"Upside" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sides, a soft way of speaking, with a peculiar habit of whispering the letter S so distinctly, that he seemed to use it oftener than any other man; but every peculiarity that he had he made respectable. If his nose had been upside-down, he would have made that respectable. He surrounded himself with an atmosphere of respectability, and walked secure in it. It would have been next to impossible to suspect him of anything wrong, he was ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... slowly despite of Philip's secret promptings. The truth is, that the means proposed by the Spanish monarch were ludicrously inadequate to his plans, and it was idle to suppose that the world was to be turned upside down for his benefit, at the very low price which he was prepared ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... this very defect of humor) were predominantly religious, and their theology, which was that of their times, was crude and cruel. The deep, sympathetic earnestness, which is the basis of the best humor, they had, but, to use an illustration of Richter, they could not turn sublimity upside down,—a great feat, only possible through sense of the comic, which, in its highest manifestation of humor, pillows pain in the lap of absurdity, throws such rays upon affliction as to make a grin to glimmer through gloom, and, with the fool in "Lear," forces you, like a child, to smile through ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... which Mrs Bowldler had decorated his summer hearth. It consisted of a cascade of paper shavings with a frontage of paper roses and tinsel foliage, and was remarkable not only for its own sake but because Mrs Bowldler had chosen to display the roses upside down. But though Cai stared at it hard, he observed ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... seems to me probable that archebiosis is true. I am not convinced partly I think owing to the deductive cast of much of his reasoning; and I know not why, but I never feel convinced by deduction, even in the case of H. Spencer's writings. If Dr. B.'s book had been turned upside down, and he had begun with the various cases of heterogenesis, and then gone on to organic and afterwards to saline solutions, and had then given his general arguments, I should have been, I believe, much more influenced. I suspect, however, that my ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... ourselves with the more subtle devices of fugal treatment; although but one of these is employed in the fugue just studied, which is comparatively simple in structure. I. Inversion; the melodic outline is turned upside down while identity is retained by means of the ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... originally represented the NOBILITY, and the following are its significances in fortune-telling. The ace of spades wholly relates to love-affairs, without specifying whether lawful or unlawful—a pretty general occupation of the 'nobility,' of course; it also denotes death when the card is upside down: the king of spades shows a man ambitious and successful at court, or with some great man who will have it in his power to advance him—but, let him beware of the reverse! the queen of spades shows that a person will be corrupted by the rich of both ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... normal, small-town American family. As the eldest, she had been her mother's assistant. She had served her apprenticeship in cooking, nursing babies, patching small clothes, turning old things around and upside down, in order to make them over. She could market wisely, she could ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... perfectly in order that the rupture of a tie of more than twenty years should have left him sore. But if she had been so clear a blessing what in the name of consistency had the dear man meant by turning him upside down that night—by dosing him to that degree, at the most sensitive hour of his life, with the doctrine of renunciation? If Mrs. St. George was an irreparable loss, then her husband's inspired advice had been a bad joke and renunciation was a mistake. ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... There's orders to be given.... There's a whole company of soldiers ... soldiers from the manoeuvres.... The town-hall is upside down.... He's the only one to put ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... glad to comply with her plea to put sensible talk from them just then. There was nothing sensible he could say. He was holding Julius Marston's daughter in his arms, and she was telling him that she loved him. The world was suddenly upside down and he was surrendering himself ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... be very fond of this song," spluttered Happy. (It is difficult to speak while upside down, and if you don't think ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... cocoanut trees, which, having vainly struggled with the sea breeze to maintain the elegant stateliness of their race, have long since given up the contest, and resigned themselves to being stunted and broken into the appearance of magnified splint brooms planted upside down—and found ourselves at last in our desired haven, Kingston harbor. It is a broad and sheltered basin, fully entitled, I understand, to the standard encomium of a harbor of the first rank, namely, that it will float the united navies of the world. Due provision ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... through that formality the morning after the ball. At present I do not wish to be disturbed with the turning of the villa upside down, as would be the ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... measured by an old opponent whose face had often looked out on him from the mist of battle. This pretentious and windy institution even attempted the absurdity of a yearly prizegiving, when, instead of the Provost sitting in state and glaring before him with a Horace in his hands upside down, McIntyre's minister would hold forth on diligence and tidiness and courtesy and such like contemptible virtues. Had a Seminary boy been offered the painful choice, he would almost as soon have gone to the Pennies as to McIntyre, for in that case he had not been ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... handle upside down, he saw that from one of the horse's delicately finished shoes, a nail was missing, and its hole left empty. It was a hind ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... that the whole bill is sharply bent downwards at the middle. The advantage of this is that when the bird lets down its head into the water, like a bucket into a well, the point of the bill does not stick in the mud, but lies flat on it, upside down. ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... the one time of year when he became of supreme importance and when everybody in the house united to turn the world upside down for his delight. Christmas was a general holiday. But May twentieth was his own particular anniversary. Always there was some really worthwhile present about which endless whispering and the greatest secrecy was maintained. Once it had been a fine camera; once a tool chest; last year ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... but we see them quite puzzled when they are to connect these maps in their idea of the world. They do not know the relative size or situation of England or France; they cannot find London or Paris when they look for the first time upon the globe, and every country seems to be turned upside down in their imagination. Young people who learn particular arts and sciences from masters who have confined their view to the boundaries of each, without having given an enlarged idea of the whole, are much in the same ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... to the top of the cliff. Tweel was still pointing and trilling excitedly, shooting up toward the sky and coming down head-on to stick upside down on his beak in the sand. I pointed toward the south and at myself, and he said, 'Yes—Yes—Yes'; but somehow I gathered that he thought the flying thing was a relative of mine, probably a parent. Perhaps I did his intellect an injustice; I ...
— A Martian Odyssey • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... the palace," she said, "because, when you look right down into it, the water seems muddy. But sometimes, when it is still, you can see the Upside-Down Country where the King of the Eels lives. There the trees all grow with their heads down and the sky is 'way, 'way below the trees. You see the sky might as well be down as up for the eels. They aren't like us, just obliged to crawl around on the ...
— The Belgian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... by a trail I'd run across that took around the mountain, and meanin' to keep on as long as I could durin' the night, when all at once something flew up and hit me ker-slap! Say, I thought it was an earthquake, sure I did. And then I found myself hangin' upside down, with all the blood runnin' into my head. What's it mean, young fellers; I give yuh my word I don't get the hang o' it ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... heaven, a thousand miles from anywhere, that machine began executing the most remarkable flip-flaps the mind of man ever conceived. Not once or twice, but a hundred times did we go whirling round and round through the skies, until finally I got so that I could not tell if I were right side up or upside down. It was great sport, however, and but for the fact that on the third trial I lost my grip and would have fallen head over heels through space had not Mercury, who was flying alongside of the machine, swooped down and caught me by the leg as I fell out, I found ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... said Nan, "until you see the house to-morrow. I know a little about the Rolands, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised to find things pretty much upside down." ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... this, but was quickly disappointed. There wasn't a thing he wanted in any of the drawers. He turned the desk upside down, looking for secret compartments. Finding none, he ordered the marines to take it to pieces. At a nod from the admiral they dismantled ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... high relief forming foliated cusps and painted blue. In the spandrels formed by the interlacing of the semicircles are three green leaves growing out from a brown flower; in short the design is exactly like a Gothic corbel table such as was used on Dom Joao's church at Batalha turned upside down, and so probably dates from his time. On the second row of tiles there are alternately a tall blue fleur-de-lys with a yellow centre, and a lower bunch of leaves, three blue at the top and one yellow on each side; the ground ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... as he knew how. But the racket he made was as nothing compared with the uproar of Jasper Jay and the noisy crew he had brought with him. They squalled with delight as Timothy Turtle plunged through the air like a stone. And when he landed upside down in the creek, striking the water with a great splash, the whole company shrieked ...
— The Tale of Timothy Turtle • Arthur Scott Bailey
... literary point of view, indeed, they soon regarded us with emotions of envy and wonder; and the doctor was considered nothing short of a prodigy. The Cockney found out that he (the doctor) could read a book upside down, without even so much as spelling the big words beforehand; and the Yankee, in the twinkling of an eye, received from him the sum total of several arithmetical items, stated aloud, with the view of testing the extent of his ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... "for at least fifteen years she's been makin' that dress over an' over. Now she'll get a new breadth of goods or a couple of breadths, turn the others upside down or cut 'em over, an' by keepin' everlastingly at it she contrives to look like the pictures in the papers most of the time. It's maddenin' to the rest of us. Abbie Brewster knows Minnie well an' somewhere in a book she's got set down ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... with a hat like a round white dish Upside down on each pig-tailed head, Jugglers offer you snakes and fish, Dreams and dragons and gingerbread; Beautiful books with marvellous pictures, Painted pirates and streaming gore, And everyone reads, without any strictures, Tales he ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... funny that they said it over and over again, screaming with laughter all the while, until Tommy got a piece of cake stuck in his throat and became nearly black in the face, and then Philpot had to turn him upside down and punch him in the back to save him from choking to death. This rather sobered the others, but for some time afterwards whenever they looked at each other they began to laugh afresh because they thought it ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... times one were nine; If the pony rode his master, And the buttercups ate the cows; And the cat had the dire disaster To be worried, sir, by a mouse; And mamma, sir, sold her baby, To a gypsy for half a crown, And a gentleman were a lady, This world would be upside down. But, if any or all these wonders Should ever come about, I should not think them blunders, For ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... the Malt" supplies a subject for five pictures. First the owner carrying in the malt, next the rat driven away by the man, then the rat peeping up into the deserted room, next the rat studying a placard upside down inscribed "four measures of malt," and finally, the gorged animal sitting upon an empty measure. So "This is the Cat that Killed the Rat" is expanded into five pictures. The dog has four, the cat three, and the rest of the story is amplified with its secondary ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... calmest water without a struggle; the story of the punt which got its painter under its keel and drowned three men; the story of the full-rigged ship which got driven across the seven-fathom part of the Dogger—the part that looks like a man's leg in the chart—and which was turned upside-down through the bank breaking. The skipper and the mate got outside and clung to her bottom, and a steam-cutter tried to get them off, but smashed them both with her ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... affairs a very great deal farther than anybody else. This second sight is very efficient when properly managed. A little reading of the 'Dial' will carry you a great way. Eschew, in this case, big words; get them as small as possible, and write them upside down. Look over Channing's poems and quote what he says about a 'fat little man with a delusive show of Can.' Put in something about the Supernal Oneness. Don't say a syllable about the Infernal Twoness. Above all, study innuendo. Hint everything—assert nothing. If you feel inclined ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... of one another, expend their longings in empty space; and, having time for reflection, come to their own conclusions about each other. Many a passion that has taken the field in gorgeous array, with colors flying and an ardor fit to turn the world upside down, has turned home again without a victory, inglorious and crestfallen, cutting but a foolish figure after these vain alarums and excursions. Such mishaps are sometimes due to the diffidence of youth, sometimes ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... afraid that was the last of it. In that one still minute she could almost feel her beautiful plan crumbling, by little bits, like a heap of sand in a minute-glass, away into the opposite end where things had been before, with nobody to turn them upside down again. Which was upside down, ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... the right- hand side of the pendulum, beginning from the bottom and at the places of the hours V, IV, III, the words Moderate Desires—Great Hopes, Ambition—Unbridled Passion, Mania of Greatness. Then, turning the paper upside-down, he wrote on the opposite side, where on a dial would be marked VII, VIII, IX, the words Slight Troubles— Deep Sorrow, Disappointment—Despair. Lastly, in the place of No. VI, just where the pendulum fell, he sketched a large black spot, which he shaded off with ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... quickly had the envelope open, and, holding the packet upside down, there fell out upon the deck a thick little wad of bank-notes, which the wind threatened to take off into the sea before the boy's astonished senses returned to him. Ben prevented such a disaster, however, ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... special ways of writing the address on their letters, of placing the stamp—upside down, askew, at bottom in a corner of the envelope—to distinguish their letters from those which they wrote to persons who did not matter. These childish secrets had the charm of ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... that things inanimate could never without mind have attained such scientific accuracy; and some (Anaxagoras) even in those days ventured to assert that mind had ordered all things in heaven; but they had no idea of the priority of mind, and they turned the world, or more properly themselves, upside down, and filled the universe with stones, and earth, and other inanimate bodies. This led to great impiety, and the poets said many foolish things against the philosophers, whom they compared to 'yelping she-dogs,' besides making other abusive remarks. No man can now truly worship ...
— Laws • Plato
... your field-glasses? I've been rummaging all through your clothes, and swords, and sashes, and things. I've turned everything in your room upside down. ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard
... crystal mirror, In that lakelet's placid face, I saw the mountains upside down, With all their pristine grace; I saw each cliff and point of rocks, I saw the stately pine, Inverted in fantastic form ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... never escaped his observation and analysis. Before he could form any idea of anything, before he would express his opinion on any subject, he must know it in origin and history, in substance and quality, in magnitude and gravity. He must know his subject inside and outside, upside and down side. He searched his own mind and nature thoroughly, as I have often heard him say. He must analyze a sensation, an idea, and words, and run them back to their origin, history, purpose and destiny. He was most emphatically a remorseless analyzer of facts, ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... both barrels from the jokers carrying press cards. They call it Operation Upside Down. At last three characters were really going to dig a hole and pull it in after them. Three hours before Dig-day, Exmud R. Zmorro interviews us. We are televised around ...
— Operation Earthworm • Joe Archibald
... Aunt Abby. "I'm entitled to some consideration! Here's the whole house turned upside down with a murder and police and all that, and nobody considers me! It's all Eunice!" Then, with a softened voice, she added, "And Lord knows, ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... When they return to their homes they totter in their walk, and enter the house backward, as if they had forgotten how to walk properly; or they enter the house by the back door. If a plate of food is given to them, they hold it upside down. They remain dumb, indicating their wants by signs only. All this is to show that they are still under the influence of the devil or the spirits. Their sponsors have to teach them all the common acts of life, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... ky[o]ka often shortened into saka-bashira) literally means "upside-down post." A wooden post or pillar, especially a house-post, should be set up according to the original position of the tree from which it was hewn,—that is to say, with the part nearest to the roots downward. To erect a house-post in the contrary way is thought to be unlucky;—formerly ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... feet. The fellow screamed, and the Pathan shouted "Ho!" But he did no murder yet. He let his victim grow fully conscious of the fate in store for him, holding him so that his frantic kicks were squandered on thin air. He turned him slowly, until he was upside-down; and so, perpendicular, face-outward, he hove him forward like a dead log. He stood and watched his victim fall two or three thousand feet before troubling to turn and resume both rifles; and it was not until then, as if he had been mentally conscious of each ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... first place, it will be necessary to reply to those reasons; to urge how absurd it is for a man not to deny that he has acted contrary to the law, but at the same time to give some reason for having acted so. Then one will say too that all things are turned upside down; that formerly prosecutors were in the habit of trying to persuade the judges that the person who was being prosecuted before them was implicated in some fault, and of alleging some reasons which had instigated ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... all passed a very miserable and sleepless night. In the morning the sun shone brightly, and everything was put out to dry. We tried to find out why the mats leaked, and thought we had discovered that they had been laid on upside down. Having shifted there all, and got everything dry and comfortable by the evening, we again went to bed, and before midnight were again awaked by torrent of rain and leaks streaming in upon us as bad as ever. ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... sun!" exclaimed Lounsbury, spilling ground coffee into his boot-tops. He strode to the front of the store, the tin scoop in his hand still held recklessly upside down. A pung was passing the grocery—a green pung drawn by a milk-white horse. On its quilt-padded seat were two men. Above them, as they slowly proceeded, ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... was of Sweetclover, the dress was a purple morning-glory turned upside-down so it looked like a bodice and a skirt, and it was tied to the head so that they wouldn't come apart. And perched on the top of the head was a little bonnet, only it wasn't really a bonnet, you know, ...
— Kernel Cob And Little Miss Sweetclover • George Mitchel
... I am!" quoth the defender; "you know that well enough. If I had my way, the world should be turned upside down, but what the poor folk should get nearer to the sun! But what I say is this, never go against law, while the law is too strong. And it were a sad thing to see fifty fine fellows trussed up for burning an old wizard. So, be off with you, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not "ornary" B is merely A turned upside down and viewed with the imperfect appreciation of the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... ropes then, and I'll soon show yer some! (This invitation is hastily declined.) Well, then, go outside quiet, d'jear me? or else you'll do it upside down, like ole JOHN BROWN, in 'arf a sec., I can ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various
... deck at once, to see the ship on fire.' I rushed up quickly, hardly knowing whether she referred to our own or some other vessel, and on reaching the deck I found everybody looking at a large barque, under full sail, flying the red union-jack upside down, and with signals in her rigging, which our signal-man read as 'Ship on fire.' These were lowered shortly afterwards, and the signals, 'Come on board at once,' hoisted in their place. Still we ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... the children began to see one of the laws of nature turn upside down and stand on its head like an acrobat. Any grown-up persons would tell you that money is hard to get and easy to spend. But the fairy money had been easy to get, and spending it was not only hard, it was almost impossible. ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... his well, he saw others, more cunning than he, come to his perch, who by dint of "stamping on his toe," succeeded in ousting him. Pending the appearance of artificial alizarine, which was presently to turn the whole madder industry upside down, these more sophisticated persons were able to benefit at leisure by the ingenious processes discovered by Fabre, so that the practical result of so much assiduity, so much patient research, was absolutely nil, and he found himself as poor ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... ye've turned an honest man's hoose upside doon. Set to, and leave it as ye fand it. Stow that hay where it was when ye cam' here; and be quick aboot it, or I'll break every bane in your ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... said she, apparently not displeased to find herself thus surprised from the rear. "I too have a mad kind of feeling, as though the world had gone upside down. Don't be amazed if I suddenly clutch out at you to keep from falling. But the name of it—of this feeling—is having a holiday. Mr. Dayne went to New York ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... of butter ain't up to the mark, he says. I'm sure I don't see why it ain't, for I worked every pound of it with my own hands—but thar ain't no rule for pleasing men, and never will be till God Almighty sets the universe rolling upside down. That's the wagon you hear now. Thank heaven, he won't be back ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... A.M.—My brain is reeling. My world is upside down. There is no use in trying to sleep. I will write down what has happened. It may calm me. This evening when I entered the house where I was to entertain others at the expense of my self-respect, I found I was before ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... intrinsically miraculous character of the object itself. It is difficult to give examples of the proper use of grotesqueness without becoming too grotesque. But we should all agree that if St. Paul's Cathedral were suddenly presented to us upside down we should, for the moment, be more surprised at it, and look at it more than we have done all the centuries during which it has rested on its foundations. Now it is the supreme function of the philosopher of the grotesque to make the world stand on its head that people ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... braver, but I think it's really more dangerous to ride sideways, because of the saddle slipping round. (I didn't cry; I played at slipping round the world, and getting to New Zealand with my head upside down on the ground.) The reason the saddle is slippery is not because it's smooth, for it's rather rough; and there's a hard ridge behind, And the horse's hair coming through the donkey's back (I mean through his saddle) scratches ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... wish any assistance, and a great argument ensued. Tau Tana finally won his point and made the noses which he placed on the people upside down. When all was finished, Melu and Tau Tana whipped the forms until they moved. Then Melu went to his home above the clouds, and Tau Tana returned to his place below ...
— Philippine Folk Tales • Mabel Cook Cole
... dressed my wound; and then I felt nothing till I found myself staring at the grave face of the eastern surgeon, as he lightly passed a moistened finger beneath my nostrils, and then touched the neck of a bottle which he turned upside down, and proceeded to moisten my temples, while a peculiar cool pungent odour ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... children? You know how, from your seat at the piano, you watched your listener striving to take the hints you strove to give, and wandering aimlessly away from the fire-irons he should have shouldered—the book he should have read upside down—the little sister he should have kissed or tickled—what not? You remember the obdurate pertinacity with which he missed fire, and balked the triumphant outburst that should have greeted his success? Surely, if some well-wisher among the choir of Angels, harping ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... in a very novel manner, on the score of her ladyhood, Laura tied on the apron and obeyed the Motherkin with less reluctance. She was awkward, and made mistakes. She placed cups where plates should go, and turned things upside down and downside up. And when the old lady told her she had done enough, she sat down and cried for vexation, she had done so badly. Again came the whimsical little smile on the Motherkin's face, and, ...
— The Princess Idleways - A Fairy Story • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... after turning the leaves languidly over, and smiling a little at the picture of Charlotte cutting bread and butter in a left-handed manner, she put it aside on the shelf by the Complete Farrier; and there Philip saw it, upside down and untouched, the next time he came to ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the side of a large stump. I knew he was a fractious man, so I climbed into one of the wagons where I could see how he got along. The first thing that attracted my attention was the coffee pot upside down, next away went the bacon out of the pan into the fire. By this time he was getting warm inside as well as outside, and I could hear some small "cuss words"; next he looked into the Dutch oven, and saw that his dough had turned to charcoal. I got down into the wagon out of sight, ...
— California 1849-1913 - or the Rambling Sketches and Experiences of Sixty-four - Years' Residence in that State. • L. H. Woolley
... the area of slavery, and in a suspicion present to their own minds that even the existing area of that cherished institution would be narrowed, and finally reduced to nought,—expunged "as a man wipeth a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down." The friends among us of constitutional liberty and of legality, the enemies of anarchy, the unseduced execrators of slavery, the upholders of the tie of brotherhood across the Atlantic, may well look back with shame to the time—and it was no matter of days or weeks, but a period ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... awkward mix-up. The sled was upside down and jammed between a tree-trunk and a huge rock, and they were forced to unharness the dogs in order to straighten out the tangle. The two men were bent over the sled and trying to right it, when Henry ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... an old fool, Priscilla Perkins! The idea of all Boston being turned upside down for the sake of one little girl! People have come over from England before, big and little, and there's been a war and there may be another, and no end of things to happen. To be sure, I'd done my duty by her if I'd had her; and if the others spoil her—I ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... the fact that every tone which the human voice is capable of producing can be produced by inspiration as well as by expiration. The tones sung by inspiration are, as might be expected, wholly devoid of beauty, because the vocal apparatus is, as it were, put upside down, and the position of bellows and resonator reversed. But that does not alter the question. The fact remains, and clearly proves that the pockets have no more to do with the falsetto than with the ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... suits me fine." Fred, having removed one shoe, turned it upside down and shook out the sand, ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... face, Frances Barbour and Carmencita looked into each other's eyes, then with a leap Carmencita was out of the room and down the steps and at the telephone. With hands that trembled she turned the pages of the book she was holding upside down, then with disgust at her stupidity she righted it and ran her finger down the long line of V's. Finding at last the name she wanted, she called the number, then closed her eyes and prayed fervently, feverishly, and half-aloud the ...
— How It Happened • Kate Langley Bosher
... muttering all the while. Then—further and conclusive proof of a yielding intellect—he would get a half-sheet of paper with some writing on it and put it on the mantelpiece and stare at that. Next he would turn it upside down and stare at it so, then sideways, then all ways, then he would hold it before a looking-glass and stare at the looking-glass, and so on. When asked how she knew all this, she confessed that her niece Jane had seen it through the ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... woman's shabby hat, old ribbon, &c. In front of window at end of pianola is thrown a lot of old empty boxes, such as are used for stocking and shirtwaist boxes. The picture-frame and basket of flowers have been removed from pianola. The stool is on top of pianola, upside down. There is an empty White Rock bottle, with glass turned over it, standing between the legs of the stool. The big trunk is in front of sofa, and packed, and it has a swing tray under which is packed a fancy evening gown; the lid is down. On top of ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... snobbery, and often ruined by unconscious selfishness. We long to strike back at the human traits which have wronged us, and the satiric depiction of hateful characters whose seeming virtues are turned upside down to expose their impossible hearts feeds our craving for vicarious revenge. We dote upon vinegarish old maids, self- righteous men, and canting women when they are exposed by narrative art, and especially when poetic justice wrecks them. The books that contain ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... a Republic, wherein philosophers shall rule, and warriors be the bulwark of the state, and no Greek shall enslave a fellow Greek, but only outer barbarians—all of which is vastly pretty on paper—but they agree that it would turn the world upside down were it ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... conditions upside down. It is not Austria-Hungary which has called forth the conflict with Servia, but it is Servia which, through unscrupulous favor toward pan-Serb aspirations, even in parts of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, threatens the same in her existence and ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... Uncouth, strange, Underne, - A.M., Ungoodly, rudely, Unhappy, unlucky, Unhilled, uncovered, Unr the, scarcely, Unsicker, unstable, Unwimpled, uncovered, Unwrast, untwisted, unbound, Upright, flat on the back, Up-so-down, upside down, Ure, usage, Utas, octave of a festival, ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... excitement pardonable under the circumstances, yet tempered with thankful humility, I now applied my last and severest trial, my experimentum crucis. I turned the stone, now doubly precious in my eyes, with scrupulous exactness upside down. The physical exertion so far displaced my spectacles as to derange for a moment the focus of vision. I confess that it was with some tremulousness that I readjusted them upon my nose, and prepared my mind to bear with calmness ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... believe that such an arrangement can be, or will be, permanent. In these times the educational tree seems to me to have its roots in the air, its leaves and flowers in the ground; and, I confess, I should very much like to turn it upside down, so that its roots might be solidly embedded among the facts of Nature, and draw thence a sound nutriment for the foliage and fruit of literature and of art. No educational system can have a claim to permanence, unless it recognises the truth that education has two great ends to which everything ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... of the nation leads to the right way of looking at these matters, because it constrains every man to put himself and all that he has at the service of the community. Thus it is the opposite of socialism, which merely turns upside down the current worship of ownership, and which thinks "having" so supremely important that it would put "not having" in its place. The only cry I will adopt is "England for ever," which means that we are here, every one of us, with all that ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... misapprehend concerning her, as if she was for destroying kings, for subverting kingdoms, and for bringing all to desolation, and so they set themselves against her, 'crying, These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also; whom Jason hath received: and these all do contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, one Jesus' (Acts 17:5-7). Indeed, the very name of Jesus is the very tower ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... or saying a word. It is evident that in this frightful pause of fate, Jeanne had become to France as to England, the Witch whom it was perhaps a danger to have had anything to do with, whose spells had turned the world upside down for a moment: but these spells had become ineffectual or worn out as is the nature of sorcery. No explanation, not even the well-worn and so often valid one of human baseness, could explain the terrible situation, ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... o'clock at Mud View Villa," would be depicted. This, needless to say, economised greatly in space and matter; and in case any special exhibit failed to arrive in time, or was thrown away by mistake, an old one turned upside down at once ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... yesterday's miracle? The town is quite upside down with it; more than twenty people have already given me an account of what occurred. Yes, it seems they obtained an extraordinary miracle, a paralytic young lady got up and dragged her invalid carriage as far as the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... this naive assertion. "He imitates father and Uncle John in everything," she explained. "He will have played his way through all the music in the house before to-morrow night—most of it upside down, too." ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... shoe to shake out some tiny thing that had got into it and that annoyed her. It turned out to be a bit of pine-needle. It was pleasant to feel her foot freed from the hot leather and resting on the thick moss, and so the other shoe came off too, and was turned upside down and shaken, as an excuse, for there was nothing in it, and both feet rested in the moss, side by side. She wished she could take off her stockings, and if there had been a stream she would have done it, so sure was she that no one would disturb her, up there amongst the rocks and ever ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... foundations of his life. He had come to despise all that he had counted most precious, and to clasp as the only true treasures all that he had despised. With him the revolution had turned his whole life upside down. Though the change cannot be so subversive and violent with us, the forsaking of self-confidence must be as real, and the clinging to Jesus must be as close, if our Christianity is to be fervid and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... to have on a convenient table, if your doctor be of a homoeopathic school, a little covered tray, and on it two glasses, clean, and turned upside down to keep them from dust, teaspoons and covers for the glasses, also a small pitcher of fresh water. Many doctors of the old school also use some medicines in water, so it is best to have glasses always ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery
... Then I gazed long and earnestly down my throat. It was quite hollow as usual. Next I got the clinical thermometer and sucked it for quite a long time. When I removed it I saw my temperature was about 86. Then I found I was reading it upside down and that I was only normal. I felt disappointed. After that I tried my pulse. It took me some time to locate it, but it hadn't run down; it was still going quite regularly—andante ma non troppo, two beats in the bar. I whistled "Tipperary" ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 9, 1914 • Various
... thought they might be. I don't know much about them," said Peter, rubbing his chin. "Rough as a porcupine, aren't I? You must have thought me a savage when you found me stuck upside-down in that tree like a sloth. ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... be the least disturbed of any of the party. She was a pretty child, and robust. She kicked vigorously against being held almost upside down by her mother (as though by that means the dose of poison could be coaxed out of the child) but she ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... he did not know what to "crate" meant. It was a custom in the days of early Indiana barbarism for the youngsters of a village, on spying a sleeping drunkard, to hunt up a "queensware crate"—one of the cages of round withes in which crockery was shipped. This was turned upside down over the inebriate, and loaded with logs or any other heavy articles that would make escape difficult when the poor wretch should come to himself. It was a sort of rude punishment for inebriety, and it afforded a frog-killing delight to ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... as air; so in order to expedite the complete saturation of the water, it is convenient to remove the bottle A with its tube from bottle B, and after having closed the latter by its cork or stopper, to agitate it thoroughly by turning the bottle upside down. As the sulphurous acid gas accumulated in the air space over the water is absorbed by the water, a partial vacuum is created, and when the stopper is eased an inrush of air may be noted. When, after passing fresh gas through the liquid for some minutes, no further inrush of air is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... turned his aluminum coffee-pot upside down and, good morning, sister Anne, it was full ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... zee Grammer as she did use Vor to show us, at Chris'mas, her wedden shoes, An' her flat spreaden bonnet so big an' roun' As a girt pewter dish a-turn'd upside down; When we all did draw near In a cluster to hear O' the merry wold soul how she did use To walk an' to ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... antipodes must, however, have been a tremendous difficulty in the way of this conception of a sphere, and I scarcely suppose that any one can at that time have contemplated the possibility of such upside-down regions being inhabited. I find that intelligent children invariably feel the greatest difficulty in realizing the existence of inhabitants on the opposite side of the earth. Stupid children, like stupid persons in general, will of course believe anything they are told, and much good may ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... of sap, full of leaves, and full of boughs: but now in vain does the busy art of man pretend to vie with nature, by tying that withered bundle of twigs to its sapless trunk. It is now at best but the reverse of what it was, a tree turned upside down, the branches on the earth, and the root in the air. It is now handled by every dirty wench, condemned to do her drudgery, and by a capricious kind of fate, destined to make her things clean, ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... their yearly descent from the lakes. They soon appeared, and he called them to a solemn council. Terror had seized them all. "Father, take pity on us," said the Ottawa orator, "for we are like dead men." A Huron chief, named the Rat, declared that the world was turned upside down, and implored the protection of Onontio, "who is master of the whole earth." These tribes were far from harmony among themselves. Each was jealous of the other, and the Ottawas charged the Hurons with trying to make favor with the common enemy at their expense. Frontenac told them ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... jerked a whisky bottle upside down over a glass. Half the contents splashed across the bar. He turned and faced the crowd, his hand dripping with the ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... dodge tendency of sword to get between their knees; sit down with the consciousness that they are the cynosure of every eye, including those of JOSEPH GILLIS, regarding them across House through horn-bound spectacles. To-day everything upside down. Instead of moving the Address, HARCOURT on with question of Privilege—HARCOURT, a plain man, in civilian costume! Worst of it was, they could not go away and change their clothes. No one knows what may happen from hour to hour in House of Commons; debate on Privilege ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various
... she realized with vague wonder, her slowly formed theories had been set at naught, her whole philosophy turned upside down. Had these years of protest and rebellion done no more than lead her in a wide circle, past empty gain, and joyless mirth, and the dead sea fruit of riches and idleness, back to her mother's knees again? She had met brilliant women, rich women, courted women—but where among them ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... expressed Mrs. Haim's sole and characteristic criticism of the organism into which she had so unassumingly entered. Secure in the adoration of Mr. Haim, she might safely have turned the place upside-down and proved to the Grove that she could act the mistress with the best of them; but she changed nothing except the doormat. The kitchen and scullery had already been hers before the eye of Mr. Haim had fallen upon her; she was accustomed to them and had largely fashioned ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... rushes, grasses, and ferns, and soon it opened into a broad pool, which was smooth as glass. The clouds in the sky, the tall surrounding trees, and the graceful ferns and rushes of the banks, were all reflected in the water, so that it looked to Dot like a strange upside-down picture. This, then, was the home of that wonderful animal; and Dot felt quite frightened, because she thought she was ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... world has turned upside down since Aunt Margaret died," said Cecilia. "And I have worked pretty hard for the last two years, Bob; and it ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... a rap on the door and the knob turned as he shot the photograph into his pocket and pretended to be reading a volume of Bacchylides—upside down. The intruder was Teed. Litton was too much startled and too throbbing with guilt to express his ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... room was turned upside down, And all the carpets hung out to blow; For when the Bishop is coming to town The house must ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... tea] Have some more! Yes, it only seems that our life is pleasant; but sometimes it is very disgusting,—clearing up all their messes! Faugh! It's better in the country. [Peasants turn their cups upside-down, as a polite sign that they have had enough. Tnya pours out more tea] Have some more, Efm Antnitch. I'll fill your cup, ...
— Fruits of Culture • Leo Tolstoy
... I hesitated. I am ashamed of my hesitation now, but this is supposed to be a truthful chronicle. Then I went back down the road. By another flash of lightning I saw the minister's umbrella upside down in the bushes where I had dropped it, and I took it with me. I was about as wet as I well could be but I am glad to say I remembered that the ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... own fingers, as old-fashioned butlers do, for he was scrupulous in all matters of craftsmanship; holding his fat face obliquely, so that it seemed as unrelated to anything but space as a riding moon, save when he looked down and smiled to see the blue square of the window and the elm top shine upside down and distorted in the bulbous silver: thinking his solution ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... him to pieces, and which he said "was wearing him out," at which we all laughed irresistibly, and then felt ashamed of ourselves, as well we might; but he himself seemed to enjoy his cough. It was all part of that odd, topsy-turvy mind in which everything appeared most natural upside down! ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... traveling much faster than safety demanded. At a turn in the road there was a treacherous, slippery place, the sled swung around sideways—skidded would explain the motion—one runner slipped over the edge of the bank, the sleigh turned upside down throwing out the cargo ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... any one did. I went away to school in Paris for two years; I wouldn't go to college—how I wish I had! I was the gayest, most thoughtless girl you ever knew until—the thing happened that sent my world spinning upside down. Why, Mr. King, I was so selfish and so thoughtless that I could turn that poor girl away from my door with a careless denial, and never see that she was desperate—that it wanted only one more such turning away to make her do the thing ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... "grave Tyrian trader" on the table turned upside down that was his raft, as serious and intent as if it had been the navy of Tarshish bringing Solomon gold and silver, ivory and apes and peacocks. With one arm he clutched the cat and assured that unwilling ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... seen upside down, with his fore feet projected up into the sky. Only the head, neck, and fore feet are represented. The star ...
— A Field Book of the Stars • William Tyler Olcott |
