoi without reason: so just tell me ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... to arrive, he found the old lady alone in the drawing-room. "Well! little one," he asked, with his smiling familiarity, "are your affairs going on all right? Why the deuce do you make ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... continued Stubby, confidentially. "Usually it's pretty dull here, and all we can do is ride and hunt—play cards and quarrel. But your coming has created no end of excitement and this dance will be our red-letter day for a long time to come. The deuce of if is, however, that there are only two girls to dance with thirteen men. We limit our community to fifteen, you know; but little Ford and old Rutledge have backed down and won't have anything to do with this enterprise. I don't know ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... a class of men belonging to these soul-forsaken years: Third-rate canvassers, collectors, journalists and auctioneers. They are never very shabby, they are never very spruce — Going cheerfully and carelessly and smoothly to the deuce. Some are wanderers by profession, 'turning up' and gone as soon, Travelling second-class, or steerage (when it's cheap they go saloon); Free from 'ists' and 'isms', troubled little by belief or doubt — Lazy, purposeless, and useless — knocking ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... in exchange," said Porthos, covered with perspiration and soiled by dust, "in exchange, I have torn many skins. Those wretches wanted to take away my sword! Deuce take 'em, what a popular commotion!" continued the giant, in his quiet manner; "but I knocked down more than twenty with the hilt of Balizarde. A ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... well) but how the deuce can you be funny in the Baltic? Why call it Baltic? For days and nights at sea, sometimes up, more often down, and a sense of inability coming over me in the middle of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... is all a mass of steam." What in the world does that mean? The man has gone out — if not out on to the Barrier, then certainly into it — into snow-ice, and then he comes back and says that it is all a mass of steam. It seems ridiculous — absurd. I send Sherlock Holmes to the deuce, and watch Hassel with increasing excitement; if he takes any more off — I felt I was blushing, and half turned my head, but there he stopped. Then he picked up a towel, and away we went: out through the pent-house ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... been a run, and an infernally daring one,' said Mr Rattenbury; 'in Lealand Cove, not half an hour ago. And the deuce of it is we had warning of ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... gamblers, (it is a serious truth) though shot dead, still held the cards hard gripped in his hands. Led by curiosity to inspect this strange sight, a dead gambler, we found that the cards which he held were ace, deuce, and jack. Clubs were trumps. Holding high, low, jack, and the game, in his own hand, he seemed to be in a fair way to do well; but Marion came down upon him with a trump that spoiled his sport, ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... really want to," Vernon capitulated, in deadly fear of further revelations. "Only keep mum about it or there'll be the very deuce to pay." ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... if she gets married to any on 'em. One cools off, and another cools off, and before she brings any one on 'em to the right weldin' heat, the coal is gone and the fire is out. Then she may blow and blow till she's tired; she may blow up a dust, but the deuce of a flame can she blow up agin, to save her soul alive. I never see a clever lookin' gal in danger of that, I don't long to whisper in her ear, You dear little critter, you, take care! you have too many irons in the ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... army not to be seen on the surface. There had been private dramas in private drawing-rooms. Some of the older men had been "churned up," as they would say, because this sudden war had meant a leave-taking from women, who would be in a deuce of a fix if anything happened to certain captains and certain majors. Love affairs which had been somewhat complicated were simplified too abruptly by a rapid farewell, and a "God bless you, old girl. ... I hate to leave ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... 6/4. It was in the second set that the real struggle took place. In spite of all my efforts, Miss Sugden won game after game, until the game stood at 5/1 against me and 30 all; but by good luck I snatched that game and the two following. At 5/4 and my service we had deuce quite ten or twelve times, but in the end I managed to win and took the set at 7/5. After that I felt better, and with renewed confidence and steadier nerves I won the final ...
— Lawn Tennis for Ladies • Mrs. Lambert Chambers
... be given this evening, and will be forced—if it does not succeed—to leave this marvellous scenery, these rich stuffs at a hundred francs the yard, unpaid for. His fourth failure is staring him in the face. But, deuce take it! our manager has confidence. Success, like all the monsters that feed on man, loves youth; and this unknown author whose name is entirely new on the posters, ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... what the deuce was the matter with you this evening on the Elysium road?" The suddenness of the question wrenched an answer from ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... him, sir, we'll try him. After having escaped the Arabs, the deuce is in it, if we cannot weather upon John Bull! I beg your pardon, Mr. Sharp; but this is a question that must be settled by some of the niceties of the ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... Janice one day, after hearing Mobray through his lines in "The Deuce is in Him," "I'd give a finger but to ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... the story of the times:—a contemporary wit has recorded this literary injury, by repeating it.[342] And Swift, who once exclaimed to Pope, "The deuce take party!" was himself the greatest sinner of them all. He, once the familiar friend of Steele till party divided them, not only emptied his shaft of quivers against his literary character, but raised the horrid yell of the war-whoop in his inhuman ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... merely a bogey prince. Naturally, we don't care about being made to look fools. The dear old Mater, you know, is one of those simple, trusting natures that, if they once discover they have been taken in by a sham title, why, they kick up the row of a deuce! And, as for the Governor, he's the sort of old retiring chap that has a downright loathing of publicity, when it makes him ridiculous. If he came across you just now, there's really no saying what he mightn't do. He's such a ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... haggard and ill, but Sir Hugh only laughed at him; there was nothing the matter, he said, carelessly; he was tough, like all the Redmonds, and he had never been ill in his life. If he only slept better he should be all right, but want of sleep plays the very deuce with a ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... "if Time thought no more of me than I do of Time, I believe I should bid defiance, for one while, to old age and wrinkles; for deuce take me, if ever I think ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... safe enough in some Sanatorium, depend upon it. And what if she did come? Do you think, my dear good woman, that I—a sensible clear-headed general practitioner, who have found out all I know for myself—would let her play the deuce with me as she did with poor HALVARD? No, general practitioners don't ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 11, 1893 • Various
... "Oh, to the deuce with your nonsense!" the attorney replied, his cheek flushing as he lighted his cigar. "If you had listened to the twaddle that I have all day, you would be glad to talk to almost any ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... himself Quintus Januarius Fronto. More and more absurd, said the emperor. You seem to have a great deal of impertinent knowledge about a great many impertinent people; but proceed in your story: whence came you? Mynheer, said she, I was born in Holland—The deuce you was, said the emperor, and where is that? It was no where, replied the princess, spritelily, till my countrymen gained it from the sea—Indeed, moppet! said his majesty; and pray who were your countrymen, before you had any country? Your majesty asks a vey shrewd question, said ...
— Hieroglyphic Tales • Horace Walpole
... of gratitude, rather than lessen it. Staniford smoked with him, and told him stories; he walked up and down with him, and made a point of parading their good understanding, but his spirits seemed to sink the lower. "Deuce take him!" mused his benefactor; "he's in love with her!" But he now had the satisfaction, such as it was, of seeing that if he was in love he was quite without hope. Lydia had never relented in her abhorrence ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... note the nearest domino seen distinctly. This will be the number of dioptries expressing the nearest point at which he can read. This number permits us to know whether it is necessary to add or subtract dioptries in order to allow him to read nearer by or farther off. If, for example, he sees the deuce and the ace distinctly, say 3 dioptries or 0.33 meter, and we want to allow him to read at 0.25 meter, corresponding to four dioptries, it will be necessary to increase the power of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various
... waters the Sea Puss is found, Cat-like, forever chasing round and round. She has no claws, but crouching sly and low She stealthily puts out her undertow. And when an old seadog comes in her way I'll warrant you there is the deuce ...
— A Phenomenal Fauna • Carolyn Wells
... send broadcast a story that would only arouse international hatred? That's their method. Ours—I mean our government's—is to give hatred a chance to die down. If our papers got hold of the Bundesrath story they'd make a deuce ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... disciplining him—when he'd go on a big tear they'd fire him for a few days and then take him back. But they can't git him now—not if I can help it. A better cook never throwed dishwater over a guy-rope than that same old Mose, but—" He stopped and looked at Ford hesitantly. "Say! I hate like the deuce to tie a string on you as soon as you hit the ranch, Ford, but—if you've got anything along, you won't spring it on Mose, will you? A fellow's got to watch him pretty ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... longer," said Dr. Archie. "He's been making a tank of himself lately. He'll be pulling his freight one of these days. That's the way they do, you know. I'll be sorry on your account." He paused and ran his fresh handkerchief over his face. "What the deuce are we all here for anyway, Thea?" ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... slowly putting down his saucer without tasting its contents, is laughingly beginning, "Why, what the deuce, Phil—" when he stops, seeing that Phil is counting on ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... room in a hurry. He was not in the best of humors; why the deuce couldn't Fraser manage without dragging him there? He had carte blanche as ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... his papers, slung the spruce white drill coat over his arm, and unlocked the door. "Captain Rabeira," he said, "you have my full permission to resume your occupation of going to the deuce your own way." With which parting salutation, he went below to the steamer's bathroom and ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... in my life!" he panted. "But, you young scaramouch! what the deuce d'you mean by stopping to chatter to ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... got very bored, for I had nothing to read and my pipe was verboten. People passed now and then in the corridors, but no one offered to enter. No doubt they saw the big figure in uniform and thought he was the deuce of a staff swell who wanted solitude. I thought of stretching my legs in the corridor, and was just getting up to do it when somebody slid the door back and a ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... doorway and looked up and down the street with open disgust. "Come on down to Picardo's, Jack; what the deuce is there here to hold you? How a man that knows horses and the range, can stand for this—" he waved a gloved hand at the squalid street—"is something I can't understand. To me, it's like hell with the lid off. What's holding you ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... "You're having hallucinations, my love. You'll feel better in the morning. Where the deuce did you get such ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... feel afraid, that he ought to feel "queer." He said to himself, "Here you are, as nervous and temperamental a youth as ever stepped, with a mental laziness that amounts to moral cowardice, in the deuce of a hole that I don't expect you'll ever get out of. You ought to be in an awful state. Your cheeks ought to be white, and there they are looking like two raw beef-steaks. Your tongue ought to cleave to the roof of your mouth; and it isn't. You ought to feel pains in the pit of your stomach, ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... that this wretched war will play the very deuce with our foreign friends. If you Germans do not give that crowned swindler, whose fall I have been looking for ever since the coup d'etat, such a blow as he will never recover from, I will never forgive ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... a letter which simply said that the bearer, Gulab Lal Singh, would look after me and my belongings. So I paid attention to the man. He was a strapping fellow, handsome as the deuce, with a Roman nose, and the eye of ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... more than the deuce,' says Mrs Pipchin. 'He never does me the honour to speak to me. He has his meat and drink put in the next room to his own; and what he takes, he comes out and takes when there's nobody there. It's no use asking me. I know no more about him than the man ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... to his sister-in-law. "She can't but see Anderson every day, and that goes a long way. She, of course, puts on a resolute air as well as she can. They all know how to do that. Do you be resolute in return. The deuce is in it if we can't have our way with her among us. When you talk of ill usage nobody wants you to put her in chains. There are different ways of killing a cat. You get friends to write to you from England about young Annesley, and I'll do the same. The ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... big fellows can prevent it. If he's caught there'll be the deuce to pay. Our Pillars of Finance will topple.... No, ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... "Well, McTavish, how the deuce do I see you here? You ought to be up at the fort. But, say, old man, I'm glad you broke out. That thirty-day term smelled to heaven when the old man ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... The Duchess is a girl in pink, with a great wedge-comb erect among her ringlets, the Beau tres degage, his head averse, his chin most supercilious upon his stock, one foot advanced, the gloved fingers of one hand caught lightly in his waistcoat; in fact, the very deuce of a pose. ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... Sapt. "If you stay here, the deuce a man in all Ruritania will doubt of it—or a ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... "I wish Arend had let the horse go to the deuce. It was not worth following into ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... after a minute's interval, "it's bad business for you to run off like that. Suppose you played hide and seek with me till a storm wiped out your track? You'd be in a deuce ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... painful gabbling in all the rows, pathetic whisperings and "go ons" or eager urgings of one and another to sacrifice himself upon the altar of necessity, insistences by the ex-trumpeter that he had blown trumpets in his day as good as any one—what the deuce had got into him anyhow? ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... minutes ago I thought her plain!" said Sir Wilfrid to himself as he moved away. "Upon my word, for a dame de compagnie that young woman is at her ease! But where the deuce have I seen her, ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was the deuce of a place To drink and to fight, and to gamble and race; The height of choice spirits from near and from far Were ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... Spanish, thought Luck, why the deuce hadn't he done it at first? But there is no fathoming the reticence of an Indian—and Luck, by a sudden impulse, hid his own knowledge of the language. He stood up and turned toward the rocks, cupped his hands around his lips and called for the Native Son. "And leave ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... and be served with a cutlet, or buttered eggs with asparagus tips, and the butler, knowing his tastes, would bring him a fine bottle of old Leoville, lying in its basket, and which he would pour out with the greatest care. The deuce take it! That was a good time, all the same, and he would never become accustomed to this life ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... ill you look! More fitted for the sick list than the sentry's duties. What the deuce ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... Ste.-Foy Murray sent the frigate "Racehorse" to Halifax with news of his defeat, and from Halifax it was sent to England. The British public were taken by surprise. "Who the deuce was thinking of Quebec?" says Horace Walpole. "America was like a book one has read and done with; but here we are on a sudden reading our book backwards." Ten days passed, and then came word that the siege was raised ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... Big and his eternal kids. [He sighs. They exchange meaning glances. CURT seems to feel ashamed of his grumpiness and tries to fling it off—with a cheerful smile.] But what the deuce! I must be getting selfish to grudge Martha her bit of fresh air. You don't know what it means to outdoor animals like us to be pent up. [He springs to his feet and paces back and forth nervously.] We're used to living with the ...
— The First Man • Eugene O'Neill
... brave Kurzbold who spoke, as he playfully kicked, not too gently, those of his comrades who lay nearest him. He was answered by groans and imprecations, as one by one the sleeping beauties aroused themselves, and wondered where the deuce ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... with them to the door. "There's your dog-cart; it's paid for, and here's a little bag of French money—no thanks, my dear fellow; we can settle all that later. But what the deuce you two children are going to Sedan for is more than my old ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... darlings haven't had any new clothes for nearly a month, and the old man wants to buy a new drag from Calcutta,—solid silver railings and silver lamps, and trifles of that kind. I've tried to make him understand that he has played the deuce with the revenues for the last twenty years and must go slow. ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
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