"Higgledy-piggledy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... face to the wall and pulled up two handfuls of the nice clean straw, and bored in them with his finger, and so made a scabbard, and sheathed his nose in it. And soon they were all asleep; men, maids, wives, and children all lying higgledy-piggledy, and snoring in a dozen keys like an orchestra slowly tuning; and Gerard's body lay on straw in Germany, and his ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... accumulation needs to be thrown pell-mell, higgledy-piggledy into the discard. The love lyrics of the poet, the magic of the emotions of Shelley and Poe, for instance, with their marvelous music and exquisite intonings of feeling, furnish us with important information. They are the facts ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... the Vatican frescoes that show Raphael's infallible instinct as a composer. He grows tired, exaggerates his mannerisms, gives a greater and greater share of the work to his pupils. The later Stanze are either pompous or confused, or both, until we reach the higgledy-piggledy of the "Burning of the Borgo" or that inextricable tangle, suggestive of nothing so much as of a dish of macaroni, the "Battle of Constantine," a picture painted after the master's death, but for which he probably left something in the way ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... I, with a highly-dissuasive inflection of voice. "Please not to-night; we are all higgledy-piggledy—at sixes and sevens! To tell you the truth, we have been cooking. I wonder you did not smell ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... Woman, or worse, of the pharisaical and satisfied woman, from good and bad books, from newspaper exploitations of divorce and scandal, from sly gossip with girls whose budget of marital wisdom is as higgledy-piggledy as her own. ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... saying that, for there's no company good enough for us," answered the higgledy-piggledy butler, with a quirk of the mouth; "but, as messengers go, I never seen one ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... architecturally much superior to the central portion of it. I remembered a dazzling glimpse of the White House as a distinguished little building. I feared that ere my next visit the indefatigable energy of America would have rebuilt Pennsylvania Avenue, especially the higgledy-piggledy and picturesque and untidy portion of it that lies nearest to the Capitol, and I hoped that in doing so the architects would at any rate not carry the cornice to such excess as it has been carried in other parts of the town. And, finally, I was slightly scared by the prevalence ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... the higgledy-piggledy point, as Mr. Howells suggested I do, I want to thank you, gentlemen, for this very high honor you are doing me, and I am quite competent to estimate it at its value. I see around me captains of all the illustrious industries, most distinguished ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Indian war-whoop, and threw himself right across the middle of the board, and shook it with all his might, so that it jiggled awfully right up and down. Before we had time to scream or to paralize our danger, over we all went, pell-mell, helter-skelter, higgledy-piggledy, down, down, down into the foaming water! What do you think of that, Clytie? Every single one of us—dogs, Jane, carriage, and all! 'Twas worse, a thousand-fole, than when we lost Lucille. Fan sat right down on the pebbles at the bottom of the sea, and gave herself up for lost. ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... walked back to the hotel he was strangely happy. He was touched by the higgledy-piggledy way in which those people lived; and in the smiling good-nature of Mrs Brevald, in the little Norwegian's fantastic career, and in the shining mysterious eyes of the old grandmother, he found something unusual and fascinating. It was a more natural life than any he had known, ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... beneath, had a perfect and entire view of the proscenium opening. And Edward Henry now proved this unprecedented fact by climbing to the topmost corner seat and therefrom surveying the scene of which he was monarch. The boxes were swathed in their new white dust-sheets; and likewise the higgledy-piggledy stalls, not as yet screwed down to the floor, save three or four stalls in the middle of the front row, from which the sheet had been removed. On one of these seats, far off though it was, he could descry a paper bag—probably containing sandwiches—and ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... one of the long row of carriages was so much as scarred. It was evident, however, that the trains had been unskilfully driven and that there had been checks and shocks upon the road, for the wounded, who had been bestowed along the benches at the beginning of the journey, were lying all higgledy-piggledy on the floor when they arrived. I helped to carry some of them from the train to the rough eight-wheeled springless arabas in which they were borne to hospital. In these wretched vehicles the wheel was not a cycle but an octagon, and the wounded, who were jolted along the street, ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... scene of amazing disorder. The walls were covered with books and charts; the floor was littered with manuscripts, mathematical instruments, huge folios, piled higgledy-piggledy, carpenter's tools, retorts, bottles of chemicals. In one corner, beside a door leading to his bedroom, stood a turning-lathe three inches deep in sawdust and shavings; in another, a human skeleton hung against the wall, its feet concealed ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of the new South Kensington Museum, and the great excavation, which was like the ditch of a fortress, and the stuff thrown out, which was like the rampart, was all dug in, or made of, river gravel. In this the men had found, lying higgledy-piggledy, with no two bones "belonging," quantities of bones of the beasts which used to graze on what I suppose was the Kensington "veldt," or perhaps flats by the riverside, during the time when the river's drift and brick earth was being deposited. The ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... "Higgledy-Piggledy," I have endeavoured to post each note to a suitable account, but some of Butler's leading ideas, expressed in different forms, will be found posted to more than one account, and this kind of repetition ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... ballad fragments. References to old ballads are numerous in the Elizabethan plays. Percy devoted the second book of his first series to "Ballads that Illustrate Shakspere." In the seventeenth century a few ballads were printed entire in poetic miscellanies entitled "Garlands," higgledy-piggledy with pieces of all kinds. Professor Child enumerates nine ballad collections before Percy's. The only ones of any importance among these were "A Collection of Old Ballads" (Vols I. and II. in 1723, Vol III. ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... enhanced by the fact that a number of paths paved with black and white stones, and each with a curious little kerb at the side, ran hither and thither in an orderly manner. The houses of the central village were quite unlike the casual and higgledy-piggledy agglomeration of the mountain villages he knew; they stood in a continuous row on either side of a central street of astonishing cleanness; here and there their particoloured facade was pierced by a door, and not a solitary window broke their even ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... I have just put them down "higgledy-piggledy," as we used to say when we were children. J——'s having to work in town, too far to come home except for an occasional week-end, the neighbors' dogs, servants, Bermuda grass, tenants, ants, the eccentricities of an adobe road during the rains, ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... the stage child up the practicable footway beside the waterfall of the fifth act. With so strong a helper, the business was speedily transacted. Soon the assayer's office was thronged with our belongings, piled higgledy-piggledy, and upside down, about the floor. There were our boxes, indeed, but my wife had left her keys in Calistoga. There was the stove, but, alas! our carriers had forgot the chimney, and lost one of the plates along the road. The ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rolling higgledy-piggledy over itself of course," said Lewis, flippantly, as he came up and sat down on the end of the sofa, being out of humour with himself and everybody in consequence of having utterly failed to gain the attention of Nita Horetzki, ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... boys set to work. Kits and cans, ballast and blocks, spare spars and tackle, higgledy-piggledy overboard they went, some on the shingle, some splashing into the tide, to be snatched ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... "Higgledy-piggledy, here I lie Picked and plucked, and put in a pie; My first is snapping, snarling, growling; My second ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... commissioners of the Navy, laid the foundation for that British fleet which has ever since played so large a part in the history of the world. He was the practical man of the commission, from whom James, Duke of York, afterwards, and very briefly King, took most of his advice. He reformed the higgledy-piggledy naval tactics of the time and taught the commanders to attack the enemy in line, the most important change in the sea annals of his country. Knighted in 1665 for service against the Dutch he failed of ...
— The Tryal of William Penn and William Mead • various
... papa, you do see," interposed Adela, "that a select life is preferable to that higgledy-piggledy city-square existence so many poor creatures are ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... pipe shared a plate on the top of the ricketty chest of drawers. I had to blow the ash off the fish. A paper of tea and a loaf of bread I found in a higgledy-piggledy mixture of clothes, books and papers. My godlike friend had carelessly put his hair-brush into the butter. The condition of the sole cooking utensil warred even against my sense of the fitness of gridirons, and I cleansed ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... the force moved towards the Mahdi's tomb and the Khalifa's chief residence or palace. The Sirdar and staff reined up before Abdullah's doorway, for the dervish leader's house was surrounded by an inner wall and various small buildings. We were in a higgledy-piggledy looking corner, surrounded by rough shelters or stables for animals, horses and camels, and the unfinished but covered approaches to the Mahdi's tomb. The staff sat on horseback facing the doorway and dwelling; I pulled in opposite beside an angle ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... the Zouaves repaired to their tents, and proceeded to pack their clothes away out of the lockers. They were not very scientific packers, and, in fact, the usual mode of doing the business was to ram everything higgledy-piggledy into their valises, and then jump on them until they consented to come together and be locked. Presently Jerry came trotting down with a donkey cart used on the farm, and under his directions the boys folded their blankets neatly up, and ...
— Red, White, Blue Socks. Part Second - Being the Second Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... And Timocles never gets hold of an effective idea; he can only ladle out trite commonplaces higgledy-piggledy—no sooner heard ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... round these semi-subterranean dwellings, which, as already stated, are chiefly to be found on the plains, for the purpose of carrying off surface water. It is hardly necessary to say that in these underground cells men, women, and children live together higgledy-piggledy, and that the result of such an existence is widespread disease. Marsh fever is one of the most prevalent and malignant maladies of the plains; there is hardly a family (and the families of the peasantry are very numerous) in which one or more children have not been carried off ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... mantel-piece, and half a dozen disreputable-looking pipes scattered about in painfully prominent positions—with one carpet slipper peeping from beneath the coal-box and the other perched on the top of the piano—with the well-known pictures to hide the dingy walls, and these dear old friends, your books, higgledy-piggledy all over the place—with the bits of old blue china that your mother prized, and the screen she worked in those far by-gone days, when the sweet old face was laughing and young, and the white soft hair tumbled in gold-brown curls ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... Phoebe kindly, "and better for your health: but you must not go far from the wagon, for I'm a fidget; and I have got the care of you now, you know, for want of a better. Come, Ucatella; you must ride with me, and help me sort the things; they are all higgledy-piggledy." So those two got into the wagon through the back curtains. Then the Kafir driver flourished his kambok, or long whip, in the air, and made it crack like a pistol, and the horses reared, and the oxen started and slowly bored in between them, for they ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... sure, ain't we, my sweet child?' replied that morsel of a woman, feeling in the bag with her head on one side and her eye in the air. 'Look here!' taking something out. 'Scraps of the Russian Prince's nails. Prince Alphabet turned topsy-turvy, I call him, for his name's got all the letters in it, higgledy-piggledy.' ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... fed it. There is little to encourage it. The very architecture of the streets shows that environment has done naught for it: ragged brickwork, walls finished anyhow with saggars and slag; narrow uneven alleys leading to higgledy-piggledy workshops and kilns; cottages transformed into factories and factories into cottages, clumsily, hastily, because nothing matters so long as "it will do;" everywhere something forced to fulfil, badly, the function of something else; in brief, the reign of the slovenly makeshift, ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... about two miles and dismounted for action. Soon they began to come up from three sides, and we retired again. They were pretty close, advancing higgledy-piggledy across the fields and firing. They shot abominably (nothing like the morning, from the houses, when they had all the ranges marked to a yard). We lost only about 20 horses, no men killed. "Hellfire Herbert" got his horse shot under him when they were within about 200 ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... boards from other regions. Cover the balance with thatch of long grass, and erect chimneys that just peer above the ridge poles. Scatter these buildings on a hillside next the water; arrange three-fourths of them in a single street, and leave the rest to drop wherever they like. Of course those in the higgledy-piggledy position must be of the poorest class, but you can make a few exceptions. Whitewash the inner walls of half the buildings, and use paper or cloth to hide the nakedness ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... Greek hospital. They were only cafes and large villas, unsanitary, stuffy, and overworked. The windows were never open, and through the huge sheets of plate glass could be dimly seen in the thick blue tobacco smoke a higgledy-piggledy crowd of beds. Often two men lay in one bed covered with their dirty great coats, while typhus patients and wounded men slept together. One man lay unconscious for several days in the window, his feet in his dinner-plate. At last he died, his feet still in the dinner. ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... two wives and eleven children—and at the bottom of each photograph he had written the date of birth and death—on the walls were framed texts and vile chromolithographs of Mozart and Beethoven. A little piano stood in one corner, a great violoncello in another; rows of books higgledy-piggledy, pipes, and in the window pots of geraniums. It was like being surrounded with friends. The old man could be heard moving about in the next room, and planing or hammering, and talking to himself, calling himself an idiot, or singing in a loud voice, improvising ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... so-called, "La Gioconda" seems almost washed in innocency, and if its music is at times highly spiced, it is at least frankly and simply melodious. Naturally he has followed his librettist in aiming at contrast, at higgledy-piggledy finales, at garish orchestration, at strenuous declamation in the dialogue not cast in melodic forms and at abrupt changes. But he has plenty, if not profound melodiousness. La Cieca's air, Enzo's romance, Laura's "Stella del Marinar," Barnaba's barcarole, ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... like compasses, armed with a huge bow, from which he is in the act of discharging a monstrous arrow. Then close by they draw, without any attempt at perspective, a square enclosure, in which they set down higgledy-piggledy a variety of animals, some of them sufficiently like nature to allow their species to be guessed at. In one corner, perhaps, is a sprig of something intended for a tree, and intimating that all this is supposed to take place in a wood. This hieroglyphical or algebraical method of 'taking off' ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... which I have observed for so long among the pines is the Bolboceras. Its burrows, scattered here and there, higgledy-piggledy with those of the Minotaur, are easy to recognise. The burrow of the Phalangist is surmounted by a voluminous rubbish-dump, the materials of which are piled in the form of a cylinder as long as the finger. Each of these dumps is a load of refuse and rubbish pushed outward by the ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... Thackerays, Charlotte Yonges, Charlotte Brontes, a Thomas Hardy or so, and some old school-books. She looked at the pictures, including a sampler worked by a deceased aunt, at the loud-ticking Swiss clock on the mantelpiece, at the higgledy-piggledy photographs there, at the new Axminster carpet, the piece of linoleum in front of the washstand, and the bad joining of the wallpaper to the left of the door. She missed none of the details which she knew so well, with such ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... Father Clapp very kindly offered to show Strong and me the native village, an invitation we made haste to accept. This village, if village it be, marches with the Christian town, so that we at once got into it, to find it a collection of huts put down higgledy-piggledy, with almost no reference to convenience of access. Streets, of course, there were none, nor even regular paths from house to house; you just picked your way from one habitation to the next as best you could, carefully ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... had was making our way through the mass of waggons and animals all mixed up higgledy-piggledy, and there has been no more excitement than if we had been walking through Dundee. We have got all we wanted to know. Their strength is about four thousand. They have six guns. They are building a stone wall along the brow of the hill, and they are cock-sure that they ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... heavens were darkened with a tempest of missiles. Bang! went the guns—whack! went the broadswords—thump! went the cudgels—crash! went the musket-stocks—blows, kicks, cuffs, scratches, black eyes, and bloody noses swelling the horrors of the scene! Thick thwack, cut and hack, helter-skelter, higgledy-piggledy, hurly-burly, head over heels, rough and tumble! Dunder and blixum! swore the Dutchmen; splitter and splutter! cried the Swedes; storm the works! shouted Hardkoppig Pieter; fire the mine! roared stout Risingh; tanta-ra-ra-ra! ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... maloca of Suba, the small forest of poles and hammocks seemed a higgledy-piggledy maze wherein was neither beginning nor end. Yet, as the newcomers took time to observe it, they presently found that the confusion was only apparent and that there existed an efficient and orderly arrangement. The hammocks, seemingly slung from any available pair of poles in utter disregard ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel |
