"Crumpled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... washed it, and drew it on over her own lovely face and neck, as one draws a glove on one's hand. Then she took a long stick and began hobbling along, leaning on it, toward the town. The old woman's skin was all crumpled and withered, and people who passed by only thought, "What an ugly old woman!" and never dreamed of the false skin and the beautiful girl inside. So on she went, picking up the pearls—one here, one there—until she found the last pearl just in front of the palace gate. Then she ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... into the church on that terrible night, although almost destitute of clothing, he bore the flag safely pinned inside of his ragged flannel shirt. A few days afterwards I found the poor, emaciated frame propped up in bed, with a crumpled sheet of paper spread upon a piece of pine board before him, while, with unaccustomed hand and unaccustomed brain, he toiled over some verses of poetry addressed to "Annie." After a week or two, when he lay dying, I received from his hand the flag and the verses pinned together, and addressed ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... He doesn't want to be hanged, of course. No one does. It's a perfectly natural feeling. So he crumpled ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... of course, in any case. But the point is whether it's true or not." Draper bent down, and picking up the crumpled letter, smoothed it out between his fingers. "The point, is, whether my father, when he was publicly denouncing the peonage abuses on the San Pablo plantations over a year ago, had actually sold out his stock, as he announced at the time; or whether, as they say here—how do they put it?—he ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... think of, but he spoke without obtrusive assurance or pronounced embarrassment; and the girl, shaking out her crumpled skirt over one little foot, with a swift sinuous movement, choked back a sob and favored him with a glance of keen scrutiny as she rose to a sitting posture. She was quick at reading character—the life she led had made that necessary—and his ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... cowered in his chair, wincing under each blow. He wiped his face and crumpled the moist handkerchief tightly in ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... bag, and after we had finished the room, we was just goin' out, when master he ran up-stairs as if he was in a hurry. He came into the room with a bit of paper in 'is 'and, somethink like a bank note, but he started on seein' us, an' crumpled up the paper an' stuffed it in 'is pocket. At the same time 'e got very angry, scolded us for being so slow, and ordered us off to the other rooms. Not ten minutes after that in comes Mr Lockhart, the lawyer, with two policemen, an' seizes Mr Laidlaw, ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... seen had risen before him. The girl was bareheaded, and she stood in a sun mellowed by a film of cloud. Her head was piled with lustrous coils of gold-brown hair that her hat and veil had hidden. Never had he looked upon such wonderful hair, crushed and crumpled back from her smooth forehead; nor such marvellous whiteness of skin and pure blue depths of eyes! In her he saw now everything that was strong and splendid in woman. She was not girlishly sweet. She was not a girl. She was a woman—glorious to look at, a soul glowing ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... the corner in front of the trolley, saw, too late, the swift-coming automobile bearing down upon the child, its head-lights flaring on the golden hair. With a cry the young man sprang to the rescue, but the child was already crumpled up like a lily and the relentless car speeding onward, its chauffeur darting frightened, cowardly glances behind him as he plunged his machine forward over the track, almost in the teeth of the up-trolley. When the trolley was passed there was no sign of the car, even if any one had had ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... be the programme," continued Trot, drawing a dirty, crumpled piece of paper out of her pocket. "I will write it down on this. They will ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... shook it. It must be there—the thing she sought; the thing that had troubled her most in her dream; the thing that was a menace while it existed. It was at the very bottom of the box, caught in a corner. She took it out with fingers that trembled, crumpled it into a little ball so that she could not read what it said, straightened it immediately, and read it reluctantly from the beginning to the end where the last word was clipped short with hasty scissors. A paragraph cut from a newspaper, it was; yellow and frayed from contact ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... to keep up his fury. I crumpled up the handkerchief and buried it in my pocket—preferring to endure the perspiration rather than remain there any longer. By hiding the scarlet, I conceived a hope he would the sooner ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... Alderney, and mourn, O maiden all forlorn, The cow with crumpled horn that filled thy pail; Mourn, damsels, mourn and sigh Who can no more reply, "I'm going a milking" to the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 5th, 1914 • Various
... appointed their police when he was at the Castle?—with Lord Frederick and Mr. Burke! And if the judges were appointed by the Irish, we should have, in all probability, Mr. Tim Harrington, barrister-at-law, on the bench; and a few years ago Mr. Tim Harrington crumpled up the Queen's writ and flung it out of the Court House window. And what power over the fortunes of others can be given to men who boycott a ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton
... in a surprisingly new suit of blue cloth with a portentous white waistcoat and an enormous crumpled white cravat, that gave him the appearance of suffering from a glandular swelling. His manner had, it seemed to Paul, advanced in exaggeration with his clothes. Dusting a chair and offering it to the visitor, he ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... by the collar and crutch, and flung him head foremost through the air. Then, taking the other as swiftly, he lifted him high overhead, and threw him down like a crumpled rag. ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... Bessy had gone to the top of the barn to fetch her frock; the truth is, that it was some time before she could find it; she had thrown it on the drawers when she had taken it off, and it had slipped down behind them, to use an expression of her own. It was all covered over with dust, and the trimming crumpled past recovery; but she gave it a good shaking, and down she came, not in the least troubled at the accident. When she got into the parlour, she found Lucy and Emily seated each with her small task of needlework; their other lessons were finished; ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... quarrelsome disposition, don't you believe it on any account. There is no saying what gossip from the army may reach your innocent ears. Whatever you hear you may rest assured that your ever-loving brother is not a duellist." Then Captain D'Hubert crumpled up the blank sheet of paper headed with the words "This is my last will and testament," and threw it in the fire with a great laugh at himself. He didn't care a snap for what that lunatic could do. He had suddenly acquired the conviction that his ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... a stump of a clay pipe, with tobacco still hot in it. There was a greasy piece of string, a crust of bread, a halfpenny, a few brass buttons, and a very greasy and very crumpled and very filthy copy of a "penny awful" paper. I need hardly say that this scrutiny did not afford me absolute pleasure. In the first place, my temporary lodging was most unsavoury and unclean; and in the second place, there was not one among my many fellow-lodgers who ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... and sat bolt upright in bed before he was fairly awake. He glanced reproachfully down at Ford, who stared back at him from a badly crumpled pillow. ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... for their hard past, I honor the women of my race. Their beauty,—their dark and mysterious beauty of midnight eyes, crumpled hair, and soft, full-featured faces—is perhaps more to me than to you, because I was born to its warm and subtle spell; but their worth is yours as well as mine. No other women on earth could have emerged from the hell of force and temptation which once engulfed and still surrounds black ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... soft voluptuous lips are drawn apart, Curving in fine repose, and maiden pride; Her creamy breast,—its mantle brushed aside Swells with the long pulsation of her heart: One languid arm rests on the coverlid, And one beneath the crumpled sheet is hid, (Ah happy sheets! to hide an arm so sweet!) Nor all concealed amid their folds of snow, The soft perfection of her shape below, Rounded and tapering to her little feet! Oh Love! if Beauty ever left her sphere, And sovereign sisters, Art and Poesy, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... troubles of the seaside boarder for ours," Bobby announced, hurriedly groping amid the rubbish in her skirt pocket and bringing forth a crumpled newspaper clipping. Bobby insisted upon having a pocket in almost every garment she wore (it was whispered that she wore pajamas at night for that reason) and no boy ever carried a more heterogeneous collection in his pockets than ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... amongst the Christians; and a score and a half of good, honest, unthinking Shandean people as ever lived, whose names I can't recollect,—all pretended that their jerkins were made after this fashion,—you might have rumpled and crumpled, and doubled and creased, and fretted and fridged the outside of them all to pieces;—in short, you might have played the very devil with them, and at the same time, not one of the insides ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... last, thank goodness!" cried a dark-brown silk which was greatly crumpled, and looked very uncomfortable hanging up by ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... the cold, a sleepy, shock-headed lad with guttering candle appeared and led the way to a dark and ill-smelling sleeping-apartment. The latter contained an iron bedstead (an unknown luxury here a decade ago), but relays of guests had evidently used the crumpled sheets and grimy pillows. Bathroom and washstand were supplied by a rusty brass tap, placed, pro bono publico, in the corridor. Our meals in the restaurant were inferior to those of a fifth-rate gargotte. And this was the best hotel in the "Paris of Siberia," as enthusiastic ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... had been but a few hours ago the scene of a large dinner-party. Glasses, dessert-plates, dishes of fruit, decanters empty and half empty, cumbered the great mahogany table as dead and wounded, guns and tumbrils, might a battlefield. Chairs stood askew; crumpled napkins lay as they had been dropped or tossed, some on the floor, others across the table ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... whipped and spurred furiously. Suddenly the answer came. The desert awoke in a fusillade of shots, and Jim saw Glover, who once more was in the lead, drift out of his saddle, slip down much as a child descends from its high-chair, and fall to earth in a crumpled heap. He swerved and dashed alongside. For an instant he drew rein and studied the still face. Then he lifted his eyes, gazing off absently toward the distant skyline, the mellow haze in the hills, the shimmering of heat-waves above the dunes, the glistening reflections of light ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... Lundi Druro crumpled up—what do you think of that?" Gay's charming face turned to a mask. "That gives you an idea of her power," continued Beryl dolorously, "if she can keep Lundi Druro amused. She is sitting in the lounge with him now. They've been there ever ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... in curiosity as Fred brought forth from the stack of cornstalks his missing suitcase. Beside the bag were several newspapers crumpled ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... tree he looked at it with despair. It was indeed very smooth and high,—as smooth as glass, and when he tried his hunting knife upon it the knife bent and crumpled ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... short, squarely built man of forty emerged from the weeds, went hastily to the car and did something to it. Noise ceased; clouds of steam continued to ascend from the crumpled hood. ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... he found the letter all crumpled and soiled there where he had placed it. He really had forgotten where it came from. The envelope was opened and out dropped a Bank of England note for one thousand pounds. This note was to pay for certain legal advice. The advice wanted was of a trivial nature, and Disraeli, always conscientious ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... came on, and the wonderful paper crane got damp, crumpled up, and fell into the sea. Sentaro fell with it. Very much frightened at the thought of being drowned, he cried out loudly to Jofuku to save him. He looked round, but there was no ship in sight. He swallowed a quantity of sea-water, ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... the crumpled-up piece of paper in his pocket. The two men passed on. Duson took off his hat, but his fingers were trembling. The carriage door was opened and a ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... me you had come from Orleans;" saying which he crumpled Manicamp's letter in his hand, and thrust it ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... is a front line trench in a re-entrant. The Hun trench facing it is also in a re-entrant, the original front lines on both sides having been crumpled and flooded out of existence. So when night fell the officer of B116 took his party and set out, and he went on and on, and then on, and there was still wire. And he went on and on and on. And there were bits of old trenches and saps and listening posts, but still wire. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 1, 1916 • Various
... it published in book form, to be flattered by critics and reprinted throughout the country press, or even to be cut up well and severely. But, after all, now we come to think of it, we would almost as soon see a piece of ours marked with big inky crosses in the soiled and crumpled rag that Bill or Jim gets sent him by an old mate of his—the paper that goes thousands of miles scrawled all over with smudgy addresses and tied with ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... and ordered the fly from the Peal of Bells, went to his room to change his old coat for a better one, since appearances must be kept up, even if the heart be breaking. His thin hair was disordered, and his tie, he noticed, was oddly crumpled, as though strange hands had been busy with his throat. He put on a fresh tie, smoothed his hair, and went down again. As he passed, he lingered a moment outside ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... his malt he pil'd, Cautious in vain! these rats, that squeak so wild, Squeak not unconscious of their father's guilt. Did he not see her gleaming thro' the glade! Belike 'twas she, the maiden all forlorn. What the she milk no cow with crumpled horn, Yet, aye she haunts the dale where erst she stray'd: And aye, beside her stalks her amorous knight Still on his thighs their wonted brogues are worn, And thro' those brogues, still tatter'd and ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... thigh to thigh, arm to arm, breast to breast, each sought to break the other's strength. And I saw that, when one was broken, he would not yield slowly, but, having spent the last of his strength, would collapse like a crumpled cardboard figure and go down into the ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... last, and crumpled it up in his hand, clenching it till the knuckles became dead-white under ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... crumpled in one hand. Brockton put down his paper, and regarded her curiously. She saw the expression on his face, and, reading its meaning, averted her head in order not to ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... and the ping of bullets whining through the trees. He did not tell of the ball that slid along his ribs, leaving a fiery, aching memory behind, as the man crashed down a clay bank, to lie for an instant in a crumpled heap, to rise and stumble on—not toward the haven of his own Confederate lines, but forward, to where a baby waited—through a dancing mist ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... under his command: "I beg your pardon." The end came soon. A perfect tornado of gigantic shells had struck his flagship, the Defence, at the very first salvo. She reeled under the terrific shock and had hardly begun to right herself before her sides were smashed in by another. At the third she crumpled up and sank with every soul aboard of her. Her next astern and second, the Black Prince, and the Warrior, managed to crawl away under cover of the mist. But both went down; though the battered Black Prince ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... high-minded man? what if my patient is sweet, dove-eyed and affectionate? Had not Anson qualities as excellent in their way, rights as certain, and a hold upon myself superior to any claims which another might advance? Drawing a much-crumpled little note from my pocket, I eagerly read it. It was the only one I had of his writing, the only letter he had ever written me. I had already re-read it a hundred times, but as I once more repeated to myself its well-known lines, I felt my heart grow strong ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... we threw down some flowers, and saw them scramble for them, kiss their hands to the invisible ladies, and go laughing away, to smoke and drink beer, I suppose. Next morning Fred showed me one of the crumpled flowers in his vest pocket, and looked very sentimental. I laughed at him, and said I didn't throw it, but Flo, which seemed to disgust him, for he tossed it out of the window, and turned sensible again. I'm afraid I'm going ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... to find himself face to face with Miss Easton. Try as he would, the telltale blood slowly mounted to his tanned cheeks, suffusing his entire face with a ruddy hue. Instinctively he crumpled up the letter in his hand and thrust it into his coat-pocket, then, with a poor attempt at a smile, answered her question. "Yes; the letter contains disagreeable news, at least so far as I am concerned. In fact, I will have to return to New ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... reached the end of the bridge, the outrageous journalist had crumpled up Madame de la Baudraye's muslin dress to such an effect that ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... stirred and sat up. He had learned a long time ago the futility of trying to deny Astro's Gargantuan appetite. "There's a dining car on this section of the monorail, Astro," he said, slapping a crumpled mass of credits into the Venusian's hamlike hand. "Here. Have yourself a good time." He slumped back in his seat ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... of her mouth. She resented at this late date King's way of going; not only had he not told her good-bye, he had left no word with her father for her. She sat smiling over a letter received some days ago from Gratton—after she had retrieved the letter from a heap of crumpled papers in her bedroom waste-paper basket. She read to her mother fragments, bright, gossipy remarks in Gratton's clever way of saying them; she wrote a long, ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... dimly conscious of a horrible blur of lights in his eyes, as helplessly as if he had been made of paper. A second blow, before he crumpled on the pavement, blotted out the last remaining vestige of emotion. He lay there in ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... purpose. Now I thrust my arms over the clothes; now I poked them under the clothes; now I violently shot my legs straight out down to the bottom of the bed; now I convulsively coiled them up as near my chin as they would go; now I shook out my crumpled pillow, changed it to the cool side, patted it flat, and lay down quietly on my back; now I fiercely doubled it in two, set it up on end, thrust it against the board of the bed, and tried a sitting posture. Every effort was in vain; I groaned with vexation as ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... line of trade. Now in the pastoral realms of Finance, it is an odd fact that not only is the milk all cream, and golden cream into the bargain, but it is sometimes hard to tell which are the dairy-maids and which are the kindly animals with the crumpled horns which furnish the lacteal supply which is so particularly sought after. Of course every body wants as much cream as possible, and all have faith that, at the nick of time, it will be given to them to milk instead of the other thing. There is a pleasant amusement known among juveniles ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... but we did not understand Ideala, and yet we applauded by laying our best before her, and acknowledged the charm of her presence in every word. She spoke very little, however. Indeed, I remember nothing she said until we went to the drawing-room. On the way thither Claudia had picked up a crumpled paper, and, glancing at it, had exclaimed—"Why, Ideala, here are some of your verses! Do ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... They were now ten feet in air; the shelf, a yawning distance still before them, appeared to frown down upon them. To the right of them an ice-pan half the size of the one on which they rode, having come within some ten feet of the wall, broke and crumpled ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... sprang up and rubbed his eyes. Not one of the wild folk was to be seen. But he held in his hand a broken and crumpled flower. He put the flower into his pocket and went along down the trail toward the ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix
... at the Doctor, and then through the window at his old enemy lying in the middle of the flowerbed. He did not like to see the poor book, so lately his master, crumpled and helpless, fallen from its high estate so suddenly. He would have gone to its assistance, and picked it up and smoothed it, the more so as he felt that he ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... he does not recognize me," said Barbesieur, relaxing his hold; while Strozzi, unmindful of his presence, caressed his flowers, and smoothed their crumpled leaves. ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... the better to see him, her face aglow with her fierce hope, her big belief, while she waited for that storm, that outraged denial, that tremendous vindication. And while she waited, erect, hopeful, eager, he shrank in upon himself; crumpled and wrinkled in upon himself until he looked weazened ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... the adornment of which she had ever disdained the use of essences and unguents. Yet I am told that her wrinkles and creases, although manifold, were not harsh nor rugged; and that her face might be likened rather to a billet of love written on fair white vellum, that had been somewhat crumpled by the hand of him who hates Youth and Love, than to some musty old conveyance or mortgage-deed scrabbled on yellow, damp-stained, rat-gnawed parchment. Her hands and neck were to the last of an amazing Whiteness. The former, as were also her feet, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... she stood defiant before him, white and resolute. Then quite suddenly, as if her will was being bent and crumpled under the insistent pressure of his own, she drooped and sank down again to the divan. Slowly, reluctantly she drew the dish nearer. Watching her, he laughed ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... sensible of the least wearisomeness of life. Of my gift it is, that you have so many old Nestors everywhere that have scarce left them so much as the shape of a man; stutterers, dotards, toothless, gray-haired, bald; or rather, to use the words of Aristophanes, "Nasty, crumpled, miserable, shriveled, bald, toothless, and wanting their baubles," yet so delighted with life and to be thought young that one dyes his gray hairs; another covers his baldness with a periwig; another ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... wife were engaged in cheerful chat when the first instalment of cakes arrived; a few crumpled, burnt scraps of something. ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... had an expression of cherubic innocence; but just as she let go Frank's hand she winked abruptly. He found as she turned away, that she had left something in his hand. He unfolded a small, much crumpled piece of blotting paper, taken, he supposed, by stealth from the writing table beside Priscilla's chair. A note was scratched with a point of a pin ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... saw the tall old man's great figure standing flat against the opposite wall, and he saw the ghastly face, half hidden by the snowy beard. He glanced down, and beheld a mass of straw-coloured silk, crumpled and disordered, and just beyond it a coil of faded hair adorned with jewelled pins that reflected the soft light. He crossed the room, and his features were ashy pale, firmly set and utterly relentless. He had heard her condemnation from her own lips, he thought of his son, nameless through ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... protested Thompson. "I met the Chief in a Turkish bath, and he went into the hottest room and crumpled, so I looked after him, and that's how I ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... panting as though he had been running. Sweat was streaming from his brow. He crumpled the shirt and wiped his face with it. He began ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... door; this light announced the reappearance of her jailers. Milady, who had arisen, threw herself quickly into the armchair, her head thrown back, her beautiful hair unbound and disheveled, her bosom half bare beneath her crumpled lace, one hand on her heart, ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... they saw that the girl had heaps of black hair that had become unfastened and lay in a heavy coil on the bed. Also, she had on a crumpled silk waist and ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill
... unrealistic picture the two made as they lay on their cushions alone in the desert. The girl in her white dress, which in truth was somewhat crumpled, her white neck rising like a gleaming pillar from the low-cut blouse, the little curls rippling round the face which, under the moonlight and the stress of the past hours, showed white with shadow-encircled eyes, gazing at the man who rose and knelt with a towel of softest linen, ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... and unexpected, throws him into convulsions. Audacity—boldness of all kinds—repels him. This Athenian of the Roman time is a true disciple of Epicurus in all matters of sight, hearing, and intelligence—a crumpled rose-leaf disturbs him. ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... possessed some features of interest. I was able to refer him to two parallel cases, the one at Riga in 1857, and the other at St. Louis in 1871, which have suggested to him the true solution. Here is the letter which I had this morning acknowledging my assistance." He tossed over, as he spoke, a crumpled sheet of foreign notepaper. I glanced my eyes down it, catching a profusion of notes of admiration, with stray "magnifiques," "coup-de-maitres," and "tours-de-force," all testifying to the ardent ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... lover from assaulting him. The girl was dead—there was a knife-wound in her breast. Sick at the sight I left the place, and went on, almost mechanically, to Voban's house. It was level with the ground, a crumpled heap of ruins. I passed Lancy's house, in front of which I had fought with Gabord; it too was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... parted. The scout moved off and his hand went to the pocket of his trousers where his fingers crumpled the crisp five-dollar bill he had received for his services. Nothing else really mattered to him. Seth rode away humming a tune ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... "that I should ever have come to understand that or to—to fulfil it unless I had—what did the girl say?—done the straight thing in the end, and come out of Blent. Well, old Blent, good-by!" He crumpled up Mina's letter, and flung it into ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... and the table looked inviting when Mrs. Vane came downstairs. Alie had hurried down to see to it all; she knew what a difference a little care makes sometimes—how a crumpled-looking table-cloth or untidily placed dishes will add to low spirits when any one is not feeling as bright and cheerful as usual. There were still some of grandmamma's good things, which she had had packed in a hamper for the first start at the new rectory—home-made ...
— The Rectory Children • Mrs Molesworth
... exhausted, fainting from loss of blood, he crumpled up and fell by his victim, and when the wolf-dogs closed in to take their vengeance, with his last consciousness dragged his body on top of Batard to shield him from ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... anything he wanted? Sometimes he would sit grubbing in his desk, or among his books, to find a certain exercise or paper for half an hour, and finally, when everything was upside down, he would remember he had it in his waistcoat pocket, from the recesses of which he produced it crumpled, greasy, and almost illegible. On Sundays he always had a hunt for his gloves; and at the end of the term, when he undertook his own packing, he generally first of all contrived to pack up his keys in the ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... to pass through the rain, which still fell thick and resonant, to reach a lavatory on the other side of the court. There were three basin-stands, and a few crumpled towels and pieces of wet soap, white and slippery like fish; nor should I forget a looking-glass and a pair of questionable combs. Another Scots lad was here, scrubbing his face with a good will. He had been three months in New York and had not yet found a single job nor earned a single ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... came over me. I crumpled up the paper and stood staring up and down the street. The newspaper boy was in the far distance, still shrieking. I saw Sir Barnaby Burtle, the obstetrician, standing by his scarlet front door, eagerly devouring the news. His jaw was slack ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... his feet. It was faintly perfumed. He turned toward the windows. In front of them was a canape and over it were flung, pell-mell, a gown of silk, a heap of lace-like garments, white and delicate as spiders' meshes, long, crumpled gloves, and, on the floor beneath, the stockings, the little pointed shoes, and one garter of rosy silk, quaintly flowered and fitted with a silver clasp. Wondering, he stepped forward and drew the heavy curtains from the bed. For a moment the candle flared in his hand; ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... her mouth and eyes with her dusty cambric handkerchief, she ties up her nightcap into a little bundle, and replaces it by a more becoming head-piece, covered with withered artificial flowers, and crumpled tags of ribbon; she looks wistfully at the company for an instant, and then places her handkerchief before her mouth:—her eyes roll strangely about for an instant, and you hear a faint clattering noise: the old lady has ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his attention was a movable drawing- board, on which lay an uncompleted drawing. At one side stood a glass, into which were thrust numerous pens and brushes. Near this lay a small ball of crumpled cambric, such as women insist upon carrying in their street-car purses, a delicate, dainty, useless thing. So she drew pictures, too, he thought. Was there anything this beautiful creature could not do? Everything seemed to suggest her presence. An indefinable feminine perfume ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... eyes fell on her apron. Its crumpled state, and the red and green smears on it, showed the use to which it had been put, and he began to guess ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... crumpling of paper. She opened the door quickly and went in. Connie turned, startled, a guilty red staining her pale face. Carol sat down sociably on the side of the bed, politely ignoring Connie's feeble attempt to keep the crumpled manuscript from her sight. She engaged her sister in a broad-minded and sweeping conversation, adroitly leading it up to the subject of literature. But Connie would not be inveigled into a confession. Then Carol ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... his room the next morning (ten o'clock had struck, and there was no appearance of Ted), she found him lying in a deep sleep; one arm was flung outside the counterpane, the hand had closed on a crumpled sheet of paper. It was Audrey's last note of invitation—the baby had taken it ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... government altogether inept—was no match for an army less than a third of its size to be sure, but well drilled and commanded, and with a stable, progressive, and efficient government at its back. The Peruvian forces, lacking any substantial support from Bolivia, crumpled under the terrific attacks of their adversaries. Efforts on the part of the United States to mediate in the struggle were blocked by the dogged refusal of Chile to abate its demands for annexation. ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... out his pocketbook as soon as the director turned his back on them, but before he could hand her the ten-ruble bill the inspector turned round, facing them. He crumpled ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... dirty crumpled paper, a reed, and some ink was then placed before Harry; and while the letter was being written, Bo Muzem commenced making ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... to touch on things I should have liked to keep hidden," said Austin. "Very well." He took a scrap of crumpled paper from the desk. "Do you recognise this? It formed the wad of the pistol that was in ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... you mean, Sir? It's offensive, I tell you: a downright offensive, ungentlemanly thing to do! Yes, Sir, ungentlemanly!" He crumpled up my verses and tossed them into the waste-paper basket. "We had better get on with our Tacitus." And "Offensive!" I heard him muttering once more, as he picked up the book and found his place. I began to construe. His outburst had disconcerted me, and no doubt I performed ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the richest man in Greenstream, wore—as was customary with him—a crumpled yellow shirt, open at his stringy throat, and innocent of tie; his trousers, one time lavender, had faded to a repulsive, colorless hue, and hung frayed about cheap, heavy shoes fastened by copper rivets. An ancient cutaway of broadcloth, spotted and greenish, ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... with his hands tied behind his back, advanced toward the table silently, without lifting his eyes to anyone. He seemed shorter in stature and thinner. His dishevelled hair fell on his forehead and temples; the torn and crumpled bosom of his shirt protruding from under his vest, and the collar covered his lips. He turned his head to push the collar down under his chin, and was unable to do it. Then the gray-headed little old man walked up to him, adjusted what was ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... the store veranda, where he had been standing, a majestic and interested onlooker. The Organiser—after all, a mere man of straw, crumpled under his ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... compunctions about killing, only his darts couldn't penetrate the magter's thick clothing. As the magter turned, Ulv's breath pulsed once and death stung the back of the other man's hand. He collapsed into a crumpled heap. ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... almost a part of his mind—the consciousness that something must be done, and promptly. Whatever his position was, he must face it. His hurried pacing to and fro came to a sudden stop, and he took the crumpled document from his packet, and ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... old piece of crumpled paper that contained a mixture of lampblack and grease, with which he besmeared his whole face, from his neck to the roots of his hair, after which he stripped the shirt he wore outside his clothes, and in about two or three minutes completely metamorphosed our friend ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... large man, with a fatal freshness on him." Mr. Podsnap has "two little light-colored wiry wings, one on either side of his else bald head, looking as like his hair-brushes as his hair." On his forehead are generally "little red beads," and he wears "a large allowance of crumpled shirt-collar up behind." ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... the loungers under the Linden at Berlin are startled by the extraordinary appearance of a tall, lanky woman, whose thin limbs are wrapped up in a long black robe of coarse cloth. An old crumpled bonnet covers her head, which continually moving turns restlessly in all directions. Her hollow cheeks are flushed with a morbid coppery glow; one of her eyes is immovable, for it is of glass, but her other eye shines with a feverish brilliancy, and a strange and almost awful ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... withstand, and the walls collapse inward. The air inside is compressed adiabatically to such a point that the pressure inside is less by a certain amount than the pressure outside, this amount being the pressure difference outside and in that the walls can stand in their crumpled condition. The uncertainties involved are, first, that some air rushes in through any opening that the can may have, and thus helps to build up the pressure inside; and, second, that as the pressure outside falls, the air inside cannot escape sufficiently fast to avoid ...
— The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki • United States
... himself from a brown study and looked up. Then he looked down to see whence the voice proceeded. Directly in his pathway stood a wee boy, a veritable cherub in modern raiment, whose rosy lips smiled up at him blandly, quite regardless of the sugary smears that surrounded them. One hand clasped a crumpled paper bag; the other held a rusty iron hoop and a cudgel entirely out of proportion to the size of ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... tell you, pronto!" said the soldier impatiently, emphasizing the command with a push. Almost before Piang realized it, he found himself on the gunboat, which was slowly moving out toward the channel. In his hand was a crumpled piece of paper which the soldier had ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... Lavretsky remained sitting on his willow. "I talk to her just as if life were not over for me," he thought. As she went away, Lisa hung her hat on a twig; with strange, almost tender emotion, Lavretsky looked at the hat, and its long rather crumpled ribbons. Lisa soon came back to him, and again took her stand ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... if it had been a straw, and its fellow, about twenty feet long, was ripped open and torn at the rivets, just as if the huge plates of iron of which it was composed were so many postage-stamps torn off and roughly crumpled in the hand. ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... himself to his task, painfully forming a series of pothooks until one more sentence was completed. He read it over, then suddenly crumpled the sheet into a ball and dropped it into the ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... unnoticed, the pressmen took it for granted, and Joe, in his slipshod manner, gave it no thought. Later that very afternoon as the opening of the hall door rang a bell sharply and Joe came in, the men swiftly and guiltily flung their lighted cigarettes to the floor and stepped them out or crumpled them with stinging fingers in their pockets. But Joe did not even notice the clinging cigarette smell that infected the strange printery atmosphere, that mingled with its delightful odor of the freshly printed page, damp, bitter-sweet, new. Once Marty Briggs, the fat foreman, had ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... their stateroom and sitting close to each other on the sofa under the port-hole, they read Mrs. Burnett's bright, sweet motherly letter, and a note from each of their brothers and sisters,—even a crumpled printed one from five-year-old Bertie. So bright and jolly were they all, that they allayed rather than heightened the first homesick feelings, and very soon the girls were chattering happily as they busied themselves with ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt |
