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More "Helter-skelter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shock of the bullet rather than the seriousness of the wound that had toppled Kathlyn into the river. In the confusion, the rattle of musketry, the yelling of the panic-stricken pack coolies who had fled helter-skelter for the jungle, the squealing of the elephants, she had forgot to crouch low in the howdah. There had come a staggering blow, after which sky and earth careened for a moment and became black; then the chill of water and strangulation, and she found herself ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... had not only shown his eagerness to share in the helter-skelter motions of Undine's party, but had given her glimpses of another, still more brilliant existence, that life of the inaccessible "Faubourg" of which the first tantalizing hints had but lately reached her. Hitherto she had assumed that ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... wind arose and drove the fog helter-skelter across to Green Bay, where the gray ranks curled themselves down and lay hidden until morning. 'I'll go with the wind,' thought Waring, 'it must take me somewhere in time.' So he changed his course ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... staggered to her feet to go with them, but she was fat and slow of motion, so that by the time she was fairly standing, they were far down the field and running helter-skelter by the side of the fence. As she stared dully after them she could see the twenty-two curly tails bobbing along, and she heard the soft patter of eighty-eight sharp little double hoofs ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... fugitives there appeared, between the trunks of the poplars, amongst the large tufts of grass, what looked like a pack of gray beasts speckled with yellow. They sprang up from all directions, waves crowding waves, a helter-skelter of masses of foaming water, shaking the sod with the rumbling ...
— The Flood • Emile Zola
... similar stations, and harangued the warriors as they passed, exhorting them to valorous deeds. Some of the veterans took arms themselves, and sallied forth with tottering steps. In this way, the savage chivalry of the village to the number of five hundred, poured forth, helter-skelter, riding and running, with hideous yells and war-whoops, like so many ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... among tourists, because of the absence from its precincts of all that was fashionable and new, stood near the middle of the town, and formed a corner where in winter the winds whistled and assembled their forces previous to plunging helter-skelter along the streets. In summer it was a fresh and pleasant spot, convenient for such quiet characters as sojourned there to study the geology and beautiful natural features of the ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... she did the various processes rhythmically and systematically, always with the idea in view of making one stroke of the arm or the hand do, if possible, a double or a triple duty. The other girls worked helter-skelter; running hither and thither; taking many needless journeys back and forth across the floor; hurrying when they were fresh to the task, dawdling when they were weary, but at all times working without ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... Nicholas; albeit, the cookery, as an abstract fact, might have been of the simplest. We had venison-steak, pork, ham, jerked venison stew, fresh trout, broiled partridge, cold roast duck, a fricassee of wood rabbits, and broiled pigeon upon our table, coming in courses, or piled up helter-skelter on great platters of birch bark, some on tin plates, and now and then a choice bit on a chip! We had coffee, and tea, and the purest of spring water, by way of beverage, and truth compels me to admit, that ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... Bill, now—we could have half a dozen married couples all separating, getting rid of their ribs and buckling again, helter-skelter, every man to somebody else's wife; and the parish parson refusing to do the work; just to show the immorality of ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... driven helter-skelter in every direction, some as far north as Cossipore, and one vessel, the Earl of Clare, was landed high and dry on the present site of the assistants' bungalow of the north mill of the Barnagore Jute Company. One of the P. & O. boats lying at Garden Reach was deposited ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey
... out where the Indians were. After marching a few miles, they came across two Indians. Both were killed by the advanced horsemen. All four of the field officers of the militia—two colonels and two majors—joined helter-skelter in the chase, leaving their troops for half an hour without a leader. Apparently satisfied with this feat, Trotter marched home, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... in troops, and are wont to leave a trusty old-man baboon on guard, while the rest go down at early morn to rob the settler of his fruits and vegetables. If the old man happens to see or scent danger he gives a signal and the troop flies helter-skelter to the nearest cliffs. They are therefore not easily got at by hunters. As to "tigers," they go about stealthily like cats. I was told there was not a chance of getting a shot at them, unless I ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... caused by a severe thunderstorm which literally broke right over the camp. I heard the order ring out "To the horse-lines!" and watched (through a convenient hole in the canvas) several "troopers" flying helter-skelter down ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... walrus, ribs and shoulder-blades of bears, brought possibly by the ice in winter. Turning again from the sea, we resumed our search for deer; but two or three hours' more very stiff walking produced no better luck. Suddenly a cry from Fitz, who had wandered a little to the right, brought us helter-skelter to the spot where was standing. But it was not a stag he had called us to come and look upon. Half imbedded in the black moss at his feet, there lay a grey deal coffin falling almost to pieces with age; the lid was gone—blown off probably by the wind—and within were stretched the bleaching bones ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... man looked at it, the heap of blankets and rugs on the stove moved, first in one place and then in another. Then there was a little laugh. Then another. And suddenly there was a great stir in the blankets, and they were all thrown back helter-skelter, and there were dozens and dozens of little queer children, laughing and laughing and laughing, and looking at the old man. And every child had a little turnip, and showed it to the old man ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... soon as you conveniently can; though there's no need for helter-skelter haste, since there wouldn't be time for an answer, anyhow. In twenty minutes we'll weigh anchor, and be off. I've hurried ashore to see you, hoping to find you at the ship-agent's office. How fortunate my stumbling on you here! For ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... Mistress' mamma decided that she would have the nursery repainted and new paper put upon the walls. That was why all the dolls happened to be laid helter-skelter upon one ...
— Raggedy Ann Stories • Johnny Gruelle
... the present instance was no exception to the rule. It was very simply managed. He passed one hand over the table where lay the socks and stockings which had been paired by Hilary's industrious fingers, and swept them, helter-skelter, on the floor. He nudged Norah's elbow, so that the needle which she was threading went deep into her fingers, and chucked Lettice under the chin, so that she bit her tongue with a violence which was really painful. This done, he plunged both hands into his pockets and ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... thee to suppress thy proverbs, and in an instant thou hast spewed forth a whole litany of them, which are as foreign from the subject as an old ballad. Remember, Sancho, I do not say that a proverb properly applied is amiss; but, to throw in, and string together old saws helter-skelter, renders conversation altogether ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the car-man his waggon; the butcher throws down his tray; the baker his basket; the milkman his pail; the errand-boy his parcels; the school-boy his marbles; the paviour his pickaxe; the child his battledore. Away they run, pell-mell, helter-skelter, slap-dash: tearing, yelling, screaming, knocking down the passengers as they turn the corners, rousing up the dogs, and astonishing the fowls: and streets, squares, and courts, re-echo ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... astern, while forward the boat seemed striking on a ledge; the sail collapsed and exploded; a .. gush of scalding vapor shot up near by; something rolled and tumbled like an earthquake beneath us. The whole crew were half suffocated as they were tossed helter-skelter into the white curdling cream of the squall. Squall, whale, and harpoon had all blended together; and the whale, merely grazed by the iron, escaped. Though completely swamped, the boat was nearly unharmed. Swimming round it we picked up the floating oars, and ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... landscape, we ourselves being at the six. But while I was popping contentedly away at these men our platoon was ordered first to cease firing, and then to leave the trench and rush to the top of the hill, which we did helter-skelter, none, not even our ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... recalls or remembers material it has read when some note or hint suggests all of it. This kind of mind depends upon the inestimably valuable art of note-taking, a method quite as worthy as the two just considered if its results justify its employment. Note-taking does not mean a helter-skelter series of exclamatory jottings. It means a well-planned, regularly organized series of entries so arranged that reference to any portion recalls vividly and exactly the full material of the original. Books and speeches are well planned. They follow a certain order. Notes based upon ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... behind to follow on foot at leisure. I never did get left the whole of this depot journey, but I was often very near it and several times had only time to seize a strap or a part of the sledge and be dragged along helter-skelter over everything that came in the way till the team got sick of galloping and one could struggle to one's feet again. One gets very wary and wide awake when one has to manage a team of eleven dogs and a sledge load by oneself, but it was a most ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... rubbish—boilers, car wheels, fragments of locomotives, household furniture, dead animals, clothing, sewing machines, goods from stores, safes, passenger and street cars, some half buried in the sand, some all exposed, helter-skelter. ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... I believe, was temporarily crazy. Men and women ran helter-skelter in nothing but their night gowns, and many of them did not ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... thick with dust and draped with ancient cobwebs. In one corner dismally reposed a literary junk heap—old magazines, broken-backed works of reference, novels once unanimously read but now unanimously forgotten. The desk was a helter-skelter of papers. One of the two chairs had its burst cane seat mended by an atlas of the world; and wherever any of the floor peered dimly through the general debris it showed a complexion of dark and ineradicable greasiness. Altogether, it was a room hopelessly unfit for human habitation; ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... rather think he looked on me as dangerous. He put me off and put me off, until I was glad to snatch at a position in a next-of-kin agency. But in a fortnight or two I was even more glad to leave it. Then I went back to Lord Boxspur, who this time sent me helter-skelter back to Paris, to bribe a blackmailing newspaper woman from giving the details of his wife's misfortunes to the Continental correspondent of a London weekly. But even when that was done, and I had been duly paid for my work, I was only secure for a few weeks, at the outside. All along ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... mansion, at the Grand Central Station. It was a home of richness, a home of discriminating wealth, a home of artistic beauty; it was a home of nervous tension. This neurotic intensity was not of the cheap helter-skelter, melodramatic sort; there was a splendid veneer of control. But all the mother's plans and activities depended on the moods, whims and impulses of little Lawrence, the only child, then glorying in the hey-day of his three-year-old ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... Twice the effort was made, and twice it failed. First, the hooks slipped off the end, and as the horses were pulling and tugging with all their might, directly the weight was removed away they went helter-skelter down the steep hill, up which they had just climbed with so much difficulty, being utterly unable to stop themselves on the steep slippery ground. Next time the chain broke as the horses were straining every muscle, and the same tantalising process was repeated ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... Hem-shin'd, crooked-shin'd. Herd, a herd-boy. Here awa, hereabout. Herry, to harry. Herryment, spoliation. Hersel, herself. Het, hot. Heugh, a hollow or pit; a crag, a steep bank. Heuk, a hook. Hilch, to hobble. Hiltie-skiltie, helter-skelter. Himsel, himselfk Hiney, hinny, honey. Hing, to hang. Hirple, to move unevenly; to limp. Hissels, so many cattle as one person can attend (R. B.). Histie, bare. Hizzie, a hussy, a wench. Hoast, cough. Hoddin, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... and that simplicity is their excellence." Indeed, as we have already noted in passing, simplification is the method of every art. Every artist, in his own way, simplifies life: first by selecting essentials from the helter-skelter of details that life presents to him, and then by arranging these essentials in accordance with a pattern. And we have noted also that the method of the artist in narrative is to select events which bear an essential logical relation to each other and then to arrange them along the lines ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... business it is to think knows that he must for part of the day create about himself a pool of silence. But in that helter-skelter which we flatter by the name of civilization, the citizen performs the perilous business of government under the worst possible conditions. A faint recognition of this truth inspires the movement for a shorter work ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... Burning powder reaches mighty far, even here in the hills; and who knows,—the whole tribe may come helter-skelter this way, to see what has broken loose! And we ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... odd chap. When he was still he liked to hang by his feet, upside down. And when he was flying he sailed about in a zigzag, helter-skelter fashion. He went in so many different directions, turning this way and that, one could never tell where he was going. One might say that his life was just one continual dodge—when he wasn't resting with his heels where his head ought ...
— The Tale of Solomon Owl • Arthur Scott Bailey
... enthusiasm. "I'm just a plain Scotchman, an' no such a fule at climbin' either! Why, man, I've been up Goatfell in Arran, an' Ben Lomond an' Ben Nevis—there's a mountain for ye, if ye like! But a brae like this, wi' a' the stanes lyin' helter-skelter, an' crags that ye can barely hold on to—and a mad chap guidin' ye on at the speed o' a leapin' goat—I tell ye, I havena been used to't." Here he drew out his flask and took another extensive pull at it. ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... near his armpits, and chest protruded, he scudded along, while close at his heels lumbered a large-limbed, heavy, yellow mustached young man, who seemed to feel the exercise a good deal more than his senior. On they dashed, helter-skelter, until they pulled up panting at the office where the lawyer of the ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... moment the crowd, with a pack of barking dogs, came rushing on helter-skelter in hot pursuit of a brindled cow—so it seemed—whose heels its canine tormentors were ever and anon attacking, making it start forward with the pain they inflicted. At the same time a youth with his coat ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... in great style, till it is time for the matutinal meal—vulgarly called breakfast; when the whiskey, eggs, toast, and tea as strong as Hercules, with ham, fowl, beef-steaks, or mutton-chops, all pour in upon us in the full tide of hospitality. Helter-skelter, cut and thrust, right and left, we work away, till the appetite reposes itself upon the cushion of repletion: and off we go once more, full an' warm, to the delicate employment of adjudicating upon sin and transgression, until dinner comes, when, ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... reply; and on my looking round, whom should I see before me but the identical individual I had so coolly been criticising, and who, to my utter horror and dismay, was no other than Lord Wellington himself. I did not wait for a second peep. Helter-skelter, through water, thickets, and brambles, away I went, clattering down the causeway like a madman. If a French squadron had been behind me, I should have had a stouter heart, although I did not fear pursuit. I felt his eye was upon me,—his sharp and piercing glance, that shot like an ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... hack, Nell was unreliable. You could n't reckon with certainty on getting her to start. All depended on the humour she was in and the direction you wished to take—mostly the direction. If towards the grass-paddock or the dam, she was off helter-skelter. If it was n't, she'd go on strike—put her head down and chew the bit. Then, when you'd get to work on her with a waddy—which we always did—she'd walk backwards into the house and frighten Mother, ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... entirely when a unified action is ruined by mixing it with declamation, and propaganda which is not organically interwoven with the action itself. It may be still fresh in memory what an esthetically intolerable helter-skelter performance was offered to the public in "The Battlecry of Peace." Nothing can be more injurious to the esthetic cultivation of the people than such performances which hold the attention of the spectators by ambitious detail and yet destroy their esthetic sensibility by ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... past a horse and drag that, careless and Austrian-like, has been left untied and unwatched in the middle of the street, when the horse suddenly scares, swerves around just in front of me, and dashes, helter-skelter, down the street. The horse circles around the market square and finally stops of his own accord without doing any damage. Runaways, other misfortunes, it seems, never come singly, and ere I have left Lambach an hour I am the innocent cause of yet another one; this ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... baionnette!" ("At them with bayonet.") A fierce roar from our chests, and the only bugler left alive in our company sounds the charge. Away we go with our bayonets. We scarcely reach them when the bouches are put to rout. Some of them escape helter-skelter, throwing down rifles and knapsacks. "Halt!" commands our Captain. We lie down and keep up the firing on the retreating remnants of the enemy. "Back to the trenches!" is the next command. A few more volleys in the direction of the Germans, then comes the command, "Cease firing. Take your haversacks, ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... by a flank fire threw the enemy into confusion. Of this circumstance Michael availed himself once more to renew the attack, this time with the most happy results. The enemy retreated in disorder over the bridge, and by the furious onslaught of the allies his hosts were driven helter-skelter into the morass. On the one hand Michael is said to have performed prodigies of valour, whilst on the other Sinan Pasha, who fought with equal bravery, was unhorsed and thrown into the bog, from which he only escaped ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... he has sons of his own. Or have the Trojans been allotting you a demesne of passing richness, fair with orchard lawns and corn lands, if you should slay me? This you shall hardly do. I have discomfited you once already. Have you forgotten how when you were alone I chased you from your herds helter-skelter down the slopes of Ida? You did not turn round to look behind you; you took refuge in Lyrnessus, but I attacked the city, and with the help of Minerva and father Jove I sacked it and carried its women into captivity, though Jove ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... said Father Waite. "But, that granted, a flood of deductions pours in that sends human beliefs and reasoning helter-skelter. For an infinite mind would eventually disintegrate if it were ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... drink. In the midst of the pandemonium came a deafening explosion, a vivid flash of red, a volume of acrid suffocating vapour. Another explosion and men came rushing from Mountchance's laboratory—terror written in their faces. Helter-skelter the crowd darted from the house forcing Sally Salisbury with them whether she would or not. In the mad fight for gold large glass bottles filled with acids, alcohol and other inflammable liquids had been upset and smashed, and the smouldering fire in the furnace did the rest. ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... seen the previous night. The two large hounds, Ringwood and Jowler, kept at their master's heels, being trained to understand and perform all the duties required of them, while the curs and terriers were running helter-skelter far ahead, or striking out into the woods without aim, and always returning without effecting any thing. At length the two hounds paused, and scented the earth, giving certain information that they had arrived at the desired point. The curs and terriers ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... from the respectable society of the neighbouring planets, and blundering about right and left, pell-mell, helter-skelter among the fixed stars— itself, "and all which it inherit" in that glorious state of confusion so admirably described by ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... would have him dead or alive, for a Danish prisoner on one of their ships had told who he was. But Esbern had more than one string to his bow. He sent a man aloft with flint and steel to strike fire in the top, and the pirates, believing that he was signalling to a fleet he had in ambush, fled helter-skelter. Esbern got ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... and I'll come back as quick as I can. You are safe up there. Hold on, and we'll soon get you down," answered Tommy, rushing away helter-skelter, never minding where he went, and too much excited to care for ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... favourite in the neighbourhood than Alick; and as he came rushing, helter-skelter, along the garden-path, cramming Mrs. Vesey's answer into one of his crowded pockets, one could not be surprised at his popularity, for a merrier-faced boy than Geoff did not exist. And his looks did not belie his laughter-loving nature. The boy overflowed with mischief and good-humour. His ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... shirt and to bathe the upper part of his body in the stream, he put on his garments again and set forth along the trail. As he walked slowly through the fragrant woods, squirrels and jays chattered derisively at him overhead, and frightened rabbits dashed helter-skelter among the thickets. He gave them not the slightest heed; his chief interest now was to get home as soon as possible and to relieve his mother from ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler
... gate helter-skelter; We counted them—four against two! There wasn't a moment for shelter, And what could we ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... on they came in haste, and encamped above it, hoping to pass the straits next day. There Castruccio fell upon them about midnight, putting all to confusion. Horse and foot fell foul upon one another, and both upon the baggage. There was no way left for them but to run, which they did helter-skelter in the plain of Pistoja, where each man shifted for himself. But Castruccio followed them even to Peretola at the gates of Florence, carrying Pistoja and Prato on the way; there he coined money under their walls,[145] ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... human avalanche they descended on the foe. That foe did not await the onset. Panic-stricken they turned and went helter-skelter down the pass—all except two, who seemed made of sterner stuff than their fellows, ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... teeth, most recreant coward base! Sir John, I am thy Pistol and thy friend, And helter-skelter have I rode to thee, And tidings do I bring and lucky joys And golden times and ...
— King Henry IV, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Chiswick edition]
... and attendants that tumbled helter-skelter down the passages divided into two groups. Most of the Fishermen followed the proprietor to the front room to demand news of any exit. Colonel Pound, with the chairman, the vice-president, and one or two others darted down ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... have something of the same instinctive apprehension. How soon the nerves are disturbed by the smell of anything burning in the house. Raise the cry of "Fire!" in a crowded building, and at once the old savage bursts through the veneer of civilisation. It is helter-skelter, the Devil take the hindmost. The strong trample upon the weak. Men and women turn to devils. Even if the cry of "Fire!" be raised in a church—where a believer might wish to die, and where he might feel himself booked through to glory—there is just ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... a helter-skelter race for the car. In they all crowded, and none too soon. The air was almost as dark as at dusk, and there was a heavy sulphurous feeling in the atmosphere. But within the curtains of the car all was fun and merriment. The ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... as they were Jim was quicker. He had no intention of allowing such an excellent opportunity of exploring the forbidden ground to slip, and crying that it was of no use to call to Jumbo he scrambled over the gate and rushed helter-skelter down the field, taking great care, however, not to get in front of Jumbo, but running behind him shouting and waving ...
— A Tale of the Summer Holidays • G. Mockler
... hammer-handles," said one of the soldiers afterward. "It was inky dark—darker than I have ever known it to be anywhere on the plains. The water made a muddy pond of the whole camp, and the trenches were half filled in no time. Everything was blown helter-skelter by the furious wind, and some of our outfits we never recovered. In the midst of the confusion some fellows reported that the Spaniards were trying to break through our lines, but the report was false,—the outsiders were starving Cubans who had come in looking for shelter and something ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... Helter-skelter the kittens appear; "Oh mother dear, we very much fear That we have lost our mittens!" they cry. "You have? Then you shall have no pie! Lost your mittens? You ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... your girl to Castle Raincy as to a city of refuge, and why should not you and I, sir, copy them? Will you do me the honour to walk to Castle Raincy with me and take dinner? 'Zounds, sir, we ought to have thought of this long before. They put us to shame, these helter-skelter ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... thoughtless. Even now, the beauty and delight of a girl like Aileen Butler were far more important to him than the good-will of fifty million people, if he could evade the necessity of having their good-will. Previous to the Chicago fire and the panic, his star had been so rapidly ascending that in the helter-skelter of great and favorable events he had scarcely taken thought of the social significance of the thing he was doing. Youth and the joy of life were in his blood. He felt so young, so vigorous, so like ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... of the forty rooms thrown helter-skelter. Costly cabinets that refuse to yield to first pressure, are wrenched open. The frightened butler and the corps of other servants are impressed into the search. They are compelled to give up the keys to all closets and rooms. As case after case of silver ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... 'basic form'? In truth it is hard to define. Only, this world, that seems such a heterogeneous helter-skelter of mournful promiscuities, is in fact the pattern that flows from the loom of an Eternal Weaver: a beautiful pattern, with its rhythms and recurrences; there is no haphazard in it; it is not mechanical,—yet still flawless ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... among them, hurling them helter-skelter on all sides, the occupants continuing their ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... accustom itself to new conditions. When the Polyergus or Amazon ants desire to increase their band of slaves, one first remarks extreme excitement in the neighbourhood of the nest. They all come out helter-skelter, but this disorder lasts only for a short time; they soon form in line, and a regular serried column is formed, longer or shorter according to the swarm; it has been found to measure more than five metres long by fifteen centimetres broad. The Amazons advance, often changing ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... there dashed into the customs-house a well-dressed woman whose hat was very much over one ear. She was running as only a woman runs when she's made up her mind to get there. She came hot-foot, helter-skelter, regardless of modishly crippling skirt, past officers, past customs officials, into the section where stood the one small sample-trunk that she had ordered down in case of emergency. The trunk had not gone through the customs. It had not even been opened. But Emma ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... reined up, and remain at pause on a hillock. The General watches through a glass his battalions, which are still disputing the village. Suddenly approach down the track from the upland of Pratzen large companies of Russian infantry helter-skelter. COUNT LANGERON is beheld to be retreating with them; and soon, pale and agitated, he hastens up to GENERAL BUXHOVDEN, whose face ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... sanctioned newspaper article specified its exact position. A few days after the article appeared, in fact, as soon as a copy of the paper reached Germany, a thunderstorm of shells broke on the brewery. Out of it poured a helter-skelter stream of stark-naked men, who ran wherever they could for cover. From one point of view it was vastly comic. In the meanwhile the building containing all their clothes, and all the spare clothing for a brigade, was being scientifically destroyed. That was more comic still. The bather cut ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... into my coat pockets, and fell to pacing the floor while I reflected. That is to say, I reflected after I had secured a good, firm grasp upon the thoughts which skurried helter-skelter, like a flushed covey ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... the windows, and in at the door, And through the walls helter-skelter they pour, And down from the ceiling, and up through the floor, From the right and the left, from behind and before, From within and without, from above and below, And all at once to ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... view the poor General did not exaggerate. Anything more hopeless as a continuous narrative I have never read. But it supplied facts, hit off odds and ends of character, and—what the autobiography seldom does—it gave the ipsissima verba of conversations written in helter-skelter fashion with flowing pen, sometimes in excellent French, sometimes in English, which beginning in the elaborate style of his letter broke down into queer vernacular; it was charmingly devoid of self-consciousness, ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... succession. When the bayonets rang into the rifle-sockets simultaneously with the reopening of the Boers' volleys, I felt convinced that in two minutes that murderous fire would be silenced, and our men driving the foe helter-skelter down hill. After the bayonets had been drawn and fixed, and remained fixed, our men still firing for at least four or five minutes, and no order came to 'charge,' I ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... the room with the briskness of a March flurry of snow. Her cheeks were poppy-red, her eyes sparkled with the mere joy of living. And she chuckled happily as she tucked back the curly scolding locks that were flying about, all helter-skelter, like feathers unloosed or fluffy chicks blowing away from ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... hurled themselves helter-skelter through the sun again, in search of milk for their new Queen's supper. But Queer ran faster than any of them, and he took the very milk that Molly's own mother had just milked into the pail for herself; and ...
— All the Way to Fairyland - Fairy Stories • Evelyn Sharp
... of time in my life, but never till that moment had I witnessed the action itself. Somehow it made an impression on me. The man raced round the saloon still shouting, and raced away again up-stairs and out of sight. Everyone followed him pell-mell, helter-skelter, and almost in a second I found myself alone. I put on my overcoat, and my mackintosh over that, and seizing Rosa's jewel-box, I followed ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... melodic strain, fugue-like with the elfin echoes, felt a strange soothing in the sound, found tears in her eyes, not all of pain but of sad pleasure, and assumed thenceforth something of the port of a connoisseur. She said she "couldn't abide a fiddle jes sawed helter-skelter by them ez hedn't larned, but ter play saaft an' slow an' solemn, and no dancin' chune, no frolic song—she warn't set agin that at all." And she desired of Leander a repetition of this sunset motive that evening when he had come home late, and she discovered him hiding the ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... The nurses came and went, and always, after the first day or two, the new nurse would give in to the conditions, and would lead, at first with amusement and a rather excited sense of adventure, afterwards with a growing feeling of dirt and discomfort, a tangled and helter-skelter existence. Some of the children were now at school, but Lucy, a girl ten years of age, was a supercilious child who rebelled against the conditions of her life, but was too idle and superior to attempt any alteration of them. After her there were Roger, Dorothy, ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... route. It is very interesting to watch a marked ant during her journey back to her nest, after she has been carried away and placed among unfamiliar scenes and surroundings. At first, owing to her fright, she will dash away helter-skelter; but soon recovering, she will head in the direction of home, and moderate her pace until she creeps along at a very cautious and circumspect gait, indeed. Every now and then she will climb a tall grass-blade or ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... transformation would sweep over the speckled Ahabs lying deep under the lily pads. Some blind, unknown warning would run through the pool before ever a trout had changed his position. Looking over the side of your canoe you would see the little fish darting helter-skelter away among the pads, seeking safety in shallow water, leaving the pool to its tyrant masters. Now is the time to begin casting; your ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... Scattered helter-skelter over an immense surface, cut up into scalene triangles, the oddity of its plan makes Washington a succession of surprises which never fail to vex and astonish the stranger, be he ever so highly endowed ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... in this wild, Smooth-resting on its mosses sleek, Like loving lips upon a cheek Soft as the face of maid or child— Just boulders, helter-skelter piled. ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... of it all, and it is not the purpose of this true chronicle to do more than recall with utmost brevity the chief incident of that memorable encounter, the Polish Lancers galloping back with the report that the narrow pass was held against them in strong force: the Old Guard climbing helter-skelter out of carts and wagons, examining their arms, making ready: Napoleon stepping quickly out of his coach ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... One wild race for the crest, one headland charge down the slope beyond, and they are rolling over a band of yelling, scurrying, savage horsemen, whirling them away over the opposite ridge, driving them helter-skelter over the westward prairie, until all who escape the shock of the onset or the swift bullet in the raging chase finally vanish from their sight; and then, obedient to the ringing "recall" of the trumpet, slowly they return, gathering again in the little ravine; and there, wondering, rejoicing, ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... Ch'un and Hsi Ch'un interposed with an ironic laugh, "what's the use of the hurry-scurry you're in the whole day long! Even when you're having your meals, or your tea, you're in this sort of fussy helter-skelter!" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... marauders had wrought in the rooms within, while on the graveled terrace lay various articles of furniture that had been hurled from the stoop. Particularly noticeable was a drawing-room suite in sky-blue satin, its sofa and twelve fauteuils piled in dire confusion, helter-skelter, on and around a great center table, the marble top of which was broken in twain. And there were zouaves, chasseurs, liners, and men of the infanterie de marine running to and fro excitedly behind the buildings and in the alleys, discharging their pieces into the little wood that ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... pause; "a most remarkable young fellow. As I said before, he somehow fascinates me. I'd immensely like to put that young fellow into a smart hussar uniform, mount him on a good charger of the Punjaub breed, and send him helter-skelter, pull-devil, pull-baker, among my old friends the ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... 61; topsy-turvy &c (inverted) 218; shapeless &c 241; disjointed, out of joint. troublous^; riotous &c (violent) 173. complex &c 59.1. Adv. irregularly &c adj.; by fits, by fits and snatches, by fits and starts; pellmell; higgledy-piggledy; helter-skelter, harum-scarum; in a ferment; at sixes and sevens, at cross-purposes; upside down &c 218. Phr. the cart before the horse; hysteron proteron [Gr.]; chaos is come again; the wreck of matter and the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of our time is hurry: it is helter-skelter, and devil take the hind-most. Off we go all too swift at starting, and we neither run so fast nor so far as we would have done, had we taken it cannily at first. This is true of a boy as well as of a blood colt. Not only are boys and colts made to do the work and the running of full-grown men ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... encouragement and oaths, barely audible above the mad yells of the Serbians. Nevertheless, they gave way before the gleaming line of bayonet blades before them. Some few rose to fight, stirred by some long-submerged instinct generated in the days of Genghis Khan. But the majority turned and fled, helter-skelter, down the sides of the mountains toward the valleys, leaving behind guns, ammunition, and cannon. One regiment, the Hundred and Second, stood its ground and fought. As a result it was almost completely annihilated. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... the stand into a congregation, Boynton saying he would blow out the brains of the first man who dared lay hands on him.... Amid screams and shrieks, the policemen in ejecting the belligerents knocked down a stove pipe, which fell helter-skelter among the people; but, although bowie knives and pistols were wrested from their owners and thrown hither and thither to prevent disastrous results, no one was hurt, and after a short but terrible scene to be enacted in a Temple of God, order was restored ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... who was left in charge of the boat, away we all went, helter-skelter, in the direction the outlaw had taken. He made, it appeared, straight inland, for we could hear his shouts ahead of us as we rushed on, hallooing to each other from among the trees. Not one of the party seemed inclined to get before the other—not ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... 'tis true; they could only approach with their smallest vessels, and that not near enough;—besides, their shot fell sometimes among our troops. It did some good, however! It broke the French lines, and raised our courage. Away it went. Helter-skelter! topsy-turvy! all struck dead, or forced into the water; the fellows were drowned the moment they tasted the water, while we Hollanders dashed in after them. Being amphibious, we were as much in our element as frogs, and hacked away at the enemy, and shot them down as if ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... wished. Taking a pick and an axe he went to the graveyard, but when he struck the grave with his tools and the earth rolled back, disclosing the body of La Rose, the old fellow was so terrified that he ran helter-skelter from the spot. A draught of good wine brought back his failing courage, however, and he returned and passed the rose three times under the nostrils of his late acquaintance. ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... broke out below. The negroes had charged, and the Lugarenos, struck with terror at the unforeseen catastrophe, were rushing helter-skelter through the gate. The screaming of the maids was frightful. They ran up and down the galleries with their hair streaming. O'Brien passed me by swiftly, muttering like ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... jumping from a lofty precipice into a deep lake below. As they scampered off in a very numerous body to carry out their resolve, the Frogs lying on the banks of the lake heard the noise of their feet, and rushed helter-skelter to the deep water for safety. On seeing the rapid disappearance of the Frogs, one of the Hares cried out to his companions: "Stay, my friends, do not do as you intended; for you now see that other creatures who yet live are ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... a flock of sheep streaming helter-skelter before the onset of a wolf were the thoughts that a moment before had ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... achievement of Jesus, in ridding the temple courts of those who had made the House of the Lord a market place, contains nothing to suggest the inference that He exercized superhuman strength or more than manly vigor. He employed a whip of His own making, and drove all before Him. They fled helter-skelter. None are said to have voiced an objection until the expulsion had been made complete. Why did not some among the multitude object? The submission appears to have been abject and servile in the extreme. Farrar, (Life of Christ, pp. 151, 152) raises ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... accents of the blood-freezing war-whoop. On the instant Brant's tomahawk was forth from his girdle, and was whirling about the head of the astonished offender. Never had such a cry been heard within the halls of fashion. Faces turned ashen pale and screams resounded through the spacious mansion. Helter-skelter, in every direction, fled the terrified masqueraders. The Moslem thought that his last hour on earth had come. Then Brant's arm fell; his tense features relaxed, and he had become once more the genial 'Captain of the ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... found in bed. It was William Clerk who sat for the picture of Darsie Latimer, the hero of Redgauntlet,—whence we should suppose him to have been a lively, generous, susceptible, contentious, and rather helter-skelter young man, much alive to the ludicrous in all situations, very eager to see life in all its phases, and somewhat vain of his power of adapting himself equally to all these phases. Scott tells a story of Clerk's being once baffled—almost for the first time—by ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... "Please, King Sun, let me go back to the dear mother Ocean," the wind took pity on him, and came with its cool breath and fanned him, with all his brothers, into a heavy gray cloud, after which he blew them apart and told them to join hands and hurry away to the earth. Helter-skelter down they went, rolling over each other pell-mell, till with a patter and clatter and spatter they touched the ground, and all the people ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin
... not more than three or four hundred people in Palace Yard, a number of Press messengers, rushing helter-skelter out of the court and into waiting cabs, indicated the arrival of some critical juncture within the jealously guarded portals. Presently it was whispered that the Lord Chief Justice had finished his summing up, ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... Hoogstraaten; and Vilain, at the same time made a furious attack upon the front. The French cavalry wavered with the shock so vigorously given. The camp followers, sutlers, and pedlers, panic-struck, at once fled helter-skelter, and in their precipitate retreat, carried confusion and dismay throughout all the ranks of the army. The rout was sudden and total. The onset and the victory were simultaneous, Nevers riding through a hollow with some companies of cavalry, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... judged that luckless Peachy must have been on the verge of betraying some secret. She tactfully turned the conversation with a remark upon the beauty of the sunset, and the clanging of the garden bell opportunely broke up the gathering, and sent the girls hurrying helter-skelter along the terrace in the direction of the house. Irene paused for a moment to look back at the sea and the sky, and the distant twinkling lights, and to curtsy to the crescent moon that hung like a good omen in the dome of ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... anyway master of my own pen, and could write as I pleased, without being hurried along helter-skelter by the tyrannical exactions of that "young Rapid" in buskins and chiton called "THE HISTORIC MUSE," I would break off this chapter, open my window, rest my eyes on the green lawn without, and indulge in a rhapsodical ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in at the windows, and in at the door, And through the walls, helter-skelter they pour, And down from the ceiling, and up through the floor, From the right and the left, from behind and before, From within and without, from above and below, And all at once to ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... a burl tree. At the point where Bryce paused a malignant growth had developed on the trunk of the tree, for all the world like a tremendous wart. This was the burl, so prized for table-tops and panelling because of the fact that the twisted, wavy, helter-skelter grain lends to the wood an extraordinary beauty when polished. Bryee noted that the work of removing this excrescence had been accomplished very neatly. With a cross-cut saw the growth, perhaps ten feet ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... other variations of the three great classes of denouements; such as the helter-skelter nine-times-round-the-stage-combat, and the grand melee in which everybody kills everybody else, and leaves the piece to be carried on by their executors; but we dare unveil ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 9, 1841 • Various
... Greeks marched into battle in disorder; the chiefs, on horseback or in a light chair, rushed ahead, the men following on foot, armed each in his own fashion, helter-skelter, incapable of acting together or of resisting. A battle reduced itself to a series of duels and to a massacre. At Sparta all the soldiers had the same arms; for defence, the breastplate covering the chest, ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... right across the middle of the board, and shook it with all his might, so that it jiggled awfully right up and down. Before we had time to scream or to paralize our danger, over we all went, pell-mell, helter-skelter, higgledy-piggledy, down, down, down into the foaming water! What do you think of that, Clytie? Every single one of us—dogs, Jane, carriage, and all! 'Twas worse, a thousand-fole, than when we lost Lucille. Fan sat right ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... companionship. I cannot quite explain the charm of the man. He had a roving blue eye, a ruddy and glowing complexion, and a laugh that seemed to kick all gloomy fancies into flinders, and to carry those who heard it in a helter-skelter gallop of mirth. And then what stories the fellow could tell! He had the General and me in perpetual convulsions, and even ALEXANDER, a somewhat awkward and taciturn youth, much weighed down by the responsibilities of his freshmanhood at Oxford, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 5, 1892 • Various
... conceits and casuistic quibble, with art, politics, metaphysics—civilization embedded in all manner of rubbish and abomination, soiled with all manner of ominous stains. All this did they carry home and throw helter-skelter into the new-kindled fire of English intellectual life, mingling with it many a humble-seeming Northern alloy; cleaning and compounding, casting into shapes, mediaeval and English, this strange Corinthian brass made of all these heterogeneous remnants, classical, Italian, Saxon, and Christian. ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... whole extent. At the other end, opposite the fireplace, the wall is studded, from floor to ceiling, with choice foreign paintings, placed in relief against the orthodox crimson screen. Elsewhere the walls are covered with books, arranged neither in formal regularity nor quite helter-skelter, but in a sort of genial incongruity, which tells that sooner or later each volume feels sure of leaving the ranks and returning into different company. Mr. Sloane makes use of his books. His two passions, according to Theodore, are reading and talking; but to talk ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... absolution given by one of their priests, who marched in the rear file of the first company, with his cassock tucked up and his Roman hat over his eyes. These country fellows walked briskly, a little helter-skelter, like their ancestors in the time of Stofflet and M. de la Rochejaquelin, but with a firm step and their muskets well placed upon their shoulders, by Ste. Anne! They looked like ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... into the Secretary with other papers that morning. But the Secretary was gone. We then proceeded into the Secretary's office in search of it. The Secretary's habit was to take the papers from his table, and after marking on them with his pencil the disposition he wished made of them, he threw them helter-skelter into a large arm-chair. This chair now contained half a bushel; and the President and I set to work in quest of the letter. We removed them one by one; and as we progressed, he said with an impatient smile, "it is always sure to be the last ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... were so much taken aback, that they imagined all sorts of powerful beasts to be fighting with them, when it was only their own selves, biting each other; and the end of all was, that as soon as the seven Tigers had each got his four legs to himself, off they went helter-skelter into the forest, and never more troubled Mammy Nanny-goat and her four ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... phraseology of the Homeric Hymn, in which Hermes is described as acquiring the strength of a giant while yet a babe in the cradle, as sallying out and stealing the cattle (clouds) of Apollo, and driving them helter-skelter in various directions, then as crawling through the keyhole, and with a mocking laugh shrinking into his cradle. He is the Master Thief, who can steal the burgomaster's horse from under him and his wife's mantle from off her back, ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... country suits and there are wild animals, than to practise horsemanship in combination with the chase. But when these resources fail, a good exercise may be supplied in the combined efforts of two horsemen. (9) One of them will play the part of fugitive, retreating helter-skelter over every sort of ground, with lance reversed and plying the butt end. The other pursues, with buttons on his javelins and his lance similarly handled. (10) Whenever he comes within javelin range he lets fly at the retreating foeman with his blunted ...
— On Horsemanship • Xenophon
... in his own way, no idea of giving in. Chirp, chirp, chirp ! Cricket fresher than ever. Hum, hum, hum-m-m! Kettle slow and steady. Chirp, chirp, chirp! Cricket going to finish him. Hum, hum, hum! Kettle not to be finished. Until at last, they got so jumbled up together, in the hurry-skurry, helter-skelter of the match, that whether the Kettle chirped or the Cricket hummed, or the Cricket chirped and the Kettle hummed, or the Cricket chirped and the Kettle hummed, or the both chirped and both hummed, it would have taken a clearer head than yours or mine to have decided with anything like certainty. ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... was so shaken up he couldn't play at all. And young Mr. Martin's horse took fright at the noise and confusion, and nearly ran away, and just escaped throwing all the children into the ditch. And so they all scampered gaily, helter-skelter, back to the village, the hero far in the rear, hidden in clouds of dust, with his friends gambolling ahead. And indeed Gavin's homecoming was no more like a triumphal procession than any of the foot-ball games in which he used to take ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... might as well have called a whirlwind to halt; for helter-skelter, past us they dashed, without minding us a ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... happened; but it was so all-fired cold, and the wind was yelling so, and she walked off so fast, as if she knew her own business. So I just minded mine, or rather I didn't, for I never even seen the box, or trunk, which was pitched out helter-skelter, and which I found this morning, all covered up with snow. It was hers, of course, and I shall send it right over there, as it may tell ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... They knew, moreover, that even so large a command as theirs had been cut off, surrounded, and massacred more than once in the history of Sioux warfare, but then the Indians were massed, not scattered helter-skelter all over the continent as was the case the end of this eventful summer. Well did Major Warren understand that with such broken-down horses and weakened men he could now effect little or nothing against the Indians after whom he had been sent, even could he overtake ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... pulled hastily for the nearest English vessel, but so suddenly did the Spanish scatter, and the English change to take advantage of their flight, that the position of the boats became dangerous in the extreme: for what with the high wind, the burning ships, the rolling of the deep, the helter-skelter flight of the Armada and the pursuit of the English their position was, to say ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... completing the work which had summoned them for the time being on deck, tumbled helter-skelter down the fore hatch once more, and left on the deck of the "Sea Witch" about a dozen able seamen who formed the watch upon deck. A number of these were now gathered in a knot on the forecastle, and while they were sitting cross-legged, picking old rope, ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... in the world!" said the voice in emphatic accents of supreme contempt—"What braying asses!—What earth- snouting swine! Saw you not yon crowd of whimpering idiots flying helter-skelter like chaff before the wind, weeping, wailing, and bemoaning their miserable little sins, scattering dust on their addled pates, and howling on their gods for mercy,—all forsooth! because for once in their unobserving lives they behold the river red instead of ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... when the dog followed like an arrow from a bow, took to his heels, his companions with him, and they ran helter-skelter down the street, the dog pursuing them to the corner of the Carinae, and returning, his tongue hanging out, his tail wagging, with all the demonstrations of a dog who feels he has done his full ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... walked across the floor without suspicion of what was beneath. No doubt, he held his place in his tribe as an honourable man, and his conscience traced no connection between that recently disturbed patch on the floor and the helter-skelter flight from Ai; but when the lot began to be cast, he would have his own thought, and when the tribe of Judah was taken, some creeping fear would begin to coil round his heart, which tightened its folds, and hissed more loudly, as each step in the lot brought discovery nearer home; and when, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... had remained at the ramparts had also heard the shots, and thinking that the insurgents had entered by means of some subterranean passage, they ran up helter-skelter, in groups of five or six, disturbing the silence of the streets with the tumult of their excited rush. Roudier was one of the first to arrive. However, Rougon sent them all back to their posts, after reprimanding them severely for abandoning the gates of ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... there throughout the universe. She got only the most lightninglike glimpse of any one spot; flash after flash of unfamiliar, indescribable situations succeeded each other like the speeded-up scenes of a photoplay farce. For an unguessable length of time this helter-skelter process occupied her mind. ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... been done or said, mischievous practical jokes played off upon some unlucky school-fellow, mess-room jests and tattle, and a thousand other absurdities, at which he laughed aloud. Then disconnected words and phrases rushed helter-skelter through his seething brain, having no meaning, yet causing him the keenest annoyance, because he believed he had heard them before, and was anxious to connect them with the circumstances of their utterance. There was one in particular which especially tormented him. "Go for a cruise ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... a roof such as modern man makes! Nor a roof such as is made by the lowest aborigines of to-day. It was infinitely more clumsy than the clumsiest handiwork of man—of man as we know him. It was put together in a casual, helter-skelter sort of way. Above the fork of the tree whereon we rested was a pile of dead branches and brush. Four or five adjacent forks held what I may term the various ridge-poles. These were merely stout sticks ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... then a cafe parfait; and then—as if to crown the audacity—huge thick slices of roast beef! Montague had given up long ago—he could keep no track of the deluge of food which poured forth. And between all the courses there were wines of precious brands, tumbled helter-skelter,—sherry and port, champagne and claret and liqueur. Montague watched poor "Baby" de Mille out of the corner of his eye, and pitied her; for it was evident that she could not resist the impulse to eat whatever was put before her, and she was ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... if I would once more try the river, the only chance now remaining to me. I turned and hobbled away as fast as my wounded limb would let me, plunged into the nearest pool, sprawled through the next bog, crashed through the rushes, hopped along the dry ground upon one foot, and scrambled helter-skelter towards the river, expecting every moment to hear the report of the firearms, and to feel a handful of slugs in my body. Never shall I forget the horrors of that chase. I distanced my pursuers, however, and arrived at the margin of the stream without ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... "The idea!" she mocked me. "Rather say, 'The idea of a bright young fellow being so ignorant!' Did you ever hear of a provoking thing like that?" There was a good deal of her mother's helter-skelter ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... reached the crest there was the black and white bird flying low into a dell, and there the boy, with hair streaming back, was rushing helter-skelter down the hill. He reached the bottom and vanished into the dell. I, too, ran down the hill. For all that I was prying and must not be seen by bird or boy, I crept warily in among the trees to the edge of a pool that ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... have seen that Tartuffe!" continued Minard. "He had no sooner gone out than he returned, bringing the news. As everybody was longing to get away, there followed a general helter-skelter. And then what does our man do? He goes back to Madame Lambert, who was crying that she was ruined! she was lost!—which might very well be true, but it might also be only a scene arranged between them in presence of the company, whom the woman's outcries detained in the antechamber. 'Don't be ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... the age, the helter-skelter way in which dramas were got up, sometimes by half-a-dozen authors at once, of whom one occasionally monopolised the fame; and the unscrupulous manner in which booksellers appropriated any popular ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... giving in. Chirp, chirp, chirp! Cricket fresher than ever. Hum, hum, hum—m—m! Kettle slow and steady. Chirp, chirp, chirp! Cricket going in to finish him. Hum, hum, hum—m—m! Kettle not to be finished. Until at last they got so jumbled together, in the hurry-skurry, helter-skelter, of the match, that whether the kettle chirped and the Cricket hummed, or the Cricket chirped and the kettle hummed, or they both chirped and both hummed, it would have taken a clearer head than yours or mine to have decided with anything ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... for the pilgrims whom he lodged, a whole family, who were taking a case of chaplets, plaster Virgins, and framed engravings away with them. You heard a confused tramping of feet and violent bursts of conversation coming from the first floor, all the helter-skelter of people whom the approaching departure and the packing of purchases lying hither and thither drove almost crazy. In the adjoining dining-room, the door of which had remained open, two children were draining the dregs of some cups of ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... what a confused jumble they present! Having no grand animating idea, no all-pervading principle of harmony, no universally recognized standard for anything, we are necessarily the most anomalous, amorphous, helter-skelter aggregation of independent and antagonistic individualities ever gathered together since nations began to exist. What can prevent such an agglomeration from falling to pieces? ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... good farmer's tools are under shelter; But Pete Tumbledown's lie helter-skelter; And when he wants his tools again He finds them ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... "at home," the last of the direct Stuart line, whose royal person, it is said, having grown too unwieldy to permit horseback exercise, she was in the habit of following the hunt, of which she was passionately fond, driving herself, helter-skelter, in a one-horse chaise. She has the credit of having bestowed some endowment upon the Chapel, and the Bishop of London presented it with a bell; which, if all accounts be true, still hangs in the steeple of a congregational meeting-house within the precinct of the "Plains," ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... and by this time she had become so interested in the story, that she began at once, and read so fast, that she went helter-skelter, fairly tumbling over herself ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... crowing, Clucking and gobbling, Mopping and mowing, Full of airs and graces, Pulling wry faces, Demure grimaces, Cat-like and rat-like, Ratel and wombat-like, Snail-paced in a hurry, Parrot-voiced and whistler, Helter-skelter, hurry-skurry, Chattering like magpies, Fluttering like pigeons, Gliding like fishes,— Hugged her and kissed her; Squeezed and caressed her; Stretched up their dishes, Panniers and plates: "Look at our apples Russet and dun, Bob at our cherries, Bite at our peaches, Citrons and dates, Grapes ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... whether it was owing to fright, or to the excessive smoke caused by so many pieces of artillery, arrive we did. On the platforms, too, our work was not quite so difficult as might be imagined—killing these fellows was sheer butchery. As soon as we appeared, they all turned and fled helter-skelter, and the reader may judge of their courage by the fact that out of about seven hundred men killed by us, only forty had wounds in front, the rest ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... soon the nerves are disturbed by the smell of anything burning in the house. Raise the cry of "Fire!" in a crowded building, and at once the old savage bursts through the veneer of civilisation. It is helter-skelter, the Devil take the hindmost. The strong trample upon the weak. Men and women turn to devils. Even if the cry of "Fire!" be raised in a church—where a believer might wish to die, and where he might feel himself ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... round, whom should I see before me but the identical individual I had so coolly been criticising, and who, to my utter horror and dismay, was no other than Lord Wellington himself. I did not wait for a second peep. Helter-skelter, through water, thickets, and brambles, away I went, clattering down the causeway like a madman. If a French squadron had been behind me, I should have had a stouter heart, although I did not fear pursuit. I felt his eye was upon me,—his sharp and piercing ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... musketry in the street, but some who were standing close saw one of their number crumple suddenly to the earth. When they leaned over him he was dead. They were panic-stricken, and it took all the brutal authority of the Arabs to keep the Manyuema from rushing helter-skelter into the jungle—anywhere to escape ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... windows and in at the door, And through the walls helter-skelter they pour, And down through the ceiling, and up through the floor, From the right and the left, from behind and before, From within and without, from above and below, And all at once ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... not claim that the pilgrims do their acts of worship in the order and sequence above charted out in this Itinerary of mine, but I think logic suggests that they ought to do so. Instead of a helter-skelter worship, we then have a definite starting-place, and a march which carries the pilgrim steadily forward by reasoned and logical progression to a definite goal. Thus, his Ganges bath in the early ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the east portico took the oath of office. A wild rush was then made by the people to shake his hand. With difficulty the President reached a horse and started for the White House, "pursued by a motley concourse of people, riding, running helter-skelter, striving who should first gain admittance." So great was the crowd at the White House that Jackson was pushed through the drawing room and would have been crushed against the wall had not his friends linked arms and made a ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... watching the cockroaches, which are in a state of intense excitement and happiness. They manifest these feelings in a very remarkable manner—a sudden unanimous impulse seems to seize the obscene thousands which usually lurk hidden in the corners of my cabin. Out they rush, helter-skelter, and run over me, my table, and my desk; others, more vigorous, fly, quite regardless of consequences, until they hit against something, upon which, half spreading their wings, they make their heads a pivot and spin round in a circle, in a manner which indicates a temporary aberration of the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... the boat seemed striking on a ledge; the sail collapsed and exploded; a .. gush of scalding vapor shot up near by; something rolled and tumbled like an earthquake beneath us. The whole crew were half suffocated as they were tossed helter-skelter into the white curdling cream of the squall. Squall, whale, and harpoon had all blended together; and the whale, merely grazed by the iron, escaped. Though completely swamped, the boat was nearly unharmed. Swimming round it we picked up the floating ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... and what a confused jumble they present! Having no grand animating idea, no all-pervading principle of harmony, no universally recognized standard for anything, we are necessarily the most anomalous, amorphous, helter-skelter aggregation of independent and antagonistic individualities ever gathered together since nations began to exist. What can prevent such an agglomeration from falling to pieces? What can ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... Anything more hopeless as a continuous narrative I have never read. But it supplied facts, hit off odds and ends of character, and—what the autobiography seldom does—it gave the ipsissima verba of conversations written in helter-skelter fashion with flowing pen, sometimes in excellent French, sometimes in English, which beginning in the elaborate style of his letter broke down into queer vernacular; it was charmingly devoid of self-consciousness, so that the ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... for three hours, worked with a kind of frenzied delight in action and pricked on by a ravenous hunger. In and out of the combers they dashed, playing a desperate game of chance with Death. Helter-skelter, hit-or-miss, in a blind orgy of rescue, at first they pulled out everything they could reach. Repeatedly, Frank Merrill stopped to lecture them on the foolish risks they were taking, on the stupidity of such a waste of energy. "Save what we need!" he iterated and reiterated, bellowing ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety-two, Did the English fight the French,—woe to France! And, the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter thro' the blue, Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks pursue, Came crowding ship on ship to St. Malo on the Rance, With ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... simplification was their method, and that simplicity is their excellence." Indeed, as we have already noted in passing, simplification is the method of every art. Every artist, in his own way, simplifies life: first by selecting essentials from the helter-skelter of details that life presents to him, and then by arranging these essentials in accordance with a pattern. And we have noted also that the method of the artist in narrative is to select events which bear an essential logical relation to each other and then to arrange ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... collection of rubbish—boilers, car wheels, fragments of locomotives, household furniture, dead animals, clothing, sewing machines, goods from stores, safes, passenger and street cars, some half buried in the sand, some all exposed, helter-skelter. ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... had made a castle, and were standing on the top of it, all crowded together, waiting for a big wave to come and surround them; and when at last it came, it carried half their fortress away with it, and they all hopped off into the water, and splashed up through it helter-skelter, with shouts of laughter, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... nose. This was a bad business! Jack trembled with fear, and in his terror clutched the wolf's tail with both hands and held on with all his might. The wolf was frightened, too, and took to flight, dragging the cask after it. You ought to have seen the wonder; helter-skelter went the brute, banging the cask against the trees, up hill and down dale. The wolf running, the cask following, Jack holding tight to the tail—that was worth seeing! Suddenly, helter-skelter the cask struck against a wall and burst open. ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... grottos and seats; Shows all his gewgaws, And gapes for applause; A fine occupation For one in his station! A hole where a rabbit Would scorn to inhabit, Dug out in an hour; He calls it a bower. But, O! how we laugh, To see a wild calf Come, driven by heat, And foul the green seat; Or run helter-skelter, To his arbour for shelter, Where all goes to ruin The Dean has been doing: The girls of the village Come flocking for pillage, Pull down the fine briers And thorns to make fires; But yet are so kind To leave something behind: No more need be said on't, I smell when I tread ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... few minutes Marjorie returned. She had turned up the short, full skirt of her pink gingham frock to form a sort of bag, and into it she had tumbled, helter-skelter, several books, some paper and pens, her paper-doll's house, her paintbox, her kitten, a few odd toys, her Memory Book, and her clock. Staggering under the bulging load, but in a more cheerful frame of mind, she reached ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... sward, planks raised a foot or so, for every one would sit on the grass. Some of the Indian women had booths, and were already selling birch and sassafras beer, pipes and tobacco, and maple sugar. Little ones were running helter-skelter, tumbling down and getting up without a whimper. Here a knot of men were playing cards or dominoes. It was a pretty scene, and needed only cavaliers and the glittering, stately stepping dames to make it a ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... young men but had the complete jargon of the craft at his finger-tips; not one, too, but was rancorous and admiring in a breath, now detecting flaws as many as motes in a beam, now heaping praise. The spirited talk, flying thus helter-skelter through the gamut of opinion, went forward chiefly in German, which the foreigners of the party spoke with various accents, but glibly enough; only now and then did one of them spring over to his mother-tongue, to fetch a racy idiom or ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... made, it seemed to me that I was touching her hands. When the evening had fallen, a passing officer noticed us, made inquiries, and we were mustered. We plunged into the night of the building. Our feet stumbled and climbed helter-skelter, between pitched walls up the steps of a damp staircase, which smelt of stale tobacco and gas-tar, like all barracks. They led us into a dark corridor, pierced by little pale blue windows, where draughts came and went violently, a corridor spotted at each end by naked gas-jets, their flames buffeted ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... the enemy suddenly wheeled to the left and were quickly out of sight between the hills. They found the Pretoria men there, and came back helter-skelter to the accompaniment of rapid rifle firing. First one saddle and then another was emptied as they raced across from right to left, making ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... hole to hide it. His friends walked across the floor without suspicion of what was beneath. No doubt, he held his place in his tribe as an honourable man, and his conscience traced no connection between that recently disturbed patch on the floor and the helter-skelter flight from Ai; but when the lot began to be cast, he would have his own thought, and when the tribe of Judah was taken, some creeping fear would begin to coil round his heart, which tightened ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... You can't fool me," he yelled. "I saw the spot your eyes lit on when I first came into the room. Is it behind these books?" he growled, pulling them out and throwing them helter-skelter over the floor. "Women is smart in the hiding business. Is it behind these ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... forward the boat seemed striking on a ledge; the sail collapsed and exploded; a gush of scalding vapor shot up near by; something rolled and tumbled like an earthquake beneath us. The whole crew were half suffocated as they were tossed helter-skelter into the white curdling cream of the squall. Squall, whale, and harpoon had all blended together and the whale, merely grazed ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... her progeny. The trooper sat still in his saddle watching this curious company till they had satisfied their thirst; but as soon as they commenced their return, he put spurs to his horse, to intercept the boy. Off ran the wolves, and off ran the boy helter-skelter—the latter keeping close up with the dam; and the horseman, owing to the unevenness of the ground, found it impossible to overtake them before they had all entered their den. He was determined, nevertheless, to attain his object, and assembling some people from the neighbouring village ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... it pounced upon and totally appropriated by the host in liquidation of some ancient score. With a shout of rage, or rather a howl, from our Bohemian whip, we again set forward. "Hi, hi, hi!" and helter-skelter we went, through bush and bramble, where indeed there was no trace or shadow of a beaten track. The Bohemian was lost to control; he shouted, he sang, he yelled, savagely flogging his willing beast all the ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... and twigs that the trees had been too lazy to shed; short shrift for them on the first spring-cleaning night. Down they came, helter-skelter, and no notice taken of the tree's groaning, or ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... their pans, and the chambermaids to their dusters, and the stablemen and grooms trooped out of doors to look after the horses; but presently they all came rushing back again, helter-skelter, with pale faces, for the stable door had been left open, and the King's favourite brown horse had been stolen, as well as the Harper's old gray mare. For a long time no one dare tell the King, but at last the head ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... confusion followed. The only field-pieces with Keane were two light 3-pounders, not able to cope with the Carolina's artillery; the rocket guns were brought up, but were speedily silenced; musketry proved quite as ineffectual; and in a very few minutes the troops were driven helter-skelter off the levee, and were forced to shelter themselves behind it, not without having suffered severe loss. [Footnote: General Keane, in his letter, writes that the British suffered but a single casualty; Gleig, who was present, says (p. 288): ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... curtains must come down, and I may as well shut the shutters too and now this tablecloth must be content to hang straight, and Mamma's box and the books must lie in their places, and not all helter-skelter. Now, I wish Mamma would wake up; I should think she might. I don't believe she is asleep either she don't look as if ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... back to the dear mother Ocean," the wind took pity on him, and came with its cool breath and fanned him, with all his brothers, into a heavy gray cloud, after which he blew them apart and told them to join hands and hurry away to the earth. Helter-skelter down they went, rolling over each other pell-mell, till with a patter and clatter and spatter they touched the ground, and all the people cried, ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin
... always dismounted at the top of a hill, and walked down, either leading or driving their horses before them to the foot. My father dismounted, put the whip to his horse, a very spirited animal, and down the hill he galloped. First one article of clothing, then another, went helter-skelter along the road for a mile, one here and one there—ruffled shirts, white neckcloths, long coats, cashmere vests, boot-tops, pomatum boxes, cotton stockings, &c. &c.—not two of them together. It took Milner ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie
... party were moored at the steps; the rest were half a mile off, contending hopelessly against the swollen and rapid Waal. Schenk, desperately wounded, was left almost alone upon the wharf, for his routed followers had plunged helter-skelter into the boats, several of which, overladen in the panic, sank at once, leaving the soldiers to drown or struggle with ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... faced the six or seven grotesque creatures, who stood there in the sunlight, solid, casting shadows, moving, and yet so incredibly unreal. Montgomery cracked his whip at them, and forthwith they all turned and fled helter-skelter into the trees; and when Montgomery and Moreau were at a distance I judged sufficient, I waded ashore, and picked up and examined the revolvers. To satisfy myself against the subtlest trickery, I discharged one at a round lump of lava, and had the satisfaction of seeing the stone pulverised ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... carpenter, steward, cook, and boys, who keep no regular watch—have all been roused up, to bear a hand, and 'pull their pound.' Halliards are let go, reef-tackles hauled chock-a-block, and we lay aloft helter-skelter, best man up first, and bend over the yard, till the weather-earing is secured; and then comes the welcome cry: 'Haul to leeward!' It is done, and then we all 'knot-away' with the reef-points. The reef having been taken (or two, perchance), we shin down again to mast-head the topsails, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... beginning to test the possibilities of a "vertical" classification as well as a "horizontal" one. That is, each class must be divided into what are termed Gifted, Bright, Average, Dull, Normal, and Defective. In the past the helter-skelter crowding and over-crowding together of all classes of children of approximately the same age, produced only a dull ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... arrangement by always visiting his friend, whom he usually found in bed. It was William Clerk who sat for the picture of Darsie Latimer, the hero of Redgauntlet,—whence we should suppose him to have been a lively, generous, susceptible, contentious, and rather helter-skelter young man, much alive to the ludicrous in all situations, very eager to see life in all its phases, and somewhat vain of his power of adapting himself equally to all these phases. Scott tells a story of Clerk's being once baffled—almost ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... and he whizzed by, arms and legs going like mad, and the general appearance of a runaway engine. It would have been a triumphant descent, if a big dog had not bounced suddenly through one of the openings, and sent the whole concern helter-skelter into the gutter. Polly laughed as she ran to view the ruin, for Tom lay flat on his back with the velocipede atop of him, while the big dog barked wildly, and his master scolded him for his awkwardness. But ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... right or wrong, and beat him down on his knees, and then started for her spell of the merry canter over turf: an example to the English of the punishment they get for their stupid Puritanic tyranny—sure to be followed by a national helter-skelter down-hill headlong. And Mrs. Lawrence was not one of the corrupt, he argued; she concealed what it was decent to conceal, without pouting hypocritical pretences; she had merely dispensed with idle legal formalities, in the prettiest curvetting airy ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... they got so jumbled together, in the hurry- scurry, helter-skelter of the match, that whether the kettle chirped and the cricket hummed, or the cricket chirped and the kettle hummed, or they both chirped and both hummed, it would have taken a clearer head than yours or mine to have ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... of the lady who still sat near the bank, smiling more bewitchingly than ever. On reaching the top of the hill, he perceived that the sheep had already strayed down into the valley, when he hastened after them, but only to see them enter a narrow glen helter-skelter, as if they were running for dear life. He now recollected the fiddle would save him all further trouble, and drew the bow across the strings as the lady had told him, but instead of the exquisite music ...
— Up! Horsie! - An Original Fairy Tale • Clara de Chatelaine
... old man looked at it, the heap of blankets and rugs on the stove moved, first in one place and then in another. Then there was a little laugh. Then another. And suddenly there was a great stir in the blankets, and they were all thrown back helter-skelter, and there were dozens and dozens of little queer children, laughing and laughing and laughing, and looking at the old man. And every child had a little turnip, and showed it to the old man ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... wide, five high. A luminous ceiling, decorated with delicate arabesques, distributed a soft, clear daylight over all the wonders gathered in this museum. For a museum it truly was, in which clever hands had spared no expense to amass every natural and artistic treasure, displaying them with the helter-skelter picturesqueness that distinguishes ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... of light, but within a few paces of the gateway, he threw himself on the ground and awaited the event. It was not long in declaring itself. For a few seconds a dull roar of shots and shouts and curses filled the gate. Then out again, helter-skelter, with a flash of exploding powder and a whirl of steel and blows, came defenders and assailants in a crowd, the former bent on escaping, the latter on cutting them off from the Porte Tertasse and ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... sudden, his arms seemed to begin to lift, and just when he was goin' to pull 'em down the van started as they had heard and seen it. After a while he got on to his knees and managed to wrench a corner; of the front curtain clear of the button and get his head out. And there was the van going helter-skelter, and feeling like Tam o'Shanter's mare (the old man said), and he on her barebacked. And there was no horses, but a cloud of dust—or a spook—on ahead, and the bare pole steering straight for it, just as the professor had said it would be. The old man thought ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... camp. After sweeping through he discovered to his dismay that the Indians were encamped on the margin of an impenetrable swamp—in a semi-circle, as it were, and he could go no farther. Nothing dismayed, the column wheeled and rode helter-skelter back the road they had come, this time his men using their sabres. When clear of the camp Bernard turned his attention to the men under Pete French. The latter had gotten into a "hot box," two of his men had been ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... machinery, smashed, bent, twisted, and overturned, all red with rust, mixed up with and in parts covered by stone and brickwork, beams and iron girders, the whole sprinkled over with gleaming fragments of window-glass The outside walls were almost completely knocked flat, tossed helter-skelter outwards or on top of the machinery. The tall chimney—another suspected 'observing post' probably—lay in a heap of broken brickwork with the last yard or two of the base standing up out of the heap, and ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... and dogs and hammer-handles," said one of the soldiers afterward. "It was inky dark—darker than I have ever known it to be anywhere on the plains. The water made a muddy pond of the whole camp, and the trenches were half filled in no time. Everything was blown helter-skelter by the furious wind, and some of our outfits we never recovered. In the midst of the confusion some fellows reported that the Spaniards were trying to break through our lines, but the report was false,—the ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... to do as La Rose had wished. Taking a pick and an axe he went to the graveyard, but when he struck the grave with his tools and the earth rolled back, disclosing the body of La Rose, the old fellow was so terrified that he ran helter-skelter from the spot. A draught of good wine brought back his failing courage, however, and he returned and passed the rose three times under the nostrils of his late acquaintance. Instantly ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... carry equipment of every vintage and every make. If you wanted something that hadn't been manufactured in decades, and perhaps never made in quantity, Harry's was the place to go. The walls were lined with bins, all unlabeled, filled helter-skelter with every imaginable kind of gadget, most of which would have been hard to recognize unless you were both ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... also talk to his helter-skelter cousin in Holland; if the man goes on in his wild intrigues, though he will get most probably nothing by it himself, he may do a great deal of harm, and may force us to incline more towards France for fear ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... and slips and rivers, hours of weary travel apart and each without any connection with any other that I could see. Railroad tracks wound in and out with no apparent purpose, dirty freight boats crawled helter-skelter this way and that. All seemed a meaningless ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... for the idea of a dinner party has quite frightened her; and there are so many little things to be done, which I know nothing about, and which you understand, and without which we should have every thing helter-skelter, that you must come, or I'll never forgive you.' Harry made this last menace with so fierce an air, and his mouth pursed up in so ferocious a manner, although his eyes were dancing with fun, that the lady ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... didn't last more than a minute or two. At least, that's what I gather from seeing my precious Darwanis in full flight when I got the blood out of my eyes. Their way of conducting a retreat was always to fire a volley and then run away helter-skelter, and though I had been teaching them better manners, I always knew they would break if I wasn't there to stiffen them. I was a good deal knocked about, besides the wound on the head, and before I could manage to roll into the bushes, Sher Singh's men were back. I thought it well to appear ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... there are in the world!" said the voice in emphatic accents of supreme contempt—"What braying asses!—What earth- snouting swine! Saw you not yon crowd of whimpering idiots flying helter-skelter like chaff before the wind, weeping, wailing, and bemoaning their miserable little sins, scattering dust on their addled pates, and howling on their gods for mercy,—all forsooth! because for once in ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... by jumping from a lofty precipice into a deep lake below. As they scampered off in a very numerous body to carry out their resolve, the Frogs lying on the banks of the lake heard the noise of their feet, and rushed helter-skelter to the deep water for safety. On seeing the rapid disappearance of the Frogs, one of the Hares cried out to his companions: "Stay, my friends, do not do as you intended; for you now see that other creatures who yet live ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... topsy-turvy &c (inverted) 218; shapeless &c 241; disjointed, out of joint. troublous^; riotous &c (violent) 173. complex &c 59.1. Adv. irregularly &c adj.; by fits, by fits and snatches, by fits and starts; pellmell; higgledy-piggledy; helter-skelter, harum-scarum; in a ferment; at sixes and sevens, at cross-purposes; upside down &c 218. Phr. the cart before the horse; hysteron proteron [Gr.]; chaos is come again; the wreck of matter and ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... and all was ready, we lifted the blinds from the horses' eyes and then braced ourselves. Digging our heels into the ponies' sides, off we started, at a jerking, bounding, half-bucking pace. Shouting directions to each other, helter-skelter, over and around boulders, we dashed along as if we were after the hounds on a genuine old-fashioned fox-hunt. I suppose we kept it up a full hour, at topmost speed. The horses didn't want to stop, and Sinyela knew that the best way to break them was to ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... tussocks. At first it was supposed to be a dead bullock, but the beast on being disturbed rose upon his fore flippers, and, displaying a formidable array of teeth, roared loudly* at the disturbers of his rest, who, being unarmed, rushed helter-skelter to the boat and went off to the ship. They returned immediately with an assortment of pikes, muskets, and pistols sufficient to ensure the destruction of a host of sealions; but after cautiously investing the place, it was discovered ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... across a patch of moonlight with a beckoning gesture in our direction, while the breeze bore a faintly whispered, "Come! Come!" We were none of us overbold; our faith was not strong enough to run the risk of spoiling the illusion. With shrieks and laughter we turned and made helter-skelter for the house, breaking in among the elder members of the party with the panting announcement, ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... vibration of the shaky old walls! Once I had begun I couldn't leave off for my life, but went on tugging and tugging and quaking and quaking until—have you forgotten it?—all the people came running helter-skelter under the impression that the town was afire. And then, behold, it was only little me, trembling like a leaf and crying like a ninny! I remember I was scolded and smacked and dismissed into outer darkness (it was the chip vault, I think), for that first outbreak of fame, and now, lest you should ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... high spirits and her head was lifted proudly. Dan's boast had come true. Kirby Smith had risen swiftly from Tennessee, had struck the Federal Army on the edge of the Bluegrass the day before and sent it helter-skelter to the four winds. Only that morning she had seen a regiment of the hated Yankees move along the turnpike in flight for the Ohio. It was the Fourth Ohio Cavalry, and Harry and one whose name never passed her lips were among those dusty cavalrymen; but she was glad, ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... fled helter-skelter in the wildest panic that had come upon them since the outbreak of the war. In vain their officers shouted and cursed at them. The iron bonds of discipline snapped like threads. Soldiers rushed hither ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... now risen so high that Miss Grey felt this would really be the best plan, for attention to lessons seemed impossible, and soon the four children were rushing helter-skelter across the garden in pursuit of Antony. With a frisk of his tail and a squeak of defiance he led the chase in fine style, choosing Andrew's most cherished borders. What a refreshment it was, after the tedium of French ...
— The Hawthorns - A Story about Children • Amy Walton
... I did not know. I was like a man flying through the phantasmagoric happenings of a dream, knowing neither how nor whither. I tore along what I suppose was a broad passage, through a door at the end into what, I fancy, was a drawing-room. Across this room I dashed, helter-skelter, bringing down, in the gloom, unseen articles of furniture, with myself sometimes on top, and sometimes under them. In a trice, each time I fell, I was on my feet again,—until I went crashing against a window ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... girl living with Keith's uncle and aunt in a position halfway between ward and servant. Across the fields and along shaded wood paths they ran joyously to a sheltered bay with a sandy beach from which the open fjord could be seen in the distance. The children stripped helter-skelter and went into the shallow water as nature had made them, but Mina, who was to assist them, had for want of bathing suit put on a starched white petticoat. The upper part of her body was bare, ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... abundance. Apparently he was like the woodcutter entering the thick forest and saying, "Where shall I begin?" The same obstacle appeared in a minor degree to cling about his verbal exposition, and accounted perhaps for his rather helter-skelter choice of remarks bearing on the number of unaddressed letters sent to the post-office; on what logic really is, as tending to support the buoyancy of human mediums and mahogany tables; on the probability of all miracles under all religions ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... breath and realised that now the whole right corner of the barn was gone. The field stretched, a dark shadow, to the edge of the yard. In the ground where the stakes of the barn had been there was a deep pit; scattered helter-skelter were bricks, pieces of wood, and over it all a cloud of thin fine dust that hovered and swung a little like grey silk. The line of soldiers was crouched back into the trench as though it had been driven by some force. From, as it ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... That's disposed of. Everything in its turn. We old operators, go by order and system—no helter-skelter business with us. What's the next thing on the docket? The carrying on of the materialization—the bringing it down to date. I will begin on that at once. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... flung open; a stream of light struck the dark; the shadows, memories, fled, helter-skelter, like crackling smoke ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... the entire palace was alive with people. Guardsmen, officers, courtiers, servants, and slaves ran helter-skelter through the corridors and apartments carrying messages and orders, and searching ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... angry demands from the Englishmen who bade him order the mahouts to take the visitors away from the horrible spectacle. As they left they saw the Rajah's golden chariot and the carriages of the officials being driven helter-skelter across the grass with their blood-stained and terrified occupants. And the madly fanatical crowds surged wildly around the altar, while their cries to ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... from the rose-bush Mother Magpie's nerves were so shocked that she dropped the diamond helter-skelter into the hole. And in a moment she fell in after it, out of sight. She hoped that no one had seen her, but little Whitebird knew the place. He hopped after her and, perching on the edge of the hole, peered down into ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... King, with their horses at full speed, dashed from either side upon the helpless mob of countrymen. A few pikes feebly levelled met them; but they shot the pikemen, drew swords, and helter-skelter leaped into the shattered and scattering mass. Right and left they hacked and hewed; I could hear the snapping of scythes beneath them, and see the flash of their sweeping swords. How it must end was plain enough, even to one like myself, who had never beheld such a battle before. ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... the underbrush, since they were acquainted with the paths. At first they hurled from a distance; then as no one defended himself but many were wounded, they approached closer to them. The Romans were in no order but going along helter-skelter among the wagons and the unarmed, and so, not being able to form readily in a body, and being fewer at every point than their assailants, they suffered greatly and offered no resistance at all. [-21-] Accordingly, ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... grand style, amid loud cheering, and resulted in the complete rout of the Fenians. Capt. Hall's Battery of the Montreal Garrison Artillery, directed by Lieut. Fitzgeorge, cleared the wood on the left in a very thorough manner, and soon the whole Fenian army were in a helter-skelter race out of Canada and back to American territory. When the Canadian troops reached the boundary Col. Bagot had great difficulty in restraining them from crossing into the United States after the fugitives, so eager were they to effect the capture of ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... determined to put an end to themselves and their troubles by jumping from a lofty precipice into a deep lake below. As they scampered off in large numbers to carry out their resolve, the Frogs lying on the banks of the lake heard the noise of their feet and rushed helter-skelter to the deep water for safety. On seeing the rapid disappearance of the Frogs, one of the Hares cried out to his companions: "Stay, my friends, do not do as you intended; for you now see that there are creatures who are still ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... until an officially sanctioned newspaper article specified its exact position. A few days after the article appeared, in fact, as soon as a copy of the paper reached Germany, a thunderstorm of shells broke on the brewery. Out of it poured a helter-skelter stream of stark-naked men, who ran wherever they could for cover. From one point of view it was vastly comic. In the meanwhile the building containing all their clothes, and all the spare clothing for a brigade, was being scientifically ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... There was a helter-skelter race for the car. In they all crowded, and none too soon. The air was almost as dark as at dusk, and there was a heavy sulphurous feeling in the atmosphere. But within the curtains of the car all was fun and merriment. The case of the old farmer was discussed at length, and ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... now—we could have half a dozen married couples all separating, getting rid of their ribs and buckling again, helter-skelter, every man to somebody else's wife; and the parish parson refusing to do the work; just to show ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... dangerous. He put me off and put me off, until I was glad to snatch at a position in a next-of-kin agency. But in a fortnight or two I was even more glad to leave it. Then I went back to Lord Boxspur, who this time sent me helter-skelter back to Paris, to bribe a blackmailing newspaper woman from giving the details of his wife's misfortunes to the Continental correspondent of a London weekly. But even when that was done, and I had been duly paid for my work, I was only secure for a few weeks, at the outside. All along I kept ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... charged down the sides of the table. The mob wavered, turned, and were lost! Helter-skelter they fled, tumbling over one another in their haste to escape. The lamp was smashed. The benches were upset. In the smoky hall a furious din arose,—as if Sir Galahad and Sir Percivale were once more hewing their way ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... see the plain thus suddenly fill'd with rabble, all running from the south, and the silly startled sheep rushing helter-skelter, and huddling together on the tors above, that I forgot my own likely danger if any of this revengeful crew should come upon me lying there: and was satisfied to watch them as they straggled over the moors toward ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... lest the whole team should get away with the sledge and its load, and leave one behind.... I never did get left the whole of this depot journey, but I was often very near it, and several times had only time to seize a strap or a part of the sledge, and be dragged along helter-skelter over everything that came in the way, till the team got sick of galloping and one could struggle to one's feet again. One gets very wary and wide-awake when one has to manage a team of eleven dogs and a sledge load by oneself, ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... thought it out. It was in the air, so to speak. At the moment, I was too much concerned for the little parson to reason coolly. Oh, I reasoned about it a little while later, not coolly perhaps, but certainly quickly, and leaped helter-skelter to a momentous decision. But just then I ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... arose and drove the fog helter-skelter across to Green Bay, where the gray ranks curled themselves down and lay hidden until morning. 'I'll go with the wind,' thought Waring, 'it must take me somewhere in time.' So he changed his course and paddled on. The wind grew strong, then stronger. He could see a few stars now as the ragged dark ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... the warriors as they passed, exhorting them to valorous deeds. Some of the veterans took arms themselves, and sallied forth with tottering steps. In this way, the savage chivalry of the village to the number of five hundred, poured forth, helter-skelter, riding and running, with hideous yells and war-whoops, like so many bedlamites ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... on Whitsunday the full force of the storm was felt. The Commodore gave the signal to draw in all sails except one and to remove the uppermost parts of the masts. The ships were being scattered far apart. In the cabins all articles, though tied fast, were broken loose and were thrown helter-skelter, the occupants likewise, many with bruised limbs, and there was no end to the spells of seasickness and of misery made ridiculous. The storm was ever growing worse. On the second day the last sail was drawn in, and the rudder bound fast, so that now the ...
— The Voyage of The First Hessian Army from Portsmouth to New York, 1776 • Albert Pfister
... his Majesty jumped so high that his crown tumbled off, and the Queen was in such a delightful agitation that she could not confine her steps to a walk, and so the King and the Queen, and the Duchess, and all the maids of honour and pages, ran helter-skelter, as fast as they could, and took ...
— The Apple Dumpling and Other Stories for Young Boys and Girls • Unknown
... Good Heavens, how it blew! The waters seemed alive and in direst convulsion. Everywhere huge walls of breakers were constantly upheaved to be felled and shattered with a roar as of some terrific cannonade; while the air became the arena for a helter-skelter tossing of sheets of spray, clots of froth, and spirts of brine, which plentifully assailed our poor boat in their madness, and, besides partially filling her with slush, encased every man in a complete coating of ice. If our craft had not been modeled with ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... it is to think knows that he must for part of the day create about himself a pool of silence. But in that helter-skelter which we flatter by the name of civilization, the citizen performs the perilous business of government under the worst possible conditions. A faint recognition of this truth inspires the movement for a shorter work day, for longer vacations, for light, ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... three individuals on different routes. I heard the safety lock of a rifle snapped back. He would fire the next minute. Springing up, I shouted: "Separate!" to the boys, and ran as fast as I could, helter-skelter down the side of a gradual slope. I was making no effort at stooping now. Speed was ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... Heich, heigh, high. Hem-shin'd, crooked-shin'd. Herd, a herd-boy. Here awa, hereabout. Herry, to harry. Herryment, spoliation. Hersel, herself. Het, hot. Heugh, a hollow or pit; a crag, a steep bank. Heuk, a hook. Hilch, to hobble. Hiltie-skiltie, helter-skelter. Himsel, himselfk Hiney, hinny, honey. Hing, to hang. Hirple, to move unevenly; to limp. Hissels, so many cattle as one person can attend (R. B.). Histie, bare. Hizzie, a hussy, a wench. Hoast, cough. Hoddin, the motion of a sage countryman riding on a cart-horse ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... tempest of missives. Bang! went the guns; whack! went the broad-swords; thump! went the cudgels; crash! went the musket-stocks; blows, kicks, cuffs, scratches, black eyes and bloody noses swelling the horrors of the scene! Thick thwack, cut and hack, helter-skelter, higgledy-piggledy, hurly-burly, head-over-heels, rough-and-tumble! Dunder and blixum! swore the Dutchmen; splitter and splutter! cried the Swedes. Storm the works! shouted Hardkoppig Peter. Fire the mine! roared stout Risingh. Tanta-rar-ra-ra! twanged the trumpet of Antony ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... it is! One wild race for the crest, one headland charge down the slope beyond, and they are rolling over a band of yelling, scurrying, savage horsemen, whirling them away over the opposite ridge, driving them helter-skelter over the westward prairie, until all who escape the shock of the onset or the swift bullet in the raging chase finally vanish from their sight; and then, obedient to the ringing "recall" of the trumpet, ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... moment had I witnessed the action itself. Somehow it made an impression on me. The man raced round the saloon still shouting, and raced away again up-stairs and out of sight. Everyone followed him pell-mell, helter-skelter, and almost in a second I found myself alone. I put on my overcoat, and my mackintosh over that, and seizing Rosa's jewel-box, ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... there was the black and white bird flying low into a dell, and there the boy, with hair streaming back, was rushing helter-skelter down the hill. He reached the bottom and vanished into the dell. I, too, ran down the hill. For all that I was prying and must not be seen by bird or boy, I crept warily in among the trees to the edge of a pool that could know ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... curious to see the plain thus suddenly fill'd with rabble, all running from the south, and the silly startled sheep rushing helter-skelter, and huddling together on the tors above, that I forgot my own likely danger if any of this revengeful crew should come upon me lying there: and was satisfied to watch them as they straggled over the moors toward the road. Some pass'd close ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... they descended on the foe. That foe did not await the onset. Panic-stricken they turned and went helter-skelter down the pass—all except two, who seemed made of sterner stuff than their fellows, ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... riches and pleasure and are not disturbed, who look on the world and the universe they are born in with quite other eyes. To them it appears not as a bazaar to buy and to sell in; not as a ladder to scramble up (or down) helter-skelter without knowing whither or why; but as a fact—a great and mysterious fact—to be pondered over, studied, and perchance in some small measure understood. By the multitude these men were sneered at as eccentric or feared as supernatural. ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... study would be to learn whether the motion of the reported UFO's was random or ordered. Random motion is an unordered, helter-skelter motion very similar to a swarm of gnats or flies milling around. There is no apparent pattern or purpose to their flight paths. But take, for example, swallows flying around a chimney—they wheel, dart, and dip, but if you watch ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... sewing-circle here there, go back to your places that looks a little better; now, these curtains must come down, and I may as well shut the shutters too and now this tablecloth must be content to hang straight, and Mamma's box and the books must lie in their places, and not all helter-skelter. Now, I wish Mamma would wake up; I should think she might. I don't believe she is asleep either she don't look as ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... opportunity of judging whilst a looker-on here. On the occasion of a small flight, a couple of long shots were made, and a duck winged slightly: it made a good downward slant, and fell forty yards from the shore into the Seneca: at the same moment in dashed four dogs after it, helter-skelter: there was a little sea on, and the object of their search at first unseen by them: a wave of the hand from the sportsman was the signal by which their line was regulated, and for this one of the four would occasionally look back. The wounded bird, on being neared, dived, ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... the scarcely civil critic, "has learned a bead-roll of historic names, whom he lugs into his pictorial puppet-show, as he calls it, helter-skelter, without caring whether they were contemporaries or not,—and sets them all by the ears together. But was there ever such a fund of impudence? To hear his running commentary, you would suppose that these miserable ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... frantic manner. He had flung his gun from him; his eyeballs were fixed and staring; there was foam upon his lips; his hair was streaming in the wind. He bore an aspect so strange and fearful that the French uttered yells of terror, and fled helter-skelter from ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... and clatter of pebbles near me, and discovered Fred Maxim at my side. "Look!" he said, hoarse with excitement. "Already!" He pointed to a string of dim little figures galloping helter-skelter over the neck and down the gap in ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... fellow," he said, after a pause; "a most remarkable young fellow. As I said before, he somehow fascinates me. I'd immensely like to put that young fellow into a smart hussar uniform, mount him on a good charger of the Punjaub breed, and send him helter-skelter, pull-devil, pull-baker, among my old friends the Duranis on the ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... of cloth and beads covered with matting, each tied into the fork of a three-pronged stick, or else coils of brass or copper wire tied in even weights to each end of sticks which they laid on the shoulder; then helter-skelter came the Wanguana, carrying carbines in their hands, and boxes, bundles, tents, cooking-pots—all the miscellaneous property—on their heads; next the Hottentots, dragging the refractory mules laden with ammunition-boxes, but very lightly, to save the animals ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... came around, Mistress' mamma decided that she would have the nursery repainted and new paper put upon the walls. That was why all the dolls happened to be laid helter-skelter upon one ...
— Raggedy Ann Stories • Johnny Gruelle
... company messes somewhat helter-skelter in a big tent. We have very tolerable rations. Sometimes luxuries appear of potted meats and hermetical vegetables, sent us by the fond New Yorkers. Each little knot of fellows, too, cooks something savory. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... enhance the romantic wildness of the scene, upon rounding a point we came suddenly upon a large black bear, which was walking leisurely along the bank of the river. He gazed at us in surprise for a moment; and then, as if it had suddenly occurred to him that guns might be in the canoe, away he went helter-skelter up the bank, tearing up the ground in his precipitate retreat, and vanished among the bushes. Fortunately for him, there was not a gun in the canoe, else his chance of escape would have been very small indeed, as he was ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... weight owing to the excessive freight rates from the coast and on the branch line to Meadows. More than that, Jennings had disobeyed his explicit orders to box the smaller parts of each machine together. All had been thrown in the car helter-skelter. ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... and the vibration of the shaky old walls! Once I had begun I couldn't leave off for my life, but went on tugging and tugging and quaking and quaking until—have you forgotten it?—all the people came running helter-skelter under the impression that the town was afire. And then, behold, it was only little me, trembling like a leaf and crying like a ninny! I remember I was scolded and smacked and dismissed into outer darkness (it was the chip vault, I think), for that first outbreak of ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... near the spot where the bear had been seen the previous night. The two large hounds, Ringwood and Jowler, kept at their master's heels, being trained to understand and perform all the duties required of them, while the curs and terriers were running helter-skelter far ahead, or striking out into the woods without aim, and always returning without effecting any thing. At length the two hounds paused, and scented the earth, giving certain information that they had arrived at the desired point. The curs and terriers ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... sea. On the plains, it will often blow for forty-eight hours, accompanied by torrents of pelting, pitiless rain, and is sometimes so violent, that there is hardly any possibility of making headway against it. Sheep race before it as hard as they can go helter-skelter, leaving their lambs behind them to shift for themselves. There is no shelter on the plains, and, unless stopped by the shepherds, they will drive from one river to the next. The shepherds, therefore, have a hard time of it, for they must be out till the wind goes down; ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... position on a height which overlooked the town, by means of its gunfire soon produced disorder among the enemy columns, which broke ranks and rushed to the bridge. Once they had crossed the stream, instead of regrouping they fled helter-skelter over the open ground of the opposite bank, where the retreat soon became a rout! Only one regiment, that of Toula, stood its ground on the town side of the bridge. Marshal Oudinot very much wanted to force a passage across the bridge to ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... Even now, the beauty and delight of a girl like Aileen Butler were far more important to him than the good-will of fifty million people, if he could evade the necessity of having their good-will. Previous to the Chicago fire and the panic, his star had been so rapidly ascending that in the helter-skelter of great and favorable events he had scarcely taken thought of the social significance of the thing he was doing. Youth and the joy of life were in his blood. He felt so young, so vigorous, so like new grass looks and feels. The freshness ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... But, however they differed when looked at separately, they shared the same huge, lovable nature in the bulk, which murmured and swayed and quivered all the time the dancing and juggling and love-making went on in front of it, slowly laughed and reluctantly left off laughing, and applauded with a helter-skelter generosity which sometimes became unanimous and overwhelming. Once William saw Katharine leaning forward and clapping her hands with an abandonment that startled him. Her laugh rang out with ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... was quicker. He had no intention of allowing such an excellent opportunity of exploring the forbidden ground to slip, and crying that it was of no use to call to Jumbo he scrambled over the gate and rushed helter-skelter down the field, taking great care, however, not to get in front of Jumbo, but running behind him shouting ...
— A Tale of the Summer Holidays • G. Mockler
... smashed, bent, twisted, and overturned, all red with rust, mixed up with and in parts covered by stone and brickwork, beams and iron girders, the whole sprinkled over with gleaming fragments of window-glass The outside walls were almost completely knocked flat, tossed helter-skelter outwards or on top of the machinery. The tall chimney—another suspected 'observing post' probably—lay in a heap of broken brickwork with the last yard or two of the base standing up out of the heap, and even in its remaining stump were other ragged shell-holes. ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... them from all sides at once, coming through the thickest part of the underbrush, since they were acquainted with the paths. At first they hurled from a distance; then as no one defended himself but many were wounded, they approached closer to them. The Romans were in no order but going along helter-skelter among the wagons and the unarmed, and so, not being able to form readily in a body, and being fewer at every point than their assailants, they suffered greatly and offered no resistance at all. [-21-] Accordingly, they encamped on the spot, after securing a suitable place ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... the Greeks marched into battle in disorder; the chiefs, on horseback or in a light chair, rushed ahead, the men following on foot, armed each in his own fashion, helter-skelter, incapable of acting together or of resisting. A battle reduced itself to a series of duels and to a massacre. At Sparta all the soldiers had the same arms; for defence, the breastplate covering the chest, the casque which protected the head, the greaves ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... They are beginning to test the possibilities of a "vertical" classification as well as a "horizontal" one. That is, each class must be divided into what are termed Gifted, Bright, Average, Dull, Normal, and Defective. In the past the helter-skelter crowding and over-crowding together of all classes of children of approximately the same age, produced only a dull leveling ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... idea of giving in. Chirp, chirp, chirp! Cricket fresher than ever. Hum, hum, hum—m—m! Kettle slow and steady. Chirp, chirp, chirp! Cricket going in to finish him. Hum, hum, hum—m—m! Kettle not to be finished. Until at last they got so jumbled together, in the hurry-skurry, helter-skelter, of the match, that whether the kettle chirped and the Cricket hummed, or the Cricket chirped and the kettle hummed, or they both chirped and both hummed, it would have taken a clearer head than yours or mine to have decided with anything like certainty. ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... without suspicion of what was beneath. No doubt, he held his place in his tribe as an honourable man, and his conscience traced no connection between that recently disturbed patch on the floor and the helter-skelter flight from Ai; but when the lot began to be cast, he would have his own thought, and when the tribe of Judah was taken, some creeping fear would begin to coil round his heart, which tightened its folds, and hissed more loudly, as each step in the lot brought discovery nearer home; and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... wild animals, than to practise horsemanship in combination with the chase. But when these resources fail, a good exercise may be supplied in the combined efforts of two horsemen. (9) One of them will play the part of fugitive, retreating helter-skelter over every sort of ground, with lance reversed and plying the butt end. The other pursues, with buttons on his javelins and his lance similarly handled. (10) Whenever he comes within javelin range he lets ...
— On Horsemanship • Xenophon
... driving their horses before them to the foot. My father dismounted, put the whip to his horse, a very spirited animal, and down the hill he galloped. First one article of clothing, then another, went helter-skelter along the road for a mile, one here and one there—ruffled shirts, white neckcloths, long coats, cashmere vests, boot-tops, pomatum boxes, cotton stockings, &c. &c.—not two of them together. It took Milner a long time to collect the ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie
... that I was touching her hands. When the evening had fallen, a passing officer noticed us, made inquiries, and we were mustered. We plunged into the night of the building. Our feet stumbled and climbed helter-skelter, between pitched walls up the steps of a damp staircase, which smelt of stale tobacco and gas-tar, like all barracks. They led us into a dark corridor, pierced by little pale blue windows, where draughts came and went violently, a corridor spotted at each end by naked gas-jets, their flames ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... apprehension. How soon the nerves are disturbed by the smell of anything burning in the house. Raise the cry of "Fire!" in a crowded building, and at once the old savage bursts through the veneer of civilisation. It is helter-skelter, the Devil take the hindmost. The strong trample upon the weak. Men and women turn to devils. Even if the cry of "Fire!" be raised in a church—where a believer might wish to die, and where he might feel himself booked through to glory—there is just the same stampede. People who sit ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... no brooklet in this wild, Smooth-resting on its mosses sleek, Like loving lips upon a cheek Soft as the face of maid or child— Just boulders, helter-skelter piled. ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... my book, I crossed to the deserted drawing room, the scene of the night's social carnage. The sight was enough to sicken any man! Eight tables covered with half-filled glasses; cards everywhere—the floor littered with them; chairs pushed helter-skelter and one overturned; and from a dozen ash-receivers the slowly ascending columns of incense to the great God of Chance. On the middle table lay a score card and pencil, a roll of bills, a pile of silver, and my wife's vanity box, with its ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... chartered every ship that is to sail to France during the remainder of the autumn. These things are provoking enough, but they drive me for consolation to you. But for you I should shut myself up in Beaumanoir, and let every thing go helter-skelter to the devil." ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... I were anyway master of my own pen, and could write as I pleased, without being hurried along helter-skelter by the tyrannical exactions of that "young Rapid" in buskins and chiton called "THE HISTORIC MUSE," I would break off this chapter, open my window, rest my eyes on the green lawn without, and indulge in a rhapsodical digression upon that beautifier of the moral life which is called ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... they charged down the sides of the table. The mob wavered, turned, and were lost! Helter-skelter they fled, tumbling over one another in their haste to escape. The lamp was smashed. The benches were upset. In the smoky hall a furious din arose,—as if Sir Galahad and Sir Percivale were once more ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... lavender-water, and grow plum-cakes in flower-pots, then will be a fine time for dandies; but until the millennium comes we shall all have a deal to put up with, and had better bear our present burdens than run helter-skelter where we shall ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... be next to innumerable, and as there is no index, there is no way to find a thing one wants without reading the book through. If ever I inspire a Bible-Annex I will not rush at it in a half-digested, helter-skelter way and have to put in thirty-eight years trying to get some of it the way I want it, I will sit down and think it out and know what it is I want to say before I begin. An inspirer cannot inspire for Mrs. Eddy and keep his reputation. I have never seen such slipshod work, bar the ten that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... his head in some confusion, and did not reply; and on my looking round, whom should I see before me but the identical individual I had so coolly been criticising, and who, to my utter horror and dismay, was no other than Lord Wellington himself. I did not wait for a second peep. Helter-skelter, through water, thickets, and brambles, away I went, clattering down the causeway like a madman. If a French squadron had been behind me, I should have had a stouter heart, although I did not fear ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... scene before him with the utmost freshness and enthusiasm. "I'm just a plain Scotchman, an' no such a fule at climbin' either! Why, man, I've been up Goatfell in Arran, an' Ben Lomond an' Ben Nevis—there's a mountain for ye, if ye like! But a brae like this, wi' a' the stanes lyin' helter-skelter, an' crags that ye can barely hold on to—and a mad chap guidin' ye on at the speed o' a leapin' goat—I tell ye, I havena been used to't." Here he drew out his flask and took another extensive pull at it. Then he added suddenly, "Just look at Errington! He'll be in a fair way to ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... with euphuistic conceits and casuistic quibble, with art, politics, metaphysics—civilization embedded in all manner of rubbish and abomination, soiled with all manner of ominous stains. All this did they carry home and throw helter-skelter into the new-kindled fire of English intellectual life, mingling with it many a humble-seeming Northern alloy; cleaning and compounding, casting into shapes, mediaeval and English, this strange Corinthian brass made of all these heterogeneous remnants, classical, Italian, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... the Palatine Hill grew a cornel-tree which was esteemed one of the most sacred objects in Rome. Whenever the tree appeared to a passer-by to be drooping, he set up a hue and cry which was echoed by the people in the street, and soon a crowd might be seen running helter-skelter from all sides with buckets of water, as if (says Plutarch) they were hastening to put ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... the kitchen, a hot, steaming place, where men, mostly cooks, in dirty white jackets, rushed helter-skelter into each other and around ...
— Eric - or, Under the Sea • Mrs. S. B. C. Samuels
... the old. Pipe-clay and method gave way to Sans-culottism and dash. The greatest of the generals of the Revolution said: "I had sooner see a soldier without his breeches than without his bayonet." Rapidity, surprise, the charging column, the helter-skelter pursuit, were the innovations of {201} the new French generals. They translated into terms of tactics and strategy, Danton's famous apostrophe, "Audacity, more audacity, yet ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... could have half a dozen married couples all separating, getting rid of their ribs and buckling again, helter-skelter, every man to somebody else's wife; and the parish parson refusing to do the work; just to show the immorality ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... plunging helter-skelter into the silent, heartless wood. The trees miraculously opened up a way for them as they dived and stooped and wriggled forward. In which direction they were going neither of them had the least idea, but as neither one nor the other disappeared, it was clear ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... try again. They were Robert Bruces, all of them. It's the best that stays the longest. After a brief rest these heroic Scots once more swarmed up the ridge. Their cheers had the note of victory in them, they drove their bayonets home with the haymakers' lift, and what was left of the Turks fled helter-skelter down the hill towards Deir Sineid, broken, dismayed, beaten, and totally unable to make another effort. The H.L.I. Brigade's victory was bought at a price. The cost of that hill was heavy, but the Turks' tale of dead was far heavier than ours, and we had won and held the hills and ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... got behindhand with their work, through taking up petty paid jobs outside, had been repeating the cry, 'Oh! I'm in the truck and no mistake.' The moment the vehicle appeared, a clamour arose. It was a quarter to nine o'clock, there was barely time to reach the School of Arts. However, a helter-skelter rush emptied the studio; each brought out his chases, amidst a general jostling; those who obstinately wished to give their designs a last finishing touch were knocked about and carried away with their comrades. In less ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... Near the prairie they stood like people on the outer edge of a crowd, looking over one another's shoulders and pushing in a disordered mass toward the center of interest. Some seemed to have straggled away as if they had given up trying to see or hear. So to one nearing it the town had a helter-skelter look. ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... of the poor and the unfortunate, and what a confused jumble they present! Having no grand animating idea, no all-pervading principle of harmony, no universally recognized standard for anything, we are necessarily the most anomalous, amorphous, helter-skelter aggregation of independent and antagonistic individualities ever gathered together since nations began to exist. What can prevent such an agglomeration from falling to pieces? What ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... never be approached by me; not for fear of my own but of others' safety. They would first stick out their necks and stare at me, and then on a nearer view break loose from their halters or tethers, and rush away helter-skelter as if a demon were after them, without any regard for what might be in their way. Whenever I met buffaloes carrying packs along a pathway, or being driven home to the village, I had to turn aside into the jungle and hide ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Minie-balls whizzed about in the air or knocked up the dust from the street, and firing was now and then heard near by in uncertain directions, where perhaps the enemy were vexing our pickets. I believe it had been a helter-skelter day for us all, had the enemy got in then and attacked us in the midst of this confusion. They might surely have driven us into irretrievable rout, flying on the road to Rivas, by a spirited charge of fifty good men, or ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... foreman. "You remember how nicely you could pile your blocks into the box, when you put them all in evenly and nicely. But if you threw them in quickly, without stopping to make them straight, they would pile up helter-skelter, and maybe only half of them would fit. It is that way with ...
— Daddy Takes Us Skating • Howard R. Garis
... at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety-two, Did the English fight the French,—woe to France! And, the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter thro' the blue, Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks pursue, Came crowding ship on ship to St. Malo on the Rance, With ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... Keith's uncle and aunt in a position halfway between ward and servant. Across the fields and along shaded wood paths they ran joyously to a sheltered bay with a sandy beach from which the open fjord could be seen in the distance. The children stripped helter-skelter and went into the shallow water as nature had made them, but Mina, who was to assist them, had for want of bathing suit put on a starched white petticoat. The upper part of her body was bare, showing ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... them to valorous deeds. Some of the veterans took arms themselves, and sallied forth with tottering steps. In this way, the savage chivalry of the village to the number of five hundred, poured forth, helter-skelter, riding and running, with hideous yells and war-whoops, like so many bedlamites or ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... in case of accident of absolution given by one of their priests, who marched in the rear file of the first company, with his cassock tucked up and his Roman hat over his eyes. These country fellows walked briskly, a little helter-skelter, like their ancestors in the time of Stofflet and M. de la Rochejaquelin, but with a firm step and their muskets well placed upon their shoulders, by Ste. Anne! They looked like soldiers ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... put them through at Dexter speed, And, this late day, there is no need Of flying off to Indiana In such a helter-skelter manner; We're going to have a train, you know, 'Twill stop, (with patients passing through,) Five ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 13, June 25, 1870 • Various
... Imagine the helter-skelter of those thousands of trees over the roaring, rushing waterfalls, or along the rapidly flowing cataracts and flooded rivers. To prevent these wooden horses getting caught-up on the banks along their watery course, men with long poles "personally conduct" ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... King's troops had retreated, By Tiger's Rebel band defeated; They ran pell-mell and helter-skelter, For any place ...
— The Animals' Rebellion • Clifton Bingham
... and remain at pause on a hillock. The General watches through a glass his battalions, which are still disputing the village. Suddenly approach down the track from the upland of Pratzen large companies of Russian infantry helter-skelter. COUNT LANGERON is beheld to be retreating with them; and soon, pale and agitated, he hastens up to GENERAL ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... was leading, had popped his head up above the level of the parapet before he realised what he was doing. Luckily, none of the pirates happened to be looking upward at that particular moment; they were all riding helter-skelter down the street, evidently determined to see what lay at the end. Drake counted them before getting under cover again, and found that there were thirty of them; and that there might possibly be ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... down the side of the embankment, in a string. They were tied together at intervals along a rope. All in a mix-up, they landed helter-skelter in the snow of the cut. They resembled Alpine tourists, ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... for I had seen him pass every day. This morning he carried a stick in his hand, and I discovered that it was pointed with some sharp substance that would assist him, for every time he lifted it up, it left a little white spot in the coating of ice. There went a schoolboy, helter-skelter, swinging his books by a strap, running and sliding along the pavement in profound contempt for its dangers. A jaunty little Miss with fur wraps and veiled face, but through the thin obstruction I could plainly see two rosy cheeks, and a pair ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... stiffened, their black eyes shone with malice. Then suddenly the boys swooped on the pebbles of the courtyard, and with cries of 'Bestia!—bestia!' they flung them at the priest over their shoulders, as they all fled helter-skelter, the brothers dragging off the sisters, the big ones the little ones, out ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... scattered an extraordinary collection of rubbish—boilers, car wheels, fragments of locomotives, household furniture, dead animals, clothing, sewing machines, goods from stores, safes, passenger and street cars, some half buried in the sand, some all exposed, helter-skelter. ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... for the last. They are the nightmare curse of the pianist, with their rattle-trap harmonies, their helter-skelter melodies, their vulgarity and cheap bohemianism. They all begin in the church and end in the tavern. There is a fad just now for eating ill-cooked food and drinking sour Hungarian wine to the accompaniment of a wretched gypsy circus called a Czardas. Liszt's rhapsodies irresistibly remind me ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... to be able to do four miles an hour. That gives us about thirty miles. It's less than that to the frontier, and we ought to be able to manage it, even if we have to leave the road and cut straight across country. Come along; we'll keep to the road while we can, but if too risky we must go helter-skelter, plumb ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... difference that M. Anatole France has introduced into the Dumas theatre some preeminently un-Dumas-like stage-business: the characters, between assignations and combats, toy amorously with ideas. That is the difference which at a stroke dissevers them from any helter-skelter character in Dumas as utterly as from any of our clearest thinkers ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... an usher; to introduce our thoughts as they reveal themselves, ignorant of "their own degrees," not "standing on the order of their coming," but, as a pit crowd on a benefit-night, bustling over one another, helter-skelter, "in most admired disorder." This will well comport with Roger's daily life: for, notwithstanding the frequent interference of an Amazon wife—regardless of poor, dear Grace's gentle voice and melancholy eyes—in spite of a conscience pricking in his breast, with the spines of a horse-chestnut, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... however, as the force began to march upon the forts, the Chinese became panic-stricken, and fled helter-skelter ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 57, December 9, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... wore an unwonted and a rakish air. The stools seemed to have tried to dance the lancers and have fallen out about the figure. Two were overturned. The unwashed dishes were tossed helter-skelter. A tipsy Christmas tree leaned in drunken fashion against the wall, and under its boughs lay a forgotten child asleep. On the other side of the cabin an empty whisky bottle caught a ray of light from the fire, and glinted feebly back. Among the ashes on the hearth was a screw of paper, charred ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... calmly. "You must remember, that on such an occasion as this, there is nothing so important as presence of mind—self-command. If I alarm your servants, all the guests assembled here will take the alarm; and they will rush helter-skelter to Yarborough Tower, to testify their devotion to Sir Oswald, and to do him all the harm they possibly can. What would be the effect of a crowd of half-drunken men, clustering round him, with their noisy expressions of sympathy? What I have to propose is this: I am going to Sir Oswald immediately ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... fun-loving disposition. The tame things which we sometimes see about country yards are often stupid, like a playful kitten spoiled by too much handling; and the flying glimpse we sometimes get of a bundle of brown fur, scurrying helter-skelter through and over the huckleberry bushes, generally leaves us staring in astonishment at the swaying leaves where it disappeared, and wondering curiously what it was all about. It was only a brown ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... ever struck me was that the fish did not fall helter-skelter, or here and there, but they fell in a straight line, not more than a cubit in breadth." ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... to pursue the cavalry with great eagerness and venom. Several times bodies of 200 and 300 Baggara horsemen threatened to charge, but Majors Mahan and Le Gallias turning upon these riders sent them flying back helter-skelter. For five miles the cavalry was, so to speak, driven from pillar to post by the dervish infantry. When the pursuit had been pressed four miles, and more, north of the zereba, Major Mahan succeeded in clearing the ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... at this unusual hour of the day produced perfect consternation among the already excited negroes. They no doubt supposed it the musical exercise set apart for the performance of the angel Gabriel on the day of judgment, and in less than ten minutes all without exception had come pell-mell, helter-skelter, running to "the house." The dairymaid left her churn, and the housemaid put down her broom; the ploughs stood still, and when the horses turned their heads to see what was the matter they found they had no driver; she also who ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... his whistle an' off t'train started helter-skelter up bi Utley as hard as ivver it cud go. An nah for a change o' scene!—fer t'Exley-Heeaders aght wi ther rhubub pasties an' treacle parkins. Harry o' Bridget's hed a treacle parkin t'size of a pancake ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... Helter-skelter the men rushed out, Tony and his mates in front. On the rise at the end of the township the flames gleamed as they flared from the wooden building, which burned like matchwood. From the distance in the opposite direction came the sounds ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... is! One wild race for the crest, one headland charge down the slope beyond, and they are rolling over a band of yelling, scurrying, savage horsemen, whirling them away over the opposite ridge, driving them helter-skelter over the westward prairie, until all who escape the shock of the onset or the swift bullet in the raging chase finally vanish from their sight; and then, obedient to the ringing "recall" of the trumpet, slowly they return, gathering again in the little ravine; ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... of great interest, save for its constant change and the primitive manner in which the majority attacked their food supply, which was piled helter-skelter upon the long tables, yet he ran his eyes searchingly over the numerous faces, seeking impartially for either friend or enemy. No countenance present, as revealed in the dim light of the few swinging lamps, appeared familiar, ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... other conclusion," said Father Waite. "But, that granted, a flood of deductions pours in that sends human beliefs and reasoning helter-skelter. For an infinite mind would eventually disintegrate if it were not perfect ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... some trifling errand, and came to a stand-still on the landing, uttering sharp cries of surprise; then Agatha followed to discover the cause of the excitement, and guffawed with laughter, when Nan and Elsie jumped from their chairs and ran helter-skelter in pursuit. They found the two younger girls leaning up against the wall, staring at the door of Lilias's room, on the centre of which was tacked a square of paper, ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Howells and "Charley" Clark had edited several years before, and occasional conferences were desirable. Howells tells us that, after he and Clark had been at great trouble to get the matter logically and chronologically arranged, Clemens pulled it all to pieces and threw it together helter-skelter, declaring that there ought to be no sequence in a book of that sort, any more than in the average reader's mind; and Howells admits that this was probably the truer method in a book made for the diversion rather than the instruction ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... she brings to her guidance she has picked up helter-skelter. They are the crumbs gathered from the table of the Uneasy Woman, or worse, of the pharisaical and satisfied woman, from good and bad books, from newspaper exploitations of divorce and scandal, from sly gossip with girls ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... this was the impression that his listener retained above all else. This flood of wild, unorthodox, speculative ideas had been poured upon him helter-skelter with a purpose. And the abruptness of the climax was cleverly planned to induce ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... here. You can't fool me," he yelled. "I saw the spot your eyes lit on when I first came into the room. Is it behind these books?" he growled, pulling them out and throwing them helter-skelter over the floor. "Women is smart in the hiding business. Is it ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... Hog grunted and staggered to her feet to go with them, but she was fat and slow of motion, so that by the time she was fairly standing, they were far down the field and running helter-skelter by the side of the fence. As she stared dully after them she could see the twenty-two curly tails bobbing along, and she heard the soft patter of eighty-eight sharp little double hoofs ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... back many a time, to take a last glimpse of the lady who still sat near the bank, smiling more bewitchingly than ever. On reaching the top of the hill, he perceived that the sheep had already strayed down into the valley, when he hastened after them, but only to see them enter a narrow glen helter-skelter, as if they were running for dear life. He now recollected the fiddle would save him all further trouble, and drew the bow across the strings as the lady had told him, but instead of the exquisite music ...
— Up! Horsie! - An Original Fairy Tale • Clara de Chatelaine
... event, his Majesty jumped so high that his crown tumbled off, and the Queen was in such a delightful agitation that she could not confine her steps to a walk, and so the King and the Queen, and the Duchess, and all the maids of honour and pages, ran helter-skelter, as fast as they could, and took ...
— The Apple Dumpling and Other Stories for Young Boys and Girls • Unknown
... far, and I'll come back as quick as I can. You are safe up there. Hold on, and we'll soon get you down," answered Tommy, rushing away helter-skelter, never minding where he went, and too much excited ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... it was so all-fired cold, and the wind was yelling so, and she walked off so fast, as if she knew her own business. So I just minded mine, or rather I didn't, for I never even seen the box, or trunk, which was pitched out helter-skelter, and which I found this morning, all covered up with snow. It was hers, of course, and I shall send it right over there, as it may tell who the ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... and all the king's men could never make it stir an inch. Twice the effort was made, and twice it failed. First, the hooks slipped off the end, and as the horses were pulling and tugging with all their might, directly the weight was removed away they went helter-skelter down the steep hill, up which they had just climbed with so much difficulty, being utterly unable to stop themselves on the steep slippery ground. Next time the chain broke as the horses were straining every muscle, and ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... suppress thy proverbs, and in an instant thou hast spewed forth a whole litany of them, which are as foreign from the subject as an old ballad. Remember, Sancho, I do not say that a proverb properly applied is amiss; but, to throw in, and string together old saws helter-skelter, renders conversation altogether mean ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... it sleeps In its own little lake. And thence at departing, Awakening and starting, It runs through the reeds, And away it proceeds, Through meadow and glade, In sun and in shade, And through the wood-shelter, Among crags in its flurry, Helter-skelter, Hurry-skurry, Here it comes sparkling, And there it lies darkling; Now smoking and frothing Its tumult and wrath in, Till, in this rapid race On which it is bent, It reaches the place Of its ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... had wished. Taking a pick and an axe he went to the graveyard, but when he struck the grave with his tools and the earth rolled back, disclosing the body of La Rose, the old fellow was so terrified that he ran helter-skelter from the spot. A draught of good wine brought back his failing courage, however, and he returned and passed the rose three times under the nostrils of his late acquaintance. Instantly La Rose ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... three hours, worked with a kind of frenzied delight in action and pricked on by a ravenous hunger. In and out of the combers they dashed, playing a desperate game of chance with Death. Helter-skelter, hit-or-miss, in a blind orgy of rescue, at first they pulled out everything they could reach. Repeatedly, Frank Merrill stopped to lecture them on the foolish risks they were taking, on the stupidity of such a waste of energy. "Save what we ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... the other; 'see, 'tis easy as flying.' Wi' that he leaps off his horse, and at one stroke of his switch, up they went, jump, jump, jump, like a batch of crows from a corn-field. The dogs set up a fearful howl, and, without once turning to see what was behind them, set off helter-skelter through bog and bush for the nearest, and left my father to himself with the foul fiend. All at once it popped into his head the tales he had once heard about the 'Spectre Horseman,' that was said to ramble about these hills, sometimes in the air, sometimes ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... being not more than three or four hundred people in Palace Yard, a number of Press messengers, rushing helter-skelter out of the court and into waiting cabs, indicated the arrival of some critical juncture within the jealously guarded portals. Presently it was whispered that the Lord Chief Justice had finished his summing up, and that Mr. Justice Mellor was ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... four children ran helter-skelter into the lane, shouting "Mammy! mammy!" in an anguish of fright. Their clamour was caught by the fierce north wind, which had begun to sweep the hill, and was borne along till it reached the ears of a woman who was ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... wild elephants. They were taken quite by surprise, for they were feeding at the time on a level piece of ground of considerable extent. As it was impossible to surround them, away the whole khedda went helter-skelter after them. It was a tremendous sight. The herd had scattered in all directions, so that our khedda was also scattered. Each hunting elephant had two men on its back—one, the nooseman, sitting on its neck, with a strong, thick rope in his hands, on which was ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... at not being able to follow. Angela put the orphan chick down amongst the others; for a second it cheeped pitifully; then it, too, began to eat. As soon as the last grain had gone some more was thrown into the coop for the old hen. All the chicks poured back helter-skelter into the coop, the orphan amongst them, and the hen took it into her family circle without demur, and the baby Plymouth Rock's life ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... Dr. McGarry. And the Piper was so shaken up he couldn't play at all. And young Mr. Martin's horse took fright at the noise and confusion, and nearly ran away, and just escaped throwing all the children into the ditch. And so they all scampered gaily, helter-skelter, back to the village, the hero far in the rear, hidden in clouds of dust, with his friends gambolling ahead. And indeed Gavin's homecoming was no more like a triumphal procession than any of the foot-ball games in which he used to take ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... sudden noise from the rose-bush Mother Magpie's nerves were so shocked that she dropped the diamond helter-skelter into the hole. And in a moment she fell in after it, out of sight. She hoped that no one had seen her, but little Whitebird knew the place. He hopped after her and, perching on the edge of the hole, ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... borders a wondrous wealth of choice blossoms. And the same plants could still be found; but perpetuated, grown into such numberless families, and scampering in such mad fashion throughout the whole garden, that the place was now all helter-skelter riot to its very walls, a very den of debauchery, where intoxicated nature had hiccups ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... on the top of it, all crowded together, waiting for a big wave to come and surround them; and when at last it came, it carried half their fortress away with it, and they all hopped off into the water, and splashed up through it helter-skelter, with shouts of ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... have bought those things which they ought not to have bought and have left unbought those things which they ought to have bought. But it is not only a matter of reaching a systematic instead of a helter-skelter enjoyment of the offerings of the world. It is also a matter of reaching, by study of money values, a mental habit of economy. And it comes at a time ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... over the speckled Ahabs lying deep under the lily pads. Some blind, unknown warning would run through the pool before ever a trout had changed his position. Looking over the side of your canoe you would see the little fish darting helter-skelter away among the pads, seeking safety in shallow water, leaving the pool to its tyrant masters. Now is the time to begin casting; your trout are ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... continuous narrative I have never read. But it supplied facts, hit off odds and ends of character, and—what the autobiography seldom does—it gave the ipsissima verba of conversations written in helter-skelter fashion with flowing pen, sometimes in excellent French, sometimes in English, which beginning in the elaborate style of his letter broke down into queer vernacular; it was charmingly devoid of self-consciousness, so that the man as he was, and not as he imagined ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... driven off, and not till they had completed the work of destruction they had commenced. This did not take them long, and at last, several of their number having fallen, a panic seized them, and away they went helter-skelter in every direction out of the square. I could not resist the temptation of sallying out to see what they would next do, in spite of the warnings of my relative, who advised me to keep in the house. I laughed at the idea of ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... heavy-armed be arrayed against heavy-armed, cavalry join issue with cavalry; and against the chariots of the barbarians the Roman archers would be contending. Again, the barbarians would assail the Romans with a rush of their chariots, knocking them helter-skelter, but, since they fought without breastplates, would be themselves repulsed by the arrows. Horseman would upset foot-soldier, and foot-soldier strike down horseman; some, forming in close order, would go to meet the chariots, and others would be scattered by them; some would ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... when it never took pains to give notice of the facts of the drawing, of the number of bills drawn, of dates, or amounts; in a word, really gave no basis for account-keeping or identification. No more helter-skelter way of conducting business has ever been seen since modern business methods were invented. The system, if system it may be called, would have been aggravating and confusing enough under any condition of attendant circumstances; but it so happened that all attendant circumstances tended ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... gone. We then proceeded into the Secretary's office in search of it. The Secretary's habit was to take the papers from his table, and after marking on them with his pencil the disposition he wished made of them, he threw them helter-skelter into a large arm-chair. This chair now contained half a bushel; and the President and I set to work in quest of the letter. We removed them one by one; and as we progressed, he said with an impatient smile, "it ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... disappeared. We thought he had escaped, but a little later on we heard the dogs baying frantically farther down the creek, and Rob shouted that they had treed him, and for everybody to hurry up if they wanted to be in at the death. So away we went, helter-skelter, in a wild race down the creek bank, godmother, Papa Jack, Cousin Carl, and everybody. It was a rough scramble, and as we pitched over rolling stones, and caught at bushes to pull ourselves up, and swung down holding on to the saplings, I wondered what Doctor ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... thoughts fled back to what she had said to Ide the day before on the deck of the Utopia. "I didn't take up much room before, but now where is there a corner for me?" Where indeed in this crowded, topsy-turvey world, with its headlong changes and helter-skelter readjustments, its new tolerances and indifferences and accommodations, was there room for a character fashioned by slower sterner processes and a life broken under their inexorable pressure? And then, in a flash, she viewed the chaos from a new angle, and order seemed ...
— Autres Temps... - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... said he. "Men and women, priests and pretty girls, all helter-skelter. It's enough to make one ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... the wind took pity on him, and came with its cool breath and fanned him, with all his brothers, into a heavy gray cloud, after which he blew them apart and told them to join hands and hurry away to the earth. Helter-skelter down they went, rolling over each other pell-mell, till with a patter and clatter and spatter they touched the ground, and all the people cried, ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin
... throws down his tray; the baker his basket; the milkman his pail; the errand-boy his parcels; the school-boy his marbles; the paviour his pickaxe; the child his battledore. Away they run, pell-mell, helter-skelter, slap-dash: tearing, yelling, screaming, knocking down the passengers as they turn the corners, rousing up the dogs, and astonishing the fowls: and streets, squares, and ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... took her eldest daughter's hand, and rushed out of the tent. Sophy and Alice stayed behind to have one parting spoonful each of their delicious ices. Then the whole family went helter-skelter down the five sacred steps and on to the lawn. They saw the objects of their desire vanishing through a gap in the hedge into a distant field. They must pursue, they must go hotly to work. Mrs. Bell panted and puffed, and Matty stopped ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... the absence from its precincts of all that was fashionable and new, stood near the middle of the town, and formed a corner where in winter the winds whistled and assembled their forces previous to plunging helter-skelter along the streets. In summer it was a fresh and pleasant spot, convenient for such quiet characters as sojourned there to study the geology and beautiful natural features of the ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... their host Down sinking on the plain. Their efforts were in vain; Fate ruled that final hour, (Inexorable power!) And so the captains fled As well as those they led; The princes perish'd all. The undistinguish'd small In certain holes found shelter, In crowding, helter-skelter; But the nobility Could not go in so free, Who proudly had assumed Each one a helmet plumed; We know not, truly, whether For honour's sake the feather, Or foes to strike with terror; But, truly, 'twas their error. Nor hole, nor crack, nor crevice Will let ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... about whose rugged personality and leadership they instinctively rallied. More than one night the gray dawning light of the morning found them, with white, drawn faces, still in conference. The emergency gripped them. An emergency always does. The habits of life are upset, helter-skelter, in the effort to avert the threatening danger. That was an emergency in the money world. Grave danger threatened. Everything else was forgotten, and every bit of available resource strained to turn the danger aside. It was turned aside. That was a splendid achievement. And ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... and beat him down on his knees, and then started for her spell of the merry canter over turf: an example to the English of the punishment they get for their stupid Puritanic tyranny—sure to be followed by a national helter-skelter down-hill headlong. And Mrs. Lawrence was not one of the corrupt, he argued; she concealed what it was decent to conceal, without pouting hypocritical pretences; she had merely dispensed with idle legal formalities, in the prettiest curvetting ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... remembered it many years after at the forester's—the young lady and the odd man came across to the barn to unpack the case. The man rolled it across the threshing-floor; and, as soon as it was outside, they saw what had happened. Everything rolled out helter-skelter and higgledy-piggledy: coffee, tea, cinnamon, spices, sugar-candy, all without end and all mixed up together and spoilt. There was not a bag but had a hole ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... disastrous results. Part of the ground was in hay which had already been harvested and piled in stacks, the rest was in sugar beets. The Prussians had charged across the field and had come upon a sunken road into which they fell helter-skelter without having time to draw rein. We could see where the horses had fallen, how they had scrambled to their feet and tried with might and main to paw their way up on the other side. The whole bank was pawed down, and the marks of hoofs were everywhere. ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... before the gleaming line of bayonet blades before them. Some few rose to fight, stirred by some long-submerged instinct generated in the days of Genghis Khan. But the majority turned and fled, helter-skelter, down the sides of the mountains toward the valleys, leaving behind guns, ammunition, and cannon. One regiment, the Hundred and Second, stood its ground and fought. As a result it was almost completely annihilated. The same ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
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