"Crooked" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and others nearly completed. If he wishes to leave the town he crosses the Singapore River by a new bridge, which was built two years ago. The scene now undergoes a change: in place of the narrow and crooked streets the stranger finds himself amongst rows of neat villas, each standing in its own enclosure. The Governor's residence is to the left upon a small hill commanding a fine view of the town ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... believing, ye shall receive,' Mat. xxi. 22. 'Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you,' John xiv. 27. I saw the blessed Redeemer to be the fountain of life, and the well of salvation. I experienced him all in all; he had brought me by a way that I knew not, and he had made crooked paths straight. Then in his name I set up my Ebenezer, saying, Hitherto he hath helped me: and could say to the sinners about me, Behold what a Saviour I have! Thus I was, by the teaching of that all-glorious Deity, the great One in Three, and Three in One, confirmed ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... nodding his head violently at every second syllable; 'naming no names, and therefore hurting nobody but those whose consciences tell them they are alluded to, that I think it would be much more decent and becoming, if those who hooked and crooked themselves into this family by getting on the blind side of some of its members before marriage, and manslaughtering them afterwards by crowing over them to that strong pitch that they were glad to die, would refrain from acting the part of vultures in regard to other members ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... own body—and glided off through the branches, evidently recognizing in me a representative of the ancient parties he once so cunningly ruined. A few moments later, as he lay carelessly disposed in the top of a rank alder, trying to look as much like a crooked branch as his supple, shining form would admit, the old vengeance overtook him. I exercised my prerogative, and a well-directed missile, in the shape of a stone, brought him looping and writhing to the ground. After I had completed ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... the beds the ground is first marked off. The first bed is made alongside of the wall, and rounded to the front; the other beds run parallel with this and may be straight, crooked, or wavy, as the interior of the cave may suggest. The beds are all ridge-shaped, eighteen to twenty inches wide at the base, eighteen to twenty inches high in the middle, six inches wide at top, and the sides ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... lips," added Mr. Wade, who, as he drove up, had seen that brilliant financier uneasily strolling under the trees of the Toornoifeld, looking towards the hotel, for Lord Ferriby's death was a link in the crooked malgamite chain which even Von Holzen had ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... a windlass barrel, about 6 in. diameter and a foot longer than the distance between the supports, as straight as is procurable; cut in it two circular slots about an inch deep by 2 in. wide to fit into the forks; at one end cut a straight slot 2 in. deep across the face. Now get a crooked bough, as nearly the shape of a handle as nature has produced it, and trim it into right angular shape, fit one end into the barrel, and you have a windlass that will pull up many a ton ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... though the hour was late, and the dip candle was put out, and the fire was dying away. If you had climbed the crooked staircase, you would have seen an old man sitting alone in his attic, and smiling at his organ as he turned it with ...
— Christie's Old Organ - Or, "Home, Sweet Home" • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... fast, and eager to reach Villafranca, where I had determined on resting, and which was still distant three leagues and a half, I made no halt at this place. The road was now down a rapid and crooked descent, which terminated in a valley, at the bottom of which was a long and narrow bridge; beneath it rolled a river, descending from a wide pass between two mountains, for the chain was here cleft, probably by some convulsion of nature. I looked up the pass, and on the ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... a more clumsy piece of naval architecture could hardly have been invented to annoy the eye of a sailor. With her perpendicular masts of one stick, no bowsprit, only an opening where it should be, to receive an anchor, made of part of a crooked tree; poop sticking up like a game fowl's tail, and immense red and white eyes painted on each bow:—for the Chinese sailor says: "No have eyes, how can see? no can see, how can walkee?"—make such a picture of a thing to float in, and wherewith to ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... up shortly after midnight his warning came to my mind with its hint of danger that seemed, in the starred darkness, real enough to make me get up for the purpose of having a look round. On the hill a big fire burned, illuminating fitfully a crooked corner of the station-house. One of the agents with a picket of a few of our blacks, armed for the purpose, was keeping guard over the ivory; but deep within the forest, red gleams that wavered, that seemed to sink and rise from the ground amongst confused columnar ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... get to the other side was to follow along these smaller cracks where they made a crooked natural bridge across the chasm. Even Seppi's stout heart quailed a little as he gazed down into the depths of the huge rifts. The walls of ice gleamed with wonderful greens and blues, but he had no heart to ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... crooked, no room for vehicles, so we had to trek about two miles to the railroad station, the baggage being sent there by teams. After getting on the train we ran through orange, fig, olive, lemon, pomegranate and date groves, then over a great flat, fertile plain, the ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... knows it. I am the umble instrument of umbly serving him, and he puts me on an eminence I hardly could have hoped to reach. How thankful should I be!' With his face turned towards me, as he finished, but without looking at me, he took his crooked thumb off the spot where he had planted it, and slowly and thoughtfully scraped his lank jaw with it, as ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... to me. The injury of which you had heard, was a dislocated wrist, and though it happened eleven months ago, was a simple dislocation, and immediately aided by the best surgeon in Paris, it is neither well, nor ever will be, so as to render me much service. The fingers remain swelled and crooked, the hand withered, and the joint having a very confined motion. You ask me when I shall return. My commission expires next spring, and if not renewed, I shall return then. If renewed, I shall stay somewhat longer: how much, will not depend on me altogether. So far as it does, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... she pays out hand over hand: if she had only her woman to build, she might get along, but now come in demands for algebra, geometry, music, language, and the poor brain-bank stops payment; some part of the work is shabbily done, and a crooked spine or weakened lungs ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... narrow court, hardly lighted by the one gas-light flaring at its entrance, 'Toinette stopped, and, looking dismally about her, began at last to cry. At the sound, a crooked old woman, with a great bag on her back, who had been resting upon the step of a door close by, although the little girl had not noticed her, ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... proceeded from the openness of his temper, by which he was ill qualified to succeed in such difficult, and dangerous enterprises. He indulged himself in great liberties of speech, and was even heard to say of the queen, that she was now grown an old woman and was become as crooked in her mind as in her body.[*] Some court ladies, whose favors Essex had formerly neglected, carried her these stories, and incensed her to a high degree against him. Elizabeth was ever remarkably jealous on this head; and though she was now approaching to her seventieth ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... foolish! Crooked, wilt thou not believe The Head of sovereignty; And he saying to us That after dying he would rise ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... Julio, stretching out to him her arms of light, so that he suddenly awoke to find himself surrounded by all the honors and advantages of celebrity. Fame cunningly surprises mankind on the most crooked and unexpected of roads. Neither the painting of souls nor a fitful existence full of extravagant love affairs and complicated duels had brought Desnoyers this renown. It was Glory that put him ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... whirlwinds sometimes have made avenues through the thick forest, by levelling the loftiest trees, or sweeping them away before them like chaff. These terrible blasts are generally confined to a narrow tract, and run in an oblique and crooked direction. Hurricanes have also often visited the country and through such low and flat lands have spread their ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... from general consequences, however, does not go down into the depths of things. There is always something morally crooked and inordinate in an action itself, the general consequences whereof are bad. It remains to point out the moral crookedness, inordination, and unreasonableness, that is intrinsic to the act of suicide, apart from its consequences. We find the inordination in ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... time to time peered through the slatted window overhead and mocked him, pointing with their crooked thumbs. ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... getting in motion. We were not too soon in our movements, for the column had hardly passed a cross-road some six miles from our first battle-ground when the enemy were discovered advancing on our left. Sharp skirmishing commenced at Crooked Creek, which is about ten miles south of Day's Gap, and finally the enemy pressed our rear so hard that I was compelled to prepare for battle. I selected a strong position about a mile south of the crossing of the creek, on a ridge called Hog Mountain. The whole force soon became engaged ...
— The Battle of Atlanta - and Other Campaigns, Addresses, Etc. • Grenville M. Dodge
... and, finally, I decided to bear up for the Navidad, or Ship Bank, proceed through the Sea of Hayti as far as the entrance of the Windward Channel, and then, if still unsuccessful in my search for traces of the pirate, to work my way back to the Atlantic by the Crooked Island Passage, exploring some of the cays in Austral Bay on the way, they seeming to me to afford considerable facilities for the establishment of ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... away, else the cops will know we're up to somethin' crooked. Wait here, an' me an' Teddy'll come back as soon as we've taken ...
— Aunt Hannah and Seth • James Otis
... fortune for his merit's sake; But the kind sailor could not boast the art Of looking deeply in the human heart; Else had he seen that this weak brother knew What men to court—what objects to pursue; That he to distant gain the way discern'd, And none so crooked but his genius learn'd. Isaac was poor, and this the brother felt; He hired a house, and there the Landman dwelt, Wrought at his trade, and had an easy home, For there would George with cash and comforts come; And when they parted, ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... raging with jealous suspicion, and fawning with fatuous trustfulness upon the man who is wronging him. Mosbie is a cold-blooded, underhand villain whose pious resolutions and protestations of love could only deceive those blinded by fate, and whose preference for crooked, left-handed methods is in tune with his vile intention of murdering the woman who loves him. Alice, the representative of womankind among these beast-men, the wife, the passionately loving mistress, is an arch-deceiver, an absolutely brazen liar and ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... hint about the whole street of secret meetings, and of unavowable deeds done under cover of isolation and of darkness, whilst the great crooked mouth of the archway disclosing the blackness and gloom of the passage beyond, suggested the lair of human wild beasts who only went ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... by Egdean and Byworth to Petworth. Petworth town consists of a number of old-world streets extremely crooked, narrow, and picturesque. Seen from any near point the grouping of roofs is as artistically good as any in Sussex. Petworth Church has been practically rebuilt. The north chantry contains the tombs of some of the Percy family, including that of the ninth ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... upon the more trite topics, employed by the sceptics in all ages, against the evidence of sense; such as those which are derived from the imperfection and fallaciousness of our organs, on numberless occasions; the crooked appearance of an oar in water; the various aspects of objects, according to their different distances; the double images which arise from the pressing one eye; with many other appearances of a like nature. These ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... all that to you?" he sneered. "The fire-water at the trading-house makes your heart very strong and your tongue crooked. This sounds to me like the language of a simple seequa, not the Great Bear—a mere bit ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... crooked town of Dover hid itself away from the beach, and ran its head into the chalk cliffs like a marine ostrich. The beach was a desert of heaps of sea and stones tumbling wildly about, and the sea did what it liked, and what it liked was destruction. It thundered at the town, and thundered at the ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... right arm with haste His crooked and pointed shield he braced, He clutched his sword in his left hand— While round that hero of the band The Fian warriors pressed, and praised His valour ... Mute was Goll ... They raised, Smiting their hands, the battle-cry, To urge ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie
... seen coming on the top of the waves The crooked, clamouring, shivering brave ... Her face was blue black of the lustre of coal, And her bone-tufted tooth was ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... Cumberland also, Mr. Dyer goes on to say, 'the power of the divining-rod is much believed in, and also in other parts of England.' The method of using it is thus described. The small ends, being crooked, are to be held in the hands in a position flat or parallel to the horizon, and the upper part at an elevation having an angle to it of about seventy degrees. The rod must be grasped strongly and steadily, and then ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... country, the river bank high and firm, a bank of rather vivid yellow clay, with trees thickly covering the rising ground beyond. The passage of a few hundred yards revealed the mouth of Rassuer Creek, a narrow but sluggish stream, so crooked and encroached upon by the woods as to be practically invisible from the center of the river. The water was not deep, yet fortunately proved sufficiently so for our purpose, although we were obliged ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... on Magdalis. Crooked Hans' jokes were apt to be as crooked as his temper and his poor limbs, and to give much dissatisfaction, hitting on just the sore points no ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... no difficulty in his following the right course in the discharge of his professional duties. If a man is lacking in probity of character, it is said the discussion of legal ethics will do him no particular good, because if he is tempted to a crooked path or an unjust act by his pecuniary interest, he will yield, and neither lectures on ethics nor the establishment of an ethical code will make him good; whereas the upright man will either not be so tempted, ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft
... small eels, that left the deeper way For the warm shore, within the shallows play; Where gaping muscles, left upon the mud, Slope their slow passage to the fall'n flood: Here dull and hopeless he'd lie down and trace How side-long crabs had crawled their crooked race; Or sadly listen to the tuneless cry Of fishing gull or clanging golden-eye; What time the sea-birds to the marsh would come, And the loud bittern, from the bull-rush home, Gave from the salt ditch-side ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... where the soil was light and loamy, and covered with luxuriant broom-grass; this was the case for the last few miles, which consisted of a very good tract of land. The cypresses here grew into very handsome timber, and indeed were the only useful wood, as the box tree was usually stunted and crooked. At the end of twelve miles we found a small spring of water that supplied some ponds, which also run northerly. The grass being pretty good, although old, we determined to halt for the evening, as the horses were ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... in his pockets, one after another. A few small coins, a thimble, and some thread and big needles, a piece of pig-tail tobacco bitten away at the end, his gully with the crooked handle, a pocket compass, and a tinder-box, were all that they contained, and ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... breaking his heart in earnest because Elsie has lost hers pro tem.,—engaging little goose that she is. Really I sometimes think that the man and woman puzzle is just an endless game of cross questions and crooked answers!" ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... said Elder Skates patiently, "that a few of the Crooked Rivers have drove down to-day, too. Will one of the Crooked Rivers lead ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... whole face flashed out into wild glory, and then sank again suddenly into a shudder of something like fear and disgust, as she saw, watching her from under the wall of the gardens opposite, a crooked, withered Jewish crone, dressed out in the most gorgeous and fantastic style ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... "Crooked is not the word. Colonel Coffin, I know these widows. I have had my eye on them. They've got a way of bursting into a man's feelings and walking off with his affections that fills a modest woman like ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... But it is both unwise and unjust, to neglect the many trees in your nursery, which by ordinary attention, may be made to grow straight and tall, and to bear good fruit, that you may waste your labor upon a crooked stick, from which all your toil can secure very little beauty ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... with long cloaks and crooked staffs, murmuring their surprise and incredulity at what the angel had said; some pretending to grumble at being awakened from sleep, others anxious to prove the truth ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... Temninck, Madame), wife of Balthazar Claes; born at Brussels in 1770, died at Douai in 1816; a native Spaniard on her mother's side; commonly called Pepita. She was small, crooked and lame, with heavy black hair and glowing eyes. She gave her husband four children: Marguerite, Felicie, Gabriel (or Gustave) and Jean-Balthazar. She was passionatley devoted to her husband, and died of grief over his neglect of her for the scientific experiments which ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... the shepherds, whom he finds still sleeping, and lies down again beside them. Presently they all awake and rouse Mak, who still pretends to sleep. He, after some talk, goes home, and the shepherds go off to seek and count their sheep, agreeing to meet again at the "crooked thorn." ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... said she would run up stairs to her little box, where she kept her money tied up in a bit of an old glove, and would bring down a bright queen Anne's sixpence very crooked. "I am sure," added she, "it is a lucky one, for it cured me of a very bad ague last spring, by only laying it nine nights under my pillow, without speaking a word. But then you must know what gave virtue to this ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... crooked, and generally unpaved, but they contain some well-built houses. There are, too, several good buildings among the churches, one of which contains the remains of Christopher Columbus. The other large edifices, as the Palace of the Government ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various
... the sequence of human history from any thing which we can call irresistible or inevitable. Did one dare to deal in epithets, crooked, wayward, mysterious, incalculable, would be those which would rather suggest themselves to a man looking steadily not at a few facts here and there, and not again at some hasty bird's-eye sketch, which he chooses to call a whole, but at the actual whole, fact by fact, ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... to a question of the duke Gae on the subject of government, threw out a strong hint that the duke might do well to offer him an appointment. "Government," he said, "consists in the right choice of ministers." To the same question put by Ke K'ang he replied, "Employ the upright and put aside the crooked, and thus will ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... through the horror. The author's sympathy is his password, a sympathy which he occasionally exposes, for he is not above pinning his heart to his sleeve, as, for example, when he says, "In spite of Augustus's boast, the city was not by any means of marble. It was filled with crooked little streets, with the atrocities of the Tarquins, with houses unsightly and perilous, with the moss and dust of ages; it compared with Alexandria as London compares with Paris; it had a splendour of its own, but ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... caused by the double murder of Madame de Lamotte and her son, and his name, unlike those of some other great criminals, does not at first recall a long series of crimes, but when one examines this low, crooked, and obscure life, one finds a fresh stain at every step, and perhaps no one has ever surpassed him in dissimulation, in profound hypocrisy, in indefatigable depravity. Derues was executed at thirty-two, and his whole ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the banjo had done his worst, and desisted; Jennie had piped through her repertoire and was now graciously accepting the support of Amiel's arm. Dorothea and the Monster, somewhat withdrawn from the circle, watched a crooked moon lift itself above the horizon and lay a trail of opal glory on the waves. Still awaiting inspiration, she regarded it with as little interest as Lucretia Borgia might have given the sunset that preceded one of her little ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... talking together of old times and the wonderful adventures they had met with while traveling with Dorothy, the little Kansas girl. They became so much interested in this talk that they forgot to notice that the boat was now sailing through the forest, or that the stream was growing more narrow and crooked. ...
— Little Wizard Stories of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... have no other aim than to give the boy the best possible education—his abilities justifying the brightest hopes—and to fulfill the trust placed in my brotherly love by his father. The shoot is still flexible; but if longer neglected it will become crooked and outgrow the gardener's training hand, and upright bearing, intellect, and character be ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... be crooked about it. I had not time to come out and tell you and Patience, the old crones kept me so close, stitching at shirts for a captain that is to sail next week, and I knew you would ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for all her rubbing, and back she sank with the shudder and the clutch of the arm I had come to expect. Something impelled me to take my glove and rub my window. There, too, was a little speck on the glass. For all my rubbing it remained. And then the spasm went through me; I crooked my arm and plucked at the middle of my back. My skin, too, felt like the damp chicken's skin in the poulterer's shop-window; one spot between the shoulders itched and irritated, felt clammy, felt raw. Could I reach it? Surreptitiously I tried. She saw me. A smile of infinite irony, infinite ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... this time had become to us quite a memorable stream, was winding and crooked after coming out of the canon, and could be traced through the desert only by the willows that grew along its banks and around its shallow pools. Our route lay on the left bank all the way ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... (B) is 45. degrees of a great Circle, which after the vsuall account makes 2700. one eight part of the earths compasse. The quaestion now is, whether the runninge from (C) to (B) runne continually downward in a streight line; or circularly in a crooked line. If it runne in a streight line, as is most agreeable to the nature of the water it must moue either by the line (CEB) or by the line (DB.) By the line (CEB) it cannot moue: for when it is come to (E,) it will stand ...
— A Briefe Introduction to Geography • William Pemble
... to me to have any light and air in them. The butler got our names wrong, and I marched in first, more shy than I ever have been before in my life. Lady Charlotte had two gentlemen with her. She evidently did not know me in the least; she stood staring at me with her eyeglass on, and her cap so crooked I could think of nothing but a wish to put it straight. Then Rose followed, and in a few minutes it seemed to me as though it were Rose who were hostess, talking to the two gentlemen and being kind to Lady Charlotte. I am sure everybody ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... therefore as an eagle, black, rapacious, with hooked bill and crooked talons, that he paints Miss Nightingale; and the Swan of Scutari, the delicate Lady with the Lamp, fades into a fable. Mr. Strachey glorifies the demon that possessed this pitiless, rushing spirit ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... figure, and seem a self-moving mass of fragrant bloom and verdure. Oftener, however, the bundle reached only halfway down the back of the rustic nymph, leaving in sight her well-developed lower limbs, and the crooked knife, hanging behind her, with which she had been reaping this strange harvest sheaf. A pre-Raphaelite artist (he, for instance, who painted so marvellously a wind-swept heap of autumnal leaves) might find an admirable subject in one of these ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... transplanting forks lift from the seedling box a clump of seedlings, dirt and all, clear to the bottom. Hold this clump in one hand and with the other gently tear away the seedlings, one at a time, discarding all crooked or weak ones. Never attempt to pull the seedlings from the soil in the flats, as the little rootlets are very easily broken off. They should come away almost intact. Water your seed-flats the day previous to transplanting, so that the ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... at the court of Wenceslaus of Bohemia (A. D. 1368 to 1419,) appears to great advantage in the annals of these humbugs. He was a homely, crooked creature, with an immense mouth. He had a collision once in public on a question of skill with a brother conjuror, and becoming a little excited, opened his big mouth and swallowed the other magician, all to his shoes, which ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... figure was in every respect worthy of his voice. He was an enormous, six-foot high, herculean fellow, with his shirt-sleeves rolled up to his shoulders, and the disorderly appearance of his dolman and the crooked cock of his turban more than justified the suspicion that he had already taken far more than was good for him of that fluid which the Prophet has forbidden to ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... menaces, concealed under the semblance of public interest—such were Colbert's maneuvers. A detestable delight at an approaching downfall, untiring efforts to attain this object, means of seduction no less wicked than the crime itself—such were the weapons Marguerite employed. The crooked atoms of Descartes triumphed; to the man without compassion was united a woman without heart. The marquise perceived, with sorrow rather than indignation, that the king was an accomplice in the plot which betrayed the duplicity of Louis XIII. ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... town, and then, around the castle-tomb of the Colonna and the castle-theatre of the Orsini the wretched houses begin to rise here and there, thickening to a low, dark forest of miserable dwellings threaded through and through, up and down and crosswise, by narrow and crooked streets, out of which by degrees the lofty churches and palaces of the later age are to spring up. From a training ground it has become a fighting ground, a labyrinth of often barricaded ways and lanes, deeper and darker towards ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... crooked. I dare say the distance between the fort and Venango, can not be less than one hundred and thirty miles to ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... von Franckenberg, who, like a good portrait-painter, strives to let the body reveal the soul. "The external form of Jacob's body," he says, "was worn and very plain; his stature was small, his forehead low, his temples broad and prominent, his nose somewhat crooked, his eyes grey and rather of an azure-cast, lighting up like the windows of Solomon's Temple; his beard was short and thin; his voice was feeble, yet his conversation was mild and pleasant. He was gentle in manner, modest in his words, humble in conduct, patient in suffering and meek of heart. ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... in Virginia or townships in Massachusetts, which grew up just as it happened. The contrast is similar to that between Chicago, with its straight streets crossing at right angles, and Boston, or London, with their labyrinths of crooked lanes. For picturesqueness the advantage is entirely with the irregular city, but for practical convenience it is quite the other way. So with our western lands the simplicity and regularity of the system have made it a marvel of convenience ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... learned fast, kid!" said Loring with a crooked smile. "I wouldn't trust Shinny as far as I could ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... miserable dwelling would not have withstood a vigorous kick, let alone a siege—but to rush back on shore and regain possession of the boat. To this Lingard made up his mind quickly and, arming himself with a crooked stick he found under his hand, sallied forth at the head of his three men. As he bounded along, far in advance, he had just time to perceive clearly the desperate nature of the undertaking, when he heard two shots fired to his right. ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... looked. It was a long, lean, bony hand reaching down the chimney and groping in the direction of the cot. The fingers were spread out and crooked, all ready to clutch. Slowly the long arm lengthened and drew near the cot. It was about to snatch the child, when Fion darted forward and seized it in an ...
— Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book - Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations • Edmund Dulac
... fine silk for his neighbours, he himself was very, very poor—a little old man in spectacles, with a pinched face, old crooked fingers, and a suit ...
— The Tailor of Gloucester • Beatrix Potter
... every one with a little scream; and the Prince was so startled that he cut an extremely crooked slice of cake. As soon as the blue smoke cleared away, however, and he saw that it was his fairy godmother, he recovered his good manners without any difficulty, and walked across ...
— All the Way to Fairyland - Fairy Stories • Evelyn Sharp
... now ready to nail the cross-bars to the side pieces of the ladder. He asked Phonny where he kept his nails. Phonny showed him a box where there was a great quantity of nails of all sizes, some crooked and some straight, some whole and some broken, and all mixed up in confusion with a mass of old iron, such as rings, parts of hinges, old locks and fragments of keys. Stuyvesant selected from this mass a nail, of the size that he ...
— Stuyvesant - A Franconia Story • Jacob Abbott
... I cannot say; but he swept so many that he got quite tired, and puzzled too, for they were not like the town flues to which he was accustomed, but such as you would find—if you would only get up them and look, which perhaps you would not like to do—in old country-houses, large and crooked chimneys, which had been altered again and again, till they ran one into another, anastomosing (as Professor Owen would say) considerably. So Tom fairly lost his way in them; not that he cared much for that, though he was in pitchy darkness, for he was as much at home ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... got my Rosan, too, though I wish mightily now that they hadn't. This feller is the private secretary to the president, an' the other two are clerks or something in the office. They may have been up to something crooked, and then again they may have just been talkin' things over as young fellers often do when they're interested in their work. Anyway, there's enough in what they said to set you thinkin', ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... passed in and out had been closed long before. Very few of the worthy burghers—who went to bed betimes and rose so early that they rarely had leisure to enjoy the moonlight long—passed here at this hour. The last one, an honest master weaver, had moved with a very crooked gait. As he saw the moon double—like everything else around and above him—he had wondered whether the man up there had a wife. He expected no very pleasant reception from his own at home. The watchman, who—the moon did not exactly know why—lingered a short ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... day we rowed 20 miles and passed a short carrying place. The river is very crooked and the water deep. We discovered on the bank of the river an old Indian hut, built as we supposed for hunting. Many bones of animals lay round the hut, and there was a ...
— An interesting journal of Abner Stocking of Chatham, Connecticut • Abner Stocking
... from the sudden and extreme changes to which the government of France is liable in its form and principles. The revolution of 1848 brought France morally nearer to England. Louis Philippe had much difficulty in holding in rein the war spirit, which for, his own selfish and crooked policy, he had himself evoked. After that corrupt prince was driven from the throne by the people he had betrayed, a friendly feeling sprung up towards England. The moderate republican party regarded Great Britain as a land of freedom, and the natural ally of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Mr. Eldridge; "don't be quite so hard on him, Captain. Now, Mr. Smith," he said, standing up with his hands in his coat-pockets and looking at Eli, "we know that there often is crooked sticks on juries, that hold out alone—that's to be expected; but they always argue, and stand to it the rest are fools, and all that. Now, all is, we don't see why you don't sort of argue, if you 've got reasons satisfactory ...
— Eli - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... to be found in mitred heads—if the power to heal angry passions and to settle the conflicting claims of prerogative and conscience were to be looked for among men of lofty station, then the Cologne conferences ought to have made the rough places smooth and the crooked paths straight throughout all Christendom. There was the Archbishop of Rossano, afterwards Pope Urban VII, as plenipotentiary from Rome; there was Charles of Aragon, Duke of Terranova, supported by five councillors, as ambassador from his Catholic Majesty; ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... were rather formidable—some fifty men and boys, no other girl or woman. Soon two cold females made their appearance and we shivered together and got acquainted in five minutes, as is wont under the circumstances. One rawboned girl with a crooked nose and frizzled blond hair had been married just two months. She went into immediate details about a party at her sister-in-law's the night before, all ending at a dance hall. The pretty, plump Jewess ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... certainly, than those of an ordinary comb; wherefore the queen, having inspected them, wisely declined to lay any eggs there, for the generation that would have arisen therefrom would necessarily have been deformed. Each cell, however, was a perfect hexagon; nor did it contain a single crooked line, a single curved figure or angle. And yet the ordinary conditions had all been changed; the cells had neither been scooped out of a block, according to Huber's description, nor had they been designed within a waxen hood, and, from being ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... subscribers behind, and as soon as the commonwealth floated out of the jurisdiction of Russia the people rose and threw off their allegiance and ran up the English flag, calculating to hook on and become an English colony as they drifted along down the British Possessions; but a land breeze and a crooked current carried them by, and they ran up the Stars and Stripes and steered for California, missed the connection again and swore allegiance to Mexico, but it wasn't any use; the anchors came home every time, and away they went with the northeast ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... took her place in the coach in which she had journeyed a year before; and reaching the station at Blaennos, soon arrived at Fordsea. Leaving her luggage at the station, she made her way into the well-remembered town. There was the white-flashing harbour, here was the crooked Reuben Street, and here the dear little house once occupied by her uncle, where she and Cardo had spent their happy honeymoon. Yes, she remembered it all; but she held her head up bravely, and crushed down every tender memory, hardening her heart, and setting herself to attend to ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... into the open air and found ourselves in a narrow, crooked street along which men were hurrying in great numbers and at high speed. On both sides of it were enormously tall houses. There was just one building, right opposite to us, which was of English height. ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... before two; was nearly an hour in raising it, and then so long in hauling it into dock that I did not get ashore till half past three, too late to pass the Customs house this evening. The first person I saw on shore known to me was young Crook, then Miss Crook and Mary Ann Marsden. Went to the Crooked Billet and engaged a bed; put the letter into the Liverpool Post Office from Mr. Webster and called with Mr. Bowker's letter, but found the Aunt gone from home. Spent the ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... of the old unadulterated Russia, a home of the simple, honest manners and customs of olden days, of faith and honour, of a child-like, pure-hearted belief in the religion of the country, the Catholic Greek Church. In its crooked, winding, badly-paved streets swarm Tatars, Persians, and Caucasians, among Slav citizens and countrymen, those inexterminable Russian peasants who suffer and toil like slaves, look too deep into the vodka[20] cup ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... belong to its original securities, and had been, though very long ago, somewhat clumsily superadded. Dusty and rusty they were, but I had no difficulty in drawing them back. There was a rusty key, I remember it well, with a crooked handle in the lock; I tried to turn it, but could not. My curiosity was piqued. I was thinking of going back and getting Mary Quince's assistance. It struck me, however, that possibly it was not locked, so I pulled the door and it opened quite easily. I did not find myself ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... when thou didst let her slip away like a snake in the stones I saw thee, and I knew that she had bewitched thee and that a true man had abandoned the truth, and he who aforetime loved a straight path had taken a crooked way. Forgive me, my father, if my words are sharp, but out of a full heart are they spoken. See her no more, so shalt thou go down with honour to the grave. Else because of the beauty of a woman that weareth as a garment of fur shalt thou be even as I ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... of my father's, I don't know why filial piety should exceed fatherly fondness, and still less cousinly, still there is a decency to be exprest in black bombazine and retirement. Besides, a thousand nothings kept me engaged. I passed a part of the time writing satires upon the little crooked viper of Twicknam, Pope—that may appear one day with a decoration from my Lord Hervey's pen; for Pope's last lampoon on me is a disgrace to any nature above that of a baboon. So all was pastoral ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... Cecil. "You see I am expected to attend to Mrs. Poynsett; and I have seen whist at Dunstone when any dull old person came there. What a troublesome crooked hand Julius writes— just like Greek! What's all this? So many services—four on Sunday, two every day, three on Wednesdays and Fridays! We never had anything like this ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at the base of society. He was stoical, serious, austere; a melancholy dreamer, humble and haughty, like fanatics. His glance was like a gimlet, cold and piercing. His whole life hung on these two words: watchfulness and supervision. He had introduced a straight line into what is the most crooked thing in the world; he possessed the conscience of his usefulness, the religion of his functions, and he was a spy as other men are priests. Woe to the man who fell into his hands! He would have arrested his own father, if the latter ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... table-cloths and the angle of sofas, opening windows because it was 'so stuffy,' and closing them a minute later with complaints about the draught, forcing occupants of arm-chairs to get up because the carpet was caught, fiddling with pictures because they were crooked either with floor or ceiling, and never realising that in the old house these latter were nowhere parallel. But her chief occupation was to prevent the children crossing their legs when they sat down, or pulling their dresses ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood |
