"Crookedly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to describe the unsuccessful attempt of poor Jack to obtain something from the female slave to satisfy hunger. The planter's house was situated on an elevated spot on the side of a hill. The fencing about the house and garden was very crookedly laid up with rails. The night was rather dark and rainy, and Jack left me with the understanding that I was to stay at a certain place until he returned. I cautioned him before he left me to be very careful—and after ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... downstairs, and there was something peculiarly airless about the atmosphere of it. Then he realized that there was no window. He walked round it. The walls were filthily dirty, as everywhere else. Four pictures hung crookedly on the wall representing scenes from Faust. Marguerite with her box of jewels, the church scene, Siebel and his flowers, and Faust and Mephistopheles. The latter brought Tommy's mind back to Mr. Brown again. In this sealed and closed chamber, with its close-fitting ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... oft go crookedly, Even then this love is still, Can the cross bear patiently, Thinking 'tis the Father's will. From this thought doth comfort taste, Better days ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt
... the list is "The Fall of Greece" and sounds very grand, indeed; but when the curtain rises (or rather, if it is the sheet curtain, drops), the audience see a lighted candle set rather crookedly in a candlestick and fanned from the background so as to ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... man was having a pail filled with hot cabbage soup. It was the ancient clock-mender across the way. The mountaineer was startled out of his habitual reserve, but he recovered his composure almost instantly. The clock-mender, his heavy glasses hanging crookedly on his nose, his whole aspect that of a weary, broken man, took down his pail and shuffled noiselessly out. The mountaineer followed him cautiously. Once in his shop the clock-mender poured the steaming soup into a bowl, broke bread in it, and began his evening ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... you." The savior, turning toward her, saw the fattest little Madigan nudge her red-haired neighbor savagely. She was evidently angry at something. "It's good of you to take me in like this. What I want to say is that the train was late crawling crookedly up and around the mountains. I had no idea of arriving in the evening and coming in upon you this way. But when I got here, the town looked so savage, don't you know, so—drear—and desolate and—and flimsy, I got a bit home-sick—there! ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... suggest, exceeded the bounds of credibility. Some men were supposed to be so rarely endowed that "a thousand liveried angels" waited on them invisibly, to execute their behests for the benefit of those they favoured; while, much oftener, the perverse and crookedly disposed, who delighted in mischief, would bring on those to whom, for whatever capricious reason, they were hostile, calamities, which no sagacity could predict, and no merely human power ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... Board, and swaddled hard down thereon, from one End of this Engine, to the other. This Method makes the Child's Body and Limbs as straight as an Arrow. There being some young Indians that are perhaps crookedly inclin'd, at their first coming into the World, who are made perfectly straight by this Method. I never saw an Indian of a mature Age, that was any ways crooked, except by Accident, and that way seldom, for they cure and prevent Deformities of the Limbs, and Body, very ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... bearing signs of haste, was in Mildred's usual clear handwriting; but there was a postscript scrawled crookedly across the inner sides of the sheet and prefixed ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... Miss Hoag's front room Miss Sidonia Sabrina, of the Flying-Fish Troupe, World's Aeronaut Trapeze Wonder, gloved and ringleted, beaded of eyelash and pink of ear-lobe, the teeth somewhat crookedly, but pearlily white because the lips were so red, the parasol long and impudently parrot-handled, gilt mesh bag clanking against a ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... one!" said the Jinnee, after she had gone, as he reappeared to view. "Did I not foresee that thou wouldst deal crookedly? Restore ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... after which we separated, exchanging one of our horses, which Ephraim's brother rode, and was to be sent back to the Manathans, for one of theirs, which must return to the South River. We rode on a little further, and came to Millstone River again, which runs so crookedly, that you cross it at three different places. After we crossed it now, we took the bridles from the horses, in order that they might eat something, while we sat down and dined together, upon what we had in our travelling bags. We remounted in about an hour, and rode on, continuing ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... the lieutenant, shaking his head sadly. "What a pity it is that things will go so crookedly!" And he walked on in silence down into the main street, looking sharply ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... and have perfect weapons; but it is evident that they have bad training. At the heels of Sargon marched the best Assyrian warriors, archers, axemen, spearmen, and still there were not six among them who could march in line warrior fashion. Besides they carry their spears crookedly, their swords are badly hung, they bear their axes like carpenters or butchers. Their clothing is heavy, their rude sandals gall their feet, and their shields, though strong, are of small use, for the men ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... faint miniature of the staid British suburb. The river bending to the eastward there conducts certain of the streets crookedly away from the rectangular Quaker demon who is ever seeking to square them. Along the water side, or near it, passes a sort of Quay Street, between ship-yards and fish-houses on the one side, and shops ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... means at their disposal, and fix the morality of society. Their genuine stupidity lies hid beneath their specialism. They know their business, but are ignorant of everything which is outside it. So that to preserve their self-conceit they question everything, are crudely and crookedly critical. They appear to be sceptics and are in reality simpletons; they swamp their wits in interminable arguments. Almost all conveniently adopt social, literary, or political prejudices, to do away with the need of having opinions, just as they adapt their conscience to the standard ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... of his chamber window. The trunk of this apple-tree was covered with dry moss, its bare and knotty branches, with but a few little green and brown leaves, stuck out here and there, raised themselves crookedly towards the heavens, like the suppliant arms of an old man, with bent elbows. Nezhdanof stood firmly on the dark earth which surrounded the foot of the apple-tree, and drew from his pocket the small object ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... and elders. But in later times, as the people made additions and omissions, and so altered the sense of the motions before them, the kings, Polydorus and Theopompus, added these words to the rhetra, "and if the people shall decide crookedly, the chiefs and elders shall set it right." That is, they made the people no longer supreme, but practically excluded them from any voice in public affairs, on the ground that they judged wrongly. However these kings persuaded the city that this also was ordained ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... Home" to the chauffeur. The first inmate our eyes fell upon was Sadie Kate, just fresh, I judge, from hugging the molasses barrel; and a shocking spectacle she was for any esthetically minded person. In addition to the stickiness, one stocking was coming down, her pinafore was buttoned crookedly, and she had lost a hair-ribbon. But—as always—completely at ease, she welcomed us with a cheery grin, and offered ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... into the dim north, the brown level of the plains, broken only by sharp fissures In the surface, treeless, extending for unnumbered leagues. To east and west the valley, now scarcely more green than those upper plains, bounded by its verdureless bluffs, ran crookedly, following the river course, its only sign of white dominion the rutted trail. Beyond the stream there extended miles of white sand-dunes, fantastically shapen by the wind, gradually changing into barren ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... day's notice! and that wedding Magdalen's! and not a single new dress ordered for anybody, the bride included! and the Oriental Cashmere Robe totally unavailable on the occasion when she might have worn it to the greatest advantage! Mrs. Wragge dropped crookedly into a chair, and beat her disorderly hands on her unsymmetrical knees, in utter forgetfulness of the captain's presence and the captain's terrible eye. It would not have surprised her to hear that the ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... plant with four blossoms. The four blossoms were elaborately dead. Their death was drawn with a fearful care. An obscure deliberation was exposed in the depiction of their drooping petals. The pot tottered very crookedly on a sort of table, as near as I could see. All around ran a funereal scroll. I read: "My farewell to my beloved wife, Gaby." A fierce hand, totally distinct from the former, wrote in proud letters above: "Punished for desertion. ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... trying to cheer and comfort the little black girl that she never noticed the Psammead who, roused from sleep by her voice, had shaken itself free of sand, and was coming crookedly up the stairs. It was close to her before she saw it. She picked it up and settled it ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... would be an indication of impotence, of servile yielding to the feminine edict that had already gone forth, and behind which Chavis and his men were even now hiding—the decree of the Flying W owner that there should be no taking of human life. His lips twisted crookedly as on the morning of the day following his adventure with Ruth and the recreant pony he mounted his own animal and rode away from the outfit without telling any of them where he was going. Two or three hours later, in a ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... perhaps"—Gray raised his head and smiled crookedly—"but it will never be a home, and that's what I wanted most of all. Do you think I'm very weak, very silly to come to you for ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... her meagre dress flapping about her knees like a flag. But at the foot of the rickety outer steps that ran across the bare front of the shack crookedly, like a broken arm, I caught her by ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... resuming their seats, insinuated that as the venerable old man was well gone in his dotage, he had better measure his diet somewhat after the judicious character of his diplomacy, which was celebrated for its small doses crookedly doled out. The dish was again removed, mouths began to water, eager eyes glanced upon the steaming viands, giving out their strong glows and unsavory smells. This incited dither strong, on calling the two cooks ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... skimmed over the surface of the desert. Before long he noticed a dark spot ahead of him which proved to be a large body of fierce looking men, riding upon dromedaries and slender, spirited horses and armed with long rifles and crookedly shaped simitars. ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... emerged from their shade to speak to her. I did not approach her solitary figure without trembling; for this gloomy end to her determined walk, and the way in which she stood, almost within the cavernous shadow of the iron bridge, looking at the lights crookedly reflected in the strong tide, inspired a dread ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... which he was to be chief guest in honor of the day's event. Four weeks later Flavia read it, under the flowering almond trees that surrounded the house so closely as to overhang the balcony on which she sat. Read it, then kissed the careless, boyish Corwin B. Rose that slanted crookedly across the foot of the page. Holding the letter, ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... no longer matters so much how life appears to one; one must consult another: one, who may be strong, must not offend the other, who is weak. The only weak brother I am willing to consider is (to make a bull for once) my wife. For her, and for her only, I must waive my righteous judgments, and go crookedly about my life. How, then, in such an atmosphere of compromise, to keep honour bright and abstain from base capitulations? How are you to put aside love's pleadings? How are you, the apostle of laxity, to turn suddenly about into the rabbi of precision; and after these years ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... get good work anywhere, but he won't work honestly. All he cares for is the excitement of big things he can get at crookedly. That was why he tried a coup with that copper mine in the Urals and had to clear out of Russia. And the La Chance mine that he came to contemptuously, and just to get hold of me, is a big thing too. No—listen! You don't know how big, for you've been ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... enlarged itself into another,—that spirituality is no adequate security for sound moral discernment. These alienated friends did not know they were acting unjustly, cruelly, crookedly, or they would have hated themselves for it: they thought they were doing God service. The fervour of their love towards him was probably greater than mine; yet this did not make them superior to prejudice, ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... was like marble, so smooth and so fair; Though it's wrinkled so crookedly now, As if time, when those furrows were made by the share, Had been tipsy ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... very face. Oh Oro! how hard is truth to be come at by proxy! Fifty accounts have I had of Rafona; none of which wholly agreed; and here, these two varlets, sent expressly to behold and report, these two lying knaves, speak crookedly both. How is it? Are the lenses in their eyes diverse-hued, that objects seem different to both; for undeniable is it, that the things they thus clashingly speak of are to be known for the same; though represented with unlike colors and qualities. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... stared sickly at the spot where it had vanished. An instant later he had whirled and was thrusting wide the wireless room door. The operator was returning to his key, grinning crookedly. He looked ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... turned back into the cabin. There was womanish solicitude in the scrutiny he bent upon Garry Devereau's crookedly ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... disorder. Chairs were overturned, there were empty spaces on the wall where the finest pictures of the millionaire had been hung. The window facing the door was wide open. The shutters were broken; one of them was hanging crookedly from only its bottom hinge. The top of a ladder rose above the window-sill, and beside it, astraddle the sill, was an Empire card-table, half inside the room, half out. On the hearth-rug, before a large tapestry fire-screen, ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... shades were drawn the grotesque shadow of a fir-tree stood against the window; silhouettes moved past. Picket fences marched crookedly along. At each intersection of streets a white arc-light dangled, hissing and spreading its radiance to the ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... This is a serial novel. It shows the course of true love running very crookedly—as it so often does—among the obstructions and difficulties of the housekeeping problem—and solves that problem. (NOT ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... intended to hire one of the waiting cabs to drive him back to St. Fair. As he neared the top of the street which led to the square, his eye was caught by the flutter of a woman's dress in one of the narrow old passages which spindled crookedly off it. The wearer of the dress was his niece Sisily. She was walking swiftly. A turn of the passage took her in the direction of the Morrab Gardens, and he saw ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... tones to the man, so that Braman could not hear. Levins departed shortly afterwards, grinning crookedly, tucking a piece of paper into a pocket, upon which Corrigan had transcribed something that had been written on the cuff of his shirt sleeve. Corrigan went to his desk and busied himself with some papers. Over in the courthouse, Judge Lindman took from a drawer in his desk ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... crookedly, and, in a tone of pleasant reproof, desired her laughter-compressing inferior ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... has been rendered unhappy for the rest of her life, has been lost and dishonored by a man whom she has ceased to love, because he took off his coat awkwardly, trimmed one of his nails crookedly, put on a stocking wrong side out, and ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... seated at the tea table. My practised eye instantly saw that the cloth was laid crookedly, and that the dishes were placed in a ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... lips crookedly, rolled his head to signify the inexpressible. "Isn't that like a woman?" he demanded. He rose. "Rather than let you in for a show of temper," he said ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale
... and he crookedly points with his crooked fingers at the large letters, and reads: "One thousand dollars (hic) dollars reward for the capture of John Logan! What do you say to that, Carats? That's a fine fellow to have for a lover, now, ain't it?—a waluable lover, ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... lettering on the southern arm. Eastwards a much more weatherbeaten arm, pointing crookedly up a stony cart track, said in dim brown characters: "CHILMARK 2 M." Plainly a short cut over the moor! Better stones underfoot than padded dust: and Lawrence struck uphill swiftly, glad to escape from the traffic ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... really quite perplexing," said Martha, sitting down with a sigh, and regarding the tea-table with a critical gaze; "quite perplexing. I'm sure I don't know how I shall bear it. It is too bad of George— darling Ailie—(dear me, Jane, how crookedly you have placed the urn)— ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... He smiled crookedly. "You know, convicts' prayers don't seem to rise very high, miss—don't seem to reach anywhere. We haven't got the stand-in with the Boss that others seem to have," he said in ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... of his black mustache and regarded her askance, smiling crookedly. "Yoh 'fraid for trus' me, that's why I promise," he said at last. "Me, I don' need padre to mumble-mumble foolish words before I can be happy. Yoh 'fraid of Luck Leen'sey, that's why I promise. Now yoh come way up here, so luck don' matter ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... young people began to appear, singly and in twos and threes, and then go out again, and go on up the stairs which led crookedly to and from the corner the office was cramped into. Some of them went up stairs after merely glancing into the office, others found letters there, and staid chatting awhile. They looked at Cornelia with merely an identifying eye, at first, as if they perceived that she ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... one weak point in my calculations was my inability to hold to a straight line, or to anything like one—because I had to advance from one wreck to another as they happened to touch or to be within jumping distance of each other, and therefore went crookedly upon my course and often fairly had to double on it. And another weak point was that the sea in its tempests recognizes no order of seniority, but destroys in the same breath of storm ships just beginning their lives upon it and ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... all the sky is hid As with the shutting of a lid, One by one great drops are falling Doubtful and slow, Down the pane they are crookedly crawling, And the wind breathes low; Slowly the circles widen on the river, Widen and mingle, one and all; Here and there the slenderer flowers shiver, 30 Struck by ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... consider them to be unwise and intemperate. (5) Every one, I conceive, deliberately chooses what, within the limits open to him, he considers most conducive to his interest, and acts accordingly. I must hold therefore that those who act against rule and crookedly (6) are neither ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... roof of rusty iron where the thatch had been. The whitewash had fallen off in places, exposing a rough, granulated wall, for the house was a dabbin, built of puddled clay. A window was broken and the door hung crookedly. Except for a few rows of withered potatoes, the garden was occupied by weeds. Three or four shellducks, hatched from wild birds' eggs, paddled about ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... chuckle, as if she had made an original observation. But she had not, for Lady Garvington always appeared worn and weary, and sallow, and untidy. She was the kind of absent-minded person who depended upon pins to hold her garments together, and who would put on her tiara crookedly ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... like her furniture, seemed to have taken on a coating of dust. Timid eyes looked out at Joan from behind pince-nez set rather crookedly on a thin nose. One side of her face, from eye to chin, was disfigured by an unsightly bruise. Miss Bacon dabbed a handkerchief to it continually and started ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... we live by railroad time," was her modest boast. "And my husband always comes straight home." She did not emphasize the "my," knowing in her compassionate heart what other husbands were prone to lag by the way until they came home late and crookedly. ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... seemed necessity; and here, thought I, with my own hand I ply my own shuttle and weave my own destiny into these unalterable threads. Meantime, Queequeg's impulsive, indifferent sword, sometimes hitting the woof slantingly, or crookedly, or strongly, or weakly, as the case might be; and by this difference in the concluding blow producing a corresponding contrast in the final aspect of the completed fabric; this savage's sword, thought I, which thus finally ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... on the table wore rough knickerbockers, high, rather muddy boots, a loose jacket, and a cap set crookedly on the head. When Northrup spoke, the young person turned and he saw that it was a woman. There was no surprise, at first, in the eyes which met Northrup's—the door of the little yellow house was constantly admitting visitors—but ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... had just closed after this last stop, and Betty had opened her mouth to tell Bobby that her hat was tipped crookedly when with a sickening speed the car began ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... under the bowlder alone, a small brown creature in picturesque-looking rags, a mere waif and stray of a child, with her feet trailing in the pool; every now and then small mottled crabs scrambled crookedly along, or dug graves for themselves in the dry waved sand. The girl watched them idly, as she flapped long ribbons of brown seaweed, or dribbled the water through her hollowed hands, while a tired sea-gull that had lowered wing was ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... servant slipped along on his knees before him. He found many an inequality which the fellow had to remove at once. It was no wonder. Twice every minute old Valentine thought: "Now he's coming!" And when he thought thus the shears cut crookedly right into the bog. And the old gentleman would have growled in quite another manner if the same thought had not made uncertain the hand ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... interval, during which Mrs. Pendomer smiled crookedly, and Patricia continued to sob, although at lengthening intervals. Then, Mrs. Pendomer lifted the packet of letters lying on the bed, and cleared ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... was, even if he did not know how he got here. The L-B—if it did exist—was to the west. He had a vivid mental picture of the rocket shape, its once silvery sides dulled by exposure, canted crookedly amid trees. And he was going ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... one?" asked Frank, laughing in spite of himself at the woe-begone figure of the professor, who, his bonds having been cut, now stood upright with his spectacles perched crookedly on his nose. ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... resumed, "what shall I say of him, for he had no personal history. He had an old name, however, which he hoped not to sully, and he bent himself quietly to duty, as, crookedly and undesirably, it came his way. He found no call to do great things of the world, but rather to straighten out the small things of a wee corner of it, and there to keep the peace. The maid just came into his life, and he, in his plain way, thanked Providence and ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... aware that he had spoken of a thing that had been mentioned by neither Ba'tiste nor Houston. His lips worked crookedly. He tried to smile, but it ended only in ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... in one place? It was the old question over again. Formerly he had had his clear faith with which to beat down doubt, but now he could not be content with a blind hope; he required to be shown an expedient. If the Movement had failed through having been begun crookedly, the causes with which one had to do were practical causes, and it was possible to do the whole thing ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... the second stranger before King Arthur. Poorly clothed, too, yet had his coat once been rich cloth of gold. Now it sat most crookedly upon him and was cut in many places so that it but barely ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe
... of nothing but constant rubbing and the practice of gymnastics to do your shoulders good. You probably have some trick of standing crookedly that has helped to make it grow out, such as standing on one leg, or ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various
... suggesting that the murderer threw a box out of the window?" exclaimed Superintendent Galloway, staring at the detective. "Look how straight the line from the wall is! A box would have fallen crookedly." ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... dream out of Jeanne by kicking Doggie out of her sphere. And there was a girl in England in Doggie's sphere whom he was to marry. She knew it. A man does not gather his sagacities in order to answer crookedly a direct challenge, unless there ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... Heyst's eyes wandered to the creature who had replaced the first man at the end of the water-pipe. Enormous brown paws clutched it savagely; the wild, big head hung back, and in a face covered with a wet mass of hair there gaped crookedly a wide mouth full of fangs. The water filled it, welled up in hoarse coughs, ran down on each side of the jaws and down the hairy throat, soaked the black pelt of the enormous chest, naked under a torn check shirt, heaving convulsively with a play of massive ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... told you that she shall be free,—if she chooses to be free? But it is all one. You deal in subterfuges till you think it impossible that a man should be honest. You mine underground, till your eyes see nothing in the open daylight. You walk crookedly, till a straight path is an abomination to you. Four hundred a year is nothing to me for such a purpose as this,—would have been nothing to me even though no penny had been paid to me of the money which is my own. I can easily understand what it is that makes the Earl so ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... they last came, where they began, through what agency they crookedly quivered and jerked, scores at a time, over the heads of the crowd, like a kind of lightning, no eye in the throng could have told; but, muskets were being distributed—so were cartridges, powder, and ball, ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... them, and she remembered remorsefully how she had laughed during recess when one of the girls had drawn on her slate a funny caricature of Miss Ketchum, with the two little curls that she wore on each side of her forehead standing up like ears, and her glasses on crookedly. She made up her mind that she would never laugh at her teacher again, but try to help her in every way she could by being good herself and setting others a ...
— Ruby at School • Minnie E. Paull
... room with but one little window, low down below the slope of the ceiling. But this room was to some extent furnished. There was a bed in it, and a rocking chair, and one or two pictures hanging crookedly upon the wall. Also, and this was the really important thing, upon that bed ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... family. Marriage at eleven could by no stretch of sophism be called a voluntary act. He recalled the long, sordid, sensational matrimonial comedy of which he had been the victim; the keen competition of the parents of daughters for the hand of so renowned an infant prodigy, who could talk theology as crookedly as a graybeard. His own boyish liking for Pessel, the rich rent-farmer's daughter, had been rudely set aside when her sister fell down a cellar and broke her leg. Solomon must marry the damaged daughter, the rent-farmer had insisted to the learned boy's father, who had replied ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... eastwards. The landscape below was level and unvaried, of a greenish hue, and much like that of Chick's own earth in the early spring-time—a vast expanse, level and sometimes dotted with opalescent towns and cities. Ribbons of silver cut through the plain at intervals, crookedly lazy and winding, indicating a drainage from north to south or vice versa. Looking back to the west, he could see the great, golden sun, poised as he had seen it that morning, a huge amber plate on the rim of ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... this out a blessing. It was bad enough being "so rich" at the Silts; here he was more ashamed of it than ever. In a few weeks he would come of age and his money be his own. What a pity things were so crookedly arranged. He did not want money, or at all events he ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... other hand, the wild preachers of unrest and discontent, the wild agitators against the entire existing order, the men who act crookedly, whether because of sinister design or from mere puzzleheadedness, the men who preach destruction without proposing any substitute for what they intend to destroy, or who propose a substitute which ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... learn it easily enough; but strange to relate, their minds are not straightened for that; they perceive the truths of geometry; but they do not learn to weigh probabilities; they have got into a habit; they will reason crookedly all their lives, and ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... kissing thy maiden aunt, Jacques," she told him. "Now, with thee—" They looked at each other eloquently, and Peter Champneys, whose eyes had followed the girl, smiled crookedly. An unaccountable gloom descended upon him. All these lusty young men shouting and laughing around him, all these handsome, ardent young women, snatched what joy from life they could; they lived their hour, knowing how brief that hour must be. They ate to-day, starved to-morrow; but they were ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... by St Paul's and went down, at a long angle, almost to the water's edge, through some of the crooked and descending streets which lie (and lay more crookedly and closely then) between the river and Cheapside. Passing, now the mouldy hall of some obsolete Worshipful Company, now the illuminated windows of a Congregationless Church that seemed to be waiting for some adventurous Belzoni to dig it out and discover its history; ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... he has established new rules. Thou indeed, O Agni, reignest by thy own nature over the heavenly and over the terrestrial world as a shepherd takes care of his cattle. These two variegated, great goddesses striving for gloriousness, the golden ones who move crookedly, have approached thy sacrificial grass. Agni! Be gratified and accept graciously this prayer, O joy-giver, independent one, who art born in the Rita, good-willed one, whose face is turned towards us from all sides, conspicuous ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... undiscovered, the shelter of the glen. Here, under the overhanging hill, Burl could walk upright, and that for the first time since quitting the opposite rim of the valley, if we may except when chin-deep in water he was fording the river. Down the glen, with twisted current winding crookedly among the rocks, came bubbling a little brook, thus serving to muffle the sound of the black hunter's footsteps, as now with swift and powerful strides he ascended into the depths of the hills. When he came to where the two ravines united to form the larger glen, he took the more easterly one, which, ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... what makes you walk so crookedly?" "Oh, my nose, you see, is crooked, and I have to ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... came in from the street, stamping crookedly under his stone of coal, heard her words. He dropped his load promptly on the floor and hurried to her side to see. He mauled the edges of the paper with his reddened and blackened hands, shouldering her aside and complaining that he ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... the gods who dwell on Olympus, and whenever anyone hurts her with lying slander, she sits beside her father, Zeus the son of Cronos, and tells him of men's wicked heart, until the people pay for the mad folly of their princes who, evilly minded, pervert judgement and give sentence crookedly. Keep watch against this, you princes, and make straight your judgements, you who devour bribes; put crooked judgements altogether ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... dropped, he stared unblinkingly, and purple veins bulged crookedly on his seamed forehead. He was bereft of the power of movement. He stood stock-still, ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... soldiers, who apparently wished him to be a witness of the whole affair. Andre's body lay there, huddled up in a pool of drying blood, that glistened under the electric light. One of his legs was bent crookedly under him, and Lawrence had a strange mad impulse to thrust his way forward ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... labyrinthine passages, just wide enough for two slim persons to pass side by side. The rough wooden walls were neither painted nor stained, and the knot-holes were stuffed with rags. Here and there a rude door was open, hanging crookedly on its hinges, while the occupant talked with a friend outside, or prepared for an expedition, laden with kitchen utensils, coal and food, to the common cooking-place of the rabbit colony—a queer and dismal set of iron shelves, long and narrow, sticking out from ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... a plain arch, while 160 is a tented arch. This differentiation is necessary because, if the first pattern were printed crookedly upon the fingerprint card so that the ending ridge was nearer the horizontal plane, there would be no way to ascertain the true horizontal plane of the pattern (if the fissure of the finger did not appear). In other words, there would be no means of knowing that there was sufficient rise to ...
— The Science of Fingerprints - Classification and Uses • Federal Bureau of Investigation
... blue cotton frock, and a brown mushroom hat, with a wreath of wild roses which had somewhat too obviously been sewn on in a hurry and crookedly; and she looked far more like a village schoolgirl than a young lady who was shortly to make her debut in London society. But he was struck with the extraordinary brilliancy of her complexion, transparent and pure as it was, in the ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... violent jerk he brought her round toward him. Then it was that there met my eyes a quite distressing sight: this exquisite creature, blushing, glaring, exposed, with a pair of big black-rimmed eyeglasses, defacing her by their position, crookedly astride of her beautiful nose. She made a grab at them with her free hand while ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... crookedly up a hill, as it left the streets of the town behind. The scattered tents extended for a mile in this direction, the squares of silent canvas, like so many dice, cast on the slopes by a careless fate that had cast man with ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... light had leapt to full brilliancy. An uncertain hand pulled the shade down crookedly. As the young man turned for a last look at the house he perceived a shadow hurriedly passing and repassing the lighted window. Then all at once the shadow, curiously huddled, stooped and was gone. There was something sinister in the sudden disappearance of that active shadow. Jim Dodge watched ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... an angular woman who walked a little crookedly, throwing one hip into ungainly prominence as she went. Her face, too, was brown as a russet apple, with a pleasant hard redness on the cheeks. She had white teeth, brown eyes, and an honest expression. But people said she was a difficult ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... in about a quarter of a mile one found it issuing out of a lovely little meadow, through which it meandered crookedly, its course marked out ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... smiling crookedly. "You mustn't mind me. I'm sort of nervous, I guess. And you mustn't hop up and down in a boat that way. You set still and I'll fetch ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... middle of the ploughed-up plain she saw people in black walking slowly and crookedly behind a coffin that went staggering on black legs under a black pall. She tried not ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... led crookedly among the pines that grew thickly in this sheltered hollow, until presently, after half an hour of rough going, they came upon a small natural clearing, rock-bound ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... exactly see the dirt (except on the cheap, unbleached "damask" flung crookedly over the black oilcloth nailed onto table tops); but, like a cowardly ghost that dares not show itself, in some secret, shuddering way the squalor was able to make its presence felt. Now and then a black beetle pottered across the oilcloth-covered floor; and though a black beetle may happen anywhere, ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... limpingly. There is nothing the Foanna can do to me which is worse than what the Shadow has already done. Choosing to follow you I may stand up to face Zahur in his own hall, show him that the blood of his House has not been drained from my veins because I walk crookedly!" ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... apple tree that had first attracted his attention when he had looked out of the little window of his room on the day of his arrival. The whole of its trunk was evergrown with dry moss, its bare, rugged branches, sparsely covered with reddish leaves, rose crookedly, like some old arms held up in supplication. Nejdanov stepped firmly on to the dark soil beneath the tree and pulled out the object he had taken from the table drawer. He looked up intently at the windows of the little ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... down from the bench; tied insecurely and crookedly to the tentpole, the Union Jack hung limp on the windless air. "If only I could do things like that!" he thought, as he carried the ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... bullets began to whicker around him. He dodged behind the ship, then ran crookedly for cover. By great good luck, he was not hit. His beast-men hurried ...
— The Devil's Asteroid • Manly Wade Wellman
... about women, who played an equally minor role in his life and in his books. This may be partly because his personal appearance was not prepossessing. He is described by a contemporary as "a little man with legs too short for his body. He walked crookedly; he was clumsy, ill-dressed, and rather ridiculous-looking, with his long lock of hair flapping on his forehead, and ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... heart beat normally it was roused again, this time by the sight of a human form indeed, the form of Esther, the wind blowing her skirts before her, hurrying along the road to which the signpost so crookedly pointed. Mark who had been climbing higher and higher now felt the power of that wind full on his cheeks. It was as if it had found what it wanted, for it no longer whispered and lisped among the boughs of the blackthorn, ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie |
