"Upside-down" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in a spacious semicircular drawing-room, one of several drawing-rooms, where there was a parrot on the outside of a golden cage holding on by its beak, with its scaly legs in the air, and putting itself into many strange upside-down postures. This peculiarity has been observed in birds of quite another feather, climbing upon ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... longer, in any sense, a book "under review." The painful student of the past may still, indeed, with tape and compass, question its details and proportions; or the quick-fingered professor of paradox, jauntily turning it upside-down, rejoice in the results of his perverse dexterity; but certain things are now established in regard to it, which cannot be gainsaid, even by those who assume the superfluous office of anatomising the accepted. In the first ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... the most infuriated of revolutionary Socialists. The whole spirit of perversion is contained in the description of Nietzsche by his friend Georges Brandes: "His thoughts stole inquisitively along forbidden paths: 'This thing passes for a value. Can we not turn it upside-down? This is regarded as good. Is it not rather evil?'" What is this but Satanism? The case of Nietzsche is not to be explained away by the fact that he died raving mad, since a number of apparently sane people still profess for him unbounded admiration, ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... even every half mile, each brook in the course of ages eating far back into the mountain mass, forming a V-shaped depression called a cove, and between two coves thus formed is a reverse [symbol: upside-down V], called a point, always, naturally, composed of the hardest rock, and not infrequently ending in a literal point so sharp that it is like a vast granite bowsprit thrust out into the green plains far below, terminating in a sheer precipice of several ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... she repeated to herself. "I wasn't running for five minutes. The point is, how am I to find the way back. Everything is so difficult in this upside-down place; I haven't the least idea which is north and which is south; nor which way the wind blows, nor how the shadows fall, nor anything; and if I go the wrong way I will only get farther and farther from the Dell. The best plan really is to sit down ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... unit, and prints the page in the middle of his paper—only nominally so, however, in many cases, since when he uses a headline he counts that in, the result as measured by the eye being that the lower margin is less than the top one, and that the whole opening has an upside-down look vertically, and that laterally the page looks as if it were being driven off ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris
... my own eyes, I turned it over and over, looked at it, looked at him—there was nothing but clear, smiling assurance in his beloved old face, as he twinkled, and winked, and chuckled, and pulled off his spectacles, and wiped them, and put them on upside-down; and then relieved himself by rushing at his pipe, and cramming it fiercely with tobacco till ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... opposite direction from all the conventional methods in the study and elaboration of a dramatic character, and certainly not following the course I would advise any one to pursue. I merely mention the out-of-the-way, upside-down manner of going to work as an illustration of the impatience and enthusiasm with which I entered upon the task, I can only account for my getting the dress ready before I studied the part to the vain desire I had of witnessing ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... Attourney's Academy," 1630. The reader will perceive that the ornamental heading is printed upside down. In the ordinary copies it is not so printed, but only in special copies such as that possessed by the writer; the object of the upside-down printing being, as we have already pointed out in previous pages, to reveal, to those deemed worthy of receiving it, ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
... I had no sensible idea of what was going on around me. That we were being hurled somewhere upside-down, and that I didn't like it, was about all I knew. I have, indeed, a vague impression that my father used to climb up to the berth and call me his "Ancient Mariner," bidding me cheer up. But the Ancient ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... high seas. Here was a possible explanation; but I will admit that it seemed, on second thoughts, an unlikely one. An irate landlord, returning unexpectedly and finding his house in possession of unauthorised tenants—catching them, moreover, in the act of turning it upside-down with a fancy-dress ball—would naturally begin to be nasty on the doorstep. The idea of placating him by a bedroom near the roof and the costume of a Punchinello was too bold altogether, and relied too much on his unproved fund of goodnature. Moreover, ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... began a systematic search of the house. Everywhere everything was upside-down, and finally we came to a door on the third story back, leading into the children's play-room, and as we turned the knob and tried to open it we heard Mrs. ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... grey overhead; the dock like a sheet of darkling glass crowded with upside-down reflections of warehouses, of hulls and masts of silent ships. Rare figures moved here and there on the distant quays. A knot of men stood alongside with clothes-bags and wooden chests at their feet. Others were coming down the lane between tall, blind walls, surrounding a hand-cart loaded with ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... surprised welcome, and seen of them—forty days—many days, we may read—preaching acceptably, and binding with baptismal vows even persons in good society: and that in such numbers, that at last he is accused to the Roman governor, by the priests of Jupiter and Mercury, as one turning the world upside-down. And in the last day of the Forty—or of the indefinite many meant by Forty—he is beheaded, as martyrs ought to be, and his ministrations ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... woman was a mischosen profession—that we were at once too obstinate and too sentimental? Perhaps you were right. We don't come into touch with the same forces that you meet with, and we come into touch with others which make the world seem curiously upside-down. Good-night, Lawrence! I am going to my room quietly. Lady Redford wants to play bridge, and I don't feel like it! ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... seat in front of Redmond. His gaze fell on a diminutive, red-headed, inquisitive-faced urchin of some eight years, and a small, gray-eyed, wistful-looking maiden, perhaps about a year younger, with hair that matched the boy's in colour. Under one dimpled arm she clutched tightly to her—upside-down—a fat, squirming fox-terrier puppy. Hand-in-hand, in an attitude of breathless, speculative awe, they sat there bolt upright, like two small gophers; watching intently the face of the uniformed representative of the Law, as if seeking some ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... element is the fascinating part of the book which holds one's attention and keeps him reading to the end. It is a bright, breezy, and radical turn-the-world-upside-down book. We do not like its religious tone. We do not like the author's occult theosophy. We do not like her sociology, with its good word for the windmill logic of the speculative Bellamy. We do not like her views of marriage and divorce. But when all is said, and with all these ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... Another would have died like a fly at this conflict with the maid's innocence, but Bruyn was of such an iron nature that it was difficult to finish him off. One evening that Blanche had turned the house upside-down, upset the men and the beasts, and would by her aggravating humour have made the eternal father desperate—he who has such an infinite treasure of patience since he endures us—she said to the seneschal while getting into bed, "My good Bruyn, I have low down fancies, that bite and prick me; thence ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... the pendulum, beginning from the bottom and at the places of the hours V, IV, III, the words Moderate Desires—Great Hopes, Ambition—Unbridled Passion, Mania of Greatness. Then, turning the paper upside-down, he wrote on the opposite side, where on a dial would be marked VII, VIII, IX, the words Slight Troubles— Deep Sorrow, Disappointment—Despair. Lastly, in the place of No. VI, just where the pendulum fell, he sketched a large black spot, which he shaded off with great ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... the palace," she said, "because, when you look right down into it, the water seems muddy. But sometimes, when it is still, you can see the Upside-Down Country where the King of the Eels lives. There the trees all grow with their heads down and the sky is 'way, 'way below the trees. You see the sky might as well be down as up for the eels. They aren't like us, just obliged to crawl around on ...
— The Belgian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... right." Captain MacWhirr soothed him, sitting heavily on a little canvas folding-stool he greatly affected. "All you have to do is to take care they don't hoist the elephant upside-down before they ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... picture of despair. Around her was collected every description of bag, box, and bundle, also the baby, while Morton and Molly (the latter secretly delighted with all this excitement) were turning things upside-down and wrongside-out, with vim enough to ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... shores' shadders kind o' mix an' mingle In sunthin' thet ain't jes' like either single; An' when you cast off' moorins from To-day, An' down towards To-morrer drift away, The imiges thet tengle on the stream Make a new upside-down'ard world o' dream: Sometimes they seem like sunrise-streaks an' warnins O' wut 'll be in Heaven on Sabbath-mornins, An', mixed right in ez ef jest out o' spite, Sunthin' thet says your supper ain't gone right. I'm gret on dreams, an' ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... original. Material added by the transcriber is in braces {}. Greek words have been transliterated and shown between symbols. Single Greek letters are identified by name: eta, alpha. o: and e: represent omega and eta. "i" represents upside-down i (used in I.3.6). {gh} represents yogh (used in I.4.10). {L} represents the "pounds" symbol. Letters with diacritics are "unpacked" and shown within braces: {a'} {e'} a with acute accent, e with grave accent Irregularities ...
— Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue - A Treates, noe shorter than necessarie, for the Schooles • Alexander Hume
... smooth head with short hair clinging to it at the sides, a soft way of speaking, with a peculiar habit of whispering the letter S so distinctly, that he seemed to use it oftener than any other man; but every peculiarity that he had he made respectable. If his nose had been upside-down, he would have made that respectable. He surrounded himself with an atmosphere of respectability, and walked secure in it. It would have been next to impossible to suspect him of anything wrong, he was so thoroughly respectable. Nobody could have thought ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... because they weren't on their side, nor would they read any of the volumes the professors composed. They would read only a book that an old German capitalist wrote—a radical book which turned economics all upside-down and said that capital ought to start a class ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... time the noise of the Wabbly was very near. There was the noise of felled trees, pushed down by the Wabbly in its progress. Great, crackling crashes, and then crunching sounds, and above them the thunderous smooth purring rumble of the monster. The 'copter man climbed into the upside-down staff car. He turned the vision set on and fiddled ...
— Morale - A Story of the War of 1941-43 • Murray Leinster
... the same principle. The earlier forms seem to have lived in a part of the ocean where silica was scarce, and they absorbed and built their protective frames of lime. In the simpler types the frame is not unlike a wide-necked bottle, turned upside-down. In later forms it takes the shape of a spirally coiled series of chambers, sometimes amounting to several thousand. These wonderful little houses are not difficult to understand. The original tiny animal covers itself ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... upside-down flights, his general acrobatic feats in the air are all of the utmost value to pilots throughout the world. We shall have proof of this, I am sure, in the near future. Pegoud has shown us what it is possible to do with a modern machine. In his first attempt to fly upside down he courted ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... that I was able to observe at the moment of laying her eggs worked upside-down, clinging to the wire near the top of the cover. My presence, my magnifying-glass, my investigations did not disturb her in the least, so absorbed was she in her labours. I was able to lift up the dome of wire gauze, tilt it, reverse ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... from the poor fellow I helped to carry into the public-house at Knoll, just this side Backsworth, a good deal hurt, I'm afraid. Something had got on the lines, I believe. I was half asleep, and knew nothing till I found ourselves all crushed up together in the dark, upside-down, my feet above my head. There was but one man in my carriage, and we didn't get foul of one another, and found we were all right, when we scrambled out of the window. So we helped out the others, and found that, besides the engineer and stoker—who ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... extravagance of the younger members of the family. On the latter subject she spoke very feelingly. "Such goings on, Ellen, are enough to set me crazy—so many nurses—and then we have to keep four horses—and it's company, company from Monday morning until Saturday night; the house is kept upside-down continually—money, money for everything—all going out, and nothing coming in!"—and the unfortunate Mrs. Thomas whined and groaned as if she had not at that moment an income of clear fifteen thousand ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... latter with the ball of his great toe, as he passed Down-East; from which part of the country some of our people used to maintain he originally came. Some fancied resemblance to an inverted toe (the devil being supposed to turn everything with which he meddles, upside-down,) has been imagined to exist in the shape and swells of our paternal acres; a fact that has probably had its influence ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... the sound of her visitor's heavy tread on the boards overhead as he stumbled about. Presently his head appeared looking down through the trap. In any aspect, Captain Wopper's shaggy head was an impressive one; but viewed in an upside-down position, with the blood running into it, it was ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... within them—and within all creation besides, every member of it, strong or weak, witnessing together, and joining in the happy consciousness that each one's work is good; the bee also being profoundly of that opinion; and the lark; and the swallow, in that noisy, but modestly upside-down, Babel of hers, under the eaves, with its unvolcanic slime for mortar; and the two ants who are asking of each other at the turn of that little ant's-foot-worn bath through the moss "lor via e lor fortuna;" and the builders also, who built yonder pile ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... kep' still. An' when we took her by each hand, an' run back toward the fence with her, her feet hardly touchin' the ground, she kep' up without a word, like all to once she'd found out this is a world where the upside-down is consider'ble in use. An' I waited with her, over there this side the cut, hearin' 'em farther down rippin' off fence rails so's to let through what ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... hands a slice of bread-and-butter. The clown steals this article of food and devours it; whereupon the child, crying aloud, pursues him hither and thither about the stage. The incident always excites much amusement; for in pantomimes the world is turned upside-down, and moral principles have no existence; cruelty is only comical, and outrageous crime the best of jokes. The paper parcel borne to the theatre by the clown under mention enclosed the bread-and-butter that was to figure in the harlequinade. "You see I'm a particular feeder," the ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... clean frying-pan; when it is melted, pour in the omelette, and stir it with a spoon till it begins to set, then turn it up all round the edges, and when it is of a nice brown it is done: the safest way to take it out is to put a plate on the omelette, and turn the pan upside-down: serve it on a hot dish; it should never be done till just wanted. If maigre, grated cheese, shrimps, or oysters. If oysters, boil them four minutes, and take away the beard and gristly part; they may either be put in whole, or cut ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... quite wide at this point, and out near the middle of it he saw Tony's head. The turkey-hunter was swimming hand-overhand, "dog-fashion," for the shore. Behind him was a boat, upside-down, which seemed just on the point of ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... them upside-down, the waters flow, And plunge them in the river's deepest bed; The horse is uppermost, the knight below. From the bridge looks his lady, sore bested, And tear employs, and prayer, and suppliant vow: ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... lest the same Arts which are to enable him to negotiate between Potentates might a little infect his ordinary behaviour between Man and Man. There is no Question but these young Machiavil's will, in a little time, turn their College upside-down with Plots and Stratagems, and lay as many Schemes to Circumvent one another in a Frog or a Sallad, as they may hereafter put in Practice to over-reach a Neighbouring Prince ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... a possible antipodes must, however, have been a tremendous difficulty in the way of this conception of a sphere, and I scarcely suppose that any one can at that time have contemplated the possibility of such upside-down regions being inhabited. I find that intelligent children invariably feel the greatest difficulty in realizing the existence of inhabitants on the opposite side of the earth. Stupid children, like stupid persons ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... Isa's face with the hole in his ear were connected with one of his very earliest memories—or one of his very earliest memories was connected with the scars on his face and the hole in his ear—a memory of jolting along on a camel, swinging upside-down, while a strong hand grasped his foot; of seeing his father rush at his captor with a long, broad-bladed spear, of being whirled and flung at his father's head; and of seeing his father's intimate internal economy seriously and permanently disarranged ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... revolutionary force in history; for without Him society is constituted on principles the reverse of the true, and as the world, apart from Jesus, is down-side up, the mission of His gospel is to turn it upside-down, and so bring the right side uppermost. The condition of receiving anything from Him is the humble recognition of emptiness and need. If princes on their thrones will come to Him just in the same way as the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... generally realized that the managers of every big modern business have become as particular about letting in the right kind of directors as they have been before about letting in the right kind of labour, we will stop having an upside-down business world. ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... [boild'd] Other Rice Puddings. [Rich] Other forcing of calves udder boiled and cold [calves uddder] First, of raw Beef. [Beeef] then have boil'd carrots [carrrots] and being cold take off ["b" printed upside-down] lay on the kunckle of beef [kunckle] Thus also you may do hiefers' udders [uddders] Beef fried otherways, being roasted and cold. [otheways] To bake a Flank of Beef in a Collar. [Lo bake] toasts of houshold bread [houshhold] [the spelling "household" does not occur] slice it in to thin ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... to Havill; and here he was met by an amazing state of affairs. Havill's creditors, at last suspecting something mythical in Havill's assurance that the grand commission was his, had lost all patience; his house was turned upside-down, and a poster gleamed on the front wall, stating that the excellent modern household furniture was to be sold by auction on Friday next. Troubles had apparently come in battalions, for Dare was informed by a bystander that ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... It consisted of a woman's face, with serpents for hair, and a virgin's breasts, with stumps for arms, ending in blue butterflies' wings, the whole changing at the waist into a goat's body, which ended below in an obelisk upside-down, to the apex at the bottom of which were appended, by graceful chains, an altar, and two ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... present text unchanged: error for "thus"? this great and incurable disease of olde age text reads "iucurable" Dv what good I pray can hee haue but onlie text reads "bnt" D2v of the paines we felt at our birth? question mark printed upside-down) ...
— A Discourse of Life and Death, by Mornay; and Antonius by Garnier • Philippe de Mornay
... did not know about her brother was not of importance; it was the assumption that he was capable of exercising an influence upon the man, protecting and saving him from himself that hurt, hurt with all the poignancy of physical pain. She did not dream that she had got the whole thing upside-down; that if the Governor was a social pariah he himself was no whit better, and had thrown himself upon ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... the museum—a very interesting establishment, which I was condemned to see as imperfectly as I had seen the Capitol. It was being rearranged; and the gallery of paintings, which is the least interesting feature, was the only part that was not upside-down. The pictures are mainly of the modern French school, and I remember nothing but a powerful though disagreeable specimen of Henner, who paints the human body, and paints it so well, with a brush dipped in blackness; and, placed among ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... is never moved by anything outside himself, nor is he subject to inward passions, and he is never led to that which can cause him offence. It appears, therefore, that M. Bayle gives odious names to the best things in the world, and turns our ideas upside-down, applying the term slavery to the state of the greatest and ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... on thy ways!" said she. "It'll mayhap do thee good. Bread and water's all thou'lt get, I promise thee, and better than thy demerits. Dear heart! to turn a tidy house upside-down like this, and all for a silly maid's fancies, forsooth! I hope thou feels ashamed of thyself; for I ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... in, crying that her youngest was choking. Bonnetless, Polly had flown across to the woman's hut. There she discovered the child, a fat youngster of a year or so, purple in the face, with a button wedged in its throat. Taking it by the heels she shook the child vigorously, upside-down; and, lo and behold! this had the opposite effect to what she intended. When they straightened the child out again the button was found to have passed the danger-point and gone down. Quickly resolved, Polly cut slice on slice of thin bread-and-butter, and with this ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... the upside-down position. The telescope gave him an even better close-up than at the restaurant. Again he groped for the identity of the white-haired ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... to Dupe, and while Bulaki Ram waited among the Angari men, 'I ran to see our Sahib in bed. His eyes were very bright, and his mouth was full of upside-down orders, but the old woman had not loosened her hair for death. The Hajji said: 'Be quick with my trial. I am not Job!' The Hajji was a learned man. We made the trial swiftly to a sound of soothing voices round the bed. Yet—yet, ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... your maw was no bigger than a fly's head," cried the cook, "and now you devour meat like the crocodiles in the sacred tank of Seeland. You must come from a world of upside-down, where the men are as small as flies, and the flies as big as the giants ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... know what to do, so we did nothing—except that the smaller lads cried, piteously, and we all struggled frantically into our clothes, putting on anybody's that came handy, and getting them wrong- side-out and upside-down, as a rule. Then we scurried away and gave the alarm, but none of us went back to see the end of the tragedy. We had a more important thing to attend to: we all flew home, and lost not a moment in getting ready ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... were just entering the grounds of the pension. They were leaning toward each other as the wateroaks bent from the sea. There was not a particle of earth beneath their feet. Their heads might have been turned upside-down, so absolutely did they tread upon blue ether. The lady in black, creeping behind them, looked a trifle paler and more jaded than usual. There was no sign of Mrs. Pontellier and the children. Robert ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... buried. It is always placed right side up if a woman desires to continue bearing children. If she wishes not to have children it is buried upside down. If at a later time she wishes to become pregnant, she will turn the earth where the upside-down afterbirth was buried. Informants say that not many people do this any more, mainly because younger women go to the hospital to have their babies, but that many people know how and some may still ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... her upside-down fashion of praise and endearment; never guessing its Eastern significance—to avert the watchfulness of jealous gods swift to spy out our dearest treasures, that hinder detachment, and snatch them from us. "Such a big rude boy—and you ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... by reference to the map in Prebendary Scarth's 'Aquae Solis'—the diagram (copied from Spry) there being almost similar to Sutherland's conjectural plan of the baths, except that the section of Lucas's Bath, correctly represented in Sutherland's map is figured upside-down by Spry and Scarth. It is quite clear what Sutherland knew of the great Roman Bath; it is equally clear that when he proceeded, on the strength of his very limited observations, to draw a conjectural plan of the whole bath, he fell into absolute errors, such as, commonly enough, spring out of ...
— The Excavations of Roman Baths at Bath • Charles E. Davis
... one night-watch when the brothers were looking out together. Only once in the year, Captain Brown said, is this cross perfectly perpendicular towards the zenith; for, as it circles round our planet, it reverses its position, finally turning upside-down. ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... town and beyond the pale of declared revolution—a placid and antiquated little city with a forgotten air, where life had been probably too easy for its inhabitants to wish for a change. But the supposed arrival of the Terrible Man turned everything upside-down. Peard, with Commander Forbes, who was following the campaign as a non-combatant, rode up to the house of the old Syndic, who instantly became their devoted servant. Like wildfire spread the news—the whole population besieged the house, brass bands resounded, chinese ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... Duke of Newcastle particularly would do anything. These were the men who were so squeamish that they could not be brought to support amendments even, unless they were permitted to turn the schedules upside-down, straining at gnats out of office and swallowing camels in. It is remarkable that after the sacrifice Wharncliffe made to re-ingratiate himself with the Tories, incurring the detestation and abuse of the Whigs, and their reproach of bad faith, the former ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... an upside-down bucket for a seat. Nothing more uncomfortable for a fat man can be imagined, yet Cheon sat on his rickety perch, for the most part chuckling and happy. Perhaps, like Mark Tapley, he felt it a "credit being jolly" under ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... Denman, "do you want with money?" Then, as their faces clouded, he added: "Oh, go ahead. Don't turn my room upside-down. You'll find my pile in a suit of citizen's clothes hanging up. ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... a bit sorry for Jack Odin too. Getting ready to lower himself over a precipice, and not having the slightest idea when he would reach bottom. Or whether there was any bottom at all. The blackness beat at the little light. A startled bat left its upside-down perch and fluttered against his face, ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... administered to the poor doll, until the papier-mache was thoroughly saturated and broken; when she was considered dead, and preparations were made for her burial,—this ceremony being repeated over and over again. White dresses were put on for the funeral; a cricket was turned upside-down to serve as the coffin; my mother's flower-pots furnished the green leaves for decoration; and I delivered the funeral oration in praise of the little sufferer, while placing her in the tomb improvised of chairs. I hardly ever joined the other children in their plays, except ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... to do with it," she went on, speaking more hesitatingly, "because you see my brother doesn't like us to turn the house upside-down with cleanin'; he hates havin' things disturbed; an' we were afraid he would be put out to find what we'd done. So we decided to wait till some time when he wasn't round an' make way ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... all began counting. Dorry seized the clock—shook it, slapped it, turned it upside-down. But still the sharp, vibrating sounds continued, as if the clock, having got its own way for once, meant to go on till it was tired out. At last, at the one-hundred-and-thirtieth stroke, it suddenly ceased; and Dorry, ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... little teenty-weenty baby-coon 'Bout as big as little pups, an' tied him to a tree; An' Pa gived Noey fifty cents, when he come home at noon. Nen he buyed a chain fer him, an' little collar, too, An' sawed a hole in a' old tub an' turnt it upside-down; An' little feller'd stay in there and won't come out fer you— 'Tendin' like he's kindo' skeered o' boys ...
— Riley Child-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... Ezekiel's time, and the Greeks and others had four-spoke models. This was quite an invention and in addition to its useful aspects, it produced some rather unusual, even magical side-effects. As every child knows, if you turn your tricycle upside-down and spin the wheel, the spokes seem to vanish. All that can be seen is the rim and the parts of the hub near the center of rotation. No matter what shape the hub actually is, it too looks round like a wheel. It is very likely that such an effect was referred to as "a wheel ...
— The Four-Faced Visitors of Ezekiel • Arthur W. Orton
... Ages. Why do you say there is no chance for this normal property and liberty? You can only mean to say of our scheme exactly what you yourself admit about the Communist scheme. That it requires awful and almost inhuman sacrifices; that we must turn the mind upside-down; that we must alter the whole psychology of modern Englishmen. We must do that to make them Communists. Why is it an answer to say we must do that to make them Distributists? I could point out many ways in which our ideal is nearer and more native ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... stores—for the most part rounded masses tapering downwards into the ground—some are as good for human beings as honeycombs are; only not so sweet. We steal them from the plants, as we do from the bees, and these conical upside-down hives or treasuries of Atreus, under the names of carrots, turnips, and radishes, have had important influence on human fortunes. If we do not steal the store, next year the plant lives upon it, raises its stem, flowers and seeds out of that abundance, and having ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... believe I was," he agreed, rather lamely. "Well, it's very singular. I was called there last Monday, at about two o'clock in the morning. I found the house upside-down, and Lady Lashmore, with a dressing-gown thrown over her nightdress, engaged in bathing a bad wound in her ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... town, that I can remember. And then he's small in size; together with a stiff arm, that was injured in an accident; well, wasn't Casper Blue knocked out of his job as an air pilot by his arm failing him when he had to handle the levers like a flash, or have his aeroplane turn upside-down, Frank? I tell you I just feel dead sure it's our man, and that we've found the clue ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... vehicle, descried in carter B the acknowledged enemy of his existence, took his own two horses out, and walked off with them! After which, the whole set-out remained in the field all night, and we came to town, thirteen individuals, with one comb and a pocket-handkerchief. I was upside-down during the greater part of ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... girl ought to be happy? the bird in the window thinks his blue and gold cage the finest house in the world, and sings as heartily and cheerily as if he had been in the wide green forest; but his mistress does not sing. She sits in the easy-chair, with a book upside-down in her lap, and frowns,—actually frowns, in a forget-me-not bower! There is not much the matter, really. Her head aches, that is all. Her German lesson has been longer and harder than usual, and her father was quite ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... to get ashore or to the boat first, and each grimly resolved not to let go until three times the proper fee shall have been paid. Of only these two things let the passenger assure himself—fight how he may, he will neither escape their clutches nor get wet. Rather they will hold him upside-down until the contents of his pockets fall into the surf. Dry on the beach or into the boat they will dump him. And whatever he shall pay them will surely ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy |
