"Twisting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cap" of the Belgian maiden on Carnival Day. Coming suddenly round the corner I almost ran into a girl. Her back was towards me. It was a quiet street. She had half a dozen of these serpentins. Hurriedly, with trembling hands, she was twisting them round and round her own head. I looked at her as I passed. She flushed scarlet. Poor little snub-nosed pasty-faced woman! I wish she had not seen me. I could have bought sixpenny-worth, followed her, and tormented her with them; while she ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... climbed upon his knee, and now, laying hold of one of the ungloved hands, she began twisting a large seal ring which presented itself to her mind as a pleasing novelty. Presently her attention seemed arrested by the device of the seal, and she ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... sweet woman, and I should think you could live very happily with her," said Maria, twisting her hair carefully. Maria had a beautiful neck showing above the lace of her underwaist. Lily looked at it. Her tears had ceased, and left not a trace on her smooth cheeks. The lace which Maria's upward-turned hair displayed ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Nigel," she said, twisting her hands. "But he made me begin to live again. He talked to me of Something that watched and would not leave me—would never leave me. I was learning to believe it. Sometimes when I walked through the ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... sometimes, because he was so thoughtful and so tender of her always, and knew as well as she did that there were troubles about money—though these troubles were vague to them both, and the debtors were patient and kindly, being neighbours all in the old twisting streets between the ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... horrible scene, it would have been impossible for him to tell how they dealt their blows. He would have seen two heads—frightful, livid, convulsed—rising, falling, now here, now there—arms, now stiff as bars of iron, and now twisting like serpents—and, in the midst of the undulation of the blue coat of the marshal and the black cassock of the Jesuit, from time to time the sudden gleam of the steel. He would have heard only a dull stamping, and now and then a deep breath. In ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... place with an old man, and so at the age of twelve I was part of the Big Show whose performance is continuous, whose fire-eaters have real flame to contend with, and whose snake-charmers risk their lives in handling great hissing, twisting red-hot serpents of ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... the cable by his hands. With him he carried the monkey-wrench and short iron bar and a few spare feet of rope. It was a slightly up-hill pull, but this he did not mind so much as the wind. When the furious gusts hurled him back and forth, sometimes half twisting him about, and he gazed down into the gray depths, he was aware that he was afraid. It was an old cable. What if it should break under his weight and the ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... the trail. Through a notch in the brow of the cliff a solid bar of water shot forth. The solid bar, in its fall broken to a misty spray, fell into a mossy basin at the cliff's foot, regathered, and then, sliding and twisting in its rock-strewn bed, gurgled among nodding flowers and slender, waving willows that were fanned into motion by the breath of the falling spray. Where the brook crossed the trail Zephyr stood still. Not all at once. There was an indescribable ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... been absently playing with his napkin, twisting it into folds and then untwisting ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... distress, twisting her hands in her lap. One there was, and not far away. Yet to send for him crossed her resolution and stung her pride most sorely. We had parted in anger, she and I; I had blamed my share in the quarrel bitterly enough, it is likely she had spared herself no more; yet the ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... twisting we came in sight of a small house of grey stone which, from its appearance and situation, I judged to be some gentleman's shooting lodge. We cut across the valley, on one slope of which it stood, and I caught a glimpse of cottage roofs beyond it. We worked round to the rear ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... you hurt me—you are cross: leave me alone," screamed Fina, twisting her little body to free herself from ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... twisting his fingers nervously. Now his hands shut themselves into fists. He looked ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... an awe of the harman's [constable] claw, And the best will avoid the trap; [bailiff] But our wealth is as free of the bailiff's see As our necks of the twisting crap. [gallows] CHORUS.—So the king ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and palmated leaves. At a mile and a half further the creek is improving wonderfully. We have now passed some fine holes of water, which will last at least three months; at five miles the water is becoming more plentiful and the creek broader and deeper, but twisting and turning about very much, sometimes running east and then turning to the west and all other points of the compass. Having seen what I consider to be permanent water, I shall now run a straight course, 20 degrees east of ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... I, but others too, suffered every kind of punishment. One kind of torture was to make us hold a board at arm's length and hold it out by the hour. They also had a practice of twisting our legs, while they spat on our faces. When ordered to undress, one person replied, 'I am not guilty of any offence. Why should I take off my clothes ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... go?" she asked, rising and coming near to me, standing in front of me, twisting her head sideways and looking up at me. "Can't you stop a bit longer? We can all be cosy to-day, there's nothing to do outdoors." And she laughed, showing her teeth oddly. She had a ...
— Wintry Peacock - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • D. H. Lawrence
... o'clock auxiliary, Mac peered at each tubing connection, tugging and twisting. "Wait a minute," he said. His light flashed out at the motor, riding perched on its swivel, limned against cold, hard points of light that were the stars. His heart gave a bound. "I think I've found it!" His other voice droned on morbidly. "Turn that thing ...
— Tight Squeeze • Dean Charles Ing
... unwittingly established itself, Ward C was crying itself to sleep. Not that it knew what it was crying about, it being merely a matter of atmosphere and unstrung nerves; but that is cause enough to turn the mind of a sick child all awry, twisting out happiness and twisting ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... which from strangulation the head of a fetus was in a state of putrefaction, the funis being twice tightly bound around the neck. Cleveland, Cuthbert, and Germain report analogous instances. Matthyssens observed the twisting of the funis about the arm and neck of a fetus the body of which was markedly wasted. There was complete absence of amniotic fluid during labor. Blumenthal presented to the New York Pathological Society an ovum within which the fetus was under ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... his captor twisting his arms behind him with such silent ease that it was ominous of what might be expected should the sheepherder set up a struggle to ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... in a way which seems like a mere perverse and wasted display of skill. But let anyone imagine for a moment the solid, leaden, lifeless result of letting all the parts descend together, instead of setting them, as Tschaikowsky does, twisting round each other, and it will at once be perceived that Tschaikowsky never knew better what he was doing, or was more luckily inspired, than when he devised the arrangement that now stands. Much as I should like to have debated dozens of such points, it is perhaps better, after all, just now ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... cried out that she was coming. Presently she stood above the declivity, and peered over. Almost immediately below her, a few feet down, was a man lying in the snow. He had strayed from the obliterated road, and had fallen down the crevasse, twisting his foot cruelly. Unable to walk he had crawled several hundred yards in the snow, but his strength had given out, and then he had called to the house, on whose dark windows flickered the flames of the fire, the name of the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... ritual, and then boys and girls deriving also a little fun from their immersion. Here and there the bathing ghaut is diversified by a burning ghaut, and one may catch a glimpse of the extremities of the corpse twisting among the faggots. Here and there is a boat or raft in which a priest is seated under his umbrella, fishing for souls as men in punts on the Thames fish for roach. And over all is the pitiless sun, hot even now, before breakfast, but ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... 'Oh no,' said Cicely, twisting the ends of her veil lightly between a finger and thumb. 'Just a "cushy" wound, that'll bring him home on a three months' leave, and give her the ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... forest: the rains had stained, frosts cracked, suns blistered it; but what of those? A vine covered with thorns and stemmed with cords had wreathed about it and bound it closely in serpent-coils. I stayed and tore apart the fetters till my hands bled, cut away the twisting branches, and set the god free from his bonds. Triumph rose to my lips, for I said, "So will I free my country!" Ah, there was my error,—the shackling vines would grow again, and infold the marble image that had consecrated the forest-glooms; there is the flaw in all my work,—I have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... him soon, though, and bundled him into a cab for Scotland Yard, where, upon his arrival, the scoundrel again caused a rumpus by jumping and twisting around when they went to put him into a prison-cell, so that it required the combined efforts of four fat policemen to hold ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... under the earth, and then the deep forge whistle sounding like a desperate cry rending the silence of the night; the chimney-stacks too, with their worn-out lungs spitting forth their smoke with a perpetual death-rattle, and the wind which had just risen twisting the streaks of smoke into spirals which it sent up towards the sky or beat down all at once on to us, all this wild dance of the natural and the human elements, affected my whole nervous system so that it was quite time for me to get back to the hotel. I sprang out of the carriage quickly ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... attaching the oil lines to the fuel unit. Overtightening or twisting will twist the pump-motor mounting plate and put a ...
— Installation and Operation Instructions For Custom Mark III CP Series Oil Fired Unit • Anonymous
... my shoulders. He stared at me as if I were a strange animal, clicking his teeth and twisting ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... front teeth, and wore their beards long; they also differed from the above description in having their hair long and curly. Dampier may have been deceived in this respect, and from the use that they make of their hair, by twisting it up into a substitute for thread, they had probably cut it off close, which would give them the appearance of having woolly ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... watched him for a moment, twisting his mouth. Then he walked up to his companion and laid a ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... stimulation of the skin-vessels and nerves, the muscles of the leg are treated, first by friction of the more superficially placed masses, then by careful deep kneading (petrissage) of the large muscles of the calf, twisting, pressing, and rolling them about the bone with one hand while the other supports the limb. In fat or heavily-muscled subjects it may be necessary to use both hands to get sufficient grasp of the muscles. The tibialis anticus and muscles of the outer side of the leg are operated ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... ground but in later times having a stone foundation—from which rafters sloped to corner posts, similarly erected, the sides being clapboarded. Nails were used, but the heavy timbers were tied together with ropes made by twisting the fibrous stems of climbing plants. A conspicuous feature was that the upper ends of the rafters projected across each other, and in the V-shaped receptacle thus formed, a ridge-pole was laid with a number of ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... leaped to their feet and at a signal from Harlan they surged forward to the bar and formed a barrier between Johnny and his friends; and as they did so that puncher jerked at his gun, twisting to half face the crowd. At that instant fire and smoke spurted from Jerry's side coat pocket and the odor of burning cloth arose. As Johnny fell, the rustler ducked low and sprang for the door. A gun roared twice in the ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... clear, moonlit night, so beautiful indeed that, twisting a shawl about her shoulders, she went to her father's den, where he usually smoked alone, and, taking his arm, led him out for a walk into the park over that gravelled drive where, upon such nights as that, 'twas said that the unfortunate ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... off the brigadier, who, God knows why, struck me as something of an enigma. In the life of this man—so I mused—there must certainly have been something out of the ordinary. But he, it seemed, did not notice me at all. He was sitting huddled up on the bank, and twisting in his fingers some pinks which he had gathered in my friend's garden. Cucumber made his appearance, at last, with a bundle of rolls in his hand; he made his appearance, all red and perspiring, with an expression of gleeful surprise on his face, as though he had just seen ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... human progress is like a mountain road, veering and twisting, and often appearing to turn back upon itself, and having many by-roads, which lead us astray. If we know but a few miles of it we cannot tell whether it leads north or south or due west. But if from any mountain-top we can gain a clear bird's-eye view of its whole course, we easily ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... as of the town of San Juan, scarcely three miles distant. Beyond its stern guardianship Echo Canyon stretched grim and desolate, running far back into the very heart of the gold-ribbed mountains. The canyon, a mere shapeless gash in the side of the great hills, was deep, long, undulating, ever twisting about like some immense serpent, its sides darkened by clinging cedars and bunches of chaparral, and rising in irregular terraces of partially exposed rock toward a narrow strip of blue sky. It was a fragment of primitive nature, as wild, gloomy, desolate, and ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... said Lord Nigel, impatiently throwing down the Proclamation, which he had hitherto been twisting to and fro in his hand,—"an excellent and well-approved piece—A New ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... in the middle of the day, and the horses, tortured by their lances, drove badly, twisting and turning in their despairing rage. Their tails were continually getting over the lines, and in stopping to kick their tormentors from their bellies they often got astride the traces, and in other ways made trouble for me. Only in the early ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... and some manoeuvring was necessary in order to sit down. This was Clara's station. Occasionally, on a brilliant, a very brilliant day in summer, she could write without gas, but, perhaps, there were not a dozen such days in the year. By twisting herself sideways she could just catch a glimpse of a narrow line of sky over some heavy theology which was not likely to be disturbed, and was therefore put at the top of the window, and once when somebody bought the Calvin ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... seized the boat, twisting it hither and thither till it seemed to the now trembling fugitive a symbol of the stream of tendencies upon which he had launched the frail ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... himself upright to a sitting position, his hand darting for the gun in his pocket. A low shriek came from the woman, and she lunged forward, the knife rising. There was no time for the gun. He caught her wrist, twisting savagely. She scratched and writhed, but the knife spun from her grasp. With a moan, she collapsed across ...
— Victory • Lester del Rey
... however, from her position by the wall. She had ceased to sob, and was twisting her ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... was lying on his back, his body being almost concealed by the grass, which was a foot high. In the air he waved his legs to and fro, twisting and twining them. The boys could not help laughing at the curious appearance of the two black objects waving slowly about. The herd of deer stood staring stupidly at the spectacle. Then, as if moved by a common impulse of curiosity, they began slowly to approach, in order to investigate more ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... talk," he said. "I have to concentrate and if you talk I can barely think." He took off his hat suddenly, and began twisting the brim in his ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... Mr. Travers, sitting upright and instinctively twisting his moustache. "When I was in ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs
... flashed a light of scandal upon his home, I felt that there was more in him than could be discovered in casual gossip; I wished to know him better. Something of shyness marked his manner, and like all shy men he sometimes appeared arrogant. He had a habit of twisting his moustache nervously and of throwing quick glances in every direction as he talked; if he found some one's eye upon him, he pulled himself together and sat for a moment as if before a photographer. One easily perceived that he was not a ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... favour and published in his paper many an item concerning them. Paulsberg showed him the greatest deference, and conversed with him about his series, "New Literature," which he found admirable; and the Journalist was happy and proud because of this approbation. He had a peculiar habit of twisting words so that they sounded odd and absurd, and nobody could turn this trick as smartly ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... twisting in and out between the trees, and keeping my head as low as possible, I could hear behind me a hoarse uproar from my fellow-convicts, who by this time were evidently getting out of hand. No sound could have pleased me better. The more boisterous ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... immediately above or below the middle line of the wire, the torsional resistance of the latter tends to keep the beam horizontal and to limit its sensitiveness. When the beam is deflected out of its horizontal position and the wire thereby twisted, the resistance to twisting increases with the arc of rotation. To counteract this resistance and to render the beam sensitive to a very slight excess of load at either end, a poise, D, is attached to the beam by a standard, C, which poise carries the center of gravity of the structure above the axis of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... to take the public affairs of the country as seriously as the incidental atrocity of methods deserved. She saw in them a comedy of naive pretences, but hardly anything genuine except her own appalled indignation. Charles, very quiet and twisting his long moustaches, would decline to discuss them at all. Once, however, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... had to choose: Cut capers and be followed, or walk in dignity, ignored. I chose to cut the capers. As time wore on I found myself striving to cut them quicker, quainter, thinking out funny stories, preparing ingenuous impromptus, twisting all ideas into ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... of both hands. I could feel the broken skin curl up on my back, and when my head got too heavy to hold it straight it hung down, and I saw the blood on my legs and dripping off my toes into a pool of it on the floor. Something was straining and twisting inside of me again. My back didn't hurt much; it was the thing twisting inside of me that hurt. I counted the lashes, and when I counted to twenty-eight the twisting got so hard that it choked me and blinded me; ... and when I woke up I was in the dungeon again, and the doctor had my back ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... beside me an advertisement clipped from one of the newspapers of twenty years ago, which says: "The Lady Balgarnock and her eldest daughter having attained to great perfection in making whitening and twisting of SEWING THREED which is as cheap and white, and known by experience to be much stronger than the Dutch, to prevent people's being imposed upon by other Threed which may be sold under the name of Balgarnock ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... praying—actually praying for courage. Her throat was working, her grey eyes had their most startled look. She was twisting her hands nervously together. ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... belonging to Afghan chiefs, and long lances ornamented with white mares' tails, wielded by the horsemen of Cabul. The walls are painted from designs brought from Lahore. The panels of the doors were decorated by Gerome. The great artist has painted Nautch girls twisting their floating scarves, and jugglers throwing poignards into the air. Around the room are low divans, covered with soft and brilliant Oriental cloth. The chandelier is quite original in form, being the exact representation of the god Vishnu. From the ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... hues. Her hands, as swift as her thoughts, went from the table to the flower she was making, as those of an accomplished pianist fly over the keys. Her fingers seemed to be fairies, to use Perrault's expression, so infinite were the different actions of twisting, fitting, and pressure needed for the work, all hidden under grace of movement, while she adapted each motion to the result with the lucidity ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... slipped and fell with a loud discomposing clatter, calmly approached the reading desk. To look at his outer man, this knight of the truth might have been the very high priest of the monster which, while he was sitting there, had been twisting his slimy, semi-electric, benumbing tendrils around his heart. His business was nevertheless to fight him, though to fight him in his own heart and that of other people at one and the same moment, he might well find hard work. And ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... big brass handle—for he knew the mechanism of that much-advertised make of safe—Ralph first turned it to the right. Then he turned the key, which worked evenly and easily, afterwards twisting the ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... Ruth, twisting her handkerchief into a hard knot. "There won't be room for him. But Mrs. Cole said it didn't matter in the least. She says she often goes off and leaves him, and he has just as nice a time sitting home with his cigar and a ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... of watery lace. Once in a while, too, the wind manages to get back of the fall, between it and the cliff, and then it will whirl it round and round for two or three hundred feet, as if to try the experiment of twisting ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... ordinarily a revolving one with a dip backward. Stationary chairs are trying, for those who have to remain quiet for so many hours at a time, and the swinging back and forth and twisting about ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... senator's son said about the horses was true. The wildcat had been badly, but not mortally, wounded, and now it was rolling and twisting on the ground, sending the dirt and leaves flying in all directions. The steeds were in a panic, and leaped and plunged hither and thither, doing their best to ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer
... next room. Agias returned to his prisoner. Pratinas was coughing and twisting, and trying ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... On the right a vertical streak of black appeared. He clutched with heels and hands, and sought to steer toward it. He swept nearer, and reached with outstretched hand. The effort swung him sideways, his fingers just grazed the iron, and twisting about, he shot downward head first at greater speed than ever. A moment after there was a chorus of shouts, a sharp cry in his ears, an impact, a rolling and tumbling, a second crash, and Wilson felt himself dragged to ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... heart, and I'm fond of it," said the cat, twisting around to view its own body. "But it's made from a ruby, ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... baby's mouth done? Use a swab made by twisting some absorbent cotton upon a toothpick. The folds between the gums and lips and cheeks may be gently and carefully cleaned twice a day ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... still twisting her braid between her slim fingers, "You would find it—perhaps—because you are one who would not give up easily. Shall I tell you why I came to see you at Doctor Cardigan's? It was curiosity, at first—largely ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... taken up a boat which she was twisting into a gendarme's hat. "You would need to get mamma's leave," ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... we are going to start," said I, cheerfully, and stood waiting, twisting the gilt hilt-tassels of ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... "Only I feel I'd like to talk to you for a little time, if you don't mind. It's nothing very much," she continued, nervously twisting her ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... but you won't believe what I say. But I'll tell you. Then you can see for yourself that I am no ORDINARY criminal. You'll become convinced, I think, that there are errors which, so to speak, are involuntary—[twisting again] which seem to commit themselves—spontaneously—without being willed by oneself, and for which one cannot be held responsible— May I open the door a little now, since the storm ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... house, and walking on for a little way, I found myself at the entrance to the stables, and face to face with Silas Meadowcroft once more. He had his elbows on the gate of the yard, swinging it slowly backward and forward, and turning and twisting a straw between his teeth. When he saw me approaching him, he advanced a step from the gate, and made an effort to excuse himself, with a ...
— The Dead Alive • Wilkie Collins
... hair hanging about his ears and neck in shaggy points, rolling a large quid of tobacco in his mouth, and dangling a little whip in his right hand, you saw the index to his office. As he raised his voice—which he did by twisting his mouth on one side, and working his chin to adjust his enormous quid—the drawling tone in which he spoke gave ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... said, twisting herself round to the fire, "if your father has money to fling about like that, I have of course no more ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... She laughed uneasily, twisting the screen in her hands. For an instant she raised her eyes to mine, and as they ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... man at some distance. It had been delightful, gumming on the clean tops, and then writing on them. She had dipped freely into the biscuit-box. Then Edward had returned, and they had gardened again. Now they were settled for the evening, and she was learning to knit, twisting obdurate wool round anarchic needles, while Mrs. Marston—the pink shawl top—chanted: 'Knit, purl! ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... if one looked at it right, and Keith found himself swinging back into his old view-point. It was the hugest joke life had ever played on him. His sister! He could fancy Conniston twisting his mustaches, his cool eyes glimmering with silent laughter, looking on his predicament, and he could fancy Conniston saying: "It's funny, old top, devilish funny—but it'll be funnier still when some other man comes along and carries ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... into the ward. There was a new nurse feeding little Albert. "Hold on," I said. "That ain't the way. Don't you see how he's twisting that left eye? Let me show you." Mebbe she thought I was a new doctor, for she just gave me the spoon, and I guess I filled little Albert up with the most comfortable meal he'd had since I went away. Droolers ain't bad when you understand ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... go, of course. I just stood there twisting my handkerchief in my fingers; and, of course, right away he saw me. He had ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter
... thoroughly awakened and vitalized by its unusual fare, was putting forth a tentacle. Right from the top of the shivering globe it pushed, sluggishly weaving and prescient of doom. Wavering, it hung for a moment, turning, twisting, groping. Finally it shot straight outward ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... notice how simply he assumed that he was going to be great. He went on, a smile twisting his mouth unpleasantly beneath its dark moustache—"Not many people think like you! It's a crime not to have ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... go after a while,' she said, twisting herself about under the new form of loneliness and unrest which possessed her when she got to town. And it did: ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... the very clods where we tread entitled to this ardent preference, because they are greener? No, sir, this is not the character of the virtue, and it soars higher for its object. It is an extended self-love, mingling with all the enjoyments of life, and twisting itself with the minutest filaments of the heart. It is thus we obey the laws of society, because they are the laws of virtue. In their authority we see not the array of force and terror, but the venerable image of our country's honor. Every good citizen ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... elegant, and his satire, seemingly so playful and facetious, stung his victims and cut them to the quick. This was a somewhat dangerous gift to the man who wielded the whip when the Grand Monarch felt the lash twisting around his royal person. Therefore poor Bussy was compelled to end his days ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... turned deadly pale, then gave a start, then a rush forward, which pinned, or rather cushioned, the tailor against the wall; then twisting himself abruptly round, he sprang to the door of the bar, and bounced into ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... unpinned her for the night; but, Lord! I had much ado to get Lady Patience combed or unpinned at all! First would she jump with both knees upon mine, and hug my very breath away; then, when I had at last coaxed her to get down, first she would perch on one leg and then o' the other, and then be a-twisting her head now over this shoulder, now over that, to see how I came on with the unpinning, that it was with a prayer to God that I finally set her night-gown over her shoulders, and led her to bed. As for her ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... capital. Imagine that nation's warriors in the act of crushing your tiny army, whose remnants were already exhausted and on the verge of despair. Then picture a quaint, sleepy city, with shadowy alleys and twisting, gabled streets, in which every other store and house was decorated with King Albert's picture or draped in the red, black, and yellow banner of the country-a city whose atmosphere was charged with fear and suspicion and excitement. Sometimes ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... exception of a close-reefed foresail, and her topmast lowered. All the time that we were working, the heavy bank astern had been rising and spreading itself over the heavens like a dark canopy, the vast mass of vapour of which it was composed writhing and twisting like the contortions of a wounded snake; and by the time that our preparations were complete, the entire sky was overspread, with the exception of a low strip away on the western horizon, which was rapidly lessening, even as ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... a corn buttercup; the flowers were much smaller than the great buttercups which grew in the meadows, and these were not golden but coloured like brass. His foot caught in a creeper, and he nearly tumbled—it was a bine of bindweed which went twisting round and round two stalks of wheat in a spiral, binding them together as if some one had wound string about them. There was one ear of wheat which had black specks on it, and another which had so much black that the grains seemed ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... I could catch a glimpse of our pilot standing up on the boards very much like a circus rider, for the wagon wheels were twisting around over the roots of trees and stones, in a way that required careful balancing on his part. We got along very well until about noon, when a soldier came splashing up on a mule and told Faye that one of the wagons ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... in a mahogany box, was a square clock with a large dial, huge figures and bulky hands. Beside it, under glass covers, were two candlesticks formed by three silver swans twisting their necks around a golden quiver. Near the fireplace an easy chair a la Voltaire, covered with one of the pieces of tapestry of checker-board pattern, which little girls and old women make, extended its ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... when him list to soar, This same steed shall bear you evermore Withoute harm, till ye be where *you lest* *it pleases you* (Though that ye sleepen on his back, or rest), And turn again, with writhing* of a pin. *twisting He that it wrought, he coude* many a gin;** *knew **contrivance He waited* in any a constellation, *observed Ere he had done this operation, And knew full many a seal and many a bond This mirror ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... her heart was beating fast, there was a buzzing in her ears, and she felt indeed exhausted by that ascent in the dense gloom. It seemed to her as if she had been climbing for hours, in such a maze, amidst such a turning and twisting of stairs that she would never be able to find her way down again. Inside the studio there was a shuffling of heavy feet, a rustling of hands groping in the dark, a clatter of things being tumbled about, ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... reasoning thus with himself, Maggot stood anxiously watching his countenance and twisting the cloth that had enclosed the jewellery into a tight rope, as he shifted his position uneasily. At length old Mr ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... shout the men. The boats are turned towards the shore, and the bending oars creak and groan as they pull swiftly on. Hiss! whir! the gale bursts forth, dashing clouds of spray into the air, twisting and curling the foaming water in its fury. The thunder crashes with fearful noise, and the lightning gleams in fitful lurid streaks across the inky sky. Presently the shore is gained, amid a deluge of rain which saturates everything with water in a ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... dwellers in the city, who proved faithless. In 1675 the last vestige of aboriginal life was wiped out. For a century the Apaches held undisputed control of the country; then the Mexican pioneer crept in. His children are now scattered over the border. The American ranchman and gold-seeker followed, twisting the stories of a Christian conquest into strange tales of ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... there were flying clouds of singular shape,—clouds tossed up into the momentary similitude of Titanesque human figures with threatening arms outstretched,—anon, to the filmly outlines of fabulous birds swooping downwards with jagged wings and ravenous beaks,—or twisting into columns and pyramids of vapour as though the showers of foam flung up by the waves had been caught in mid-air and suddenly frozen. Several sea-gulls were flying inland; two or three soared right over Helmsley's head with a plaintive cry. He turned to ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... this wickedness to go unpunished; and grieving for the loss of the bard of his sacred rites, he immediately fastened down in the woods, by a twisting root, all the Edonian matrons who had committed this crime. For he drew out the toes of her feet, just as each one had pursued him, and thrust them by their sharp points into the solid earth. And, as when a bird has entangled its leg in a snare, which the cunning ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... Our sex is so accustomed to squaring its shoulders, pulling down its waistcoat, and assuming an engaging expression as a preliminary to an encounter with the fair, that the spectacle of a man who enters a strange drawing-room and shakes hands quietly and naturally all round, without twisting his features into an agreeable smile and mumbling entirely inarticulate words of rapture, always arouses in me feelings ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... consist of Oriental alabaster; and wherever there was a space vacant of precious and variegated marble, it was frescoed with ornaments in arabesque. Above, there was a coved and vaulted ceiling, glowing with pictured scenes, which affected Kenyon with a vague sense of splendor, without his twisting his neck to ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... could see the shadow the smoke was making which was coming out of the chimney, and the longish darkish shadow was moving up the side of the old man's woodshed out there, and on up the slant of the snow-covered roof, making me think of a great big long darkish worm twisting and squirming and crawling up a stick in the summer-time.... There must have been almost a foot of snow on the roof of that woodshed, I thought, and that reminded me of the snow man at the bottom of Bumblebee hill, and when I noticed that the shadows of the trees out there were getting very ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens
... so that Hsiang-yuen had no alternative, but to draw his head nearer to her and to comb one queue after another, and as when he stayed at home he wore no hat, nor had, in fact, any tufted horns, she merely took the short surrounding hair from all four sides, and twisting it into small tufts, she collected it together over the hair on the crown of the head, and plaited a large queue, binding it fast with red ribbon; while from the root of the hair to the end of the queue, were four ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... good move, eh-what?" chuckled Hicks, twisting like a contortionist, to view the damage done his vestiture, "Hello, what have we here?—the German field-map, by the Van Dyke beard of the Prophet! I bring the Kaiser's order, ham and eggs, and ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... pause with a keen feeling for dramatic effect, his eyes seeking in turn the faces of his fellow conspirators, an insuppressible grin of malicious exultation twisting ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... that had once glowed with welcome for us both. I perceived we must lose them all. I saw life like a tree in late autumn that had once been rich and splendid with friends—and now the last brave dears would be hanging on doubtfully against the frosty chill of facts, twisting and tortured in the universal gale of indignation, trying to evade the cold blast of the truth. I had betrayed my party, my intimate friend, my wife, the wife whose devotion had made me what I was. For awhile the figure of Margaret, remote, wounded, shamed, dominated my ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... Ranke, the great German historian, said of Macaulay that he could hardly be called a historian at all, judged by the strict tests of German criticism. And Freeman, the English historian, brought violent charges against Froude of deliberately twisting his facts and misquoting his authorities; though I believe that Freeman's bitter jealousies led him into grave exaggerations. Then take Carlyle. His Cromwell is a fine portrait by an eminent literary artist. But is it a genuine delineation of the man himself, ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... grim little joke to stand as it is," he said, as he snapped his big jaws together and twisted the muscles of his mouth into a sneer. He had a habit, when he closed an emphatic speech, of twisting the muscles of his mouth in that way. When animated in talk, he was the incarnation ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... Mondays as well, old Jean Pierre Pichou, ex-boatswain of the Didon frigate, would come along arm-in-arm with Julien Carales, alias Frap d'Abord, ex-marechal des logis—Pichou, with his wooden leg, and Frap d'Abord twisting a grey moustache and uttering a steady torrent of imprecation—or so it sounded. These could be counted on; but scores of others stopped and turned at the Bayfield elm, and Polly had names for them all. Moreover, on one memorable day Dorothea had watched one who did not ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Carvel was twisting his hands until his knuckles cracked. An exultant smile lighted up his face, and his eyes flashed back the firelight. Baree drew a deep breath—a mere coincidence; but it was a tense ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... driven into verse by the strenuous emotion of the war. In some diverting prefatory lines to Over the Brazier he gives us a picture of the nursery-scene when a bright green-covered book bewitched him by its "metre twisting like a chain of daisies, with great big splendid words." He has still a wholesome hunger for splendid words; he has kept more deliberately than most of his compeers a poetical vocation steadily before him. He has his moments of dejection when the ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... reason that he spent the greater part of the night taking flying leaps over the Alleghanies, nerve-shuddering dives through valleys and gorges, and vast, skimming flights over dim, half-visible plains and forests to the west, soaring and swooping, twisting and turning at incredible speeds, in fact, doing everything that any bird that ever flew ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... and copper ore to the trunk line, from the Cape to Cairo. His ideas were the ideas of an empire-builder. But, while the others listened, fascinated, hypnotized, Everett saw only the woman, her eyes fixed on her husband, her fingers turning and twisting her diamond rings. Every now and again she raised her eyes to Everett almost reproachfully, as though to say, "Why do you not listen to him? It is much better for you than ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... for Dick too now, for he found that he could sit astride one of the thwarts, holding on in position by twisting his legs beneath; and this gave him power to use both hands, which he joined together and scooped out the water in pints that ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn |
