"Topsy-turvy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you are going to let that man turn every thing topsy-turvy, and the congregation out of the ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... concession to which weakness, it was agreed that I should call in about an hour at the office of the lawyer, whom (as he left the library) Uncle Adam should waylay and inform of the arrangement. I suppose there was never a more topsy-turvy situation; you would have thought it was I who had suffered some rebuff, and that iron-sided Adam was a generous conqueror ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was led to a corner of the corral, or stable yard, and tied. Then the foreman made ready to try to stay in the saddle longer than had any of his men, for when a bronco bucks it is like trying to hold on to a swing that is turning topsy-turvy. ...
— The Curlytops at Uncle Frank's Ranch • Howard R. Garis
... idea: turning cart-wheels, somersaults, and walking all about us on their hands, with feet in the air, to attract attention and elicit pennies. One little fellow gyrated about in a most marvelous style, keeping so persistently topsy-turvy as to grow black in the face, and we finally paid him to keep right side uppermost. Begging is reduced to a science in India, and our little party were beset, as by an army ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... nay, a single line, my dear sir, a sole and solitary line of verse might be romantic or classic, according as the humor took it. When we received this intelligence, we could not close our eyes all night. Two years of peaceful conviction had vanished like a dream. All our ideas were turned topsy-turvy; for it the rules of Aristotle were no longer the line of demarcation which separated the literary camps, where was one to find himself, and what was he to depend upon? How was one to know, in reading a book, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... with it her professional capacity, breaks down, and she dies in agony, leaving pathetic explanations of what has driven him away from her. A few points in this bare summary may be enlarged on presently. Even from it a certain resemblance, partly of a topsy-turvy kind, may be perceived by a reader of not less than ordinary acuteness to Manon Lescaut. The suggestion, such as it is, is quite frankly admitted, and an actual copy of Prevost's masterpiece figures not unimportantly in the tale.[355] Of the difference ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... know it, my darling; and if you had as much to do with Aunt Vi Truefitt as I have, you would realize how often my spirits turn topsy-turvy. I often hope that I'll be Englishized quickly, so that I may get back to my dear parents. But there, Molly ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... a sudden sharp tremor of the rocks about them; then the stones beneath their feet seemed to heave up and down. Their little universe was being turned topsy-turvy, it seemed to them. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Ozarks • Frank Gee Patchin
... 'representing a great sickness and mortality, wherein you may see the representation of people in their winding sheets, persons digging graves and sepultures, coffins, etc.;' and on another page another hieroglyphic representing a fire: two twins topsy-turvy, and back to back, falling headlong into a fire. 'The twins signify Gemini, a sign in astrology which rules London:' all around stand figures, male and female, pouring liquids (oil or water?) on the flames. When, therefore, the great fire of 1666 followed ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... the 30th of April, the town bands of Orleans were early afoot. From morn till eve everything in the town was topsy-turvy; the rebellion, which had been repressed so long, now broke forth. As early as February the citizens had begun to mistrust and hate the knights;[965] now at last they shook off their yoke and broke it.[966] Henceforth they would recognise no King's lieutenant, no ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... dreadfully because you all have been so naughty. Winthrop!—your finger! Instantly! Clemence, baby, where on earth did you acquire all that grime on your face and fists?" And to her brother: "Such a household, Phil! Everybody incompetent—including me; everything topsy-turvy; and all five dogs perfectly possessed to lie on that pink rug in the music room.—Have they been there ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... conducted with modesty and dignity. Those persons who indulged in secret debaucheries at least kept up a respect for appearances; but from the time that Maintenon's reign began, and the King's illegitimate children were made a part of the Royal Family, all was turned topsy-turvy. ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... rather Yeomanry life, its fatigues and worries, big and small, on men hitherto unaccustomed to such things, has been marvellous, and productive of a topsy-turvy dom of character, after Mr. W. S. Gilbert's own heart. To commence with, it is curious to note that in many cases men who claim to have roughed it in various parts of the world have been amongst the worst to stand the roughing here, ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... were as much at home in their new surroundings as if they had always lived there. The tent was pitched on the lawn, the large family of dolls was brought out under the trees, and the games, good times, and camp-fire cooking went on as if they had never been interrupted for an instant by the topsy-turvy work ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... clever indeed. If you would just turn it topsy-turvy, change all those bitter, truthful speeches into noble sentiments; make your Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs (who never has been a popular character) die in the last act instead of the Yorkshireman, and let your bad woman be reformed by her ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... ever saw—the man who turned all Europe topsy-turvy—was known only by one initial—and that your own, Nancy. Here! I will make you a more striking monogram than any of the other girls possess," and quickly, with a few skilful strokes of her pencil, Miss Trigg drew a single "N" surrounded by a ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... about— The condition in which the patient has been Is a thing quite awful to be seen. Not that a casual eye could scan This wondrous change by outward survey; It being, in fact, the interior man That's turned completely topsy-turvy:— Like a case that lately, in reading o'er 'em, I found in the Acta Eruditorum, Of a man in whose inside, when disclosed, The whole order of things was found transposed; By a lusus naturae, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... had first driven Norah's mother over the Billabong track; little and dainty and merry, while he had been as always, silent, but unspeakably proud of her. The little mother's grave had long been green, and the world had turned topsy-turvy since then, but the old track was the same, and the memory, and the pride, ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... uncannily that Jolyon would rather like to pay them—the chap was so loose. Besides, to claim damages was not the thing to do. The claim, indeed, had been made almost mechanically; and as the hour drew near Soames saw in it just another dodge of this insensitive and topsy-turvy Law to make him ridiculous; so that people might sneer and say: "Oh, yes, he got quite a good price for her!" And he gave instructions that his Counsel should state that the money would be given to a Home for Fallen Women. He was a long time hitting off exactly the right charity; but, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... travelers and strangers, among them, many ladies. We joined the group, and had a pleasant passage till getting into the bay, where an obstinate head wind tossed us up and down like a cork on the sea. Sea-sickness, in a crowded boat, and the retching of the waves, soon turned everything and every one topsy-turvy; every being, in fine, bearing a stomach which had not been seasoned to such tossings among anchors and halyards, was prostrate. At last the steamer itself, as we came nearer the head of the bay, was pitched out of the right channel and driven a-muck. She stuck fast on the mud, and we were all glad ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... club, to drive the ignorant and careless householder to keep his premises from becoming a nuisance. The newly-arrived, prospective citizen, or more often citizeness, fails to understand what it is all about—neither the words nor the pantomime convey an idea, except that this country is topsy-turvy anyway, for everything is different in ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards
... a legal revolt. That evening Madame Marion and her friends organized for the morrow a meeting of "independent electors" in the interests of Simon Giguet, the colonel's son. The morrow had now come and had turned the house topsy-turvy to receive the friends on whose independence the leaders of the movement counted. Simon Giguet, the native-born candidate of a little town jealously desirous to elect a son of its own, had, as we have ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... destined to be soon overlaid with metaphysical and religious accretions, so that the dialectical nerve and reasonableness of them were obliterated, and there survived only miscellaneous conclusions, fragments of wisdom built topsy-turvy into the new mythical edifice. It is the sad task reserved for historical criticism to detach those sculptured stones from the rough mass in which they have been embedded and to rearrange them in their pristine ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Hyde Brazzier, bowing profoundly and with great humility, "we be greatly surprised by what you tell us about the pearls, and we are very much obliged for your kindness, which the same is a great deal more than we expected; but it has set us all topsy-turvy, as we may say. If it's all the same, we would like to go and take a look at that same pearl-oyster bed, if ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... of others I got from the hotel to the hill in a wagon. The sight from our eminence was one that I shall never forget—that I can never fully describe. The whole world appeared to be topsy-turvy and at the mercy of an angry and destroying demon of the elements. People were floating about on housetops and in wagons, and hundreds were clinging to tree-trunks, logs and ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... with their hay, he explained. Towards the end of a week we caught our watchmaker, and obtained a key, but he would not let us pay for it. He said it was one of an old collection, and of no use to him. The etiquette of shopping in Germany seems to us rather topsy-turvy at first. In a small shop the proprietor is as likely as not to conduct business with a cigar in his mouth, even if you are a lady, but if you are a man he will think you a boor if you omit to remove your hat as ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... been through an earthquake in South America, when things about him were topsy-turvy, when the circus tent came tumbling down about him, and ring curbs went up into the air in most ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... aunt; and impressions were forming and opinions taking ground, under all the confused chatter about the journey, the train, the omnibus, and the City of Pride; opinions and impressions which were likely enough to get turned topsy-turvy in another day or two; but for the present ...
— What She Could • Susan Warner
... confidently out into the topsy-turvy corridors of the Niccola. He was about the size of a ten-year-old human boy, and features which were definitely not grotesque showed through the clear plastic of his helmet. His pressure suit was, engineering-wise, ...
— The Aliens • Murray Leinster
... the thirty-first of August, everything in the Rostovs' house seemed topsy-turvy. All the doors were open, all the furniture was being carried out or moved about, and the mirrors and pictures had been taken down. There were trunks in the rooms, and hay, wrapping paper, and ropes were scattered about. The peasants and house serfs carrying ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... "Get out, you topsy-turvy old humbug," cried Tom wrathfully. "Think I don't know you?" and he ran on, and caught up to his uncle as he was passing through ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... I'm in a crazy world. Everything's topsy-turvy. Even the streets have gone insane. They wind and twist until they cross their own tracks. I know I'll get lost looking for that French bakery. (He goes to the door.) ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... MacKim had other views of it. Even when at last he was relieved from duty he never closed an eye. The blowing out of the lamp had turned his ideas and hopes all topsy-turvy. His heart sang loud and turbulent within him. He had kissed other girls indeed before at kirns and country dances. He laughed triumphantly within him at the difference. They had run into corners and screamed and struggled, and held up ineffectual hands. And when his lips ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... heroes and engineers—also the land of mystery, the abode of intrigue, the cockpit of puerile nationalism, and the soul of all things topsy-turvy and contrary. It is a land for a brave soldier, a skilful engineer, or the tourist in search ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... Ned, "that men's heads do not grow out of their sides, or from their breasts, and that they do not walk topsy-turvy, with ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... that the war would knock some of this topsy-turvy nonsense out of us. Maybe it has. Sometimes I see on the faces of our commuters the unaccustomed agitation of thought. At least we still have the grace to call ourselves a suburb, and not (what we fancy ourselves) a superurb. ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... Dr. Sheepshanks, with a gleeful laugh. "I have made a discovery, sir—a great discovery. I happened to look out of the window, a moment ago, and I saw a couple of little chaps racing up and down, and playing at that topsy-turvy game you saw me trying just now. Their cheeks were so fat, and their frames so sturdy, that I feel convinced such exercises are the best promoters of health in the world; and as I am getting rather broken down myself, while I am finding out what is the best way for other people ...
— Funny Big Socks - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... which they have sacrificed the lives of so many thousand men, and have spent their own in hurry and trouble. Men have before them vast tracts of land uninhabited and uncultivated; and they turn mankind topsy-turvy for one nook of that neglected ground in dispute. The earth, if well cultivated, would feed a hundred times more men than now she does. Even the unevenness of ground which at first seems to be a defect turns either ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... even if she had been born of middle-class parentage. He laughed bitterly. Middle class. A homeless, countryless derelict, and he had the impudence to revert to comparisons that no longer existed in this topsy-turvy old world. He was an upstart. The final curtain had dropped between him and his world, and he was still thinking in the ancient make-up. Middle class! He was no better than a troglodyte, set down in a ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... is scornful of these as vieux jeu, that they have never been really improved upon except by the very obvious and unoriginal method common in clever-silly days, of simply reversing some of them, of "turning platitudes topsy-turvy," as not the least gifted, or most old-fashioned, of novelists, Tourguenief, has it. Perhaps the oldest of all, Havelok the Dane—a story the age of which from evidence both internal and external, is so great that people have not quite gratuitously imagined a still older Danish ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... a topsy-turvy world! Mr. Lloyd George is "the man who won the war," he who did nothing to prepare for it, and suggested some things that might have made it difficult to be won; while Lord Haldane, who did prepare for it, and whose work did save the whole world, is cast out of ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... facing the street, "I didn't cal'late to have Mis' Cullom hoof it up here the way she done. When I see what kind of a day it was I went out to the barn to have the cutter hitched an' send for her, an' I found ev'rythin' topsy-turvy. That dum'd uneasy sorril colt had got cast in the stall, an' I ben fussin' with him ever since. I clean forgot all 'bout ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... comfortably furnished, but evidently the professor, like so many other learned savants, did not know such a thing as "order" existed, for things were simply topsy-turvy. ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... a common, en passant, they saw, [p 26] And had heard she had lately come out of the straw. But the GOOSE of their tale not a word understood, And still cackled away to her terrified brood; While immers'd in a pond, to complete their ill luck, Topsy-turvy appear'd, at a distance, ...
— The Peacock and Parrot, on their Tour to Discover the Author of "The Peacock At Home" • Unknown
... one time thought of writing an Epic Poem upon Friedrich the Great, 'upon some action of Friedrich's,' Schiller says. Happily Schiller did not do it. By oversetting fact, disregarding reality, and tumbling time and space topsy-turvy, Schiller with his fine gifts might no doubt have written a temporary 'epic poem,' of the kind read an admired by many simple persons. But that would have helped little, and could not have lasted long. It is not the untrue imaginary Picture of a man and ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... though these have also been shown to lie along the path of largeness. There are, therefore, in self-sacrifice both negative and positive elements. But why select its name from the subordinate part? Why turn to the front its incidental negations? This is topsy-turvy nomenclature. Better blot the word self-sacrifice from our dictionaries. Devotion, service, love, dedication to a cause, —these words mark its real nature and are the only descriptions of it which its practicers will recognize. That damage to the abstract self which chiefly impresses the outsider ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... walk of over two miles to prepare myself for our sewing-circle! I met our sexton as I was coming home, and asked him to see what ailed one of the drawers of my desk that wouldn't shut. We had a terrible time with it, and I had to take everything out, and turn my desk topsy-turvy, and your letters and all my other papers got raving distracted, and all mixed up with bits of sealing-wax, old pens, and dear knows what not, when down comes A. from the school-room, to say that Mrs. Stearns had ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... exacting travellers, alone involved a daily recurring struggle, in which the softer emotions would have been altogether out of place, we may suppose. In the present instance she considered it a hard case that her house should be turned topsy-turvy at such an untimely hour, and its general propriety endangered thereby; and Madelon's grief, which at another time would have excited her compassion, had for the moment taken the unexpected form of determined opposition, and could only be looked upon as another element of disturbance. Madelon ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... thou hast not tumbled the bed topsy-turvy. I am glad to see thou hast yet some grace and manners in thy vocation. Now, Sir Messenger, to requite thee for this thy courtesy and forbearance, I will show thee a secret tabernacle, which all thy prying has not ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... I sometimes despair. Sir Lionel is an impossible man to shepherd. You ought to see his house at Finchley. A low, squat place completely hemmed in by trees. Damp as a swamp; smells like a jungle. Everything topsy-turvy. He only arrived to-day, and he is working and eating (and sleeping I expect), in a study that looks like an earthquake at Sotheby's auction-rooms. The rest of the house is half a menagerie and half a circus. He has a Bedouin groom, a Chinese body-servant, ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... sentiment that he introduced the rollicking bacchanal chorus in the third part. He expressed his feelings to a friend in the remark: "My head was so full of the nonsensical stuff that it all went topsy-turvy, and I therefore called the closing fugue the 'drunken fugue.'" Notwithstanding his many objections, when once he started, he worked hard,—so hard, indeed, that this continuous labor induced brain-fever and intense ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... woman? By what measure did she weigh her love? She took off her ducal coronet, and flung it on the platform of a clown! She took from her brow the Olympian aureola, and placed it on the bristly head of a gnome! The world had turned topsy-turvy. The insects swarmed on high, the stars were scattered below, whilst the wonder-stricken Gwynplaine, overwhelmed by a falling ruin of light, and lying in the dust, was enshrined in a glory. One all-powerful, revolting against beauty and splendour, gave herself ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... something to know you don't know," said Eleanor. "Not every one who sings out of tune could or would own as much. Oh, what a horrible, topsy-turvy world it is, to be sure! Here are you going to have the thing that I covet more than anything else in the whole wide world—singing lessons from a first-rate teacher, which you don't appreciate in the least—and here am I, compelled to waste the whole summer holidays doing nothing. And if you would ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... called me one side this afternoon and asked me, in a whisper, to buy for them a skillet and a pair of green belluses, with a sprig of flowers painted on them, and a brass nose. Who'd thought of a wedding setting her topsy-turvy! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... way," muttered Rachel; "shut the stable door after the horse is stolen. Folks never learn from experience till it's too late to be of any use. I don't see what the world was made for, for my part. Everything goes topsy-turvy, and all sorts of ways except the right way. I sometimes think ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... not with words, witty sayings, funny observations and topsy-turvy language alone that the writer works, when he constructs a vaudeville two-act. It is with clever ideas, expressed in laughable situations and actions, that his brain is busy when he begins to marshal to his aid the elements ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... that in my absence you could have behaved badly! Another in your place would have turned the house topsy-turvy, but you have only broken a pane of glass! God bless you for your considerateness. Go on in the same way and you will earn ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... schooners which carry on the St. Lawrence trade head up the bay. They work in close to shore, drop their anchors and wait for the tide to go out. It leaves them high and dry, and tilted sometimes at an angle which suggests that everything within must be topsy-turvy, until the vessel is afloat again. With a strong wind blowing from the north-east the bay is likely to be, at high tide, an extremely lively place for the mariner; a fact which helps perhaps to explain the sinister French ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... should so resemble each other? Am I the victim of an illusion of the senses? Have I recovered life only to lose reason? No; I know myself, I find myself the same; my judgment is firm and accurate, and can make its way in this world so new and topsy-turvy. It is on but one point that my reason wavers—Clementine!—I seem to see you again, and you are not you! Well, what's the difference, after all? If the Destiny which snatched me from the tomb has taken care ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... as it could be, but the philosopher, considering the point at which it has arrived, rather than the route by which it got there, will class it with them, for its idea of life is just theirs turned topsy-turvy. The nails of the sloth, instead of being hammered into hoofs on the hard ground, have grown long and curved, like those of a caged bird, and become hooks by which it can hang, without effort, in the midst of the leaves on which ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... each have a maid. Mr. Starkweather could not afford that luxury. But Hortense at once requisitioned one of the housemaids to wait upon her and of course Mrs. Olstrom's very carefully-thought-out system was immediately turned topsy-turvy. ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... approach with their smallest vessels, and that not near enough;—besides, their shot fell sometimes among our troops. It did some good, however! It broke the French lines, and raised our courage. Away it went. Helter-skelter! topsy-turvy! all struck dead, or forced into the water; the fellows were drowned the moment they tasted the water, while we Hollanders dashed in after them. Being amphibious, we were as much in our element as frogs, and hacked away at the enemy, and shot them down as if they had been ducks. The few who struggled ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... only he, that is, in spite of Hesiod, Homer, nay and Jupiter himself, divum pater atque hominum rex, the father of gods and men, at whose single beck, as heretofore, so at present, all things sacred and profane are turned topsy-turvy. According to whose pleasure war, peace, empire, counsels, judgments, assemblies, wedlocks, bargains, leagues, laws, arts, all things light or serious—I want breath—in short, all the public and private business of mankind is governed; without whose help all that herd of gods ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... nobody else could get a room in a crowded New York hotel, he could always obtain one. And she was fain to concede —she who had never known privilege—a certain intoxicating quality to this eminence. If you could get the power, and refused to take it, the more fool you! A topsy-turvy world, in which the stupid toiled day by day, week by week, exhausting their energies and craving joy, while others adroitly carried off the prize; and virtue had apparently as little to do with the matter as fair hair or a club foot. If Janet had ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... this time they jested. A joker pretended to stumble and set his foot in the middle of the canvas, while others trotted along the surrounding little paths, as if trying to find out which was the picture's top and which its bottom, and declaring that it looked much better topsy-turvy. ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... the late Pope, but he's cock of the walk now. He has jumped into favour all at once and can do as he pleases. How am I to oppose him? He may have secret authorization from the Vatican, for all I know. Everything's topsy-turvy now; you can't tell from day to day what may happen next. In the good old times one knew what to be ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... deliberate and merciless premeditation, that the only defense attempted by her counsel was madness, and the only alternative left to a righteous jury was a verdict which condemned the woman to death. Those mischievous members of the community, whose topsy-turvy sympathies feel for the living criminal and forget the dead victim, attempted to save her by means of high-flown petitions and contemptible correspondence in the newspapers. But the Judge held firm; and the Home Secretary held ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... and so am I on account of my health. In the mean time all goes topsy-turvy with me. The Herr[1] wants to have me with him, and Art is not less urgent in her claims. I am partly in Schoenbrunn and partly here; every day assailed by messages from strangers and new acquaintances, ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... enterprise which was aimed against the Spaniards; and, though the facts have no real connection with the Yazoo speculation, they may be briefly told here, especially since Stevens, in his "History of Georgia," turns them all topsy-turvy. ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... impossible. She'll try to turn us into fine ladies, and she'll talk about the dresses we should have, and she'll want father to get some awful woman to come and live with us. She'll want the whole house to be turned topsy-turvy." ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... they might be leaders, but they have no social weight in this topsy-turvy land, and though they have been employed in clerical work for generations they have no practical knowledge of affairs. A ship's clerk is a useful person, but he is scarcely the captain; and an orderly-room writer, ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... Giant's strawberry bed. What do you think, Mammy! There are ripe red berries and pretty blossoms, now! On the way home, we saw yellow dandelion blossoms. It isn't summer any more; it is frost-time. Everything seems topsy-turvy!" ...
— Grand-Daddy Whiskers, M.D. • Nellie M. Leonard
... large number of little slender willow-twigs between each of the main cross-knees, as shown by the thin lines in fig. 3. It is then fit for covering. Lift it up like a basket, and turn it topsy-turvy. ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... and a mighty host of clouds had followed them; and when the wind did come, it came in no moderate measure, but brought this awful storm upon its wings, which now raged as if all the powers of mischief had got loose, and were bent on turning every thing topsy-turvy ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... bolster of straw; it had neither heart, entrals, nor any thing, for the fairies belike had stollen him out of his cradle, and left that of straw instead of him. Give me credit, I beseech ye, women are craftier than we are, play their tricks by night, and turn every thing topsy-turvy. After this our tall fellow never came to his colour again, but in ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... precedent and without warning, the Emperor issued an Imperial Decree raising him to the Chinese equivalent of the peerage. Henceforth he belonged to the distinguished company of Iron Hatted Dukes—at least not he but his ancestors did, for this was no ordinary father-to-son patent of nobility. The topsy-turvy honour reached backward instead of forward, diminishing one rank ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... seized her. She would surprise him on his return by opening the door to him upon a house swept and garnished. She would show him that she could be of some use even in such a primitive topsy-turvy world as this into which Fate had ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... the boys of Cliffwood were a wild set and how, on Hallowe'en, they turned the home town topsy-turvy. This led to an organization of a boys' department in the local Y. M. C. A. When the lads realized what was being done for them, they joined in the movement with vigor and did all they could to help the good cause. To raise funds they gave a minstrel ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... head. He hated clashing and conflict above all things, and was for peace. Why should they thus rush to thrust themselves into trouble? Let matters abide as they were a little longer; surely life was pleasant enough without turning it all topsy-turvy. Then, with a sort of indignation, why should Myles, who had only come among them a month, take such service more to heart than they who had endured it for years? And, finally, with the hopefulness of so many of the rest of us, he advised Myles ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... the children did as far as possible," he said with a laugh. "But we can't get the letter back until the wind is ready to turn the dunes topsy-turvy again. That may be in years and it may be never. Let me have your address and if ever it is found it shall be sent directly back to you, and the children can inherit the money if I'm not here to ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... it not for thee The world turned topsy-turvy we should see; For Vice, respectable with cleanly fancies, Would fly abandoned ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... though the low, brightly colored houses with the old-fashioned ornate facades had tacitly come to the sensible agreement to ignore with aristocratic reserve this arrogant, blustering fellow, War, who turned everything topsy-turvy. ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... that the seas we had taken aboard had washed the fire out and made a regular wreck of the place, everything being turned topsy-turvy and mixed up into ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... spirit; if the wind is the wrong way; if you have been jilted or hen-pecked—no matter which—or if you find yourself growing poorer every hour, and all your wisest plans, and best-considered projects for getting rich in a hurry turned topsy-turvy by a change in the market-value of bubbles warranted never to burst; or if you have a note to pay for a man you never saw but once in your life, and hope never to see again—to the window with you! and lean back in your chair with a disposition ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... what happened?" asked Mr. Damon. "I saw Eradicate pull on that lever as you told him to, Tom, and then things all went topsy-turvy! Did he ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton
... head under the funereal coal-hod fermented with all manner of high thoughts and heroic purposes "to do or die,"—perhaps both; and the heart under the fuzzy brown coat felt very tender with the memory of the dear old lady, probably sobbing over her army socks and the loss of her topsy-turvy Trib. ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... Here's Topsy-Turvy, upside down, The ceiling seems the base: Reverse the ground and 'twill be found The things are ...
— The Royal Picture Alphabet • Luke Limner
... towering passion, "isn't it enough that you spend your time and money in vinegar to sour sweet peaches, and your sugar to sweeten crab-apples, that you must turn the house you were born in topsy-turvy? God help us! we've a house with windows to let the light in, and you want curtains to keep it out; we've plastered the walls to make them white, and now you want to paste blue paper over them; we've waxed ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... for them, and instinctively they dodged—all but Tom and John. These old veterans continued to gaze coolly straight ahead as though nothing had happened. Crash-h! went a clap of thunder. It seemed as if the whole heavens were being turned topsy-turvy. Even the airplane, usually so steady, heaved and rode like ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... a sigh of perplexity. There rose up in his mind a sort of uncomfortable feeling that everything was going topsy-turvy. Somehow or another he seemed to see Robbie's mother sitting by the side of Elsie's bed when she had the fever last winter, and bustling about to get nice things for her, hushing the others with ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... significant things—has ended in the wildest whirl of weather imaginable. The rains have been terrific, blinding, tropical in their almost ceaseless roar and fury. Surely only madmen or fiends would fight in such an elemental maelstrom. We may be both, and perhaps we are, now that the whole world is topsy-turvy; for we are going savagely on at this dread business, half blind and wholly desperate. If the furious sky were to rain red-hot pitchforks the contending armies would still be undismayed and would crawl, if not fly, ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... copious citation, could do justice to the book. The first part or Narrative is not of extraordinary, though it is of considerable merit, and has some of Hogg's usual faults. The Memoirs proper are almost wholly free from these faults. In no book known to me is the grave treatment of the topsy-turvy and improbable better managed; although, by an old trick, it pleases the "editor" to depreciate his work in the passage just mentioned. The writer, whoever he was, was fully qualified for the task. The possibility of a ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... have advanced," observed his mother, "but I confess I don't understand all your modern notions. Everybody seems to be getting discontented. The poor want to be rich, and the rich want to be millionaires; men want to do their master's work, and women want to do men's; everything is topsy-turvy!" ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... down on it that she might fasten it more firmly in the soil, and it was impossible to judge whether there was resentment in the tone. "He's coming back of his own free will, and if he stays he'll put up with the house just as he finds it. Nothing will be turned topsy-turvy, you may be sure. His room is where it always was, and it ain't likely ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... out with the cut cicatrised. The miracle will be quite as great, and I shall bow to it respectfully." Then he added: "If I possessed a source which could thus close up sores and wounds, I would turn the world topsy-turvy. I do not know exactly how I should manage it, but at all events I would summon the nations, and the nations would come. I should cause the miracles to be verified in such an indisputable manner, that I should be the master of the earth. Just think what an extraordinary ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... great kingdom of living nature, man is the only animal that seeks to poison or destroy his own instincts, to turn topsy-turvy the laws of his being, and to make himself as unlike, as possible, that which he was obviously ...
— An Essay on the Influence of Tobacco upon Life and Health • R. D. Mussey
... him all manner of mischief.[62] She hath been known to come at the head of these rascals, and beat her lover until he was sore from head to foot, and then force him to pay for the trouble she was at. Once, attended with a crew of ragamuffins, she broke into his house, turned all things topsy-turvy, and then set it on fire. At the same time she told so many lies among his servants, that it set them all by the ears, and his poor Steward was knocked on the head;[63] for which I think, and so doth all the Country, that ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... and portentous sights and sounds in the air, which prevailed in the earlier times of Connecticut; and would frighten them woefully with speculations upon comets and shooting stars; and with the alarming fact that the world did absolutely turn round, and that they were half the time topsy-turvy! ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... you; you will interpret all these fine allusions, and think on the rebellion—pho! we are such considerable proficients in politics, that we can form rebellions within rebellions, and turn a government topsy-turvy at London, while we are engaged in a civil war in Scotland. In short, I gave you a hint last week of an insurrection in the closet, and of Lord Bath having prevented Pitt from being secretary at war. The ministry gave up that point; but finding ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... a second before the knock had sounded at the door Dave had made a fine handspring that brought him from his topsy-turvy attitude to a position of standing on his feet. And, at the same time, he held the washbowl in his hand without having spilled a drop of the water. Like a flash Dave few across the room, depositing the bowl where it belonged. With a towel he wiped ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... "The Tribune Primer" over the first fifty, which were supplied to the favored few at "Special Rates." This was just such a freak as would have occurred to Field, and in Denver there was no restraint upon the act following upon any wild thought that flitted through his topsy-turvy brain. ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... Cyrus, with its whimsical villagers, is abruptly turned topsy-turvy by the arrival in its midst of an actress, distractingly feminine, Lila Laughter; and, at the same time, ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... man from the pitfall of so serious a social solecism. It would be fatal to accost him. For, mark you, no matter how gentlemanly and well-tailored a stranger may look, you can never be sure nowadays (in these topsy-turvy times of subversive radicalism) whether he is or is not really a gentleman. That makes acquaintanceship a dangerous luxury. If you begin by talking to a man, be it ever so casually, he may desire to thrust his company upon you, willy-nilly, ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... others, they are satisfied. When I think that if that cuirassier had only had the courage to let himself be killed like the rest I should still be happy at the gate of the Avonne, and that it was he that turned my life topsy-turvy, it ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... better go,' she said, nodding her head at her host. 'Father says things are topsy-turvy now, and the poor man has more power than he used to have; and, besides, I would like ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... He has been able hitherto, in a minute to allot his proper place to every individual, in a drove of a thousand, nay, even of ten thousand captured souls; and what difficulty can he have with seven, however dangerous they may be. But though these seven should turn the infernal government topsy-turvy, do you drive them thither instantly, for fear I should receive commands to annihilate you before your time. As for his threats, they are only lies; for although thy end, and that of the old man yonder, (looking at ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... going to be married." Elsa twirled the sunshade again. "I really wish I had stayed at home. I seem all topsy-turvy. I could have screamed when I saw the man standing on the ledge above the boat that night. No; I do not believe I shall marry. Fancy marrying a man and knowing that his ghost was at the same time wandering about the earth!" She rose and the sunshade described ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... "but there's generally a lot of complaint about him. He takes more pains dressing himself than he does in looking after guests, the result of which is that after my departure things get topsy-turvy, and by the time I get back, with the exception of Narcissus, there isn't a ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... more or less occult, head of the present Administration in France. 'M. Ferry,' said a caustic French Radical to me in Paris, 'ought to be the mask of M. Carnot. Nature gave him a Carnival nose for that purpose. Everything is topsy-turvy now in France, and so M. Carnot is the mask of M. Ferry. But the nose will come through ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... less than twenty-seven millions of people, there were not above five-and-twenty servants altogether! They were so lofty about it, too, that instead of discussing whether they should hire themselves as servants to Prince Bull, they turned things topsy-turvy, and considered whether as a favour they should hire Prince Bull to be their master! While they were arguing this point among themselves quite at their leisure, the wicked old red Fairy was incessantly going up and down, knocking ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... cleaned themselves of their mess. But they had done what they wanted—they had finished the door on the birthday, and proud enough they were of it. The griffins, cupids, and so on, were, I must own, most beautiful to behold; though so many in number, so entangled in flowers and devices, and so topsy-turvy in their actions and attitudes, that you felt them unpleasantly in your head for hours after you had done with the pleasure of looking at them. If I add that Penelope ended her part of the morning's work by being sick in the back-kitchen, it is in no unfriendly spirit towards the ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... Letters" in which two distinguished Persian travellers turn the whole existing society of France topsy-turvy and poke fun at everything from the king down to the lowest of his six hundred pastry cooks, the book immediately went through four editions and assured the writer thousands of readers for his famous discussion of the "Spirit of the Laws" in which the noble Baron compared the excellent English ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... Susan, and what ails you?" continued the farmer, turning to John. "Dang it, but everything seems to go wrong this blessed day. First there be all the apples stolen—then there be all the hives turned topsy-turvy in the garden—then there be Caesar with his flank opened by the bull—then there be the bull broken through the hedge and tumbled into the saw-pit—and now I come to get more help to drag him out, I find one woman dead like, and John looks as if he ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Addison's or Irving's or Thackeray's. It does not amuse by the perception of the characteristic. It is not founded upon truth, but upon incongruity, distortion, unexpectedness. Every thing in life is reversed, as in opera bouffe, and turned topsy-turvy, so that paradox takes the place of the natural order of things. Nevertheless they have supplied a wholesome criticism upon sentimental excesses, and the world is in their debt ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... unsightly appearance, for no better were to be had. I began to recall to mind the observation of the old gentleman with whom we travelled from Cobourg to Rice Lake. We console ourselves with the prospect that by next summer the boards will all be seasoned, and then the house is to be turned topsy-turvy, by having the floors all relaid, ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... very good," she began, an almost weak love of praise showing itself for a moment in her eyes; "but I have no room prepared. I have been house-cleaning, and everything is topsy-turvy Mrs. Wright, now, over ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... to send his sister Elodie—and that was a stage name he gave her—to send her to be a workwoman at our place, without my daughter's knowing who she was; and, gracious goodness! but that girl turned the whole place topsy-turvy; she got all those poor girls into mischief—impossible to whitewash ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... English training had taught me to despise; a habit of fighting with the fists, coupled with a curious contempt for the accident of individual superiority—all these things amazed me and put me into a topsy-turvy world where I was weeks ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... drop as it were from the clouds upon the middle-class breakfast-table—take such an intelligence, self-satisfied and empty, and place its possessor all at once in a new environment, where everything material, mental, and moral seems topsy-turvy, where life is real and morals are rudimentary—and unless he is a very particular fool indeed, what a lot you must really give that blithe new-comer to turn over and think about! The sun that shifts now north, now south of him; the seasons that go by fours instead ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... the mildly deprecating tone in which the elder sometimes do answer the younger in these topsy-turvy days:— ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... the hill to where the great white dome glistened under the stars, and once inside, Jim Carter of The New York Press was privileged to see two of those strange objects that had turned the world topsy-turvy. ...
— Spawn of the Comet • Harold Thompson Rich
... entirely upon the view you take of it. Now, the question with me, as a man of honour (and I may tell you an over-nice sense of honour has been a drawback I've had to struggle against all my life), the question with me is this: Is it not my plain duty to step in and put a stop to this topsy-turvy state of things, to show you up as the barefaced young impostor you are, and restore my unhappy brother-in-law to ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey |
