"Deviltry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on his lips, turned to the Minister: "Play him, Dewani, as you love us. There is some rare deviltry afloat." ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... upon the gently rolling waters. He was half hidden by a davit, so that two men who approached along the deck did not see him, and as they passed Tarzan caught enough of their conversation to cause him to fall in behind them, to follow and learn what deviltry they were up to. He had recognized the voice as that of Rokoff, and had seen that his companion ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... rustics, who seemed more intelligent than his fellows, and who had a good-humored deviltry in his young face and big blue eyes, began an excellent imitation of Dr. Nash's exhortation to submission and obedience delivered upon the last instruction day for servants, and soon had his audience of two guffawing with laughter. The mulatto and the convict edged by imperceptible ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... observed on her face prior to Dan Storran's appearance upon the scene. But even when she smiled and talked, playing the men off one against the other with a deft skill that was inimitable, there seemed a curious new hardness underlying it all—a certain reckless deviltry for which Gillian was ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... Greasers—breakin' through the shrubbery to the back of the house. That was while Stewart was ridin' out to the mesa. Then this lad seen your servants all runnin' down the hill toward the village. Now, heah's the way Gene figgers. There sure was some deviltry down along the railroad, an' Pat Hawe trailed bandits up to the ranch. He hunts hard an' then all to onct he quits. Stewart says Pat Hawe wasn't scared, but he discovered signs or somethin', or got wind in some strange way that there was in the gang of bandits some fellers he didn't want to ketch. ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... attending her; so Sophy was alone in the house with big Tom, who took the opportunity to put his big prick into Sophy's little cunt, get her in the family way, threaten to murder her if she ever told, to turn Hester into the streets, and do any other amount of deviltry. Sophy was frightened of Tom and at first of her sisters knowing about her swelling belly, till it was found out. All was quite probable. I believed it implicitly. The size of Tom's prick, and the number of times he ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... Tautira, from Ori-a-Ori to Matatini, had the fullest confidence that Tufetufetu had shown them a miracle, and that it was not evil; but to the American and European missionaries the Umuti was deviltry, the magic of Simon Magus and his successors, This was shown clearly in the statement of Deacon Taumihau of Raiatea, which I give in ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... quizzing shank of a son, Jefferson, who lived upon quinine, ague and deviltry; and there were the two daughters, Fanchon and Virginia. The latter was three years older than Fanchon, as dark as Fanchon was fair, though not nearly so pretty: a small, good-natured, romping sprite of a girl, who ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... but Weary would have ruined the horse with harshness, but Weary was really proud of his deviltry and would laugh till the tears came while he told of some new and undreamed bit of cussedness in ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... a spirit of deviltry had entered once more into Long Jim and his mates. A tactless remark on the part of one of the deputies had set alight once more the smouldering fire of resentment which the cowboys had all the time felt against them. At a word from ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... himself into the lower branches of the tree. Little Gazan ceased to insult him; his expression of deviltry changed to one of apprehension, which was quickly followed by fear as Toog commenced to ascend toward him. Teeka screamed to Gazan to climb higher, and the little fellow scampered upward among the tiny branches which would not support the weight of the great bull; but nevertheless ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of accident and watched him handle the machine with the skill of a master. She could understand now the spirit of deviltry in a chauffeur who knows his business. It seemed a wicked, cruel thing from the ground—this swift plunge of a car as if bent on murder. But now that she felt the sure, velvet grip of the brake in a master's hand, she saw that the danger ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... centre. This blinding atom of white heat lit up a hand hardly moving, a pen continually poised, over a disc of snowy paper; and on the other side, something that lay handy on the table, reflecting the light in its plated parts. It was Raffles at his latest deviltry. He had not heard me, and he could not see; but for that matter he never looked up from his task. Sometimes his face bent over it, and I could watch its absolute concentration. The brow was furrowed, and ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... to forgive Fourier the unmitigated slander upon the moon. I began to suspect that was the only influence alive since the sun lights men to cheating and deviltry; and the moon recalls the sweetest remembrance and best hope. After our evening at Almira's it lighted me home with such forgiving splendor that I could have fallen on my knees in the snow and have prayed its pardon if it would not have ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... nature-religion such as was that of India, the practice of demonology, witchcraft, etc., must have been an early factor. But, while this is true, it is clearly impossible to postulate therefrom that the hymns recording all this array of cursing, deviltry, and witchcraft are themselves early. The further forward one advances into the labyrinth of Hindu religions the more superstitions, the more devils, demons, magic, witchcraft, and uncanny things generally, does he find. Hence, while ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... both left for the war. At once General Anderson had promised immunity from arrest to every peaceable citizen in the State, but at once the shiftless, the prowling, the lawless, gathered to the Home Guards for self-protection, to mask deviltry and to wreak vengeance for private wrongs. At once mischief began. Along the Ohio, men with Southern sympathies were clapped into prison. Citizens who had joined the Confederates were pronounced guilty of treason, and Breckinridge was expelled from the Senate as a traitor. Morgan's great raid ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... work," said his visitor. "Arson, for the Fatherland. All supplies for the Allies, you see. I've got other similar lists, here, all German deviltry. And they're only commencing. If we go ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... say, and that I do all the deviltry and Henri gets sent to depot for it." He had called for something to eat, and looked up from ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... the searcher for the truth face to face with the very witnesses who have left behind them, in the attested records, the ludicrous or solemn, the pitiable or laughable memorials of their own folly, delusion, or deviltry, which marked them then and now ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... bargained with Anicetus, admiral of the fleet, to construct a ship so that, when certain bolts were withdrawn, the craft would sink and tell no tale. This was a bit of daring deviltry never before devised, and by turn, Nero chuckled in glee and had cold sweats of fear as he ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... "Not within a dozen leagues. But stop a bit—it is just possible that Aunt Jo can manage the matter. Aunt Jo is the sister of my wife's mother, and one of the cleverest witches in the country. She stands very high in her profession and is thoroughly schooled in every branch of deviltry; and with the exception of my wife's mother, I can think of no person whose society is less desirable. But one day in each year she takes a day off, during which she is as affable and benevolent an old dame as ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... deviltry are yu up to now?" he asked. Buck leaped from his mount, followed by the others, and shoved his sombrero back on his head as he started to ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... blunt as this concerning Allan. Besides, how nobly he had spoken of Bernal. Then she wondered why it should seem noble, for Nancy would be always a creature to wonder where another would accept. She saw it had seemed noble because Bernal must have been up to some deviltry. ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... things, but the main one was that I nearly passed out on account of some deviltry. But I'd better ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... something was doing. 'Course I didn't know what. I'll not claim I did, but I was sure there'd be a job for the coroner before night. Blister come into the store just after he left. I said to him, 'Who's that big black guy?' He says, 'Jake Houck.' 'Well,' I says, 'Jake Houck is sure up to some deviltry.'" ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... mornin'. The kids have won him. I reckon he needs that sort of cheer. Let them have him. Then after a while you fetch him out to the wheat-field. Lenore, our harvestin' is half done. Every day I've expected some trick or deviltry. But it ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... anything had happened she would always blame herself, thought McLean ironically.... The unthinking deviltry of the young scoundrel!... When he found him he'd have a ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... three stones," explained the captain. "I ain't sure just what it means, but Thirkle ain't the man to leave such work to Buckrow. You can bet Thirkle will know how to find the gold again without asking Buckrow for the bearings. There is some deviltry afoot, and my best guess is that the pirates ain't getting along none too well among themselves ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... the type of gentleman he is, and the fact that you ran into him immediately afterwards, and especially the fact that he actually does possess an old rook rifle. He thinks he may have done it out of sheer Irish deviltry, you offering so convenient a target, just as they pot landlords in his own happy country. A man can hardly have drunk as heavily as he must have done without upsetting his brain a bit, and this theory seems to ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... tug at the side—, two muscular brown hands gripped it close to my left, and a sleek, black, wet head showed its top between them. Two bright, blue eyes that held deep within them a laughing deviltry looked into mine, and a long, lithe body drew itself gently over the thwart and seated its ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... quarters without paying any attention to the interruption, or knowing anything of the character of what had occurred. But one of the candidates, perhaps by way of excuse for his failure, wrote to his parents some account of the "deviltry" in which my classmates had indulged that day. That report found its way to the War Department, and was soon followed by an order to the commandant of cadets to investigate. The facts were found fully to exonerate me from any participation in or countenance of the deviltry, except that I did not ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... Yet the advocate of Lynch Law pictures this humble fellow, this man who is afraid to attempt to defend his own home, as a reckless dare-devil, keeping the whites in constant terror. How incompatible these two traits of character. No; it is not the reckless dare deviltry of the Negro that terrorizes the South, but the conscience of the white man whose wrong treatment of a defenseless people fills him with fear and intensifies his hatred. He is determined to fill to overflow ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... we come into the mountains looks as if he was a friend to us all. I can't help saying that, but it mustn't be furgot that the whole bus'ness may be meant to close our eyes, and that he's got some deviltry in mind back of it all, that neither of ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... himself that he would hand Dick over to the justice of the peace, to be detained at the house of refuge, if he didn't give up his evil designs. But, when that young aspirant appeared, so soon as his aunts had gone, and reminded Jack of years of intimate companionship in dare-deviltry, the elder saw that his own safety would be in flight, and that night, his company was removed to Warchester. There in the great camp, surrounded by sentinels, his Acredale cronies were shut out, and Jack began in earnest ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... the river whin ye had good cause to lave me be, I'll tell ye a thing or two for the good av yer soul. Thing number wan is that ye're not Gavitt; ye're no more like him than I am. Let that go, an' come to thing number two; ye've been up to some deviltry. How do I know? Because, at the last landing below this a little man comes aboard an' spots you. Is that all? It is not. Whin the Belle Julie swings in, he's the first man off, making a clane jump av a good tin feet from the engine-room guards. I ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... said: "Parents transmit deviltry to children and then punish them for it." Instance after instance of such cruelty could be cited. Why should parents expect their children to be better ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... Mademoiselle's chamber, I have no doubt," he announced, "I will leave you, then, while I see what deviltry you have ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... one child, a daughter, said to have been as beautiful as the mother, and as wild and reckless as the father. Out of pure deviltry, as it would seem, this girl ran away from her boarding-school in company with an unprincipled young play-actor, who afterward abandoned her. Soon after this my dear father, who had known her parents and herself, too, met and recognized her under the most painful circumstances. ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... confess the fondness I had for the Sunday-school. I don't want any one to think I am laying claim to the record of having always been a good little boy; nor that everything I did was wise. No; I confess I did my share of deviltry, that some of my deeds were foolish, and (to use the slang of that time) I often got it in the neck. Once I bantered a big fat boy to a fight. He chased me and I ran and crawled into a place so narrow that ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... unfaithful to the great trust imposed on them should be smoked out, followed back to the wards which had elected them, and exposed to the people who were behind them. Their names should be pilloried in the public press. The customary hints as to Cowperwood's deviltry and trickery should ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... frosty air; the yells and songs of the carousers were echoed back from the opposite shore of the river. The chill atmosphere, the lowering sky, and the approaching night could not touch the blood of that wild crowd. Their faces glowed and their eyes sparkled; they were ready for any deviltry which ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... more than enough, and is guilty of peccadilloes with the fair sex; yet speaks most affectionately of his wife, and is a fond and careful father. He is a tall, thin, hard-featured man, with a sly expression of almost hidden grave humor, as if there were some deviltry pretty constantly in his mind,—which is probably the case. His brother tells me that he was driven almost crazy by the loss of his wife. It appears to me that men are more affected by the deaths of their wives than wives by the deaths of their husbands. ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Banneker!" Was it sheer delight in deviltry, or amusement at his direct and unstrategic method that sparkled in her face. "You surely don't credit the silly ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... deliberately sabotaged, he was planning for us to use our canteens in the preserve. That is lion country and there are long distances between springs. This is jungle below us and there is a source there I think we can safely tap. But first I must find Nymani and prove to him that this is truly deviltry of a sort, ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... getting terribly sharp these days! But among the real giants of business you might have thought yourself in a society of revolutionists; they would tear up the mountain tops and hurl them at each other. When one of these old war-horses once got started, he would tell tales of deviltry to appall the soul of the hardiest muck-rake man. It was always the other fellow, of course; but then, if you pinned your man down, and if he thought that he could trust you—he would acknowledge that he had sometimes fought the enemy with the ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... He was more than well named. His black eyes were full of good-humoured deviltry. He was a type, in his picturesque buckskin, familiar enough among the trail men of the Northland. Tough, as his nickname suggested, hard, unscrupulous, ready for anything that the gods of fortune passed down to him, nothing ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... they do it because it's bad and not because it's sanctimonious, you bet. Then there are other girls who'd cut your throat with a razor while you're asleep. You bet they wouldn't be doing that if it was considered good. All men have got deviltry in 'em, and all women mischief. The women like the men for the deviltry, and it's the mischief in women that plays the devil with the men. It don't appear on the surface, but ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... pleased to do anything but deviltry," protested Bronson. "Oh, I suppose Jim'll fall down, and we'll have to fire him—but I wish we could git a good teacher that would git hold of Newt the way ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... and stated that some deviltry was afoot, something vastly different from Blome's open intention of meeting ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... miles the traces have to be unloosened and extricated from the most abominable tangle that it is possible to conceive. This comes from a habit the dogs have of constantly running under and over the other traces to avoid the whip, or in some cases merely from a spirit of pure deviltry. ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... Metcalf, that don't understand it. It's nothing but a piece of military deviltry. Why, my innocent sir, Armstrong's confinement is only a sham—it doesn't mean anything—Cleveland told me so himself—he will be free to-night. I shouldn't wonder if they were drinking and carousing together now. Bless you, ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Love in '76 - An Incident of the Revolution • Oliver Bell Bunce
... back of those nasty grins of the ambassadors," he reflected. "I wonder what deviltry they're ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... cried Tansey, jubilant at his own temerity. "What deviltry are you up to now, Peek? Back streets and a ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... going to fire Syvorotka and put you in charge of a little FIRING SQUAD when we get to our camping ground at Ekaterinburg!' were his exact words, half whispered, half insinuated and wholly growled across the table in the diner.... With assumed hostility I actually barked: 'The dirtier the deviltry the more diverting!'... He opened his eyes widely like one emerging from a solemn drunk and WINKED knowingly as he shook my hand.... 'You know where Kerensky got his orders to release our fellows, of course,' he whispered. 'I guess you KNOW why he sent some people ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... before the war, and that's about all you do know yet. One bitter cold night I was going my rounds for the last time, when, as I turned a corner, I saw there was a trifle of work to be done. It was a bad part of the city, full of dirt and deviltry; one of the streets led to a ferry, and at the corner an old woman had an apple-stall. The poor soul had dropped asleep, worn out with the cold, and there were her goods left with no one to watch 'em. Somebody was watching 'em. however; a ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... said, "You are the most lucky outfit I ever saw. Any other tribe of Indians this side of the Rocky Mountains would not have left one of you to have told the tale, and it is just such darned fools as that man that stir up the Indians, to do so much deviltry." ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan
... at the wizened little rogue. Here was a new side to the amiable idealist! Apparently there was a streak of fearless deviltry in him besides his gentle love of books. I'm bound to say that now, for the first time, I really admired him. I had burnt my own very respectable boats behind me, and I rather enjoyed knowing that he, too, could act briskly ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... deviltry he braved; 'N' scores an' scores of white men's lives he saved. Just for that, his name should be engraved. But it won't be! U. S. gov'ment dreads Men who're ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... of Amneran about some deviltry or another in which I prefer to take no part. I now regret that I flung away a cross in this neighborhood so very recently, and trust the action was understood. If my wife had not made a point of it, and had not positively insisted upon it, I would never have thought of doing such ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... that? Don't we jug sons every day for some deviltry or other? Do you suppose you are the only father whose son is ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... as lively as Bill Greenleef he wood have cougt us. well he went round the house and then old Missis Hobbs she came to the door and said what is it William, and he said it is some more of that Purington boys deviltry, and she said i wood speek to his father and old Hobbs he said he wood and then they went in. jest as we was going to ring the bell agen a man come walking quick down the street and went up to the door and rung the bell and jest as the bell rung ...
— 'Sequil' - Or Things Whitch Aint Finished in the First • Henry A. Shute
... itself, under cover, and all that any of us has been able to get is an occasional small fish. We could never land the big fellows. In fact, we have never found the slightest material proof of what we are morally certain is the truth, that World Steel is back of a lot of deviltry all over the country. The little fellows who do the work either don't know anything or are afraid to tell. I'll see if I can find out what they are doing with the stuff they stole, but I'm not even sure of doing that. You can't plant instruments on that bunch—it would be like trying to stick a pin ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... the night had added to the vivid colouring of her rouged lips and cheeks. Her body was sleek and sinuous in its silken vesture; arms and shoulders were startlingly white; and when she turned, facing Aldous, her black eyes flashed fires of deviltry and allurement. ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... "There is some deviltry afloat," said he. "I was in the House of Commons last night, and there I saw the defendant's ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... no half-tones in Mrs. Master's judgment; everything was painted in coal blacks or glittering whites. She saw no mediums in character; he who was not good in every particular was capable of most sorts of deviltry, in ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... Black. Ha, ha, ha, ha! I can hear him still, with the sweat running off his face like oats spilling from a feed bag. I says to Paddy, 'Rub his nose a bit,' for I could see it was more nervousness with the horse than sheer deviltry. 'With what?' says Paddy, 'the hammer? Be gor! You're right, though,' says he, and with that he tries to put a twister on Diablo's nose. Holy mother! Diablo reached for him, and lifted the shirt clean off his back. Say, there ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... I kin prove anything 'clusive," resumed Perkins, "en I don't s'pose it ud be best ef I could. Ef she was up ter such deviltry, of co'se you don't want hit gen'ly known. Bigger ossifers 'n you ud have ter notice it. Ef I was in yu shoes howsomever, in huntin' shy game, I could use sech a clar s'picion agin her en be mo' on my gyard inter ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... course, some deviltry among cherry trees and apple orchards—some lawlessness born of sheer exuberance and superb health—some malicious trespassing, some harrying of unpopular neighbours. But not ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... promising to assist the former galley-slave in carrying out some deviltry to save himself from being unmasked, Jane disappeared. Anselmo regarded it as a new evidence of ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... was stolen, my fences broken down, and everything that vile men could imagine or work up by studying deviltry was done to make life a burden to me. I had raised over seven thousand bushels of corn, and everyone had a good crop. I had a large lot filled up in the husk, and I let my cattle run to it so as to keep them fat during the winter, that I might drive them ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... think you know? I'm afraid you've kinda taken it for granted I'd be mixed up in any deviltry you happened to hear about. I've got in bad with you—I know that—but just the same, I hate to be accused of everything that takes place in the country. All this is sure interesting news to me. Whereabouts was they taken ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... couriers and trains, but they don't keep a lookout for pony tracks. The chances are that their crossing would not be discovered for twenty-four hours or so, and as to the news being wired to us here, those reds would never give us a chance. The first news we got of their deviltry would be that they had cut the line ten or twelve miles this side of Laramie as they came ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... projects already under way. This was the signal. From all the stock-market sub-cellars and rat-holes of State, Broad, and Wall streets crept those wriggling, slimy snakes of bastard rumors which, seemingly fatherless and motherless, have in reality multi-parents who beget them with a deviltry of intention: "George Westinghouse had mismanaged his companies"; "George Westinghouse, because of gross extravagance, had spread himself and his companies until they were involved beyond extrication ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... silence," exclaimed Gummidge. "Why did the redskins stop firing so suddenly? Mark my word, Carew, there's a piece of deviltry brewing. I'm afraid not ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... these hyar mountings er not, but I knows thet the Lord didn't 'low fer men ter live blind, not seein' no beauty in nothin'; ner not feelin' nothin' but hate an' meanness—ner studyin' 'bout nothin' but deviltry. There hain't no better folks nowhar then my folks, an' thar hain't no meaner folks nowhar then them damned Hollmans, but thar's times when hit 'pears ter me thet the Lord Almighty hain't plumb tickled ter death with ther way things goes hyar ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... husbandman, many of them remain even to the present day loafers about the villages, maintaining themselves nobody seems to know how. The belief appears to be unanimous, however, that they are capable of any deviltry under the sun, and that, while their great specialty and favorite occupation is stealing horses, if this becomes slack or unprofitable, or even for the sake of a little pleasant variety, these freebooters from the Caucasus have no hesitation about turning highwaymen whenever a tempting ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... a crank, and humored him by coming within springing distance, just to keep him amused. Dashing young cock sparrows would show off before their particular hen sparrows, and earn a cheap reputation for dare-deviltry by going within so many yards of Edwin's ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... well-intentioned efforts of the doctor to deceive them and to cover up the shortcomings of some frail mortal. Many a poor fellow has to leave this world under a cloud of mistrust and a bad odor of past deviltry to which he is not entitled, and suffer all this in addition to all his physical ills, owing to his having been ornamented through life with an annoying prepuce,—the luckless heritage of having been born a Christian. Columbus in chains moralizing on the ingratitude of this world is nothing ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... of the prison—one Captain Bowes—was the best of his class it was my fortune to meet. Compared with the senseless brutality of Wirz, the reckless deviltry of Davis, or the stupid malignance of Barrett, at Florence, his administration ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... told of late visits; of strolls in the dusk of evenings on unfrequented streets; of little suppers after the opera; of all the small things that deviltry can suggest and malignity distort. Wickersham cared little for having his name associated with that of any one, and he was certainly not going to be more careful for another's name than for his own. He had grown more reckless since his return, but it had not injured him with his ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... feelin' you're up to some deviltry, Austin," she said uneasily, "though I don't know just what 'tis. I'm kinder nervous about this plan of them ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... emotion particularly inflammable. Other emotions also may be unwisely stimulated by art. In times of international friction, war-songs, "patriotic" speeches, or martial processions may arouse an unreasoning jingo spirit. The love of deviltry is fostered in boys by many of the penny novels, by sensational "movies" and newspaper "stories"; a famous detective has said that seventy per cent of the crimes committed by boys under twenty are traceable to "suggestions" received from these sources. ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... eyes as if thus endeavoring to get the thought firmly lodged in his brain. "He 's ben made a deputy sheriff. He kin turn that crowd o' toughs over thar into a posse, an' come over here with the whole law o' the State backin' them in any deviltry they decide on, even ter killin' off the lot o' us for resistin' officers. Es Sam Hayes said, if we shoot, we 'll be a-shootin' up Gulpin County. An' yet, by thunder, we 've plumb got ter do it, er git off the earth. I jest don't see no other way. Biff, ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... often partly right and partly wrong, and it is hard to choose between them, the dramatist usually simplifies the struggle in his plays by throwing the balance of right strongly on one side. Hence, from the ethical standpoint, the simplicity of theatre characters. Desdemona is all innocence, Iago all deviltry. Hence also the conventional heroes and villains of melodrama,—these to be hissed and those to be applauded. Since the crowd is comparatively lacking in the judicial faculty and cannot look upon a play from a detached and disinterested point of ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... exemplar of the more backward nations. Within, as well as without, the eternal rapping of knuckles and proclaiming of new austerities goes on. The American, save in moments of conscious and swiftly lamented deviltry, casts up all ponderable values, including even the values of beauty, in terms of right and wrong. He is beyond all things else, a judge and a policeman; he believes firmly that there is a mysterious power in law; he ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... surprised," said Mrs. Wellington grimly. "I always suspected Koltsoff of some deviltry. I hoped only that it would remain beneath the surface until after the ball. It did. I ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... this; would capsize in a jiffy. His bristles he'd scrape and his tusks he would whet Against it, I wish he were drowned in the Liffey! Whisht! Get away! He's so heavy and big. There! round the ladder he's playing the fooler. Ah! there's the rub. PATRICK scumfish that Pig! If he doesn't mean deviltry ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 16, 1892 • Various
... the Sadducees in old times: they won't believe in angel nor sperit, no way you can fix it; and ef things is seen and done in a house, why, they say, it's 'cause there's somebody there; there's some sort o' deviltry ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... bitterly of Ramsey Burr, but his mother pleaded with him, telling him it was his only chance, and that the deviltry Allen suspected ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... deviltry are all right in a horse or a woman, I'll grant you," Scott used to say when anyone derided the roan. "But the horse or the woman who lives with me has got to have ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... In sheer deviltry, Cummings did likewise, followed by Cook, and gave chase to the flying horseman. It was nearly dawn. The gray light was brightening the landscape, and, observing his game more closely, Cummings saw something familiar in his form; and when he glanced over his shoulder ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... my father's," continued Peter. "The bookcases have still some of the volumes he loved; he liked the low ceiling and the big fireplace, and always wrote here—it was his library, really. There opens the old drawing-room and next to it is Felicia's den, where she concocts most of her deviltry, and the dining-room beyond—and that's all there is on this floor, except the kitchen, ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... entirely participate in this roseate view it may have been because Enriquez, although a few years my senior, was much younger-looking, and with his demure deviltry of eye, and his upper lip close shaven for this occasion, he suggested a depraved acolyte rather than a responsible member of a family. Consuelo had also confided to me that her father—possibly owing to some rumors of our previous escapade—had forbidden any further excursions ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... lightly, "we're good enough for one another—he and I. He deserved what he got when he married me. But that's not saying I'm content to see him duck what's coming to him for to-night's deviltry. In fact, I mean to get him before he gets me. Are you game to ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... begins to look like it," responded Alfred. "There is some sort of deviltry around wherever we have happened to be ever since ...
— The Boy Volunteers with the Submarine Fleet • Kenneth Ward
... Springtown in search of business and diversion, to say nothing of visitors from the eastern and western seaboards; and hither, to the more secluded and less pretentious barroom, at least, come the better class of miners, those who have no special taste for bloodshed and other deviltry, and who occasionally go so far as to leave their firearms at home. Some slight prejudice, to be sure, was created among the independent Sons of Toil, when it was found that the Mountain Lion did not permit its waiters to smoke cigarettes while on duty; but such ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... with glistening eyes that got quite moist at the last. Minna went on to say that children's mothers was almost as bad, raging in to pick a fuss with her every time a child had been disciplined for some piece of deviltry. She said mothers give her pretty near as much trouble as the ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... mean," she broke in fiercely. "Don't dare to pretend to misunderstand me. I've saved you from my people. You shan't go back to them out of spite or dare-deviltry." ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... acquainted with these rough youths to know that some deviltry was preparing, and, already furious with his bride and distrustful of the future, his self-command at last gave way. Drawing Fan away from the crowd he ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... rather, what that he had been doing was he to be held to account for? Why should the colonel so eagerly ask where they could reach Blake? Time was when Sancho flattered himself that there was no deviltry going on in Arizona, except such as originated with the Indians, in which he had not at least the participation of full knowledge, yet here came two officials, hastening by stage instead of marching with military deliberation and escort, and they were in ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... anything about it? Had he not shot the buffalo roaming the plains? Had he not mingled in that wild life which, without moral lamp-posts, allures all the more because of a certain flavoring spice of deviltry? Every farmer's son in Marsden, Gould, Stornaway, and Lake Megantic, envied Donald that easy swaggering air, that frank, perhaps defiant outlook, which the girls secretly adored. Is it the village maiden alone who confesses to a secret charm ...
— The Hunted Outlaw - Donald Morrison, The Canadian Rob Roy • Anonymous |
