"Askew" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to-night," she approved. "London clothes don't set so well on many Americans. But your tie is askew. ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... on askew," Mrs. Vervain said for greeting to Ferris. "How do you do, Don Ippolito? But I suppose you think I've kept you long enough to get it on straight for once. So I have. I am a fuss, and I don't deny it. At my time of life, it's much harder to make yourself shipshape ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... inherent human nature," said the doctor, slowly, "as if we had all knowledge concerning the possibilities of that nature's best and worst. Yet I have sometimes wondered if what we call mentally askew people are not those that possess attributes which society is not wise enough to help them use wisely—mightn't such people be like fine-blooded animals who sniff land and water where no one else suspects any? Given a certain kink in a human brain, and there ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the kitchen dresser, and had turned quite hopefully and taken the thing. He put it on. But it didn't feel right. Nothing felt right. He put a trembling hand upon the crown of the thing and pressed it on his head, and tried it askew to the right and then askew to ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... slashed back, taunting the Northerners with seeking to wipe out the system of chattel slavery, only to extend and enforce all the more effectually their own system of white slavery. The honorable Senators unleashed themselves; Senatorial dignity fell askew, and there was snarling and growling, retorts and ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... of the Cometara. My ship! My first command! So smoothly, confidently rising from the Earth only a few hours ago; and she had come to this. She lay askew in the heavens. The dome was cracked throughout all its length and smashed like ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... always venture even to ask this question, but took an observation of the cap, and judged accordingly. If this expressive article of dress was drawn low upon the forehead, it was a sign that hard work was going on, in exciting moments it was pushed rakishly askew, and when despair seized the author it was plucked wholly off, and cast upon the floor. At such times the intruder silently withdrew, and not until the red bow was seen gaily erect upon the gifted brow, did anyone ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... should find the carpets worn out under the mats, and the chairs faded beneath their smart chintz covers. There was not a candid-looking piece of furniture in the apartment: the table was an impostor with one short leg; the drawers of the bureau would not open; the glasses were all askew, and twisted your face to such a degree that it frightened you to catch a glimpse of yourself in passing. But this was not the worst: from the moment I entered the rooms I felt that they had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... rough-looking fisherman, who, unseen, had tracked their steps some hundred yards; he had a tarpaulin over his shoulder, very unnecessarily, as it would seem, on so fine and warm a day; and a slouching sou'-wester, worn askew, flapped across ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... stood up, lifted his arms high above his head to stretch his healthy young muscles, pulled his face all askew in a yawn, rumpled his hair again and reached for his papers and tobacco. He knew that Mary V never noticed or cared if a fellow smoked; she was too thoroughly range-bred ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... in the person of a queer little Frenchman, who has his breakfast, tea, and lodging here, and finds his dinner elsewhere. Monsieur S—— does not appear to be more than twenty-one years old,—a diminutive figure, with eyes askew, and otherwise of an ungainly physiognomy; he is ill-dressed also, in a coarse blue coat, thin cotton pantaloons, and unbrushed boots; altogether with as little of French coxcombry as can well be imagined, though with something of the monkey-aspect ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... a heavenly inspiration, an incomprehensible and irresistible impulse, goads humanity on to achievements. Every age, every person, and every art obeys the wand of the enchanter. History moves by indirections. The first historic tendency is likely to be slightly askew; there follows then an historic triumph, then an historic eccentricity, then an historic folly, then an explosion; and then the series begins again. In the grade of folly, hard upon an explosion, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... Lucretia, piteously. She clutched the plaid shawl tightly together, but it was of no use—off the things had to come. And young Lucretia had put on the prim whaleboned basque of her best dress wrong side before; she had buttoned it in the back. There she stood, very much askew and uncomfortable about the shoulder seams and sleeves, and hung her head ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... than of tact, a charlatan in administration as well as in virtue, made to bring the one into disrepute and the other into disgust, in other respects shy from self-conceit, timid from pride, as unfamiliar with men, whom he had never known, as with public affairs, which he had always seen askew; his name was Turgot. He was one of those half-thinking brains which adopt all visions, all manias of a gigantic sort. He was believed to be deep, he was really shallow; night and day he was raving of philosophy, liberty, equality, net product." "He ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... clamour of jeering. But a man called Askew, who knew Travers well, laughed and said: "Come, let's have it!" Travers turned those twinkling little eyes of his slowly round the circle, and with ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... though some cosmically vast giant had rolled over it. The buildings to the east of it were ablaze at a dozen points, under the flaming tatters and warping skeleton of the airship, and all the roofs and walls were ridiculously askew and crumbling as one looked. "Gaw!" said Bert. "What's happened? ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... here. And then, in the reigns of 'Bloody Mary' and of Elizabeth, this was the place of public execution. Way back in 1305, the patriot William Wallace was hanged here, and after him came a long line of sufferers,—among them Anne Askew, Rogers, Bradford, and Philpot, who were persecuted because of their adherence to the Protestant Religion. After that terrible period, Smithfield was for many years the only cattle-market in London; and here was held Bartholomew Fair, also. Don't you agree that ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... John Melton, of Philadelphia," he shouted, and looked back to address them more directly. Alas, the pistols reposed in the pockets of the two prim aprons, the lantern smoked askew at Aunt Sarah's waist, and both women were holding their ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... had always been bleak. He had hung his few pictures in the wrong places, and askew at that. He understood dining, though, and no doubt the dinner was good, though I gave very ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Martha. I do hope these dear girls will not put her out. She grows a little set in her ways as she grows older, my good Martha. I don't think that blind is quite half-way down. It makes the whole room look askew, doesn't it?" ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... cannot, but it is a fact. The same with Whist; I see spades where clubs are, and diamonds for hearts, and a cold world accuses me of revoking and of carelessness, but it is not carelessness. It is something gone askew in phenomena. Thus, when I am a witness as to facts in a trial, perjury is the softest word for my testimony, so the Court thinks, because the Court is blessed with the usual relations between objective facts, and subjective impressions. I admit that I am less fortunate, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 12, 1892 • Various
... Usher had been coming to the conclusion that Father Brown might possibly be mad. The moment after he began to think he was mad himself. There burst and fell into his private room a man in the filthiest rags, with a greasy squash hat still askew on his head, and a shabby green shade shoved up from one of his eyes, both of which were glaring like a tiger's. The rest of his face was almost undiscoverable, being masked with a matted beard and whiskers through ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... one where she had been sitting when he first came to the room. From it he commanded not only a complete view of her, but also out of the window, for the blind, pulled down to the full extent, was slightly askew, and left a space between it and the window-pane. Through that space he could see across the yard to the fence running round the allotment, and beyond it to the dark line of the bush, rendered the ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... of men, women and children, not only with hands dyed, but with clothing, faces and heads as well. Girls with bright-green hair, and lemon-colored faces, leered and jeered at me as they hastened pellmell with hats askew, and stockings down, and dragging shawls, for home or public-house. Red and maroon children ran, and bright-scarlet men smoked stolidly, taking their time with ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... excited, when she had such a name as that. This young lady managed the whole family, even a little the small beflounced sister, who, with bold pretty innocent eyes, a torrent of fair silky hair, a crimson fez, such as is worn by male Turks, very much askew on top of it, and a way of galloping and straddling about the ship in any company she could pick up—she had long thin legs, very short skirts and stockings of every tint— was going home, in elegant French ...
— Pandora • Henry James
... that Blanche Devine moved in there was wild agitation among the white-ruffed bedroom curtains of the neighborhood. Later on certain odors, as of burning dinners, pervaded the atmosphere. Blanche Devine, flushed and excited, her hair slightly askew, her diamond eardrops flashing, directed the moving, wrapped in her great fur coat; but on the third morning we gasped when she appeared out-of-doors, carrying a little household ladder, a pail of steaming water, and sundry voluminous white cloths. She reared ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... learn to fix proper clothes. He might have seen what he should have done by looking at Jerry, who had an old felt hat with a bit of candle-end (not lit) stuck in the ribbon, and a bandana tied askew around his neck. But Aunt Ailsa laughed and laughed, which was what we wanted her to do, so neither of us remonstrated with Greg ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... in the garden across the way, they looked at each other solemnly. Then they threw back their big heads and laughed till their sides shook and their wigs stood askew. Kerlman laid his fat thumb on the table and regarded it respectfully. ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... Mr. Askew, turning his back on him, threw up his hands with a helpless gesture and followed in the wake of Mr. Garnham. Mr. Hogg appeared to be about to apologise, and then suddenly altering his mind made a hasty and unceremonious ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... suddenly heard his name called out in such a loud and cheerful voice that he could not help looking round. At the corner of the pavement, in a short, stylish overcoat and a low-crowned fashionable hat, jauntily askew, with a smile that showed a gleam of white teeth and red lips, stood Stepan Arkadyevitch, radiant, young, and beaming. He called him vigorously and urgently, and insisted on his stopping. He had one arm on the window of a carriage that was stopping at the corner, and out of the window were thrust ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... down the sloping passage. The interior of the wrecked ship was silent and dim. An occasional passage light was still burning. The passage and all the rooms lay askew. Wreckage everywhere but the double dome and hull shell had withstood the shock. Then I realized that the Erentz system was slowing down. Our heat, like our air, was escaping, radiating away, a deadly chill settling on everything. The silence ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... brotherhood with all that breathed around them. Nature, in beast, fowl, and tree, and earth, flood, and sky, is what it was of old; but sin, care, and self-consciousness have set the human portion of the world askew; and thus the simplest character is ever the soonest ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... temperately as a mixture of Adonis, Apollo, and Hercules. He caught sight of his friend now and a merry look came into his eyes. Miss Mehitable's mental perturbation and physical weariness had given her plump face a troubled cast, accented by the fact that her hat was slightly askew. The young man hurried forward and was in time to ease his portly friend down the last step of ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... we always dress for the particular work we have in hand. Sir LYTTON wrote "Richelieu" in a harlequin's jacket (sticking pirate's pistols in his belt, ere he valorously took whole scenes from a French melo-drama): we penned our last week's essay in a suit of old canonicals, with a tie-wig askew upon our beating temples, and are at this moment cased in a court-suit of cut velvet, with our hair curled, our whiskers crisped, and a masonic apron decorating our middle man. Having subsided into our chair—it is in most respects like the porphyry piece of furniture ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 16, 1841 • Various
... With weary words my soul has vexed (Some stranger, fumbling far astray To find the lesson for the day); He tells us truths too plainly true, And reads the service all askew,— Why, why the—mischief—can't he look Beforehand ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Sitting askew in his chair at the table, the King did not look at this gentleman, but moved the fingers of his outstretched hand in token that his crook of the leg was kneeling enough ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... suspected anything," said the hare; "but I remember Kauc did make a very curious remark on one occasion; he was always looking askew into things and places that did not concern him, so that I did not much heed, especially as he had started slanders ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... their night-gear. The whole tribe of decorous personages, who had never heretofore been seen with a single hair of their heads awry, would start into public view with the disorder of a nightmare in their aspects. Old Governor Bellingham would come grimly forth, with his King James' ruff fastened askew, and Mistress Hibbins, with some twigs of the forest clinging to her skirts, and looking sourer than ever, as having hardly got a wink of sleep after her night ride; and good Father Wilson too, after spending half the night at a death-bed, and liking ill to be disturbed, thus early, out of his ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the door at its exact angle and gazed at the three silent men. Thomas Culpepper, his brows knotted, his lips moving, was holding his head askew to see the measurements upon a map of his farm at Bromley. That Lascelles had gone out and come back saying that one Throckmorton was in the next room was nothing to him. The next room was nothing to him; he was there ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... sitting, as silent as we were: old Hauser with his three-cornered hat, the ex-mayor, the ex-postman, and others besides. They all seemed depressed; and Hauser had brought an old spelling-book with gnawed edges, which he held wide-open on his knee, with his great spectacles askew. ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... the niches round the West Door. Today they jumped in a moment into new life. Yesterday he could have calculated to a nicety the attitude that they would have; now they seemed to have been blown askew with a new wind. Because he noticed these things it does not mean that he was generally perceptive. He had always been very sharp to perceive anything ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... women proceed from certain radical elements of their nature, some evidently noble, others, when looked at askew, apparently ignoble. These elements are classed as instinctive. We are less intelligent than we think. Reason may occupy the throne, but the foundations upon which that throne is based are not of her making. To ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... said that the idea of confederation was a powerless abstraction. Yet the need of unity existed in the decade before the Constitution was adopted. The need existed, in the sense that affairs were askew unless the need of unity was taken into account. Gradually certain classes in each colony began to break through the state experience. Their personal interests led across the state lines to interstate experiences, and gradually there was constructed in their ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... He was bending over his wife as they walked. The big parrot, turning its head askew, followed their pacing figures ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... day for us all through. Everything had gone wrong. Ismay had spilled grease on her velvet coat, and the fit of the new blouse I was making was hopelessly askew, and the kitchen stove smoked and the bread was sour. Moreover, Huldah Jane Keyson, our tried and trusty old family nurse and cook and general "boss," had what she called the "realagy" in her shoulder; and, ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... florins' worth. Wherefore Biancofiore, confessing herself outwitted, long lamented the five hundred florins repaid and yet more the thousand lent, saying often, 'Who with a Tuscan hath to do, Must nor be blind nor see askew.' On this wise, having gotten nothing for her pains but loss and scorn, she found, to her cost, that some folk ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... was duly prepared by Mr. Askew, Mr. Furze's solicitor; the usual notice was sent round, and the meeting took place in a room at the Bell. A composition of seven-and-sixpence in the pound was offered, to be paid within a twelvemonth, with a further half-crown in two years' time, the ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... along either side. In the midst, on a crazy dais, two chairs stand ready for the king and queen when they shall choose to worship; over their heads a hoop, apparently from a hogshead, depends by a strip of red cotton; and the hoop (which hangs askew) is dressed with streamers of the same ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of fortune veers, And blue-white skies turn leaden hue, When every pleasant prospect blears And all the weary world's askew— Who then would envy (if he knew) Jack Point the jester, glum and trist; Or ply, tho' first of all the crew, ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... stuck the pin into the candle he never shut the slide again; and though no wind blew, there was a light breath moving in the morning off the sea, that got inside the lanthorn and set the flame askew. And so the candle guttered down one side till but little tallow was left above the pin; for though the flame grew pale and paler to the view in the growing morning light, yet it burnt freely all the time. So at last there was left, as I ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... and a workman on a pair of steps had taken its face off, and was poking instruments into the works by the light of a candle! This was a great event for Paul, who sat down on the bottom stair, and watched the operation attentively: now and then glancing at the clock face, leaning all askew, against the wall hard by, and feeling a little confused by a suspicion ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... of Miss Havisham and of Estella. He shrank from Magwitch, horrified at the bare thought of what he owed to him. He forced himself to utter some trembling words and set food before the convict, watching him as he ate like a ravenous old dog. His heart was like lead, all his plans knocked askew. Even while he pitied the old man, he shrank from him as if from a wild beast, with all his childish dread increased ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... how you drew Our shapely features all askew, Unflattering really. You made A lame and B too fat And C too curly—what of that! We ...
— The Peter Pan Alphabet • Oliver Herford
... a strange incongruity was thrust. Tall trees loomed up toward the stars. A nameless little stream flowed placidly through the night and, beached where impenetrable undergrowth crowded to the water's edge, a big amphibian plane lay slightly askew, while a light glowed brightly in its cabin. More, from that cabin there presently emerged the incredible sound of music, played in Rio for os gentes of the distinctly upper strata of society by a bored but ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... Here and there the plaster was broken as though some fastened object had been violently torn away. At one place an empty picture frame, its glass smashed, hung askew from a hook. As Pendleton caught sight of other empty frames littered about the room, the glass of each broken, their pictures torn out, he ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... wedging. But how many times does it not happen that it gets injured before reaching its destination? Besides, as it often rests upon earth that has caved in upon its seat during the descent of the tubbing, it gets askew, and later on has to be raised on one side by means of jacks or other apparatus. Under such circumstances, Mr. Chavatte considered this moss-box as more detrimental than useful, and not at all indispensable, and so substituted beton ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... his way, with his prey at his heels, toward a small railed-in space, wherein, seated on a Turkish ottoman, a little higher than the genuine, was a swarthy man with beetling brows, big rolling black eyes, and a fierce moustache bristling underneath a hooked nose. He wore a red fez, much askew, and his American trousers and waistcoat were enlivened by a tennis-sash of orange and red and a smoking-coat faced with vivid green. He was smoking a decorated Turkish pipe—'Toor-kaish,' he called it—and ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... free; Free to think and to act; free to do and to be What she pleases. The poor, pining victim of fate And man's cruelty, long ago went out of date. In the mansion of Life there were some things askew, Which the strong hand of Progress has righted. The new, Better plan puts old notions of sex on the shelf. Who is true to a knave, is untrue to herself. Oh, be true to yourself, and have pity on one Who has long dwelt in shadow and pines for the sun. Love, starving on memories, begs for one ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... He looked a little askew, I must own, but he could not help smiling. . . I gave him an instance in point, which -was the reverse given by Mr. Law to the picture drawn by Mr. Burke of Tamerlane, in which he said those virtues and noble qualities bestowed upon ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... bought the 'Game of Chess, 1474,' the first book ever printed in England, from a stall in Holland for about two groschen, or two-pence of our money. He sold it to Osborne for twenty pounds, and as many books as came to twenty pounds more. Osborne re-sold this inimitable windfall to Dr. Askew for sixty guineas. At Dr. Askew's sale," continued the old gentleman, kindling as he spoke, "this inestimable treasure blazed forth in its full value and was purchased by Royalty itself for one hundred and seventy ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton
... She must have been wet almost to those unfractured bones which she had been feeling; her black silk dress, with its white ruching about the neck, was torn and bedraggled; her black hat, with its jet ornaments, was crushed and hung askew over one ear; nevertheless, Miss Pringle conveyed at once and definitely an impression of unassailable respectability and ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... up for her cloak and hat, and in the interval between her departure and reappearance, Grannie and Nancy Joe, both glorified beings, Nancy with her unaccustomed cap askew, stood in the middle of a group of women, who were deferring, and ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... colonies never had a race of woodsmen like the coureurs du bois of New France. These were a strange mixture: French peasants, half- breeds, Canadian-born Frenchmen, gentlemen of birth with lives and fortunes gone askew, and many of the native Canadian noblesse, who, like the nobles of France, forbidden to become merchants, became adventurers with the coureurs du bois, who were ever with them in spirit more than with the merchant. The peasant prefers the gentleman to the bourgeois as his companion. Many a coureur ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... her, too, a curious want of house-pride. Dust gave her no great concern. She rather loved a litter of periodicals, chiffons, broken packets of cigarettes, tobacco and half-eaten fruit on the tables. A picture askew never attracted her attention. To remain in the house, dressed in her out-of-door clothes, seemed to her vain extravagance and discomfort. A wrapper and slippers, the more soiled and shapeless the better, were the only indoor wear. Andrew deplored ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... was very flushed and bright-eyed. Her fair hair was disordered, her hat a trifle askew. She had an air of enjoying unwonted excitements. "All the gold's being hoarded too," she said, with a crow of delight in her voice. "Faber says that probably our cheques won't be worth that in a few days. ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... see that everything is in order, and at last rings for the servant to take away the clothes and shoes that need cleaning. The subtle analyst would argue from all this that Lushington was one of those painfully orderly persons, who are made positively nervous by the sight of a hair-brush lying askew, or a tie dropped on ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... cruel was th' engagement in which my true love fought, And cruel was the cannon-ball as knock'd his right eye out; He used to ogle me with peepers full of fun, But now he looks askew at me, because he's only one. ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... her. A line of light slid through the chink of the door, crooked itself and staggered across the ceiling, a blond triangle throwing the shadows askew. That was Catty, carrying the ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... again ahead, when slow little Betty balked in the middle of the course and both the goat and dog ran into her upsetting the carts and spilling out the little lady dog drivers. None of them were hurt and the little dogs ran around stepping on their silk petticoats and getting their hats askew, they enjoying the upset by barking and making all the ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery
... most charming rectory-house on the Forest. It would be delightful to add that the rector was as charming as his abode; but Beechhurst did not call itself happy in its pastor at this moment—the Rev. Askew Wiley. Mr. Wiley's immediate predecessor—the Rev. John Hutton—had been a pattern for country parsons. Hale, hearty, honest as the daylight; knowing in sport, in farming, in gardening; bred at Westminster and Oxford; the third son ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... from the rakish angle to which his hat tumbled, to his square shoulders, braced far back even when the rest of his body fell limp, and to his feet which he moved as though avoiding the swing of a scabbard. A military cape slipped askew from his shoulders. All these details were indelibly traced in Wilson's mind as ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... physical characteristics recorded in stud-books and short-horn books. One so accomplished in this kind of analysis could tell at once, by this criterion, whether the treasure under the hammer was the same that had been knocked down before at the Roxburghe sale—the Askew, the Gordonstoun, or the Heber, perhaps—or was veritably an impostor—or was in reality a new and previously unknown prize well worth contending for. The minuteness and precision of his knowledge excited wonder, ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... had inspected all these parts of the house with a great deal of interest, but this interest was exceeded by far when, upon returning from the court to the front of the house, she followed Innstetten's leading and climbed the stairway to the upper story. The stairs were askew, ramshackly, and dark; but the hall, to which they led, almost gave one a cheerful sensation, because it had a great deal of light and a good view of the surrounding landscape. In one direction ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... wide white country. And as he went across the cold fields and saw how the stars were paling out, and cast long looks at the moon setting across the smooth snow, the lad's eyes filled so that the moon twinkled and shot rays askew in his sight. He thought how the good times of Oyster-le-Main were ended, and he thought of Miss Elaine so far beyond the reach of such as he, and it seemed to him that he was ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... do you take a baby up? What does it like to eat? Do you put rusks in a feeding cup? Have you to mince its meat? Haven't I heard them speak of pap? Isn't there caudle too? How do you keep the thing on your lap? Why are its eyes askew? Is it a touch of original sin Causes an infant to squall, Or trust misplaced in a safety-pin Lost in the depths of a shawl? When do you "shorten" a growing child (Is it so much too long)? Should ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 14, 1914 • Various
... limping forward. His cloak hung askew upon his thick shoulders, one of which was much higher than the other, with the massive head set low between. As he advanced, Migul ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... their families hard to provide for, Richard Yordas, of Scargate Hall, the chief owner of the neighborhood, set a long heavy stone up on either brink, and stretched a strong chain between them, not only to mark out the course of the shallow, whose shelf is askew to the channel, but also that any one being washed away might fetch up, and feel how to save himself. For the Tees is a violent water sometimes, and the safest way to cross it is to go on till you come ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... saw her off to one side, lying half concealed by a clump of low rose bushes. She was not unconscious, as he had thought, but was crying silently, with her face upon her folded arms and her hat askew over one ear. He stooped and touched her upon ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... of unkempt heads, and bearded anxious faces, and crouching shoulders askew, cleared their throats, and two uncrossed and recrossed their legs, the plank seat creaking ominously with the motion under their combined weight. A shade of disappointment was settling on the coroner's face. This was slight information indeed from the only person who had seen the man ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... was a kind Kangaroo, Whose bonnet was always askew; So they asked her to wait While they put it on straight And fastened ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... in spite of the current of war twisting so many things askew, does proceed in England calmly, and in something like order. As we looked back upon our London experience it seemed to Henry and me that we were hurrying from luncheons to teas and teas to dinners and from dinners to ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... fingers, Hermione straightened the very neat hat which the embrace of Mrs. Trapes had rendered somewhat askew, and, turning to the door, came face to face with Mr. Ravenslee, and in his hand she beheld his battered hat, but she did not notice how fiercely his powerful fingers ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... disagreeable business, this of repairs and restoration. I suppose I am doing fairly well considering that I have been more than half a century getting my gearings askew and awry. But I am taking orders now and say "Thank you," when I get them. Just when I shall be well enough to take hold again is not ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... My periwig's askew, my ruffle stained With grease from my new telescope! Ach, to-morrow How Caroline will be vexed, although she grows Almost as bad as I, who cannot leave My work-shop for one evening. I must give One last recital at St. Margaret's, And then—farewell ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... The principles were right but all askew the application. Love! Consider other attributes of life. Consider learning; consider food. Learning and food—were they not bounties of life's treasure, to be absorbed and used for sustenance in order, by their nourishment, to give to live this life more fully? Why, so ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... what a treasure trove it would be to a writer. Every sentence was a nugget. In itself the book had no literary merit; Captain Jim's charm of storytelling failed him when he came to pen and ink; he could only jot roughly down the outline of his famous tales, and both spelling and grammar were sadly askew. But Anne felt that if anyone possessed of the gift could take that simple record of a brave, adventurous life, reading between the bald lines the tales of dangers staunchly faced and duty manfully done, a wonderful story might be made from it. Rich comedy and ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... was that when the clown came tumbling into the ring to the blaring of the band that night, a girl with the green bow all askew upon her hat and her violet-blue eyes a shade darker and snapping with excitement was perched on one of the front row planks which served as seats, clutching a bag of peanuts and waiting in an ecstasy for the wonders about to ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant
... counsellor—have you heard of him?—has not to this day paid her for the half-dozen linen shirts she made him and drove her roughly away, stamping and reviling her, on the pretext that the shirt collars were not made like the pattern and were put in askew. And there are the little ones hungry.... And Katerina Ivanovna walking up and down and wringing her hands, her cheeks flushed red, as they always are in that disease: 'Here you live with us,' says she, 'you eat and drink and are kept warm ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... a malevolent look at the bird, and then, his cigar tip-tilted and the corner of his mouth sarcastically askew, suggested with an air as though the idea were ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... came lumberingly creaking in. It was drawn by two yoke of lean spotted oxen. The wheels had been wrapped with rawhide, for repairs, and the canvas top was torn and discolored and askew. From the puckered front peered a woman and two children; the man of the family was walking ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... happiest home, the fairest and wisest wife, and the goodliest young family, of any man in the county. That had been a joyful day, indeed, for him, twenty years before, when he brought the golden-haired Margaret Askew, the heiress of Marsh Grange, as his bride to the old grey Hall of Swarthmoor. Sixteen full years younger than her husband was she, yet a wondrous wise-hearted woman, and his ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... garden again there stood a number of peasants' huts. Though scattered, instead of being arranged in regular rows, these appeared to Chichikov's eye to comprise well-to-do inhabitants, since all rotten planks in their roofing had been replaced with new ones, and none of their doors were askew, and such of their tiltsheds as faced him evinced evidence of a presence of a spare waggon—in some cases almost ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... to some, Art not thou the man that I once saw crying under a sermon, that I once, heard cry out, What must I do to be saved? and, that some time ago I heard speak well of the holy word of God? how askew will they look upon one; or if they will acknowledge that such things were with them once, they do it more like images and rejected ghosts, than men. They look as if they were blasted, withered, cast out, and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... a white knitted shawl, for the weather was extremely cold, the English climate being much more serious and downright at that day than it is now. She bent low to the task, holding her head slightly askew, putting the tip of her tongue between her lips, and expending all the energy of her soul and body in an intense effort to do what she was doing as well as ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... instant the front door was thrown open, and Mary Ellen, her cap askew, dashed down the ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... pictures of the dear ones passed away, "Uncle Si and A'nt Lurany," taken on their wedding day; Cousin Ruth, who died at twenty, in the corner had a place Near the wreath from Eben's coffin, dipped in wax and in a case; Grandpa Wilkins, done in color by some artist of the town, Ears askew and somewhat cross-eyed, but with fixed and awful frown, Seeming somehow to be waiting to enjoy the dreadful doom Of the frightened little sleeper ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... opportunities. It is the poor immigrant who ought to sing the praises of this continent. He alone has the proper point of view; and he, unfortunately, is dumb. But often, when I have contemplated with dreary disgust, in the outskirts of New York, the hideous wooden shanties planted askew in wastes of garbage, and remembered Naples or Genoa or Venice, suddenly it has been borne in upon me that the Italians living there feel that they have their feet on the ladder leading to paradise; that for the first time ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... happy day and find her. The thought brought a smile, and with the smile on her lips, her head fell back against a yielding cushion, and in a minute she had fallen asleep. Anna Belle toppled over backward. Her plumed hat was pushed rakishly askew, but little she cared. Her eyelids had ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... upright figure disappeared bodily within the swooping arms; she was squeezed, hugged, rocked to and fro, and pelted with kisses until she was speechless and gasping for breath. When she was released her cap was askew, and the muslin folds in the front of her gown crumpled out of recognition; but for a marvel she spoke no word of reproach, and Darsie saw, with a sobering thrill, a glitter as of tears in the old eyes, and the mental question which ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... elbow of the river, where a section of the cut-bank had sunk down, making a little terrace of grass a few feet above the water. Above, there had been a small grove of trees, through which a fire had some time swept, leaving only a few slender, charred trunks pointing askew against the slow, dusky crimson of the west. On the nearest and tallest of these wrecked monuments, immediately above their camp, as on a slender pedestal, sat a great owl, the only visible living thing in all the wide expanse, besides themselves. ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... mean street, emptily echoing to my footsteps—no soul awake and audible but me. Then my halt at the placard. And amidst that sleeping stillness, smeared hastily upon the board, a little askew and crumpled, but quite distinct beneath that cool meteoric glare, preposterous and appalling, the ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... paint and gilding and Italian sketches in water-colour and statuettes under glass, might have been a lady's drawing-room. But paint and gilding were tarnished; the chintz chair-covers soiled and torn; the pictures hung askew; and a smell of dog ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... stones was caught up in a long, low rumble, prolonged, swelling to a roar from the city below. Again the ground heaved, and beneath her—she had dropped on her knees, and hung, clutching the little dog, staring over a level verge where the balustrade had run—she saw Lisbon fall askew, this way and that: the roofs collapsing, like a toy structure of cards. Still the roar of it swelled on the ear; yet, strange to say, the roar seemed to have nothing to do with the collapse, which ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... gestures; he punches in and punches out again with his fist, the hat which is stuck askew on his conical head, over the ears that are pointed like artichoke leaves. He is in front of me, and each of his soles is pierced by a valve which draws in water from ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... my mind: the bare, shining floor, the unpainted table, the chimney-shelf, and a clock, the successful working of whose machinery demanded a crazily tilted attitude; a Bible on the shelf, too, and Grandma's spectacles lying askew. Then, a commodious lounge of exceedingly simple construction set up straight against the wall and extending the whole length of the room. The original framework of this lounge, by the way, disclosed itself in many bold and striking instances, under a unique ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... these words in all sorts of keys, running up and down a strange scale of notes full of sudden changes. Humpbacked and with his face twisted askew, and his hair rough and disorderly, he wore a great blue apron with a bib; and with flaming eyes and outstretched arms he cried vociferously: "Thirty-one! thirty-two! thirty-three! Thirty-three ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... room he shut the door and carefully lifted the Mirabelle in its bottle to the place of honor on top of his chest of drawers. Then he stood looking at his reflection in the small mirror hung askew ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... was rakishly askew upon her red curls, for Fay had frequently grabbed at it in her rage, and the beautiful green ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... apparent effort. People used to say that he was like a river, smoothly flowing, very deep, rippling, constant in mutability, husbanding and guiding his eddies. It's not a bad figure of him. He liked it himself, and smiled more askew and peered more blandly ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... triple line of tombs of the same depth. And apparently of the same system and same age is the mass of tombs marked W, which are parallel to the tomb of Zet. Later there appears to have been built the long line of tombs, placed askew, in order not to interfere with those which have been mentioned, and then this skew line gave the di-rection to the next tomb, that of Merneit, and later on to that of Azab. The private graves around the royal tomb are all built of mud brick, with a coat of mud plaster over it, and the floor ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... in one, and hanging down with a fulness almost of skirts about the small determined legs. The accompanying dog was a very sympathetic, blunt-nosed, round-headed, curly-coated type, whose whiteness, which positively invited the stroking hand, was broken by two great black blotches set all askew on the back, and by a black patch which ringed the left eye and completely smothered the cocked-up left ear. The child carried a stick, which nearly reached to his shoulder, and which ended in a long and narrow crook. The ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... that gave the stranger his startling and admirable appearance—the breeches and his face. For directly under the hat, which was worn askew, was one round, greenish eye, set at the upper end of a nose that was like a triangle of leather. The eye held the geographical center of the whole countenance, this because its owner kept his head tipped, precisely as if he had a stiff neck. Under the leathery nose, which seemed to have been ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... been the invariable response; and generally Erica would avail herself of the interruption to ask his opinion about some square-headed cat, with eyes askew and an astonishing number of legs, which she had just drawn. Then would come what she called a "bear's hug," after which silence reigned again in the study, while Raeburn would go on writing some argumentative ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... night I watched the Heavens Fizz like '81 champagne— Fly to sixes and to sevens, Wheel and thunder back again; And when all was peace and order Save one planet nailed askew, Much I wept because my warder Would not ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... this hour a smallish gentleman, in an old-style Inverness opera-coat that cloaked him to his ankles, with an opera hat set jauntily a wee bit askew on his head, a mask of crimson silk covering his face from brows to lips, slipped silently like some sly, sinister shadow through the Fifth Avenue portals of the Bizarre, and shaped a course by his wits across the lobby to the elevators, so discreetly and unobtrusively that none of the flunkeys ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... failure to use knives, for Jeter saw murder looking out of more than one pair of eyes as their two pairs of fists landed on brown faces, smashed noses askew, and started ...
— Lords of the Stratosphere • Arthur J. Burks
... what might be the result of their trial. It was rumoured, not without reason, that the Queen proposed to crush out the Reformed religion with fire and sword; and they remembered that in King Henry's time, that sweet young lady—Anne Askew—had been burned at Smithfield; and it was evident that Queen Mary had much of the nature of her father. The prisoners were led over London Bridge to the Church of Saint Mary Overy—the very place in which the priest declared that Ernst ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... a family circle, but there are none too many of them. Parallel lines never meeting, squares, triangles, oblongs, and particularly those oblongs pulled askew, known as rhomboids, these and other geometrical figures abound, but circles are comparatively few. In a true family circle a father and a mother first clasp each other's hands, liking well to be thus clasped; then they stretch out a hand on either side, and these are speedily grasped by children, ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin |
