"Wriggle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... body-natural fleas), but its very elementary organism cannot so much as catch a really athletic one as yet. Meanwhile you and I are handicapped. The individual travaileth in pain. In the struggle for quality, powers, air, he spends his strength, and yet hardly escapes asphyxiation. He can no more wriggle himself free of the psychic gravitations that invest him than the earth can shake herself loose of the sun, or he of the omnipotences that rivet him to the universe. If by chance one shoots a downy hint of wings, an instant feeling of contrast puffs him with self-consciousness: a tragedy ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... she exclaimed, as, with a vigorous throw and a wriggle, she freed herself from his embrace ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... expected of him—and nothing that a man should not be willing to do for his wife. A smile, an attentive manner, the general effect of having combed his hair and washed behind his ears, a word now and then to show that he is awake (I am assuming that he controls the tendency to wriggle)—and no more is needed. He is a lay figure, but not necessarily a lay figure ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... hostile to him had a wide net spread around him — wide of mesh too, perhaps; and it was through a mesh he meant to wriggle, but the net was intact from ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... his place and cried: "Wata['][n] Thanks! I'm glad some of them will die, for they are getting so thick that they tread on me." He fairly shook with joy at the thought, so that he fell over backward and could not get on his feet again, but had to wriggle off on his back, as the Grubworm has done ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... there is anything on the other side he wishes to get at. If there is not, and especially if anything is there which he wishes to shun, a four hundred and fifty pounder cannot crash a hole large enough for you to push him through. By such a pitiful chink as that did his Infallible Highness wriggle himself out of the range of my guns, and ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... and meaningless jingle set the immediate crowd in a roar. I became an object for ribald laughter and cheers; I was pushed and hustled, albeit good-naturedly enough, but none the less to my great annoyance, so that I made all haste to wriggle away and, espying a narrow lane between these canvas booths and tents, I slipped into it, took to my heels and turning a sharp corner in full career, came thus upon an ancient man who sat upon a box, puffing serenely at a long pipe and who, despite my so sudden appearance, ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... developed those acquired characteristics whereby the birds of the air and the beasts of the field maintain themselves in a world of carnage. They learnt to walk delicately on the balls of their feet as silently as hares, to see in the dark like foxes, to wriggle like the creeping things of the field, to lower their voices with the direction of the wind, to select a background with the moonlight, and to stand motionless on patrol with muscles rigid like a pointer when the star-shells dissolved the security of the night. They studied ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... of steel burst open, and between them stood a giant with an iron club in one hand, and in the other a chain which was fastened round the neck of a serpent. Now in all the world there was no serpent more horrible than this, for it did not wriggle along the ground as serpents generally do, but advanced erect, its head higher than a man seated on a horse, while it trailed besides a tail ten feet behind it. At the sight of the young man it lashed its tail so violently ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... Shorty?" Lorry felt the warmth of a new life, felt the little body wriggle in snug contentment. "I wouldn't advise it. Tough job." Baby Newcomb twisted ...
— I'll Kill You Tomorrow • Helen Huber
... hit him with the stick in my hand; and he fetched up against the wall, on the inside of the closet. I have no doubt his striking against the partition caused some confusion in his ideas: at any rate, he dropped on the floor, and began to wriggle about in such a manner as no decent snake would, unless ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic
... long to wait, for presently Woofer crawled out of his blankets on the far side, and began to wriggle away on his ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... returning. First come the Judge, tougher than rawhide, half walking and half flying, his wings spread out, 'cree-ing' to himself about bulldogs and their ways; next come Bobby, still sputtering and swearing, and behind ambled Thomas at a lively wriggle, a coy, ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... pour in, flow into, flow in, creep into, creep in, slip into, slip in, pop into, pop in, break into, break in, burst into, burst in; set foot on; ingress; burst in upon, break in upon; invade, intrude; insinuate itself; interpenetrate, penetrate; infiltrate; find one's way into, wriggle into, worm oneself into. give entrance to &c. (receive) 296; insert &c. 300. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... manager's expressive face, but from the fact that the hands holding it tightened their grip Psmith deduced that Mr Bickersdyke's attention was not wholly concentrated on the City news. Moreover, his toes wriggled. And when a man's toes wriggle, he is interested ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... wished, it seemed to have the power of altering its own gravity, as after wading about two, or perhaps five minutes, where it could just get its head out, it would suddenly rise to the surface and begin to swim, which it does quite as well as the Water-hen. The awkward, tumbling, shuffling wriggle which it appears to have, is occasioned by the incessant motion of its head as it turns over the gravel in search of creepers, which appear to me to form the ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... cases of provisions, so that only a little space was clear for us at the stern. The cabin was about 2 metres long, 1 1/2 metre wide, and 1 1/2 metre high, and was crammed with stuff—tinned meats, cloths, guns, trading goods, etc. One person could wriggle in it, crawling on hands and knees, but two had to wind round each other in impossible positions, and it was quite unthinkable that both should spend the night below. But with the happy carelessness and impatience of a long-delayed start, we did not think of the hardships ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... four had ceased to move, though three spears were stuck in him. The man nearest to him managed to wriggle over and up on ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... order of Hosea Hessel, of the blue nose. And several boys took hold of me, all together, turned me over on the bench, face upwards. Two sat on my legs, two on my arms, and one held my head, so that I should not be able to wriggle. And another placed his left forefinger and thumb at my nose. (It seemed he was left-handed.) He curled up his finger and thumb, closed his eye, and began to fillip me on the nose. And how, do you think? Each time I saw my father in the other world. Murderers, slaughterers! What had they against ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... the very help of Prussia unacceptable to Austria was the circumstance of Prussia's using that opportunity of Austria's need to wriggle herself to the military headship of the Confederation. Austria would rather have lost Lombardy (and more) than have accepted such a disadvantage. Hence the coldness, the cause of which is scarcely avowable. Selfish ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... would be more interesting were we not lying trussed in this cellar," I said. "I am trying to wriggle some ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... be better farther back," Tignonville retorted. "Here, we are within an ace of being seen from the lane." And he began to wriggle ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... bid—who'll buy, who'll buy? Here's Mr. Hayley, Doctor Paley, Arthur Murphy, Tommy Durfey, Mrs. Trimmer's little Primer, Buckram binding, touch and try— Nothing bid—who'll buy, who'll buy? Here's Colley Cibber, Bruce the fibber, Plays of Cherry, ditto Merry, Tickle, Mickle, When I bow and when I wriggle, With a simper and a giggle, Ears regaling, bidders nailing, Ladies utter in a flutter— "Mister Smatter, how you chatter, Dear, how clever! well, I never Heard ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... was no sheltering cove to lie in on the river front; and besides, to make the visit at the regular pier was so hopelessly commonplace. Any of the ordinary palace yachts could do the thing that way. But it took a gypsy craft like Gadabout to wriggle up the little back-country creek and to land among the chickens and the geese and—bulls perhaps; but then all explorers must ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... shaking his head fiercely, like a dog worrying a rat. "You were seen carrying the body downstairs, the night of the murder. You might as well own up to it, first as last. Lies will not help you. We know too much for you to wriggle out of it. And never mind smoothing your hair down like that. We know all about that scar on your forehead, ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... But without paying the least homage to the image of the 'Lo' spirit, he simply kept his eyes fixed intently on it; for albeit made of clay, it actually seemed, nevertheless, to flutter as does a terror-stricken swan, and to wriggle as a dragon in motion. It looked like a lotus, peeping its head out of the green stream, or like the sun, pouring its rays upon the russet clouds in the early morn. Pao-yue's tears unwittingly trickled ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Miss Beaubien until Alice Renwick came; then he dropped her like a hot brick. By the Eternal, Rollins, he hasn't gotten off with that old love yet, you mark my words. There's Indian blood in her veins, and a look in her eye that makes me wriggle, sometimes. I watched her last night at parade when she drove out here with that copper-faced old squaw, her mother. For all her French and Italian education and her years in New York and Paris, that girl's got a wild streak in her somewhere. She sat there watching him as the officers marched ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... destroyed, yet the legs pushed the abdomen and corselet on; so that a disapproving friend had to divide his sympathy, and to feel for each of the pieces. And what appeared to us worthy of remark was, that whereas, when a snake was decollated, it was only the tail that continued to wriggle—when a worm was divided, all the segments writhed in the same way, and manifested an equal irritability; showing the difference between creatures of annulated structure, according as they have or have not a brain. A new ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... of mad people is a wonderful sight," Verisschenzko said, as he stood by her side. "Paris has lost all good taste and sense of the fitness of things. Look! the women who are the most expert in the wriggle of the tango are mostly over forty years old! Do you see that one in the skin-tight pink robe? She is a grandmother! All are painted—all are feverish—all would be young! It is ever thus when a country is on the eve of a cataclysm—it is a ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... at the face above her with such a winning smile that Mrs. Sherman drew her toward her with a quick hug and kiss. Lloyd gave a little wriggle of satisfaction. "I'm so glad you've come!" she cried, so completely won by Betty's artlessness that ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Although your painter may drop hints for the soul, let him not strain above his pitch lest he crack his larynx. To his colour he may add form in the flat; but he cannot escape the flat, however he may wriggle, any more than the sculptor can escape the round, scrape he never so wisely. Buonarroti will scrape and shift; the Fleming has scraped and shifted all his days to as little purpose. His seed-pearls invite your touch. Touch them, my friend, you will smear ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... praise): but the great thing was that she loved them. At bottom it was not Beethoven, nor Thome, nor Bach, nor Grieg that she loved, but the notes, the sounds, the fingers running over the keys, the thrills she got from the chords which tickled her nerves and made her wriggle with pleasure. ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... man, hard and fast," Mr. Bartholomew said. "If I was inclined to want to wriggle out, I see no chance of it. But I don't. You have set forth here exactly my meaning and intent. I want your best efforts in this matter, Mr. Swift, and if you give them to me I'll foot the bill ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... this walk of "Arab ladies" a waddle: I have never seen it in Europe except amongst the trading classes of Trieste, who have a "wriggle" of their own. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... called it, was still in progress. Without noise, the six half-nude figures were describing circles upon the smooth floor. The silence and the serpentlike motions had a peculiar hypnotic effect upon us, and in a sort of dreamlike trance we watched them wriggle by the narrow aperture to which we pressed our faces. With each circle more of the brown, sweat-polished bodies showed beneath the twisted mats. The pace was beginning to tell upon them now. Slower and slower they moved past the crevice, ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... in the end went into a great rage. She glared furiously at Marjory, dropped her arm as if it had burned her and moved down upon Coleman. She must have reflected that at any rate she could make him wriggle. When she was come near to him, she called out: "Rufus!" In her tone was all the old insolent statement of ownership. Coleman might have been a poodle. She knew how to call his same in a way that was anything less than a public scandal. On this occasion everybody looked at him and then went ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... "Wriggle her up the sides," said The Cat. "Keep her close to the crowd. They hate the carriages. Shikast, ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... through the dark chambers, calling the great thoats after me. They had difficulty in negotiating some of the doorways, but as the buildings fronting the city's principal exposures were all designed upon a magnificent scale, they were able to wriggle through without sticking fast; and thus we finally made the inner court where I found, as I had expected, the usual carpet of moss-like vegetation which would prove their food and drink until I could return them to their own enclosure. That they would be as quiet and contented ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Cornelius. How the latter had managed to exist through the troubled times I can't say. As Stein's agent, after all, he must have had Doramin's protection in a measure; and in one way or another he had managed to wriggle through all the deadly complications, while I have no doubt that his conduct, whatever line he was forced to take, was marked by that abjectness which was like the stamp of the man. That was his characteristic; he was fundamentally and outwardly abject, as ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... eel!" Bob glanced admiringly at his friend. "I believe you just wriggle by on the ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... troops, when they saw the launch wriggle off the bank where she was stuck, and steam away down stream, were filled with exasperation, because they had confidently anticipated making a barbecue out of Commandant Balliot in return for many cruelties ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... Children are wilted into silence and slumberous nonentity; boys do not bathe to-day—they welter, hour after hour, in the dark water near the shaded rock. Even they and the tadpoles can hardly be seen to wriggle. The cow has found a shade, and, preferring repose to munching, lies contented under the one great elm mercifully left in ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... of him," said Pat, solemnly. "The sort of her Ladyship houlds on the tighter the more you wriggle. He's preparing a quare bed of repentance for himself, so he is, the langwidge he's usin' about her all over the house. By-and-by he'll be rememberin' she's Sir Gerald's widdy, and'll be askin' me ashamed-like, 'I hope I didn't say too much about her Ladyship in ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... was used not only to wriggle around the line inside of ends and to squirm through difficult outlets, but to charge the line as well, a feat of which his height and strong legs rendered him well capable. He proved a consistant ground-gainer, ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... "O, don't wriggle, now," retorted Will, sternly. "You know you saw him in time to warn him. You wanted to get him into it. You just come along with me, and apologize. If he is an old skinflint, you've got to remember ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... never seemed to fuss or frown; I liked to watch her little tongue And see it wriggle ...
— Under the Tree • Elizabeth Madox Roberts
... I a younger man you might, perhaps, accuse me of scheming to wriggle myself into your good graces, Miss Enid. But I am getting old, and, moreover, I'm a confirmed bachelor, therefore you cannot, I think, accuse me of such ulterior motives. No, I only point out this peril for your family's sake—and ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... called, lay a mass of three or four hundred eggs on the surface of wounds. The larvae which in a few hours hatch from these make their way directly into the wound where they feed on the surrounding tissue until full grown when they wriggle out and drop to the ground where they transform to the pupa and later to the adult fly. Of course their presence in the wounds is very distressing to the infected animal, and great suffering results. Slight scratches that might otherwise quickly heal often become serious sores ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane
... no more than a reminiscence, if it was not always an illusion; was it because she rendered the spirit of M. Offenbach's operas so perfectly, that we liked her so much? "Ah, that movement!" cried an enthusiast, "that swing, that—that—wriggle!" She was undoubtedly a great actress, full of subtle surprises, and with an audacious appearance of unconsciousness in those exigencies where consciousness would summon the police—or should; she was so near, yet so far from, the worst that could be intended; in tones, in gestures, in ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... every time! Ye Quartos published upon every clime! 0 say, shall dull Romaika's heavy round, Fandango's wriggle, or Bolero's bound; Can Egypt's Almas [13]—tantalising group— Columbia's caperers to the warlike Whoop— Can aught from cold Kamschatka to Cape Horn With Waltz compare, or after Waltz be born? 130 Ah, no! from Morier's pages down to Galt's, [14] Each tourist ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... and making mental notes, your brain-gears soon get a hot box. The original of all paragraphers—Ecclesiastes—came very near ending as a complete cynic; though in what F. P. A. would call his "lastline," he managed to wriggle into ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... the end of me," he thought in his little round head as he tried to wriggle across the road and couldn't because his back was so stiff. "Now I am an old man and I shall never see another summer. Good-bye." And Fuzzy Caterpillar rolled himself up in a gray blanket and hung himself on the end of a dried twig. "This is the last of me," he said ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... rich, very odd; by the by, a great mesmeriser. I have seen him with my own eyes produce an effect on inanimate things. If you take a letter from your pocket and throw it to the other end of the room, he will order it to come to his feet, and you will see the letter wriggle itself along the floor till it has obeyed his command. 'Pon my honour, 'tis true: I have seen him affect even the weather, disperse or collect clouds, by means of a glass tube or wand. But he does not like talking of these matters ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... wriggle the creeping figure was at the foot of the net which shrouded Jack. The latter looked down and saw that the man was literally covered from head to foot with masses of the swarming insects. Then, with ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... a wriggle down under the blanket, and Lee leaned forward; "Are those your feet?" he demanded; "do you go that far down, ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... iron hooks, and work them down deep in the sand when the tide has just gone. With quick but steady movements, you make a series of deep "criss-crosses;" and when the fish is disturbed by the hooks you whip him smartly out, and put him in the basket before his magical wriggle has taken him deep into the sand again. The women stooping over the shining floor look like ghostly harvesters reaping invisible crops. They are very silent, and their steps are feline. Peggy worked out her day, and then she would go home and cut up the eels for the ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... be too sanguine. You know my philosophy. I've seen a scratched finger kill a man; I've known puny babes wriggle out of Death's hand when I could have sworn it had closed upon them for good and all. Where there ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... Westhouse!' cried a chorus of voices. 'Yes, it is Gauger Westhouse,' said the man calmly, giving his neck a wriggle as though he were in pain. 'I represent the King's law, and in its name I arrest ye all, and declare all the contraband goods which I see around me to be confiscate and forfeited, according to the second section of the first clause of the statute upon illegal dealing. If there are any honest men ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Jesus Christ.' That is how Paul thinks of what we call his conversion. He would never have 'turned' unless a hand had been laid upon him. A strong loving grasp had gripped him in the midst of his career of persecution, and all that he had done was to yield to the grip, and not to wriggle out of it. The strong expression suggests, as it seems to me, the suddenness of the incident. Possibly impressions may have been working underground, ever since the martyrdom of Stephen, which were ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... prospected. We should have known enough by that time to leave four or five men on guard close by; as it was, when the men still on board the dhow began kicking up a babel, Fred and I came running and jumping back through the marsh just in time to see a crocodile wriggle off into the water, with the corpse in his jaws feet first. Fred fired a shotted salute, but missed, and that ended ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... as she was under the glaring light, the letter still clutched stiffly in her hand, her eyes still staring widely at the irregular, un-English writing. The letters seemed to writhe and squirm into life before her distorted vision, to wriggle like a procession of monstrous insects across the page. Were they insects or were they reptiles? She asked herself ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... road. Instantly the Serpent uncoiled itself from his neck, and, as it touched the damp earth, it resumed the shape of the lovely damsel. Pointing to the rock, she showed him an opening just big enough for a man to wriggle through. Passing into it, they entered a long underground passage, which led out on to a wide field, above which spread a blue sky. In the middle of the field stood a magnificent castle, built out of porphyry, with a roof ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... deliver nobody, without they wriggle for themselves pretty consider'ble well fust. This a'n't the newest news to me; I've been expectin' on't a long spell, an' I've talked consider'ble with Westbury folks about it; and there a'n't nobody much, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... down. Though the lizard seemed to have lost none of its spirit, the flesh was becoming weak. While it panted, its eyes twinkled with inane ferocity, and the snake, with that peculiar fearsome, gliding movement—neither wriggle nor squirm—typical of the species, slowly edged its victim under the shadow of a tussock. There both reposed, the snake calm in craft and design, the lizard waiting for the one chance of its life. Swallowing the ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... kind of wriggle, and he prepared for a discussion. He had never fathomed Miss Bartlett. As he had put it to himself at Florence, "she might yet reveal depths of strangeness, if not of meaning." But she was so unsympathetic that she must be reliable. He assumed that ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... not be snapped up. We would wriggle away. We were very sorry, but we must start at once to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... over wine. Men say more than they mean when they are engaged in emptying mine host's cellar. Come, gentlemen, another bottle. We must hang the damned young rebel, but we'll do him this much grace—we'll drink a happy despatch to him, a short wriggle at the end of his rope, and a pleasant journey ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... for a dime, and heard himself say, "That's all right, I don't want the stuff. Take it in to that little chap in a striped suit, in the next car,—dirty little beggar, wriggled like an eel all day. This will probably make him wriggle all night. Never mind, ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... said he, "I'll keep a hand on you, my lady, that you won't be able to wriggle away from. If you are slippery, and faith you are, why I'm tough, and so you'll find it." "Get rid of your kinks before you marry," said he. "I've no use for a wife with one eye on me, and it a dubious one, and the other one squinting into a ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... these elongate rapidly, and show symptoms of head and tail curled up in a spherical cell; the jelly is gradually absorbed for their nourishment, until on some fine morning each elongated dot gives one vigorous wriggle, and claims thenceforward all the privileges attendant on this dissolution of the union. The final privilege is often that of being suddenly snapped up by a turtle or a snake: for Nature brings forth her creatures liberally, especially the aquatic ones, sacrifices ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... again. A firm of shipwrights were employed to repair the damage—the twisted stanchions, buckled beams, burnt decks, worthless pumps, and hold fittings. Old Jock was not a Scotchman for nothing, and to make their contract profitable, the 'wrights did nothing that they could wriggle out of. So we had extra work to do—their work—and from daylight to dark were kept hard at it, man-driven as only our hardcase Mate could drive. It was no wonder that we were in a state of discontent. Here we were, after a long, hard voyage, working our 'soul-case' to shreds! And there—just across ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... I exclaimed. "But suppose you were all to get drunk, what would the Frenchmen do with us, I should like to know? Shall I tell you? They would manage to wriggle themselves free, and heave us all overboard. If we don't want to disgrace ourselves, let us keep what we've got. Not another drop of liquor does anyone have aboard here till we fall in with ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... he give you some?" exclaimed aunt Corinne with a wriggle. "I had a gold dollar, but I b'lieve that little old man with a bag on his ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... fail to promote me for his own sake, as well as mine; and when I have once fairly got my legs in St. Stephen's, I shall soon have my hands in office: 'power,' says some one, 'is a snake that when it once finds a hole into which it can introduce its head, soon manages to wriggle in the rest of its body.'" With such meditations I endeavoured to beguile the time and cheat myself into forgetfulness of the lameness of my horse, and the dripping wetness of his rider. At last the storm began sullenly to subside: one impetuous torrent, ten-fold more ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to shoot out a thousand serpentine heads or knots of water, which wriggle down deliberately through the air and expend themselves in mist before half the descent is over. Then a new set burst from the body and sides of the fall, with the same fortune on the remaining distance; and thus the most charming ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... We need not wriggle and twist to try to avoid admitting that the calling of the martyred Zacharias, 'the son of Barachias,' is an error of some one who confused the author of the prophetic book with the person whose murder is narrated in 2 Chronicles xxiv. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... said with a kind of groan. "Things change so, here. Whenever I look again, it's sure to be something different! Yet I does my duty! I gets up wriggle-early ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... now so loose in their partially emptied box that they could wriggle and even change positions if they liked. The big young man wheeled, passed his arm round Winifred's waist as if for a waltz, half lifted her off her feet, and set her down ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... you are able to command the attention and the confidence of your buyers, you've got to be up and dressed all day to hold what trade is yours, and twisting and turning all night to wriggle into some of the other fellow's. When business is good, that is the time to force it, because it will come easy; and when it is bad, that is the time to force it, too, because we will need ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... unsolicited additions accruing to some parts of his being and strange deprivations in others, and upon whom the unhappy realization begins to be borne in, that his is no particular case, and that he of all the world is not to be spared, but, like his forbears, must inevitably wriggle in the disguising crucible of time. And, though men accept it with apparently patient humor, the first realization that people do grow old, and that they do it before they have had time to be young, is apt to come like ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... eagerly eaten by the fish, which appear to thrive on them better than on dead meat. Having great tenacity of life, if not snapped up immediately by the fish they remain alive for a day or two, and, as they wriggle about on the bottom, are almost certain to be finally eaten; whereas the particles of dead flesh that fall to the bottom are largely neglected by the fish and begin to putrefy in a few hours. In the fish troughs ...
— New England Salmon Hatcheries and Salmon Fisheries in the Late 19th Century • Various
... was open a little at the top, same as I've had it before once or twice these spring days, and Sol never took notice. The worst of it is, my husband told me I hadn't orter keep it open, even a speck, while the bird was out of his cage. 'Sol can wriggle through the smallest kind of a crack,' says he; and it appears he was right. My, but he'll be angry! 'Marthy, it'll serve you right,' ...
— Peggy in Her Blue Frock • Eliza Orne White
... rested. The houses, too, were so drunk as to be dangerous. They bowed over him, swaying hideously from their foundations. They seemed to be attracted, just as he was, by that abominable slimy flow and glister of the asphalt. Another wriggle of the latch-key, and they would be over on the top ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... he says that the air is thick with danger. When the blackness of night comes, then will come, also, those who make war from behind the trees of the forest. In the darkness, how is the young white and his friends to tell enemies from friends? The jackals will wriggle through and over the wall of trees like snakes through tall grass. After what they have seen, can my white friends expect mercy at hands already ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... inheritance, on the other hand, will show clearly by the violence of the response provoked that their nervous system is easily stimulated and exhausted. They will wriggle and squirm for hours together, emitting the same constant reflex cry. The whole body will start convulsively at a sudden touch or a loud sound which would evoke no response from a more stolid infant. The sleeplessness and crying exhaust the baby, rendering the nervous system more ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... from that evil place, and away also from the lower depths. So, though the way became more and more difficult as they advanced, they continued to press on, now up, now down, at another place going on their hands and knees, and further on having to wriggle between cracks which sorely nipped the Hunter as he forced his heavy frame through. And in the end they came out on the verge of the vast vault, which appeared to fill so much of the space below; emerged on a wind-swept ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... fires a mile or so back from the main road. Once as she flew along she shied like a horse and twisted the wheel as a wild screaming and twittering rose at the side of the car, and glancing back she saw three figures wriggle and laugh in mockery and astonishment. They had risen round the embers of a dead fire, and stood swaying on their feet and showing white teeth in orange faces. One had the long hair of a woman flapping ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... foremast across which he lay was complete almost to the royal-mast, though the yards were gone; and to his left, just above the battered fore-top, five men were lashed, dead and drowned. Most of them had their eyes wide open, and seemed to stare at Zeb and wriggle about in the stir of the sea as if they lived. Spent and wretched as he was, it lifted his hair. He almost called out to them at first, and then he dragged his gaze off them, and turned it to the right. The survivor still clung here, and Zeb—who ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... slide into it;) black, glossy crickets, with their long filaments sticking out like the whips of four-horse stage-coaches; motionless, slug-like creatures, larvae, perhaps, more horrible in their pulpy stillness than even in the infernal wriggle of maturity! But no sooner is the stone turned and the wholesome light of day let upon this compressed and blinded community of creeping things, than all of them that enjoy the luxury of legs—and some of them have a good many—rush round ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... gyrates in front of the hound. The way to put an end to the gaudy crimes that the suffragist alarmists talk about is to shave the heads of all the pretty girls in the world, and pluck out their eyebrows, and pull their teeth, and put them in khaki, and forbid them to wriggle on dance-floors, or to wear scents, or to use lip-sticks, or to roll their eyes. Reform, as usual, mistakes ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... cried. 'I won't let you speak. You've said it, a satellite, you're not going to wriggle out of it. You've ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... carried off without hooking the victim, and the Devil finally lost his temper. "I've heard of these San Franciscans before," he muttered. "Wait till I get hold of one, that's all!" he added malevolently, as he rebaited his hook. A sharp tug and a wriggle followed his next trial, and finally, with considerable effort, he landed a portly two-hundred-pound broker upon ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... rambles on in her aimless talking the children are bored, inexpressibly bored. It is axiomatic that the learning process does not flourish in a state of boredom. Under the ordeal of verbal inundation the children wriggle and squirm about in their seats and this affords her a new point of attack. She calls them ill-bred and unmannerly and wonders at the homes that can produce such children. She does not realize that if these children ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... and dress a wriggle, add a pint of nearly milk, Smother with a pillow any sneeze; Baste with talcum powder and mark upon its back— "Don't forget that ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... a few of the men and many of the women shrank back while those that had babies, or little folks, snatched up their children, fearing lest the poisonous snakes might wriggle towards them. ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... is lean, now Luck Is fat, And wise men take her as she comes: The Bowler may be sure the Bat Will share the sugarplums. So never wriggle, nor protest, Nor eye the zenith in disgust, But, Johnson, bowl your level best, And recollect, ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... the warm flesh of a pair of living legs. The exclamation of surprise that almost burst from his lips was throttled in his throat by steel-thewed fingers that closed about his windpipe with the suddenness of thought. The black struggled to arise—to turn upon the creature that had seized him—to wriggle from its hold; but all to no purpose. As he had been held in a mighty vise of iron he could not move. He could not scream. Those awful fingers at his throat but closed more and more tightly. His eyes bulged from their sockets. His face ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... by Quarriar clearly condemns him. The partner will be there, and I have arranged for Quarriar's landlord to appear if you think it necessary. I may add that I have very good reason to believe that Quarriar does not mean to appear. I fancy he is trying to wriggle out of ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... a shudder.) Thank you. B-but even Red Indians allow people to wriggle when they're being tortured, I believe. (Slips fan from girdle and fans slowly: rim of fan level ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... teach him patience and neatness, and above all keep him quiet in the evenings. Since your father has been so worried over his business, he needs all the relaxation possible at home, he enjoys reading aloud in the evenings, and Johnny's fidgeting annoys him. A ten-year-old boy is all wriggle and racket without ...
— The Quilt that Jack Built; How He Won the Bicycle • Annie Fellows Johnston
... gave a wriggle of delight, and much sentiment beamed in her rugged, small face, as she answered him with enthusiasm, though not stopping to couch her reply in exactly ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... could mention who took part in this contention, And at first 'twas my intention, but at present I forbear; There's young Look-sharp, and Wriggle, who would make an angel giggle, And a young conceited Zeigel, who was seated near the door; If you could only see them, you'd laugh till you were sore, And then you'd laugh ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... a sea of fancy, Genius rises, And like the rare Leviathan surprises; But the small fry of scribblers!—tiny souls! They wriggle thro' the ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... was passing away and would recommend Rushton & Co. to the bereaved and distracted relatives. By these means often—after first carefully inquiring into the financial position of the stricken family—Misery would contrive to wriggle his unsavoury carcass into the house of sorrow, seeking, even in the chamber of death, to further the interests of Rushton & Co. and to earn his miserable two and ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... likewise the Preacher, wriggle not thyself, as seeming unable to contain thyself within ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... providential thing that this young man should press his right thumb against the wall in taking his hat from the peg! Such a very natural action, too, if you come to think of it." Holmes was outwardly calm, but his whole body gave a wriggle of suppressed excitement as he spoke. "By the way, Lestrade, who made ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... than a fat baby, Kintar[o] wielded a big axe, and could chop a snake to pieces before he had time to wriggle. ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... 'em go, I tell you!" to those who would have pursued the Pearl. "Where's your heads? I told you that this hall had got to be cleared, and cleared quick, of the women. As for you, Seagreave," catching Harry by the arm, "don't try to wriggle through that door. ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... causes us to wriggle, and strain, and stammer, and we do not recognize the root of the trouble and shun it, and learn to yield and quietly relax our nerves and muscles, of course the strain becomes worse. Then, rather than suffer from it ...
— The Freedom of Life • Annie Payson Call
... so tragical. A Hottentot was carried off by a lion during the night, wrapped up in his sheep-skin kaross, sleeping, as they usually do, with his face to the ground. As the lion trotted away with him, the fellow contrived to wriggle out of his kaross, and the lion went off with only ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... come to fill their jars in the pond, and your huge black shadow would wriggle on the water like sleep struggling to ...
— The Crescent Moon • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... chamber was by means of an aperture so low that we had to lie flat on the ground, and so narrow that even I found it hard work to wriggle through. ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... this, that isn't worth the paper it is written on. And when you'd got fooled so you thought C. & S.C. would pay par for your stock, what do you do but go around and tell a man you know is working for me all about it! And now when I've got you just where I want you, where you can only wriggle, you come around and try to scare me. Do you know what you are? You're ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... not read the dressmaking periodicals. She never heard of the Wednesday matinee. When she takes the air she rides in a carriage that has a sheltering hood, and she is veiled up to the eyes, and she must never lean out to wriggle her little finger-tips at men lolling in front of the cafes. She must not see the men. She may look at them, but she must not see them. No wonder the sisters in Michigan are organizing to batter down the ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... to him that she had at first been frightened of eels; but now she had learned how to tighten her grip so that they could not slip away. From another compartment she took a smaller one, which began to wriggle both with head and tail, as she held it about the middle in her closed fist. This made her laugh. She let it go, then seized another and another, scouring the basin and stirring up the whole heap of snaky-looking creatures with ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... little wriggle under her coat. "Isn't it nice Mamsie makes me get my lessons the first thing, before I play!" she said to herself for about ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... mutely complain of the world to her. It would give me satisfaction to denounce the whole town to her. "Ah, I have got you!" I seemed to say to the people of Antomir. "The ghost of my mother and the whole Other World see you in all your heartlessness. You can't wriggle out of it." This was my revenge. I ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... hour he had been making efforts to wriggle himself free from his bulky shoulder-pack without exposing himself to a coup-de-grace. At last he had the thing off. It was a tremendous relief when he thrust it out beside the rock, almost doubling the size of his shelter. Instantly there came the crash of a bullet in it, and then ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... they saw the panel slide back, and first of all Hamar's head, and then his body, wriggle through the ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... be some few folks on the side of decency, an' I'm one of 'em. Virtue's a slippery thing—that's how I look at it—an' if you don't git a good grip on it an' watch it with a mighty stern eye it's precious apt to wriggle through yo' fingers. I'm an honest woman, Mr. Fletcher, an' I wouldn't blush to own it in the presence ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... last fall when he had been so closely cornered by his creditors that it took many a writhe and a wriggle to get through. Nobody but himself, unless it was the dour Tom Barton, knew how overwhelmingly he ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... it," agreed Russ. "Of course he hasn't really done anything yet that they could arrest him for, unless coming into our apartment without being invited is illegal, and he could wriggle out of a charge of that sort. No, I'll keep my eyes open. In a little while, after I obtain my patent, and the attachment is on the market, he can't bother me. But I don't mind ...
— The Moving Picture Girls - First Appearances in Photo Dramas • Laura Lee Hope
... kept off it by the obesity of the chest. The organs of locomotion are something altogether different. The Cetonia-grub[4] has shown us how, with the aid of the hairs and the pad-like excrescences upon its spine, it manages to reverse the universally-accepted usage and to wriggle along on its back. The grub of the Capricorn is even more ingenious: it moves at the same time on its back and belly; instead of the useless legs of the thorax, it has a walking-apparatus almost resembling feet, which appear, contrary to every rule, ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... desperately endeavouring to hook themselves on to the wealthier and younger members of the male community. They poison the air round them with sickly perfumes; they assume titles, and speak of one another as "cette chere comtesse;" their walk is something between a prance and a wriggle; they prowl about the terrace whilst the music is playing, seeking whom they may devour, or rather whom they may inveigle into paying for their devouring: and, bon Dieu! how they do gorge themselves with food and drink when some silly lad or aged roue allows himself ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... trial found the cake standing erect and solid. Gripping her harpoon, she threw herself flat on her stomach and pushing the cake before her, began to wriggle her way ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... benches. It is not because he is without a wig, for we saw him, on the occasion to which we are so guardedly referring, both in a wig and out of it; he passed behind a screen without it, and immediately (as quickly as we write) popped out in it, giving it a finishing touch rather like the butler's wriggle to his coat as he goes to the door. There are the two kinds of learned brothers, those who use the screen, and those who (so far as the jury knows) sleep in their wigs. The latter are the swells, and include the judges; whom, however, we have seen in the public thoroughfares without ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... vocation was worse than useless. The ganger's shrewd code—"All as says they be land-lubbers when I says they baint, be liars, and all liars be seamen"—effectually shut that door in his face. There were other openings, it is true, whereby a knowing chap might wriggle free, but officers and medicoes were extremely "fly." He had not practised his many deceptions upon them through long years for nothing. They well knew that on principle he "endeavoured by every stratagem in his power to impose"—that he was, in short, a cunning cheat whose most serious ailments ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... learnt by grim experience. When first he moved it, it drove him headlong into inky darkness. His gills crumpled in the rough embrace of the mud, and his eyes and sucker were choked with slime. It was only a desperate, convulsive, aimless wriggle that freed him. The next time he cleared his immediate surroundings, and shot a full six inches upwards, only to sink slowly to the ooze again, motionless, and exhausted. He had ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... men being lathered and shaved, of women having their hair dressed or their hair searched, Sicilian fashion, of youths trying to curl upward scarcely born mustaches, of children being hastily attired in clothes which made them wriggle and squint, came to the eyes from houses in which privacy was not so much scorned as unthought of, utterly unknown. Turkeys strolled in and out among the toilet-makers. Pigs accompanied their mistresses ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... a plaguey time perfecting their plans, and Robin dared scarcely breathe. Once, when he attempted to wriggle his way through the bracken, at the first sound of movement both men had become utterly silent, showing that they had heard and waited to ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... used to give me much as five pounds." Then Eddy Carroll, after delivering himself of this statement, could not get his young, black eyes away from the fixed regard of the man's keen, blue ones, and he began to wriggle as to his body, with his eyes held firm by that unswerving gaze. "What you looking at me that way for?" he stammered. "I don't think you're ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... honest forester," said Gefroi, and groaned again. "The favour of a lord is a slippery thing—much like an eel—quick to wriggle away. An hour agone my lord Duke held me in much esteem, while now? And he struck me! On the face, here!" Slowly Gefroi got him upon his feet, and having donned cap and pourpoint, shook his head and ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... enough," returned Smith. "He's yonder behind the camp. He'd be an eel or a sarpint to wriggle out of ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... we going to get ourselves free?" Tom demanded: "I've been trying to wriggle my hands out, but I'll admit that I can't ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... were talking Dick was acting. No sooner did he see the watchman called off guard than he began to wriggle like an eel across the turf towards the beech, keeping the trunk of the tree between himself and the poachers. His keen knife made short work of Chippy's bonds, gag included, and the Raven was free. The latter slipped round the trunk, and the two scouts glided quickly ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... about? And she said, 'I'll tell you.' H. O., don't wriggle so; sit on my frock if the straws tickle ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... laugh! These things do happen, you know! Now then—why didn't you come to us? We have a wing quite empty. But just as you like, of course. Do you lease it from HIM?—this fellow, I mean," she added, nodding towards Lebedeff. "And why does he always wriggle so?" ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... wasn't," cried Esau; "and there I hung for ever so long, giving myself a bit of a wriggle now and then, but afraid to do much, it hurt so, dragging at my arms, while they were twisted up. I s'pose I must have been 'bout an hour like that, but it seemed a week, and I was beginning to get sick again, when all at once, after ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... a pond or lake, looking like an old water-soaked log with a branch—its head and neck—at one end. From the tip of the tongue the creature extrudes two small filaments of a pinkish colour which wriggle about, bearing a perfect resemblance to the small round worms of which fishes are so fond. Attracted by these, fishes swim up to grasp the squirming objects and are engulfed by the cruel mouth of the angler. Certain marine turtles have ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... the orator. He would picture Hell to you as it really is. He made you see pretty much what it will be like to wriggle and turn and squirm, and never escape from burning. But Ezekiel Pim, though he seldom said more than three words, uttered those words with such alarming sincerity and had such a sure conviction shining in his eyes that ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... had been lured to the house under false pretences, grew among Lady Dauntrey's visitors and was expressed stealthily, a word here, a word there, and sullen looks behind the backs of host and hostess. Even on the first day disappointment began to wriggle from guest to guest, like a little cold, sharp-nosed snake, leaving its clammy ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Well, then I HAVE got some news!" Miss Flora gave the satisfied little wriggle with which a born news-lover always prefaces her choicest bit of information. "Frank has sold his grocery ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... cat that saved the situation and its life at the same time. Mary-'Gusta was near the edge of the pine grove and Con was close at her heels. David gave one more convulsive, desperate wriggle, slid from the girl's arms and disappeared through the pines like a ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... could not be getten o' trust, although they had to be takken that way." Then he knock'd th' table three times wi' his knuckles, an' two o'th' fiddle-faced chaps 'at wor set one o' each side on him, began to wriggle abaat as if they'd getten th' murly grubs. "Stop! stop!" he sed, "one at once, if yo pleease! Brother Sawny had better give his sperit backward for a few minutes, wol we've done wi' Brother Titus's." Soa Sawny gave ovver shakkin hissen, exceptin his heead, an' jumpin onto ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley |
