"Topsy-turvy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not slide down the sloping floor into the street. But everything remains moveless and placid. The bedroom is like a show. It might be the bedroom of some famous man exposed to worshipping tourists at sixpence a head. A few chairs have fallen out of the house, and they lie topsy-turvy in the street amid the debris; no one has thought to touch them. In all directions thoroughfares branch forth, silent, grass-grown, ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... have. Isn't it queer how sometimes, do what you can, work will keep getting in the way until you can't get anything done? That is how it was with me those few days before the wedding; so much so that when Wednesday dawned everything was topsy-turvy and I had a very strong desire to run away. But I always did hate a "piker," so I stood pat. Well, I had most of the dinner cooked, but it kept me hustling to get the house into anything like decent order before the old dog barked, and I knew my moments of ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... How such a topsy-turvy scene ever came to be tolerated in the colonel's office, of all places, was afterward a puzzle in the memory of many, including the colonel. They recalled it like a sort of nightmare, like something they could not control. Perhaps there was really a magnetism about the mesmerist; perhaps there ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... summer-land of Hellenic sky and hills of Hymettus, with its paradoxical antitheses: of flowers and flannels; strawberries and sealskin sacks; open fires with open windows; snow-capped mountains and orange blossoms; winter looking down upon summer—a topsy-turvy land, where you dig for your wood and climb for your coal; where water-pipes are laid above ground, with no fear of Jack Frost, and your principal rivers flow bottom side up and invisible most of the time; where the boys climb up hill on burros and slide down hills on wheels; where the trees are ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... Petrovitch here and beating the landlady! He is kicking her, banging her head against the steps—that's clear, that can be told from the sounds, from the cries and the thuds. How is it, is the world topsy-turvy? He could hear people running in crowds from all the storeys and all the staircases; he heard voices, exclamations, knocking, doors banging. "But why, why, and how could it be?" he repeated, thinking seriously that he had gone mad. But no, he heard too distinctly! And they would ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the end of the world, came upon him, and he racked his brains to imagine how he could ever find such a good place for his book-case as the gallery in the old maid's house. Fancying he saw his books scattered about, his furniture defaced, his regular life turned topsy-turvy, he asked himself for the thousandth time why the first year spent in Mademoiselle Gamard's house had been so sweet, the second so cruel. His troubles were a pit in which his reason floundered. The canonry seemed to him small compensation for so much misery, and he compared ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... little bit of stone which I possess is worth much more than that. And the proof of it lies in all the pains which you are at to take it from me. Aha! Months devoted to looking for it, as you yourself confess! Months in which you turned everything topsy-turvy, while I, who suspected nothing, did not even defend myself! Why should I? The little thing defended itself all alone.... It does not want to be discovered and it sha'n't be.... It likes being here.... It presides over a good, honest business that satisfies it.... Pancaldi's luck! ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... to the Kempt family now and then, if they will let me. I must get away for a time and think. My life has suddenly become all topsy-turvy, and I need to get my bearings, as does a ship that has been through a storm ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... started for the head of a gorge, down which I thought it would be possible to climb to the nearest timber. Nothing definite could be seen. The clouds on the snowy surface and the light electrified air gave the eye only optical illusions. The outline of every object was topsy-turvy and dim. The large stones that I thought to step on were not there; and, when apparently passing others, I bumped into them. Several times I fell headlong by stepping out for a ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... they might be leaders, but they have no social weight in this topsy-turvy land, and though they have been employed in clerical work for generations they have no practical knowledge of affairs. A ship's clerk is a useful person, but he is scarcely the captain; and an orderly-room writer, however smart ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... half mile of it, from the beginning to the point where another turn intervened. The two friends were galloping over this exact section and speculating as to how soon they would strike the open prairie, when all their calculations were knocked topsy-turvy. A party of horsemen charged around the bend in front, all riding at a sweeping gallop directly toward the alarmed Mickey and Fred, who instantly halted and surveyed them. A second glance showed them to be Indians, undoubtedly Apaches, and very probably Lone Wolf himself ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... matters; but as the parson told us last Sunday, nobody believes in the devil now-a-days; and here you bring about a parcel of puppets drest up like lords and ladies, only to turn the heads of poor country wenches; and when their heads are once turned topsy-turvy, no wonder everything ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... but charity, for which we, who have everything, expect them to be grateful; and when I know that every one of them has done more useful work in a year of their life than I shall ever do in the whole of mine, then I feel that the whole state of things is somehow wrong and topsy-turvy and wicked." Her voice rose a little, every emphasis grew more passionate. "And if I don't do something—the little such a person as I can—to alter it before I die, I might as well never ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... row here—hey? I was gone just half an hour, and everything has gone topsy-turvy. Lipa, why did you let the chickens get into the raspberry bushes? Go and drive 'em away, damn you! I am talking to you—yes, to you! Go, or I'll go you, ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... and establishing fisheries, organising lines of land traffic, perpetually moving from place to place, and leaving wherever they went abundant proofs of their diligence and capacity for hard work. From Thasos in the East, where Herodotus saw "a large mountain turned topsy-turvy by the Phoenicians in their search for gold,"[315] to the Scilly Islands in the West, where workings attributable to them are still to be seen, all the metalliferous islands and coast tracts bear traces ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... on Bruyn!" Bruyn! Bruyn! And always Bruyn in such a way that Bruyn was more worn-out by the clemency of his wife than he would have been by her unkindness. She turned his brain wishing that everything should be in scarlet, making him turn everything topsy-turvy at the least movement of her eyebrow, and when she was sad the seneschal distracted, would say to everything from his judicial seat, "Hang him!" Another would have died like a fly at this conflict with the maid's ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... murderous assault in his little cottage upon the outskirts of town, and was even now lying at the point of death in The Samaritan Hospital. That robbery had been the motive was amply indicated by the topsy-turvy condition of the contents of the three rooms which Baggs called home. As the victim still was unconscious no details of the crime were obtainable. Yet even this atrocious deed had been capped by ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... all—all, and that she had his sympathy; to fall on Mrs. Fazakerly's neck and cry like a child, he felt that he was capable of any or all of these things. As it was, his behavior must have been sufficiently ridiculous, since it amused Mrs. Fazakerly so much. The two had reached that topsy-turvy height of anguish that is only expressible by laughter. Theirs had a ring of insanity in it; it sounded monstrous and immoral, like the mirth of victims under the shadow of condign extinction. As for his play, he knew it was the play of ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... very clever indeed. If you would just turn it topsy-turvy, change all those bitter, truthful speeches into noble sentiments; make your Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs (who never has been a popular character) die in the last act instead of the Yorkshireman, and let your bad woman be reformed by her love for the hero ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... isn't nice to make up your mind so suddenly that it turns everything topsy-turvy," sighed Tommy—"I won't ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... had a pleasant passage till getting into the bay, where an obstinate head wind tossed us up and down like a cork on the sea. Sea-sickness, in a crowded boat, and the retching of the waves, soon turned everything and every one topsy-turvy; every being, in fine, bearing a stomach which had not been seasoned to such tossings among anchors and halyards, was prostrate. At last the steamer itself, as we came nearer the head of the bay, was pitched out of the right channel and driven a-muck. She stuck ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... MacKim had other views of it. Even when at last he was relieved from duty he never closed an eye. The blowing out of the lamp had turned his ideas and hopes all topsy-turvy. His heart sang loud and turbulent within him. He had kissed other girls indeed before at kirns and country dances. He laughed triumphantly within him at the difference. They had run into corners and screamed and struggled, and held up ineffectual hands. And when his lips did ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... back from his knowledge many facts in the administration of the country, and destroying documents addressed to him. Also in having been untrue to him in word and deed. Almost comic this last—a sort of topsy-turvy adultery charge! ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... the door on the birthday, and proud enough they were of it. The griffins, cupids, and so on, were, I must own, most beautiful to behold; though so many in number, so entangled in flowers and devices, and so topsy-turvy in their actions and attitudes, that you felt them unpleasantly in your head for hours after you had done with the pleasure of looking at them. If I add that Penelope ended her part of the morning's work by being sick in the back-kitchen, it is ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... and a successful one, so far as getting on my feet was concerned. When I woke up this morning it occurred to me, like a reproach, that I had come with you, sir, to wait on you and not to be waited on by you—which latter arrangement was a sort of turning things topsy-turvy—" ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... and she only, is she whose square answereth to the square of her figure, and to the character which her Lord hath given of his own, and so the game began. For so soon as this mistress became a dame in the world, and found that she had her stout abettors, she attempts to turn all things topsy-turvy, and to set them and to make of them what she lists. And now she will have an altar like that which was Tiglath-pileser's. Now must the Lord's brazen altar be removed from its place, the borders of the basis must be cut off, and the laver removed from off them; the molten sea must also now ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... It was topsy-turvy, March-hare weather, which perhaps accounted for the early April dementia that possessed the children at recurring intervals, and which nothing ever checked except the ultimate ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... St. Eloi, of which one aisle had been shattered; then, turning another corner, we came on a poor bourgeois house that had had its whole front torn away. The squalid revelation of caved-in floors, smashed wardrobes, dangling bedsteads, heaped-up blankets, topsy-turvy chairs and stoves and wash-stands was far more painful than the sight of the wounded church. St. Eloi was draped in the dignity of martyrdom, but the poor little house reminded one of some shy humdrum person suddenly exposed in the glare of ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... great humility, "we be greatly surprised by what you tell us about the pearls, and we are very much obliged for your kindness, which the same is a great deal more than we expected; but it has set us all topsy-turvy, as we may say. If it's all the same, we would like to go and take a look at that same pearl-oyster ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... prison, and the place closed, France is not at war with Germany, and Muller could carry on the shipping business without interruption, his own name being substituted for mine. I should instruct him to do no trade with the interior; everything will be turned topsy-turvy, and all trade of that sort would be at an end. On the other hand, with the French masters here, a considerable number of French and Italian ships will be coming in with stores of all kinds, these will often need ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... schooners which carry on the St. Lawrence trade head up the bay. They work in close to shore, drop their anchors and wait for the tide to go out. It leaves them high and dry, and tilted sometimes at an angle which suggests that everything within must be topsy-turvy, until the vessel is afloat again. With a strong wind blowing from the north-east the bay is likely to be, at high tide, an extremely lively place for the mariner; a fact which helps perhaps to explain the sinister French name of Malbaie. The huge waves, ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... was occupied by swings, where some eight or ten boat-loads of persons were flying topsy-turvy into the air, making one giddy to look at them, and constant fearful shrieks arose from the lady swingers, at finding themselves in a horizontal or inverted position, high above the ground. One of the machines ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... hat; it was lying topsy-turvy in the middle of the path, and Ethelbertha's favourite hound was swallowing the balls as fast as he ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... condition, while two men were immediately employed to transport the bed on which she used to lie from her brother's house to her new habitation; so that, in less than two hours, the whole economy of the garrison was turned topsy-turvy, and everything involved in tumult and noise. Trunnion, being disturbed and distracted with the uproar, turned out in his shirt like a maniac, and, arming himself with a cudgel of crab-tree, made an irruption into his wife's apartment, where, perceiving a couple of carpenters at work ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... and then he looked at Ginger, and they walked by grinding their teeth. They stuck to Isaac all day, trying to get their money out of 'im, and the names they called 'im was a surprise even to themselves. And at night they turned the room topsy-turvy agin looking for their money and 'ad more unpleasantness when they wanted Isaac to get up and let ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... the humors of the camp—a practical manifestation of the facetious spirit that had found literary expression in the topsy-turvy obituary notice from the pen of Hurdy-Gurdy's great humorist. Perhaps it had some occult personal signification impenetrable to understandings uninstructed in local traditions. A more charitable hypothesis is ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... cadets lost no time in making a thorough examination of the Lodge. In the bedrooms they found everything topsy-turvy, the bed clothes having been hauled near the windows where the incoming snow might fall upon them. In the kitchen they found many of their cooking utensils in the sink, and over them had been poured a mixture of flour, catsup, maple syrup, and condensed milk. In the storeroom many other ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... passion of his life: and the instrument that should serve his purpose could not be forged in haste. Neither was it easy for this past master of the random, the unexpected, the brilliantly back-foremost and topsy-turvy in talk, to learn in writing the habit of orderly arrangement and organic sequence which even the lightest ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the whole place topsy-turvy in two years, in my opinion," said Miss Crewys. "I don't deny that he is a rising young man, and that his manners are very taking. But what can a Cockney lawyer know, ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... belong to the young men who have turned the house topsy-turvy with their tableaux, their Revolution celebration, their banner, and carousing generally," said Mrs. Jeffrey, rather pleased than otherwise at being the ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... preferred to The Lotus Eaters, and the first Legende des Siecles rejected as unreadable. In face of this whirlwind of doctrine the public ceases to know whether it is on its head or its feet—"its trembling tent all topsy-turvy wheels," as an Elizabethan has it. To me it seems that security can only be found in an incessant exploration of the by-ways of literary history and analysis of the vagaries of literary character. To pursue this analysis and this exploration without ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... Such topsy-turvy habitations as the stores and dwellings of Canvas Town never were seen. The main street, if the thoroughfare where all the business of the mushroom township was transacted could be dignified with such a name, ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... rascals, and beat her lover until he was sore from head to foot, and then force him to pay for the trouble she was at. Once, attended with a crew of ragamuffins, she broke into his house, turned all things topsy-turvy, and then set it on fire. At the same time she told so many lies among his servants, that it set them all by the ears, and his poor Steward was knocked on the head;[63] for which I think, and so ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... be a necessary consequence of their geographical position, it does at least reveal them looking at the world as if from the standpoint of that eccentric posture. For they seem to him to see everything topsy-turvy. Whether it be that their antipodal situation has affected their brains, or whether it is the mind of the observer himself that has hitherto been wrong in undertaking to rectify the inverted pictures presented by his retina, the result, at all events, is undeniable. The world stands reversed, ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... to the wind. She thinks it a great favour to run down to Hiltonbury for the Horticultural Show, turn everything topsy-turvy, keep poor dear Sweet Honey in a perpetual ferment, then come away to Castle Blanch, as if she were rid of ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Because I can't help it! Who knows, really, why anything happens or does not happen in this topsy-turvy world?" ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... even promise to return to it: in concession to which weakness, it was agreed that I should call in about an hour at the office of the lawyer, whom (as he left the library) Uncle Adam should waylay and inform of the arrangement. I suppose there was never a more topsy-turvy situation: you would have thought it was I who had suffered some rebuff, and that iron-sided Adam was a generous conqueror who scorned ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... simpletons, I trow, And often did the thing we should not; But all is turning topsy-turvy now, And if we tried to stem ...
— Faust • Goethe
... should rather complain; you prostituted me vilely to scoundrels, whose laudations and cajolery of you were only samples of their designs upon me. As to your saying that I wound up by betraying you, you have things topsy-turvy again; I may complain; you took every method to estrange me, and finally kicked me out neck and crop. That is why your revered Dame Poverty has supplied you with a smock-frock to replace your soft raiment. Why, I begged and prayed Zeus (and Hermes ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... a visitor. Miss Cecilia was so distressed at your missing your breakfast that she spoke to the housekeeper, and I was sent up to you. Please to excuse it if the tea's cold. This is Grand Day, and we are all topsy-turvy in consequence." ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... his eyes should miss the glare of light, he gazed about him. He was alone, and as he realized this he scrambled to his feet, and, for the moment, the room—everything about him—seemed to be turning topsy-turvy. He placed his hand against the post which supported the ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... went further back, to the day when he had first driven Norah's mother over the Billabong track; little and dainty and merry, while he had been as always, silent, but unspeakably proud of her. The little mother's grave had long been green, and the world had turned topsy-turvy since then, but the old track was the same, and the memory, and the pride, ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... met coming up an incline, the man considerately giving the animal a lift. A life of drudgery breaks the spirit of these work-dogs and makes them cowardly and cringing. At my approach this one howls, and swerves suddenly around with a rush that upsets both man and cart, topsy-turvy, into the ditch, and the last glimpse of the rumpus obtained, as I sweep past and down the hill beyond, is the man pawing the air with his naked feet and the dog struggling to free himself ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... them. To mark the fifth, they chose a V, which is made out by bending inwards the three middle fingers, and stretching out only the thumb and the little finger; and for the tenth they used an X, which is a double V, one placed topsy-turvy under the other. From this the progression of these numbers is always from one to five, and from five to ten. The hundred was signified by the capital letter of that word in Latin, C—centum. The other letters, D for 500, and M for a 1000, were ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... had heard she had lately come out of the straw. But the GOOSE of their tale not a word understood, And still cackled away to her terrified brood; While immers'd in a pond, to complete their ill luck, Topsy-turvy appear'd, at ...
— The Peacock and Parrot, on their Tour to Discover the Author of "The Peacock At Home" • Unknown
... reading a ghost-book," said Carlyle. "Wilson's folly has turned the house topsy-turvy. Make your ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... then of parting and brushing about an inch of his hair, leaving the rest all topsy-turvy. My recollection of that boyhood habit served me as a defense in later years when he would call my attention to my own ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... hold of the mind, and life is all topsy-turvy, all vanity and vexation of spirit. There is no cure for individual or social disorder, except in forgetfulness and annihilation. "Let us eat, drink and be merry," says the pessimist, "for to-morrow we die." If I regarded my life from the point of ...
— Optimism - An Essay • Helen Keller
... Army, or rather Yeomanry life, its fatigues and worries, big and small, on men hitherto unaccustomed to such things, has been marvellous, and productive of a topsy-turvy dom of character, after Mr. W. S. Gilbert's own heart. To commence with, it is curious to note that in many cases men who claim to have roughed it in various parts of the world have been amongst the worst to stand the roughing here, and while ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... Then the poor innocent appeals to the enemies of her species, the sanguineae, and, after the manner of ants, she licks the mouth of two among them. The two sanguineae are so touched by this gesture, which turns their instinct topsy-turvy, that they disgorge their honeyed store and feed the young enemy. Thenceforward all is well. An offensive and defensive alliance is formed between the little pratensis and the sanguineae against the ants of the young one's own species. The ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... some of the Melmottites. There was much to be done about the dinner,— which could not be omitted; and much also as to the election,—which was imperative. The two Grendalls, father and son, found themselves to be so driven that the world seemed for them to be turned topsy-turvy. The elder had in old days been accustomed to electioneering in the interest of his own family, and had declared himself willing to make himself useful on behalf of Mr Melmotte. But he found Westminster to be almost too much for him. He was called here and sent there, till he was very near ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... and saddle-bags, and a French varlet, who said he was, forsooth, a cook, and carried about with him a whole elaboratory of stove-furnaces, pots and pans, and jars of sauces and condiments. Monsieur was quickly at work in the kitchen, turning all things topsy-turvy, and nearly frightening Margery, the old cook, who had been a baggage-wagon sutler at Naseby in the Great Wars, into fits. About half-past ten a trumpet was heard to wind at the bridge-foot, and a couple of horses came tramping over the planks, making ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... doll Maud Mabel Rose Matilda very ill in the best bed, while she went down to get a poppy leaf to rub the darling's cheeks with, because she had a high fever. Jocko took a fancy to the pretty bed, and after turning the play-house topsy-turvy, he pulled poor Maud Mabel Rose Matilda out by her flaxen hair, and stuffing her into the water-pitcher upside down, got into the bed, drew the lace curtains, and prepared to doze deliciously under the ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... As it sent Harry Brougham to the right about— The condition in which the patient has been Is a thing quite awful to be seen. Not that a casual eye could scan This wondrous change by outward survey; It being, in fact, the interior man That's turned completely topsy-turvy:— Like a case that lately, in reading o'er 'em, I found in the Acta Eruditorum, Of a man in whose inside, when disclosed, The whole order of things was found transposed; By a lusus naturae, strange to see, The liver placed where the heart should be, And ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... dismal imitation of a copy of some celebrated poseur—I'll tell you those! Speaking as a man of liberal—or lax—morality, you surprise me. You are godly and cleanly men; yet, when you saw in me a gem of purest ray serene, did you appeal to my better nature? Nary! In a wild and topsy-turvy world, did you implore me to devote my splendid and unwasted energies in the service of Good, with a capital G? Nix! You appealed to ambition, egotism, and greed.... Fie! A fie upon ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... coast was clear for him to return home with the rich prize he had brought from the Indian seas and the coast of Africa, and meantime he lay there in the Delaware Bay waiting for a reply. Before he left he turned the whole of Tom Chist's life topsy-turvy with something ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... entered Miss Craven's drawing-room was that she was in the midst of a removal. The place was turned topsy-turvy. Curtains had been taken down, ornaments removed from their shelves, pictures from their hangings; and the grand piano stood where it had never yet been allowed to stand, in a draught between the window and the door. Tripping over a Persian rug, ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... my word! C'est abracadabrant! Here I've been harrowing my soul all morning with thoughts of your untimely death, Hermia, dear, turning Westport topsy-turvy, to find you at your ease snugly wrapped in tte--tte with this charming social renegade. It is almost too ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... going to turn around and fight our way back against the gale. We may be turned topsy-turvy for a ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton
... one time thought of writing an Epic Poem upon Friedrich the Great, 'upon some action of Friedrich's,' Schiller says. Happily Schiller did not do it. By oversetting fact, disregarding reality, and tumbling time and space topsy-turvy, Schiller with his fine gifts might no doubt have written a temporary 'epic poem,' of the kind read an admired by many simple persons. But that would have helped little, and could not have lasted long. It is not ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... both started from the room and ran up-stairs. Here they found Henry, a boy two years older than Mary, who was between three and four, lying on the carpet with a bureau drawer upon him, which he had, while turning topsy-turvy after something or other, accidentally pulled out upon him. He was more frightened than hurt, by ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... not know what it rightly is to faint, but I do know that for the next little while the whole world swam away from before me in a whirling mist; Silver and the birds, and the tall Spy-glass hill-top, going round and round and topsy-turvy before my eyes, and all manner of bells ringing and distant ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... scattered about the country in the form of firebacks; evidently the founders considered the design convenient. Perhaps they might have made a better job if they had been severer scholars; for some of the lettering on it is quaint and topsy-turvy, the S's being twisted the wrong way round and the F's lying unhappily feet uppermost. Yet it fits well with the other old Gainsford and Angell monuments, and is also a memorial of a dead and gone industry, the iron-smelting ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... person—like me, you know," he said, winking comically at Hetty—"who won't mistake a frightened squirrel for the king of the brown elves off on a hunting spree, or for anything else that never was born, except inside of your topsy-turvy head." ...
— Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... successively tumbling from the air and were cast together into the basket. The last fragment of all that we saw tumble down was the head, and no sooner had that touched the ground than he who had snatched up all the limbs and put them in the basket turned them all out again topsy-turvy. Then straightway we saw with these eyes all those limbs creep together again, and in short, form a whole man, who at once could stand and go just as before, without showing the least damage! Never in my life was I so astonished as when I beheld this wonderful performance, and I doubted ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... the cabin to rights—thoroughly to rights. I give you my word of honor, I turned every blessed thing topsy-turvy. And my friend there came off in a shore-boat and helped me. Talking of boats, I have never asked you yet whether your boat came to any harm last night. If there's any damage done, I insist on being ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... they smile and sue. Their topsy-turvy world, you say, Is out of all perspective? Nay, 'Tis we who ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... kept locked) open slowly, and give passage to the form of Grace Poole, in prim cap, white apron, and handkerchief; when I watched her glide along the gallery, her quiet tread muffled in a list slipper; when I saw her look into the bustling, topsy-turvy bedrooms,—just say a word, perhaps, to the charwoman about the proper way to polish a grate, or clean a marble mantelpiece, or take stains from papered walls, and then pass on. She would thus descend to the kitchen once a day, eat her dinner, smoke a moderate pipe ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... field, I can use a knife at a pinch, as you know full well. You will carry your gibes too far with me some day. No," he went on more calmly, after a pause, "I shall go back to England next week, after Marmaduke Harris and his gang have finished Oliver, The country will be turned so topsy-turvy that there will be no nice inquiry into bygones, and at any rate I can keep out ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... time his reverence came to me, leaving the porter just outside the door in older to come to his help should I be violent, and then he read me a very purty lecture on my conduct, saying I had turned the religious house topsy-turvy, and corrupted the scholars, and that I was the cheat of the world, for that on inspecting the pack he had discovered the dirty marks which I had made upon the trump cards for to know them by. He said ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... in that boat, dear," she said sweetly, "you would realize the topsy-turvy condition of our brains. Even Mr. Gray himself, the coolest man on board, imagined we might sink any moment. So what can you expect of those excitable Chileans? Besides, the thing was done so quickly that we were swept away by the tide before any one fully understood ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... name. One of these box-groves covers two hundred and thirty acres. On the brow of Box Hill, Major Labilliere, a singular character, was buried in 1800. He lived in Dorking, and, becoming convinced that the world had been turned topsy-turvy, selected his grave, and gave instructions that he should be buried head downward, so that at the final setting right of mundane affairs he would rise correctly. In the Mole Valley, at the base of Box Hill, at a pretty little house called the "Fox and Hounds," Keats finished his poem of Endymion, ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... been introduced in the South Island, and the mountain goats—the ibex and the thar—are to be acclimatized in the mountains, so that unnatural sport may flourish in this ancient land of quiet and of wondrous birds, turned topsy-turvy by enlightened man. ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... to the wisdom the sages preach Who never have learnt what they try to teach. We are the lights of the age, they say! We are the men, and the thinkers we! So we build up guess-work the livelong day, In a topsy-turvy sort of way, Some with and some wanting a plus b. Let the British Association fuss; What are theirs to the feats to be wrought by us? {354} Shall the earth stand still? Will the round come square? Must Isaac's book be the nest ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... portrait, picture. retumbar resound, recho. reunir unite, gather. reventar burst forth. revs m. reverse; al —— contrariwise. revestir clothe, robe. revuelto, -a agitated, restless, disordered, topsy-turvy, winding, wrapped, clad. rey m. king, monarch. rezar pray, recite. rezo m. prayer, devotions. rico, -a rich, abundant, plentiful, fine. ridculo, -a ridiculous, strange, absurd. rielar shimmer, glisten. rienda f. rein; a —— suelta at full gallop. riesgo ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... eyes grew black, and the red spots burned again, as Marcia replied: "Well, I should think so—he proposes to turn things topsy-turvy!" ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various
... imagination, Dudley. Things have all got a little topsy-turvy since Doris went, but presently you will see you were mistaken. Don't ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... had imported a London and Dublin idea: turning cart-wheels, somersaults, and walking all about us on their hands, with feet in the air, to attract attention and elicit pennies. One little fellow gyrated about in a most marvelous style, keeping so persistently topsy-turvy as to grow black in the face, and we finally paid him to keep right side uppermost. Begging is reduced to a science in India, and our little party were beset, as by an ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... number of others I got from the hotel to the hill in a wagon. The sight from our eminence was one that I shall never forget—that I can never fully describe. The whole world appeared to be topsy-turvy and at the mercy of an angry and destroying demon of the elements. People were floating about on housetops and in wagons, and hundreds were clinging to tree-trunks, logs and furniture ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... here," said the Squire, "you are old enough now to look at things in a sensible light. I suppose you have heard that your sister has taken it upon herself to take herself off without a with your leave or by your leave and has turned the whole house topsy-turvy—eh?" ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... will find that however eager he may be to follow the light he is handicapped by vicious habits and by confirmed, destructive changes which had seized on him when he was quite too young and incompetent to care for his body. What a topsy-turvy world this is, to ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... than simply to register the decrees of the central power. Duespeptos was king only in name,—roi faineant. Gaster was the power behind the throne,—the Mayor of the Palace,—the great Grand-Vizier. Nought went merrily, for he ruled with a rod of iron. Every day his strange freaks set the empire topsy-turvy. Every day there was growling and ill-feeling at his whimsical tyranny,—but nothing more. Secession was as impossible as in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... to Lady Daphne, does he?" she said to herself, as she realised that she would be forced to speak out now if he was to be saved from such an alliance. "Then he must marry her, that's all! I can't and won't turn all Maerchenland topsy-turvy on his account! I've done all I could for him, and I shall leave him to go his own way. I'll go up to bed before he arrives, and I expect it will be a long time before I'm able to come down, for I feel sure I am going to be ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... May 25th.—After dinner went over my part, dressed and set off for Bridgewater House for our dressed rehearsal of "Hernani." Found the stage in a state of unfinish, the house topsy-turvy, and every body to the right and left. Sat for an hour in the drawing-room while our very specially small and select audience arrived. Then heard Lady Francis, Henry Greville, Mrs. Bradshaw, and Mr. Mitford try their glee—one of Moore's melodies arranged for four ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... daughters were actually out in the fields herding sheep, and their sons sweeping chimneys or carrying newspapers; while the poor charwomen's and coal-heavers' children spent their time like princesses and fairies. Such a topsy-turvy state of society was shocking. Why, the Mayor's little daughter was tending geese out in the meadow like any common goose-girl! Her pretty elder sister, Violetta, felt very sad about it, and used often to cast about in her mind for ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... appearances, and says you, 'Lor', what a thousander fellow this is!' and 'What a millioner fellow that is!' You'll be giving your millions and your thousands to the wrong people, when they haven't got a penny. All London 'll be topsy-turvy to you, unless you've got a guide, and he'll show you a shabby-coated, head-in-the-gutter old man 'll buy up the lot. Everybody that doesn't know him says—look at him! but they that knows him—hats off, I can tell you. And talk about lords! We don't mind their coming into the city, but they ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... for I have seen the ancient mines which were worked, for the most part as open quarries, still showing plenty of visible gold on the face of the slopes. Yet to these alleged Jews this gold was of no account. Imagine it; as Quick said, such a topsy-turvy state of things was enough to make a mere Christian feel cold down the back and go to bed thinking that the world must ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... facts. He practised an ancient and tyrannous hospitality, keeping open house upon the road to Letterkenny, and forcing bed and board even upon strangers, as Durrance had once discovered. He was a man of another century, who looked out with a glowering, angry eye upon a topsy-turvy world, and would not be reconciled to it except after much alcohol. He was a sort of intoxicated Coriolanus, believing that the people should be shepherded with a stick, yet always mindful of his manners, even to the lowliest of women. It was said of him with pride by the townsfolk of Ramelton, ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... hearts; but they won't chirrup. Oh, dear, no, bless you, they leave the Christians to chirrup—they hold conversations and giggle and laugh and play a thing like a fiddle—it is Australia! where everything is inside-out and topsy-turvy. The animals have four legs, so they jump on two. Ten-foot square of rock lets for a pound a month; ten acres of grass for a shilling a year. Roasted at Christmas, shiver o' cold on midsummer-day. The lakes are grass, and the rivers turn ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... continued Trottman, 'to afford you a sample of his gibberish; you may then examine what degree of instruction you suppose may be obtained from a heterogeneous topsy-turvy mass of law phrases.' ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... home swiftly through the early night, his brain seething with tumultuous thoughts. The revelations of the day were staggering; the whole universe seemed to have turned topsy-turvy since that devastating hour at Burton's Inn. Somehow he was not able to confine his thoughts to Hetty Castleton alone. She seemed to sink into the background, despite the absolution he had been so ready, so eager to grant her on hearing the story from ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... "but I confess I don't understand all your modern notions. Everybody seems to be getting discontented. The poor want to be rich, and the rich want to be millionaires; men want to do their master's work, and women want to do men's; everything is topsy-turvy!" ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... threadbare, musty gods were my father, but Plutus, Riches; that only he, that is, in spite of Hesiod, Homer, nay and Jupiter himself, divum pater atque hominum rex, the father of gods and men, at whose single beck, as heretofore, so at present, all things sacred and profane are turned topsy-turvy. According to whose pleasure war, peace, empire, counsels, judgments, assemblies, wedlocks, bargains, leagues, laws, arts, all things light or serious—I want breath—in short, all the public and private business of mankind is governed; without ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... was found the question of Wade versus Washington Street was settled. A topsy-turvy sign at the intersection announced that Wade Street was ahead. Emma Sanderson's grandson lived a couple of ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... carnations were set everywhere; violets and primroses, gold-hearted brown auriculas, spikes of veronica, all the zones and all the seasons, combining to make the Christmas-tide sweet, and to turn winter topsy-turvy in ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... valued by men are illusions, and it expresses this conviction by assuming that other manifest trifles are important. It is the deadly enemy of sentimentality and affectation, for its vision is clear. Although it turns everything topsy-turvy in sport, its world is not a chaos nor a child's play-ground, for humor is based on keen perception of truth. There is no method—except the highest poetic treatment—which reveals so distinctly the falsehoods ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... there's generally a lot of complaint about him. He takes more pains dressing himself than he does in looking after guests, the result of which is that after my departure things get topsy-turvy, and by the time I get back, with the exception of Narcissus, there isn't a well-dressed god in ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... score years since CARROLL'S art, With topsy-turvy magic, Sent ALICE wondering through a part Half-comic ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. With a Proem by Austin Dobson • Lewis Carroll
... "Get out, you topsy-turvy old humbug," cried Tom wrathfully. "Think I don't know you?" and he ran on, and caught up to his uncle as he was passing through ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... Evermond Le Mesurier, the unmarried and dissolute uncle, if he survived his nephew, and then would die out altogether. There would be no more Baron Bracondales of Bracondale, unless Hector chose to marry and have sons. Oh, life was a topsy-turvy affair at the best of times, ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... "My dear fellow, perhaps you had better go and ask him. If Hamilton Burton has turned things topsy-turvy to act as your savior in an eleventh-hour crisis, common sense compels me to infer that he has a reason too interesting ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... a crazy world. Everything's topsy-turvy. Even the streets have gone insane. They wind and twist until they cross their own tracks. I know I'll get lost looking for that French bakery. (He goes to the door.) Greenwich ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... topsy-turvy in the excitement of getting the injured father, and weary, distracted mother started on their brief journey; but finally they were off, and a row of sober-faced children stood on the bluff overlooking the flats below, watching the train puff ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... being that when he dips his pen into the inkstand he draws it out all covered with mud, when he fancies he is sitting down on a solid chair he finds himself sprawling on the floor, in a word his actions are all topsy-turvy or mere beating the air, while in every case the effect is invariably one of momentum. Habit has given the impulse: what was wanted was to check the movement or deflect it. He did nothing of the sort, but continued like a machine in the same straight line. The victim, then, of ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... been turned topsy-turvy, and a few articles of bric-a-brac had been smashed, but otherwise the loss did not seem to be of much consequence outside of the fact that two dozen silver spoons and a gold butter dish were missing, also some wine and whiskey put down in the cellar by Duncan Lyon and which the family ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... for the first time in history. He evidently looked upon Shelby as a new-comer who might be pre-empted for a regular customer before Mrs. L. Bowers, the rival grocer, got him. It somehow hurt Shelby's homesick heart to be unrecognized, more than it pleased him to enjoy time's topsy-turvy. Here he was, returned rich and powerful, to patronize the taskmaster who had worked him hard and paid him harder in the old years. Yet he dared not proclaim ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... Pavlovitch must be thoroughly studied first, before the final step should be taken; but, really, how lovely dear Aglaya had become—she actually grew more beautiful every day! And then—Yes, and then—this abominable prince showed his face again, and everything went topsy-turvy at once, and everyone seemed ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Petrie, I sometimes despair. Sir Lionel is an impossible man to shepherd. You ought to see his house at Finchley. A low, squat place completely hemmed in by trees. Damp as a swamp; smells like a jungle. Everything topsy-turvy. He only arrived to-day, and he is working and eating (and sleeping I expect), in a study that looks like an earthquake at Sotheby's auction-rooms. The rest of the house is half a menagerie and half a circus. He has ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... sciences, rational in principle, but destined to be soon overlaid with metaphysical and religious accretions, so that the dialectical nerve and reasonableness of them were obliterated, and there survived only miscellaneous conclusions, fragments of wisdom built topsy-turvy into the new mythical edifice. It is the sad task reserved for historical criticism to detach those sculptured stones from the rough mass in which they have been embedded and to rearrange them in their pristine order, thus rediscovering the ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... sigh of perplexity. There rose up in his mind a sort of uncomfortable feeling that everything was going topsy-turvy. Somehow or another he seemed to see Robbie's mother sitting by the side of Elsie's bed when she had the fever last winter, and bustling about to get nice things for her, hushing the others with a strange look in her eyes that made them quiet at once, for they could see she was troubled. ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... unlike home as possible, by turning every thing topsy-turvy, removing your furniture, and squeezing as many people into your rooms ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 358 - Vol. XIII, No. 358., Saturday, February 28, 1829 • Various
... which were supplied to the favored few at "Special Rates." This was just such a freak as would have occurred to Field, and in Denver there was no restraint upon the act following upon any wild thought that flitted through his topsy-turvy brain. ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... &c. 218; the opposite, the reverse, the inverse, the converse, the antipodes, the antithesis, the other extreme. V. be contrary &c. adj.; contrast with, oppose; diller toto coelo[Lat]. invert, reverse, turn the tables; turn topsy-turvy, turn end for end, turn upside down, turn inside out. contradict, contravene; antagonize &c. 708. Adj. contrary, contrarious[obs3], contrariant[obs3]; opposite, counter, dead against; converse, reverse; opposed, antithetical, contrasted, antipodean, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... that in my absence you could have behaved badly! Another in your place would have turned the house topsy-turvy, but you have only broken a pane of glass! God bless you for your considerateness. Go on in the same way and you will earn my ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... banging his fist on the table. "Why, it takes a man all his time to find out where he stands in this topsy-turvy city. Just tell me what this commotion is about, will you? It may be easy enough for a Frenchman to understand, but for me—it ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... affair that has just taken place, and it is an event of too great moment in this quiet little world not to turn it completely topsy-turvy. Labour is at a stand. The house has been a scene of confusion the whole evening. It has been beleaguered by gipsy women, with their children on their backs, wailing and lamenting; while the old virago of a mother has cruised up and down the lawn in front, ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... began to recall to mind the observation of the old gentleman with whom we travelled from Cobourg to Rice Lake. We console ourselves with the prospect that by next summer the boards will all be seasoned, and then the house is to be turned topsy-turvy, by having the floors all relaid, jointed, ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... is fond of drinking, and when he drinks he likes to let you know he is drinking. None of your quiet half-pint inside the bar for him. He likes to come out in the street and sing about it and do tricks with it, such as turning it topsy-turvy over his head. ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... surroundings as if they had always lived there. The tent was pitched on the lawn, the large family of dolls was brought out under the trees, and the games, good times, and camp-fire cooking went on as if they had never been interrupted for an instant by the topsy-turvy work ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... at Liverpool the other day, he is thoroughly attached, "to see how good Conservatives enjoy CHAMBERLAIN'S Speech. They are as jubilant now as they were a few years ago, when I attacked JOSEPH in connection with Aston-Park Riots. A topsy-turvy world; most of us where we never thought to find ourselves, or be found; oddest of all, surely, is to hear CHAMBERLAIN of Birmingham enthusiastically cheered in House of Commons by great Conservative Party. They mean it, too," GRANDOLPH added, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 22, 1893 • Various
... stars and comets thrown out of their orbits, and whirling about the world at present, that a little star like Madame Bonaparte attracts but slight attention, even though she draw after her so sparkling a tail as the Wiggins family." In another letter he exclaims: "The world is surely topsy-turvy, and its inhabitants shaken out of place: emperors and kings, statesmen and philosophers, Bonaparte, Alexander, Johnson, and the Wigginses, all strolling about the face ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... is past eleven," replied Miss Nora, with a giggle. "Do you suppose they pay any attention to clocks in this house? Everything here is topsy-turvy." ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... words, witty sayings, funny observations and topsy-turvy language alone that the writer works, when he constructs a vaudeville two-act. It is with clever ideas, expressed in laughable situations and actions, that his brain is busy when he begins to marshal to his aid the elements that enter into the ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... go,' she said, nodding her head at her host. 'Father says things are topsy-turvy now, and the poor man has more power than he used to have; and, besides, I would like to ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... find no opening; had no pretext, and he waited for some fortunate circumstance, with his heart ravaged, and his mind topsy-turvy. The night passed, and the pretty girl still slept, while Morin was meditating his own fall. The day broke and soon the first ray of sunlight appeared in the sky, a long, clear ray which shone ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... golden age—was followed by a series of events that threw the fat into the fire. First in England, and then in all of the important countries of Europe, the industrial revolution turned the simple grazing, farming, craft-industry life of the village topsy-turvy, by providing a new method of converting nature's bounty into goods and services calculated to meet the increasing needs and wants of mankind. So far-reaching was the change that it has compelled a reorganization of virtually all phases of social life, but for the present purpose, it has been felt ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing
... though," he murmured. "How can you possibly manage to maintain an institution like this, with all the space and the luxuries? The inmates seem to lead a better life than the adjusted individuals outside. It's topsy-turvy." ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... Every mortal son an' gal of ye! I'm riled—I'm mad. Here am I left in charge, so to speak, of your doin's, and of the work on the ranch, anyways. Your smart-aleck work has turned everything topsy-turvy. Men took from their reg'lar jobs to go hunt worthless Chinamen, and take his place a-cookin'. Hens dyin' to right an' left—pizened by some ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... copy." And, after all, they have got many more excuses for doing so than the ordinary man realises. Nobody can have anything to do with a newspaper without being amazed at the strangeness, the oddity, the topsy-turvy sensationalism of life, when once it is laid bare by ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... seem to smile to me with their great violet eyes. Later on, I see, in their place, bunches of big red cherries. I taste them. They are not nice and they have no stones. What can those cherries be? At the end of the summer, grandfather comes with a spade and turns my field of observation topsy-turvy. From under ground there comes, by the basketful and sackful, a sort of round root. I know that root; it abounds in the house; time after time I have cooked it in the peat stove. It is the potato. Its violet flower ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... the many imitative passages, and it was to relieve his own feelings and vary the monotony of the sentiment that he introduced the rollicking bacchanal chorus in the third part. He expressed his feelings to a friend in the remark: "My head was so full of the nonsensical stuff that it all went topsy-turvy, and I therefore called the closing fugue the 'drunken fugue.'" Notwithstanding his many objections, when once he started, he worked hard,—so hard, indeed, that this continuous labor induced brain-fever and intense suffering, and he ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... puzzling things over which Peter Rabbit had sat and thought and wondered until the brains in that funny little head of his were topsy-turvy, none was more puzzling than the fact that Sticky-toes the Tree Toad could climb. Often Peter had watched him climb up the trunk of a tree or jump from one branch to another and then thought of Old Mr. Toad, own cousin to Sticky-toes, and of Grandfather Frog, another own cousin, who couldn't ...
— Mother West Wind "How" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... Epidaphne that would not have had a nibble at thy carcase. Let us be off—let us take our departure!—for we shall find our delicate modern ears unable to endure the vast uproar which is about to commence in celebration of the king's escape! Listen! it has already commenced. See!—the whole town is topsy-turvy. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... who believed she was living in a dream where everything was topsy-turvy. When had a child ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown
... to say to him: But, monsieur, monsieur le comte your predecessor, for the credit of the thing, used to punch holes with his penknife in the arms of his chair to make believe he was working. And he makes such a mess of his room. I find everything topsy-turvy. He has a very small mind. How about ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... Time and Taste Had turned our parish topsy-turvy, When Darnel Park was Darnel Waste, And roads as little known as scurvy, The man who lost his way between St. Mary's Hill and Sandy Thicket, Was always shown across the Green, And guided to the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... without warning, the Emperor issued an Imperial Decree raising him to the Chinese equivalent of the peerage. Henceforth he belonged to the distinguished company of Iron Hatted Dukes—at least not he but his ancestors did, for this was no ordinary father-to-son patent of nobility. The topsy-turvy honour reached backward instead of forward, diminishing one rank ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... Hall, long years ago, there lived a Brownie that was the contrariest Brownie you ever knew. At night, after the servants had gone to bed, it would turn everything topsy-turvy, put sugar in the salt-cellars, pepper into the beer, and was up to all kinds of pranks. It would throw the chairs down, put tables on their backs, rake out fires, and do as much mischief as could be. But sometimes it would be in a good temper, and then!—"What's a Brownie?" you say. Oh, it's ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... opinions which are calculated to make people discontented with things as they are. You rob them of the content which has made them comfortable heretofore, and yet you offer them nothing better in return for it. You would have society turned topsy-turvy, and all for what? Why, simply to make a wrong thing right for yourself! If your example were followed by all the unhappy people in the world, how would it end, do you think? There must be moral laws, and it is inevitable that ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... her. All that was most firmly established in her mind was rocking. His romance and adventure were battering at the conventions. Before his facile perils and ready laugh, life was no longer an affair of serious effort and restraint, but a toy, to be played with and turned topsy-turvy, carelessly to be lived and pleasured in, and carelessly to be flung aside. "Therefore, play!" was the cry that rang through her. "Lean toward him, if so you will, and place your two hands upon his neck!" She wanted ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... something— See here, Anna. Yes, I mean Anna. What nonsense for us to attempt to keep up the Miss Moore and Mr. Sanderson business. I used to scoff at love at first sight and say it was all the idle fancy of the poets. Then I met you and remained to pray. You've turned my world topsy-turvy. I can't think without you, and yet it would be folly to tell this to my Governor, and ask his consent to our marriage. He wants me to finish college, take the usual trip around the world and then go into the firm. Besides, he wants me to eventually marry a cousin of mine—a girl ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... LAETITIA,—I promised to write to you when I should have returned home. Returned home I am, but you may conceive that many, many matters solicit attention and demand arrangement in a house which has lately been turned topsy-turvy in the operation of unroofing. Drawers and cupboards must wait a moment, however, while I fulfil my promise, though it is imperatively necessary that this fulfilment should be ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... sounds in the air, which prevailed in the earlier times of Connecticut; and would frighten them wofully with speculations upon comets and shooting stars; and with the alarming fact that the world did absolutely turn round and that they were half the time topsy-turvy! ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... day, the 30th of April, the town bands of Orleans were early afoot. From morn till eve everything in the town was topsy-turvy; the rebellion, which had been repressed so long, now broke forth. As early as February the citizens had begun to mistrust and hate the knights;[965] now at last they shook off their yoke and broke it.[966] Henceforth they would recognise no King's lieutenant, no governor, no lords, no ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... his folly. No; all this dirt and confusion, which once a week drives me nearly beside myself, is what K—— calls clearing up the ship; when he and his man Friday, as he calls Kelly, turn everything topsy-turvy, and, to make the muddle more complete, they always choose my washing-day for their frolic. Pantries and cellars are rummaged over, and everything is dragged out of its place, for the mere pleasure of making a litter, ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... vieux jeu, that they have never been really improved upon except by the very obvious and unoriginal method common in clever-silly days, of simply reversing some of them, of "turning platitudes topsy-turvy," as not the least gifted, or most old-fashioned, of novelists, Tourguenief, has it. Perhaps the oldest of all, Havelok the Dane—a story the age of which from evidence both internal and external, is so great that people have not quite gratuitously imagined a still older Danish ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... he was carryin' Ipsie Frost on his shoulder, an' leadin' all the children wi' the Maypole into the big meadow, an' all was as right as right could be,—yet 'ere we're onny just in August an' everything's topsy-turvy like. Lord, Lord!—'ow trifles do make up a sum o' life to be sure, as the copybooks sez—for arter all, what's 'appened? Naught in any wise partikler. Miss Vancourt 'as come 'ome to her own,—an' she's 'ad a few friends from Lunnon stayin' with 'er. That's simple enough, as simple ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli |
