"Twisting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to peer down into the Old Briar-patch, twisting and turning so that he could see in every direction, and all the time talking as fast as his tongue could go. Two or three times he flew out over the Old Briar-patch, pretending to try to catch moths, but really so that he could ...
— Mrs. Peter Rabbit • Thornton W. Burgess
... palmated leaves. At a mile and a half further the creek is improving wonderfully. We have now passed some fine holes of water, which will last at least three months; at five miles the water is becoming more plentiful and the creek broader and deeper, but twisting and turning about very much, sometimes running east and then turning to the west and all other points of the compass. Having seen what I consider to be permanent water, I shall now run a straight course, 20 degrees east of north, and ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... time has come for the pounded mouthful (described in the last chapter) to travel forward (the teeth having properly prepared it), the broom begins its work; scouring all along the gums, twisting and turning right and left, backwards and forwards, up and down; picking up the least grains of the pulp which have been manufactured in the mouth; and as the heap increases, it makes itself into a shovel—another accomplishment one would scarcely have expected ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... scabbard, which was exactly what that walking-stick was. Albert looked at him, and then back at Colonel Hampton. Then, whipping off his necktie, he went down on his knees beside Doctor Vehrner, skillfully applying the improvised tourniquet, twisting it tight with an eighteen-inch ruler the Colonel took from the desk ...
— Dearest • Henry Beam Piper
... uttered a roar of dismay and pain, and struck at him first with one paw and then with the other. By his coolness and quickness, however, he escaped all the blows, and then, when the lion seemed exhausted, he jerked tightly the cords, twisting them behind the lion's back and with rapid turns fastening them together. The lion was helpless now. Had Beric attempted to pull the cords in any other position it would have snapped them like pack ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... are going to start," said I, cheerfully, and stood waiting, twisting the gilt hilt-tassels of my sabre ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... would come of it all?" She dared not hope or anticipate. She dared not think at all; and, throwing her graceful form on a sofa, she commenced tearing some water-color paintings she had lately been executing, into strips, and twisting them ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... stranger stood between them, and Jacques Dupont crouched himself for his vengeance. Never to the people of Lac Bain had he looked more terrible. He was the gorilla-fighter, the beast fighter, the fighter who fights as the wolf, the bear and the cat—crushing out life, breaking bones, twisting, snapping, inundating and destroying with his great weight and his monstrous strength. He was a hundred pounds heavier than Reese Beaudin. On his stooping shoulders he could carry a tree. With his giant hands he could snap ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... mantelpiece, in a mahogany box, was a square clock with a large dial, huge figures and bulky hands. Beside it, under glass covers, were two candlesticks formed by three silver swans twisting their necks around a golden quiver. Near the fireplace an easy chair a la Voltaire, covered with one of the pieces of tapestry of checker-board pattern, which little girls and old women make, extended its empty arms. Two little Italian landscapes, a flower piece ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... Green Bay.[347] Here they caught one Outagamie warrior and three Winnebagoes, whom the Indian allies tortured to death. Then they paddled their canoes up Fox River, reached a Winnebago village on the twenty-fourth of August, followed the channel of the stream, a ribbon of lazy water twisting in a vague, perplexing way through the broad marsh of wild rice and flags, till they saw the chief village of the Outagamies on a tract of rising ground a little above the level of the bog.[348] ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... unfashionably and untheatrically decent gowns of white, blue, or red, with flowers in their hair, sat in a semicircle with one subtle, silent, darkling man among them. One after another they got up and did the same twisting and posturing, without dancing, and while one posed and contorted the rest unenviously joined the spectators in their clapping and their hoarse cries of "Ole!" It was all perfectly proper except for one high moment of indecency thrown ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... silent, nervously twisting her cigarette-case between her fingers, while her visitor rehearsed the details of his conversation with Mr. Newell. He did not indeed tell her the arguments he had used to shake her husband's resolve, since in his eloquent sketch of Hermione's ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... as regards that, I suspect. At least I find myself quite unable to conceive of any thing connected with her that could by any twisting be made ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... head of the Square, when whom should he meet but Sandy Toddle, still unwashed and yawning from his bed. It was early, and the streets were empty, except where in the distance the bent figure of an old man was seen hirpling off to his work, first twisting round stiffly to cock his eye right and left at the sky, to forecast the weather ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... breath or congratulation they turned to the necessity of the moment. The jam, the whole jam, was moving at last. Jimmy Powers ran ashore for his peavie. Roaring Dick, like a demon incarnate, threw himself into the work. Forty men attacked the jam in a dozen places, encouraging the movement, twisting aside the timbers that threatened to lock anew, directing pigmy-like the titanic forces into the channel of their efficiency. Roaring like wild cattle the logs swept by, at first slowly, then with the railroad rush of the curbed ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... at the carpet, her fingers playing with her braid, twisting and untwisting its strands. He stood waiting to close the door. She said, without lifting her eyes—said in a quiet, expressionless way, "I have ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... place the first twisting-fit [5]and rage[5] of [6]the royal hero[6] Cuchulain, so that he made a terrible, many-shaped, wonderful, unheard of thing of himself. His flesh trembled about him like a pole against the torrent or ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... full of delight, twisting his bony form up into all kinds of knots—" hi! this is the way they shout in hell. Satan ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... for about fourteen miles to a stony low range, thence East-North-East and east and south for six miles, turning and twisting, looking for water. Windich found some in a gully and we camped. Spinifex for the first fourteen miles, and miserable country. The prospect ahead not very promising. Barometer 28.06; thermometer 83 degrees at 5 p.m. Every appearance of rain. Latitude 26 degrees 8 minutes ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... horizon was lurid with the bonfires of rail-ties, and groups of men all night were carrying the heated rails to the nearest trees, and bending them around the trunks. Colonel Poe had provided tools for ripping up the rails and twisting them when hot; but the best and easiest way is the one I have described, of heating the middle of the iron-rails on bonfires made of the cross-ties, and then winding them around a telegraph-pole or the trunk of some convenient sapling. I attached much ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... right into the ward. There was a new nurse feeding little Albert. "Hold on," I said. "That ain't the way. Don't you see how he's twisting that left eye? Let me show you." Mebbe she thought I was a new doctor, for she just gave me the spoon, and I guess I filled little Albert up with the most comfortable meal he'd had since I went away. Droolers ain't bad when you understand ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... This violent twisting of an essentially tragic story has had a further ill consequence in weakening the individual characters. Pururavas is a mere conventional hero, in no way different from fifty others, in spite of his divine lineage and his successful wooing ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... than I intended; to which the court, impatient to have me gone, very readily contributed. Five hundred workmen were employed to make two sails to my boat, according to my directions, by quilting thirteen folds of their strongest linen together. I was at the pains of making ropes and cables, by twisting ten, twenty, or thirty of the thickest and strongest of theirs. A great stone that I happened to find, after a long search, by the sea-shore, served me for an anchor. I had the tallow of three hundred cows, for greasing my ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... field of operations. Before taking flight from one tree to another, they stop the insect search and gaze inquisitively toward their destination. If two of them meet, there is often a sudden stopping in the air, a twisting upward and downward, followed by a lively chase across the open to the top of a dead tree, and then a sly peeping round or over a limb, after the manner of all Woodpeckers. A rapid drumming with the bill on the tree, branch or trunk, ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various
... can't be cured, that's obvious.... [Irritably to YASHA] What's the matter? Why do you keep twisting about ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... donned my padded toggery it was with the secret spirit I should have felt in preparing for the rack, yet I played recklessly for the eclat it gave me. To-day I have an occasional reminder of those struggles in a weak knee, which has a way of twisting unexpectedly and causing excruciating pain, but I consider that these twinges are fair payment for the pleasure with which I contemplated my picture years ago in the Harlansburg Sentinel, showing me in my foot-ball clothes, poised on a photographer's fence. The subject, the Sentinel ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... had wriggled under the arms of the shouting soldiers, twisting like an uncommonly active eel, until he was close to the red-faced butcher. With ready wit the youngster piped up a plan for breaking ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... a-spinning; and as it span, he held the cotton ball in one hand, and pulled out the cotton with the other, working it between finger and thumb to keep it fine. Thus the spindle went on spinning, and the cotton went on twisting, until it was twisted into thread. That is why the man was called a Spinner. It looks very easy to do, when you can do it; but it is really very ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... constant turning over and rattling of programmes gave a cheerful and animated appearance to the scene. The centre door at the rear of the platform was opened and all eyes were turned in that direction, the chorus twisting their necks or turning half 'round ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... of the normal painful sort again. Roquemaure is a crooked, narrow, up-and-down old dirty town, where old customs and old costumes and old forms of speech still live on; and, also, its people have a very pretty taste in the twisting and perverting of historic fact into picturesque tradition—as is shown by the way in which they have rearranged the unpleasant details of the death of Pope Clement V. into a bit of melodramatic moral decoration for their own town. Their ingeniously compiled legend runs in this wise: Clement's ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... I listen, but cannot hear my grooms and servants move or speak. I think much of old days: how hand in hand, composing poems as we went, we walked down twisting paths to the banks ...
— More Translations from the Chinese • Various
... his restless hands twisting themselves round each other. "Now, be quiet, Mrs, Embury—I declare, I don't know how to say what I have to say, if you sit there like ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... out of the mountain side with two strokes of a mighty ax and was choked with a tangle of thorny vines and sword grass. Impenetrable as a wall of steel, the only entrance was by the tiger tunnels which drove their twisting way through the murderous growth far in toward ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... had unwittingly established itself, Ward C was crying itself to sleep. Not that it knew what it was crying about, it being merely a matter of atmosphere and unstrung nerves; but that is cause enough to turn the mind of a sick child all awry, twisting out happiness and twisting ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... talk to the bosses—a girl like you, working here in the mill—the better name you'll bear," Shade told her, twisting the drawing in his hands and regarding her from ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... be," interrupted Mrs. Stratton, twisting herself free, her face as red as Josie's shawl. "There's Nellie's voice. They'll be wondering what we're doing here. Do come along!" And seizing a tray of cups and saucers, on which she had placed the coffeepot and the saucer of sliced ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... vanished amongst the trees, and, twisting myself round in the direction to which she had pointed, I saw a gamekeeper coming along. His gun was thrown carelessly in the crook of his arm, and he was whistling, ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... truncated and angular end of the humerus to be divided, turned out through the incision, and smoothed across at right angles to the line of the shaft by means of the saw, whereby (6.) room might be afforded, so that partly by twisting and partly by dissection the external condyle and capitulum are removed without any division of the skin on the outer side of the arm.[56] Six ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... 'Who knows?' said Rocco, twisting his beautiful moustache. 'That would have depended on several things—on your police, for instance. But probably in the end we should have restored this mortal clay'—again he jerked his elbow—'to the man's ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... do find their way in, but even the most venomous sorts bite only when put in bodily fear themselves, or when trodden upon, or when the sexes come together. I once found a coil of serpents' skins, made by a number of them twisting together in the manner described by the Druids of old. When in the country, one feels nothing of that alarm and loathing which we may experience when sitting in a comfortable English room reading about them; yet they are nasty things, and we seem to have an instinctive feeling against them. ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... little, but some few moments elapsed before he succeeded in making the exact motion necessary, when the front portion of the hearth was depressed and slid back silently.—Taking the piece of candle in his hand, Rosmore stepped into the opening and went cautiously down the narrow twisting stairs, without attempting to shut the secret entrance. The instructions contained in the leather case were exact, even to a rough calculation of the value of the treasure hidden below the Abbey ruins. Rosmore came at last to a wide ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... party's going out"— And yawning sentries mumble, "Wirers going out." Unravelling; twisting; hammering stakes with muffled thud, They toil with stealthy haste and anger ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... would stop in a street or the middle of a room to go through it correctly. Once he collected a laughing mob in Twickenham meadows by his antics; his hands imitating the motions of a jockey riding at full speed and his feet twisting in and out to make heels and toes touch alternately. He presently sat down and took out a Grotius De Veritate, over which he "seesawed" so violently that the mob ran back to see what was the matter. Once in such a fit he suddenly twisted off the ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... dodged as though the pocketbook had been aimed at him. A young second lieutenant picked it from the floor and stood twisting it in his hands, not knowing what to do with it. People looked uneasy and ashamed as though a door had been suddenly opened on a terrible secret thing that was customarily locked up in a closet. But the uncomfortable feeling soon passed, ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... famous soldiers in the room,' said he. 'Besides,' he added, twisting his moustache, 'there may be junior officers here who have it in them to rise higher than any of them. But there ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... if you list to fly as high in air As doth an eagle, when him list to soar, This same steed shall bear you evermore Withoute harm, till ye be where *you lest* *it pleases you* (Though that ye sleepen on his back, or rest), And turn again, with writhing* of a pin. *twisting He that it wrought, he coude* many a gin;** *knew **contrivance He waited* in any a constellation, *observed Ere he had done this operation, And knew full many a seal and many a bond This mirror eke, that I have in mine hond, Hath such a might, that men may in it see When there shall fall ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... water, amazing figures and shapes, bizarre and chameleon, are born as the blue swirls and whirls through the resisting medium. Unseen forces and currents, tides and pressures, set up a seething and flowing, pulling and twisting of the drop of ink until it becomes a strange wraith created out of the molecules. A temporary ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... If the twisting is carried so far as to cause the threads to cross and come in contact with each other the suspension ceases to be a bifilar suspension, but assumes the nature of a ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... more, came ships, while others followed. Feeling their way among unsounded bars, Heaping their freights upon the groaning wharf-heads, Filling their holds with turpentines and tars, Until the little twisting streets all vanished Into ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... you don't suppose the man who built Stonehenge could have built that, or that the man who built that, would have built Stonehenge? Do you think an old Roman would have liked such a piece of filigree work? or that Michael Angelo would have spent his time in twisting these stems of roses in and out? Or, of modern handicraftsmen, do you think a burglar, or a brute, or a pickpocket could have carved it? Could Bill Sykes have done it? or the Dodger, dexterous with finger and ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... former game the "noir" passing two-and-twenty times, though no one had the courage to take advantage of such an extraordinary circumstance—yet it is a very frequent thing at roulette for the ball to have a predilection for a certain series of numbers—probably through the croupier twisting the machine with the same force each time—and on such occasions a good deal of money may be won by a careful observer. One young Englishman, who was perfectly ignorant of the game, we saw at Wisbaden ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... inexperience, it seemed as if a mine had opened at our feet. Poor Patrick stood still, unhappy and bewildered, twisting one of ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... But if I've got to pay every time, and the stakes are to be my earthly happiness plus my future existence—why, I don't play. There was the case of Midas; a nice, shabby trick you fellows played off upon him! making pretence you did not understand him, twisting round the poor old fellow's words, just for all the world as though you were a pack of Old Bailey lawyers, trying to trip up a witness; I'm ashamed of the lot of you, and I tell you so—coming down here, fooling poor unsuspecting mortals ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... whether your Great-aunt Emma had children?" asked Mrs. Thayne, twisting the odd chain reflectively ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... "stoop," in front of the house, welcoming his guests in his own peculiar free-and-easy style, looking after their horses, and seeing that his people were attentive to their duties. I think I see him now before me with his thin, erect, lathy figure, his snub nose, and puckered-up face, wriggling and twisting himself about, in his ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... hundreds of bright red slippers dangled on lines overhead. In one crooked alley, but four feet in width, we watched the goldsmiths, squatted in narrow quarters, busily at work with brazier and blowpipes and curious little tools, hammering, twisting, and welding chains of gold, and ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... their way, than Nig slyly crept round to Aunt Abby's room, and tip- toeing and twisting herself into all shapes, ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson
... to imitate—some complex act of manipulation with the hand, let us say. He tries to perform it in an experimental way, using the muscles of the hand and arm. With this he strains himself all over, twisting his tongue, bending his body, and grimacing from head to foot, so to speak. Thus he gets a certain way toward the correct result, but very crudely and inexactly. Then he tries again, proceeding now on the knowledge which the first effort gave him; and his trial is less uncouth because ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... given; writhing and twisting, she said, with a deep groan, 'O my God, I am killed!' but ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... took her face out of the pillows and peered at him curiously, twisting one of the long plaits of hair that hung over ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston
... shrieked, until we, who stood at a little distance off, could scarcely hear each other's voices. The barbarous overture being brought to a conclusion, the king, who had been seated amongst his wives, rose, and springing into the centre of the circle, began snapping his fingers, twisting and turning in all sorts of attitudes, leaping from the ground, kicking up one leg, then another, and throwing his arms round until it appeared that he ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... breakfast, Hepsey did not seem to hear her cheery greeting, but was twisting her apron and walking about restlessly. "Miss Thorne," she said, at length, "did you ever ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... the room being big enough to hold three hundred. I have a vision still before me, of twenty out of these fifty guests, solemnly executing intricate figure-dances, under the superintendence of an infirm local dancing-master—a mere speck of fidgety human wretchedness twisting about in the middle of an empty floor. I see, faintly, down the dim vista of the Past, an agreeable figure, like myself, with a cocked hat under its arm, black tights on its lightly tripping legs, a rosette in its buttonhole, and an engaging smile on its face, walking from ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... fastened to a flooring of blown-up goatskins.... They are used for swimming bladders as in the ancient world. They serve for barrels to carry water.... The skins are also used in the bazaars ... for butter, treacle, honey, etc.... The raft is not rowed, except barely to keep it in the stream. It keeps twisting round and round, like a stone in the air;... but ... you have all the freshness and life of a vast streaming river and all the tranquillity of a mere pond.... One day, a man who wished to go down the river on our raft swam to us on a goatskin.... As a Thames wherry to a Thames steamer, so is a goatskin ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... separation, and at the same time to twist them and draw the loop from between the fingers as they are twisted, seems quite a complicated operation; and so it will be found at first. But when once mastered by practice, the twisting of five nooses a minute will be an easy matter. When the entire length of the hairs are twisted, the ends should be cut off even and then passed through the small loop at the folded end. The noose is then ready to be fastened to the main string of support. Horse-hair nooses ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... Turning his head to learn the cause of delay (he had fancied the pilot of an engine under his car), he saw Burke, one of the dead men, leap up and glare into his face. That was too much for Lucien, weak as he was, and twisting slightly, he sank to the floor of ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... agreed granny, with a twinkle in her eyes. Nevertheless she was well pleased. "I am bound to say I am no lover of the depths of the country. When I walk I like to walk in comfort, and to feel that there is no risk of my twisting my ankle in a rabbit-hole, or by tumbling over a tussock." She was glad that Audrey shared her taste, but she was not quite sure that the taste was a ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... curious staff you ever saw!" cried Epimetheus. "It was like two serpents twisting around a stick, and was carved so naturally that I, at first, thought the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... MARCHBANKS (twisting himself round on him). Oh, I am not forgetting myself: I am only (covering his face desperately with his hands) full of horror. (Then, dropping his hands, and thrusting his face forward fiercely at Morell, he goes on threateningly.) ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... The nettle has found its chance in life, its one fitting vacancy, among the ditches and waste-places by roadsides or near cottages; and it has laid itself out for the circumstances in which it lives. Its near relative, the hop, is a twisting climber; its southern cousins, the fig and the mulberry, are tall and spreading trees. But the nettle has made itself a niche in nature along the bare patches which diversify human cultivation; and it has adapted its stem and leaves to the station in life where it has pleased Providence to place ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Twisting his head slightly around Toby could see his chum calmly turning the film so as to bring another blank in line for a second shot. Jack believed in making sure of such an important picture. Far better to waste good ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... undergoing an experience far from pleasant, if we are to judge from the account which he gives in a letter written the following day: "Some used me brutally in all sorts of ways, jostling me about, pushing me, pinching me, twisting my arms and hands. I must, however, admit that others cried: 'Do not harm him.' In truth the bourgeoisie showed itself what it is everywhere: brutal and cowardly. For you know that I was delivered by some sharpshooters ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... to tell. One would say something, and then the other would answer him, and both would burst into the most absurdly noisy roar, turning back to back to support each other, then clinging together, rising, and falling, and twisting, and turning, and finally rolling over on the ground, as if completely overcome. It seemed a matter of constant occurrence, for no one stopped even to take notice of these strange performances. I know that I felt inclined to burst into laughter ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... And Evelyn looked puzzled for a moment. "You mean for himself, for his own self?" There is a lawyer who comes to see papa. I've been in the room sometimes, when they don't mind. Such talk about schemes, and how to do this and that, and twisting about. And not a word about anything any of the time. And one day when he was waiting for papa I talked with him. You would ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... twisting life to follow accidental and devious paths, one might perhaps find some use for accidental and devious knowledge, but this had been no part of Henry Adams's plan when he chose the path most admired by the best judges, and followed it till he found ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... their lips were drilled with smaller holes. One of the younger men, a fine strapping fellow nearly six feet high, with a large aquiline nose, who seemed to wish to be particularly friendly with me, showed me the use of these lip- holes, by fixing a number of little white sticks in them, and then twisting his mouth about and going through a pantomime to represent defiance in the presence of an enemy. Nearly all the people were disfigured by dark blotches on the skin, the effect of a cutaneous disease very prevalent in this part of the country. The face of ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... expression molding his face. She was wrapped about with her red gown and Zoraida's cloak; her ankles were bare; then were scratches on them; her sandals looked already worn out; her hair was tumbled and snarled. She shook it loose and began combing it through with her fingers, then twisting it up into two loose ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... our voyage was at an end. We saw more of our friend the captain during those days and of Heathcroft as well. The former fulfilled his promise of showing us through the ship, and Hephzy and I, descending greasy iron stairways and twisting through narrow passages, saw great rooms full of mighty machinery, and a cavern where perspiring, grimy men, looking but half-human in the red light from the furnace mouths, toiled ceaselessly with ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... and you could see the blue sky through the windows, but nothing else, because they were so high up. It was so bright we began to think the pig-man had been kidding us. Under one of the windows was a door. We went through, and there was a little passage and then a turret-twisting stair, like in the church, but quite light with windows. When we had gone some way up this, we came to a sort of landing, and there was a block of stone let into the wall—polished—Denny said it was Aberdeen graphite, with gold letters cut in ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... of this turning and twisting to suit man's growing selfishness, that there was need for someone in authority over all the interpreters, whose word should be final. So your people cried aloud for Kings. And you have them, and your law ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... the boy could scarcely say, As tortured by the shaft he lay, Twisting his helpless body round, Then trembling senseless on the ground. Then from his bleeding side I drew The rankling shaft that pierced him through. With death's last fear my face he eyed, And, rich in store of ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... twisting and winding in and out amongst the big trees, now headed one way, now another, but keeping the general westerly direction. All hands kept their guns ready, but, although they saw evidences of big game on every hand, the noise of their advance must have frightened the wild creatures ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... and I sucked and tongued as the tawse descended rapidly on our twisting buttocks. Mary evidently meant to pay out her mistress as hard as she could now she was at her mercy, making her fairly gasp as the stinging thuds whacked on that glorious bottom, making it writhe and flinch at each blow, causing the maternal cunt to quiver and ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... she was twisting the bill about in her hands with an embarrassed air, and making creases in it with her nails. Her hard face presented a shade which was not ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... attack; nor could I without a shudder behold the dispositions he made for it. First, then, moistening well with spittle his instrument, obviously to make it glib, he pointed, he introduced it, as I could plainly discern, not only from its direction and my losing sight of it, but by the writhing, twisting and soft murmured complaints of the young sufferer; but at length, the first straits of entrance being pretty well go through, every thing seemed to move and go pretty currently on, as on a carpet road, without much rub or resistance; and now, passing one hand round ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... I replied. Gathering all the near vines and twisting them around my neck, I covered my head with leaves and creeping plants, then proceeded to show that it was possible, while Sousi followed. I reached the cover and found it was a bed of spring anemones on the far side of an old Buffalo wallow, and there in that wallow I ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... rule, but sometimes the process is very long and tedious, only a little coming away at a time, and, rarely, dizziness and faintness will require the patient to lie down for a while. The water should always be removed from the ear after syringing by twisting a small wisp of absorbent cotton about the end of a small stick, as a toothpick, which has been dipped into water to make the cotton adhere. The tip of the toothpick, thus being thoroughly protected by dry cotton applied so tightly that there is no ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... with the best intentions, but even before the words were fully spoken he realized with a sort of shock that he could not well have made a worse opening. Phil Abingdon's eyes seemed to grow alarmingly large. She stood quite still, twisting his card ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... to and fro in a huddle, as does a black bear surrounded by a pack of dogs. Still the man at the heart of the melee struck—and struck—and struck again. Men went down and were trodden under foot, but he reeled on, stumbling as he went, turning, twisting, hitting hard and sure with all the strength that many good clean years in the open had stored within him. Blows fell upon his curly head as it rose now and again out of the storm—blows of guns, of knives, of bony knuckles. ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... was out on the Dedlow Marsh, its extended dreariness was patent. Its spongy, low-lying surface, sluggish, inky pools, and tortuous sloughs, twisting their slimy way, eel-like, toward the open bay, were all hard facts. So were the few green tussocks, with their scant blades, their amphibious flavor, and unpleasant dampness. And if you chose to indulge your fancy,—although the flat monotony of the Dedlow Marsh was not inspiring,—the wavy ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... square!" contradicted Nance, twisting her wet handkerchief into a ball. "Sneaking around corners and doing things on the sly. I am ashamed to tell you where I live, or who my people are, and you are ashamed to have your family know you are going with me. Whenever I look at your father and see him worrying ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... all my facts yet, but I do not think there are any insuperable difficulties. Still, it is an error to argue in front of your data. You find yourself insensibly twisting them round to fit ...
— The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge • Arthur Conan Doyle
... body is a Lernean fenne Of all the maladies breeding in all men: That you are utterly without a soule; 505 And for your life, the thred of that was spunne When Clotho slept, and let her breathing rock Fall in the durt; and Lachesis still drawes it, Dipping her twisting fingers in a boule Defil'd, and crown'd with vertues forced soule: 510 And lastly (which I must for gratitude Ever remember) that of all my height And dearest life you are the onely spring, Onely in royall hope to kill ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... Shakespeare's tomb. Shade of the past, to be accompanied to thy resting-place by such an object! But he fastened himself on us, and jerked and hitched along in his side-wheel fashion. We declined his help. He paddled on, twisting himself into knots, and grinning in the most friendly manner. We told him to begone. "I am," said he, wrenching himself into a new contortion, "I am what showed Artemus Ward round Stratford." This information ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... among its fellows. Their beautiful scales flash scarlet, blue, and gold, and their little hand-and-foot fins are ever trembling and waving. They drift upward nearer the surface, the wide round eyes turning and twisting in their sockets, ever watchful for food and danger. Without warning a terrific splash scatters them, and when the ripples and bubbles cease, five frightened sunfish cringe in terror among the water plants of the bottom mud. Off to her nest goes the kingfisher, bearing to her brood ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... with axe, I pray you," he answered laughing, and twisting his head on one side. "I mind me ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... single wire about 25 feet high and about 75 feet long. This antenna will have capacity of about 0.0001 m. f. If you want an antenna of two wires spaced about three feet apart I would make it about 75 feet long. Bring down a lead from each wire, twisting them into a pigtail to act like one wire except near the ...
— Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son • John Mills
... every foot of the canyon by heart; she went surely and without hesitation along the twisting, winding, rocky path, half-way ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... Ingate twisting her head sideways so as to see Audrey standing like a ghost afar off. "Well, she has been going it! She's broken a window in Oxford Street with a hammer; she had one night in the cells for that. And she'd have had to go to prison altogether only some unknown body paid the fine for her. ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... the earth, built, outfitted, loaded from this port, officered and manned by the men of this town? Where the great shipyards down whose ways slipped vessels of any magnitude; the ropewalks where black slaves trod the weary miles twisting the hemp to lift the sails made in Alexandria sail lofts? Where the great docks, wharves and warehouses that lined the ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... afterwards over the plain, between groves of olive and almond trees with gnarled stems and branches white with dust, mounted by the twisting road, terraces upon his left and pine-clothed mountainside upon his right, past Valdemosa to the Pass. The great sweep of rock-bound coast and glittering sea burst upon his view, and the boom of water surging into innumerable caves was like thunder to his ears. At a little gate ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... wrapped himself in a cloak against the bitter wind rushing down the valley of the Rhone and spreading itself as an invisible fan across the delta, and wandered about the dark alleys of the town, twisting like rabbit-burrows, lighted only here and there with a stray lamp socketed to a stone wall. Now he had left the big-thoughted age of the Romans, and was carried forward to the crafty, treacherous Middle Ages. In such an alley as this, bravos had lurked with daggers ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... Hourigan, who dressed himself in rags for the occasion, then came forward; and, after pulling up the waistband of his breeches, and twisting his revolting features into what he designed for, but what no earthly being could suppose, a grin, he spoke as follows:—"My lard, an' gintlemen o' the jury, it 'ud be a hard case if we suffered poor Misther Purcel and his two daicent, ginerous, kind-hearted sons, to be condimed 'idout ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... call a general meeting of the Indian tribes, in order to acquire a knowledge of their traditionary lore, and it is from this period that he seems to have laboured to a more useful purpose than that of making "velvet purses of sows' ears, and twisting ropes of sand." The shafts of ridicule may with propriety be levelled at all attempts to ascertain the origin of the American Indians, but their Traditions are their history and learning, and therefore ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... out through the deep snows and the twisting storm, knowing that there was no more than one chance in a thousand ahead of him, and that his one chance was to keep the wind ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... considered worship, just as much as an organ voluntary, the singing of a hymn, or a display of pulpit eloquence in one of our churches. The more wonderful their feats, the more acceptable to their gods, and they go from city to city through all India, and from temple to temple, twisting their bodies into unnatural shapes and postures under the impression that they will thereby attain a higher degree of holiness and exalt themselves in the favor of heaven. They do not give exhibitions for money. ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... gnarled and wet and cut to proper stove-length, lay to one side. Frona knew it well, creeping and crawling and twisting itself among the rocks of the shallow alluvial deposit, unlike its arboreal prototype, rarely lifting its head more than a foot from the earth. She looked into the oven, found it empty, and filled it with the wet wood. ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... they marched to within sight of Frederickstadt before they returned. Imagine exaggerated Pyramids of Cheops; imagine each block of stone carved by stress of weather into a thousand needle-points and ankle-twisting crevices; plant a dense growth of mimosa and other thorny scrub in every cranny and interstice. Take a dozen such pyramids, and do your morning constitutional over them, after the scrappiest of breakfasts at 5 a.m., and you will find twelve or fourteen miles quite as much as you care about. ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... him swiftly, grasping his shoulders and twisting her face into his. She was a horrible thing—filthy of breath, dirty, with dribbling mouth and red eyes. Her few long black teeth hung loosely like tusks and the folds of fat on her chin curled down on her great neck. Bles shuddered ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... turned white again and stood twisting his fingers as though in some terrible distress. Greifenstein had not noticed his manner before, and gazed at him now in considerable surprise. He fancied that Rieseneck feared discovery ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... window came the rays from the light in the forked tree that fell like moonlight athwart the saloon. In the centre of the broad gleam was a sylph-like form, keeping time to the music in a sort of phantom style of movement; twisting, shimmering folds that appeared to effuse a scintillation of opal shades. 'Twas the chaconne; slow, graceful and full of romance, the full major lifting and seeming to float, at last dying imperceptibly into the minor ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... narrow path. The fall had shaken me considerably. My head ached, and I had much ado to grope my way along. Three several times in the course of a short distance I stumbled, and the third time fell heavily to the ground, twisting my left foot underneath me. I tried to rise, but could not. Now, what should I do? I dared not call for help, lest the Spaniards should hear me. For two hours I lay thus, wondering what would become of me. The noise of the shouting and firing ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... pursued. Wrapped in the shade of night the goddess lies, Yet to the learn'd unveils her dark disguise, But shuns the gross access of vulgar eyes. Now she unfolds the faint and dawning strife Of infant atoms kindling into life; How ductile matter new meanders takes, And slender trains of twisting fibres makes; And how the viscous seeks a closer tone, By just degrees to harden into bone; While the more loose flow from the vital urn, And in full tides of purple streams return; How lambent flames from life's bright lamps arise, And dart ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... talked he seldom looked at you, and his hands were always twisting, as if they wished ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... clearer, I will repeat that the Davenports always untie themselves by using their hands; as they are able in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, however impossible it may seem, to release their hands by loosening the knots next their wrists. Sometimes they do this by twisting the rope between their wrists; sometimes it is by keeping their muscles as tense as possible during the tying, so that when relaxed there shall be some slack. Most "committees" know so little about tying, that anybody, by a little pulling, slipping, ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... me with all the strength of both hands. I could feel the broken skin curl up on my back, and when my head got too heavy to hold it straight it hung down, and I saw the blood on my legs and dripping off my toes into a pool of it on the floor. Something was straining and twisting inside of me again. My back didn't hurt much; it was the thing twisting inside of me that hurt. I counted the lashes, and when I counted to twenty-eight the twisting got so hard that it choked me and blinded me; ... and when I woke up I was in the dungeon again, ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... the way that all men in that century necessarily were. Much euphuism, much studied grace of manner, much formal assertion of scholarship, mingling with his force of imagination. And he likes twisting the fingers of hands about, just as Correggio does. But he never does ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin |
