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More "Twisted" Quotes from Famous Books



... farmers—farmer A. and farmer B. Farmer A was seized or possessed of a bull; farmer B. was seized or possessed of a ferry-boat. Now, the owner of the ferry-boat, having made his boat fast to a post on shore, with a piece of hay twisted rope-fashion, or, as we say, vulgo vocato, a hay-band,—after he had made his boat fast to the aforesaid post (as it was very natural for a hungry man to do) went up to town to dinner. Farmer A.'s bull (as it was natural for a hungry bull to do) came down town to look for a dinner; ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... be seen. Near by is an old mill alongside the Skell, and a picturesque bridge crosses the stream, while on a neighboring knoll are some ancient yews which are believed to have sheltered the earliest settlers, and are called the "Seven Sisters." But, unfortunately, only two now remain, gnarled and twisted, with decaying trunks and falling limbs—ruins in fact that are as venerable as Fountains Abbey itself. Botanists say they are twelve hundred years old, and that they were full-grown trees when the exiles from York ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... beetling brows trembled and the tears made him blink as he tied the coarse knots of the rope, fastening the youth to the bed upon which he had been born. He felt as if he were preparing his son for burial and had begun to dig his grave. The victim twisted in wild contortions under the father's strong arms; the parent had to make a powerful effort to subdue him under the rope that sank into his flesh.... To have lived so many years only to behold himself at last obliged to ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... you why I had come before your friend," he began; and he still twisted his cap round and round by the tassel. "I suppose a sort of false modesty prevented me, but I might just as well have spoken ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley

... lay in bed, the winds had carried to him the clangoring of the church bell as some enthusiast jerked the rope frantically to tell the twisted news of a great battle. This voice of the people rejoicing in the night had made him shiver in a prolonged ecstasy of excitement. Later, he had gone down to his mother's room and had spoken thus: "Ma, ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane

... all his strength, holding it by two corners. When it fell over the object, he brought this within reach by drawing in the shawl. In his gyrations, the chain by which he was fastened often became twisted around some object. He would now examine it intently, pulling it in opposite ways with his fingers until he had discovered how the turns ran. This done, he would carefully reverse his motions until the chain was ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris

... noticed it before, and have since; but I cannot better illustrate it than by reference to this theme. Of course I can do nothing but in some shape or other it gets into the newspapers. All manner of lies get there, and occasionally a truth so twisted and distorted that it has as much resemblance to the real fact as Quilp's leg to Taglioni's. But with this ball to come off, the newspapers were if possible unusually loquacious; and in their accounts of me, and my seeings, sayings, and doings ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... five, instead uv the best two in three, jest ez though a man cood afford to play five games between drinks! The ijee is preposterous and unheard of, and ther ain't no precedent for any sich course. We wuz settlin the dispoot in regler orthodox style—he hed his fingers twisted in my neck handkercher, and I held a stick uv stove wood suspended over his head. While in this position we wuz transfixed with horror at seein Deekin Pogram enter, ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby

... fixed upon us, is, when their great power is felt impelling us strongly to certain courses. A single deed does not create a habit. One thread of hemp forms not a rope. It contains but a very slight amount of strength. But when a large number of threads are laid and twisted together, they make the mighty cable, which, attached to the ship, enables lier to bid a proud defiance to the fierce gales and mountain billows of ocean. Thus the young are continually, yet unconsciously, spinning the threads of habit. Day by day the strands increase, and are twisted ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin

... the sleek hide of the deer with a momentum that sent the animal to its knees than he had grasped a horn in either hand, and with a single quick wrench twisted the animal's neck completely round, until he felt the vertebrae snap beneath ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Miguel, the quadroon proprietor, threw himself upon him and tried to pitch him into the street. But Sach, although a small man, was both agile and ferocious. He twisted out of the grasp of the huge quadroon and turned, raising the knife. As he did so, the Algerian deftly kicked it from his grasp and left Sach to face Miguel unarmed. Screaming with rage, he sprang at Miguel's throat, and the tow fell writhing ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer

... levelled I struck up the weapon and it exploded harmless in the air. Uttering a scream of bitter rage, she thrust with the sword, but I put up the stroke (thereby taking a gash in the arm) and gripping the rapier by the guards I twisted it from her hold. And now she turned on me in ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol

... explosion, and a jet of water spurted out with terrific force. Falling on a furnace it twisted up the mass of iron as if it had been paper. The hydraulic chamber of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various

... the wagons when the latter were entering upon the road proper out of the hill-track they had followed. The first snows had vanished for the most part, leaving bleak, gaunt hills and rugged crags that twisted with soft fog. The sun struck the fog away, however, and as Brian rode on he gazed up at the purple mountains on his right, and down at the purple bog to his left, and caught the gleam of the Bertraghboy water out beyond. He laughed as he drank in ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones

... root, like the fronds of Zostera, and somewhat resembled a scourge of cords fastened to a handle. Contemporary with this organism of the gray flagstone formation, and thickly occupying the planes on which it rests, there occur fragments of twisted stems, some of them from three to four inches in diameter (though represented by but mere films of carbonaceous matter), and irregularly streaked, or rather wrinkled, longitudinally, like the bark of some of our forest trees, though on a smaller scale. With these ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... little past nine in the evening that I next saw Hewitt. He came into my rooms in an incongruous get-up. He wore corduroy trousers, a very dirty striped jersey, a particularly greasy old jacket, and a twisted neckcloth; but over all was an excellent overcoat, and on his head a tall ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison

... that the Miss Betty understand you and you tell her all things, and she is like the ferry with the twisted hairs. Hairs like gold is very pretty for little boys like Jean, but on ladies it look like the sun have fade the color. Thank you for the poetry she make. But my great sister see it and she say to Maman: "These infants write great foolishness all the time. If it continues we must ...
— Deer Godchild • Marguerite Bernard and Edith Serrell

... thing for George Copplestone to spring surprises on his guests. He had a twisted sense of the dramatic, and twisted things were expected from him. On some occasions he perpetrated the wildest and most extravagant eccentricities, without the slightest regard for the moral or artistic sensibilities of those on whom he imposed them—on others he ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming

... proud Herod's porch Ablaze with brass, and silk, and scented torch, High on Beth-Haccarem; more to behold, If men had known, than all the glory told Of splendid Caesar in his marbled home On the white Isle; or audience-hall at Rome With trembling princes thronged. A clay lamp swings By twisted camel-cords, from blackened rings, Shewing with flickering gleams, a Child new-born Wrapped in a cloth, laid where the beasts at morn Will champ their bean-straw: in the lamp-ray dim A fresh-made Mother by Him, fostering Him ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various

... The combination of the twisted wires, a a a' a', with the handle, B, and receptacle, A, substantially as and for the ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... began measuring the sheets. They were of strong and tough material, and by dividing each into four lengths, he calculated that a rope formed of them would be of sufficient strength for their purpose, and they were quickly cut through with their knives, and each length was then twisted tightly up. ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston

... objects, not sparing the leaves and flowers of living plants; at evening slime, spreading, streaming, changing; by morning fruit, a thousand stalked sporangia with their strangely convoluted sculpture. The evening winds again bear off the sooty spores, and naught remains but twisted yellow stems crowned with a pencil of ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride

... time o' day; I felt it myself comin' yer, and, though the damp of this timber kinder sets it back, it's likely to come out ag'in. Ye can't check it no more than the sap in that choked limb thar"—he pointed ostentatiously where a fallen pine had been caught in the bent and twisted arm of another, but which still put out a few green tassels beyond the point of impact. "Do you live far from here, ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte

... on the floor, and seating herself between them, she proceeded to develop their contents with ill-concealed triumph. One basket was devoted to cakes of every species, from the great Mont-Blanc loaf-cake, with its snowy glaciers of frosting, to the twisted cruller and puffy doughnut. In the other basket lay pots of golden butter curiously stamped, reposing on a bed of fresh, green leaves,—while currants, red and white, and delicious cherries and raspberries, gave a final finish to the picture. From a basket which Miss Prissy brought ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... striped cloth; in his girdle of red cotton was thrust a long Flemish knife; an India handkerchief, knotted sailor fashion, surrounded his brick-colored throat; finally, he mechanically gave the most whimsical forms to the large and flexible straw hat which he twisted about with both hands. ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue

... a slope scattered with gray lava chunks and set with spiked soapweed, which let them to the river level. Ahead of them, twisted cottonwoods and red willows marked the brink of ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... the pensive neighbor on the brogan case, "how such things do git twisted. It was only yesterday that I met a man at Tyson's Mill, who'd just come over from the Valley, and he said he'd seen this Mr Noles over thar. He's a hoss doctor, and he's going up through all the ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton

... of a red Cow Tail, but is a mixture of that, & horsehair (very course) & a little human hair of yellow hue, that I suppose was taken out of the back part of an old wig. But D—— made it (our head) all carded together and twisted up. When it first came home, aunt put it on, & my new cap on it, she then took up her apron & mesur'd me, & from the roots of my hair on my forehead to the top of my notions, I mesur'd above an inch longer than I did downwards from the roots of my hair to the end of my chin. Nothing ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow

... sorry you were misled by that preposterous tale," said he softly. "Pardo Lurena is a villain, but we will unmask him. Of course, there was a little truth in his story, but so twisted and distorted that it could not be recognized. Your father will understand, however, and even you will come to see that I am not greatly to blame. A little thoughtlessness, Juan, and a desire to help a friend—no more; but ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens

... skill, drawing perhaps for those who only understand the use of cartridge-paper when it has gunpowder inside it. Sportsmen see the very best of scenery, and come across old hollow trunks and curious trees, effects, and 'bits' of every kind, from a twisted hawthorn to an antlered stag; if they could get an artistic friend to see these, there would be some good ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... of the scarlet letter, I had hitherto neglected to examine a small roll of dingy paper, around which it had been twisted. This I now opened, and had the satisfaction to find recorded by the old Surveyor's pen, a reasonably complete explanation of the whole affair. There were several foolscap sheets, containing many particulars ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Salins is to the little town of Nans, and the source of the River Lison, a two hours' drive amid scenery of alternating loveliness and grandeur—vines everywhere as we climb upwards, our road curling round the mountain-sides, as a ribbon twisted round a sugar-loaf, and then having wound in and out jagged peaks covered with light foliage and abrupt slopes clad with vines, we come to the sombre pine-forests, passing from one forest to another, the air blowing upon us with sudden keenness. No sooner do we emerge from ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... South African name of a medium-sized red antelope (q.v.), marked with white lines and spots, belonging to a local race of a widely spread species, Tragelaphus scriptus. The males alone have rather small, spirally twisted horns. There are several allied species, sometimes known as harnessed antelopes, which are of a larger size. Some of these such as the situtunga (T. spekei) have the hoofs elongated for walking on swampy ground, and hence have been separated ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... its deep stillness, as it often is before bad weather comes on, when the storm is drawing a deep, long breath and only the clouds are moving. The clouds mounted silently and solemnly in the west above the black, rocky peaks, now a heavy brown one, that trailed and twisted, and stretched out, till it looked like a bridge reaching from one sky margin to the other, and then rolled together again and fled away to the east just as it had approached from the west—now a thin white one, that flew past like smoke, and then a still more delicate ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... Lord had gifted her was again at an end, and she repeated the words of our Saviour, "He that eateth bread with Me hath lift up his heel against Me:" and she held fast by my chair. Old Ilse, too, could not walk straight for very grief, nor could she speak for tears, but she twisted and wound herself about before the court, like a woman in travail. But when Dom. Consul threatened that the constable should presently help her to her words, she testified that my child had very often got up in the night, and called aloud upon ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... in Mr. Rogers' pale and placid countenance, you would hardly have thought he lived; but turning to Luttrell, whose mouth twisted and whose eye rolled at the fun of the mistake, he simply whispered, 'Non tali auxilio, &c.' Barton survived it, and is still alive ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various

... with every spiteful drive of his axe through the pine board which he had picked up, "It's no use; I cant do that sum, and I ain't going to try. I don't know anything, and never will. I've done it over fifty times, and twisted it every way I can think of. There's no sense to it, any way,—sixteen sheep stood him in two dollars apiece. What does that mean, I'd like to know? He had forty sheep and twenty-five cows. I know it all by heart; but I can't do it, and that's the whole of it. I wish his ...
— Tip Lewis and His Lamp • Pansy (aka Isabella Alden)

... carry two thousand pounds of mail matter or explosives or ten men. The seat John occupied was in the very bow. When occupying this seat the pressure of the wind from the speed of flying is quite a strain on the neck, chest and back. Your head will be twisted as though wrenched by strong invisible hands, your back grows tender from pressure on the back rail and must be rested by leaning forward with your head adjusted at a certain ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

... I felt a big hole in the calf of his right leg. Blood was pouring from the wound. I made a tourniquet of a strip of my pareu and, with a small harpoon, twisted it until the flow of blood was stopped. Then, guided by him, I paddled as fast as I could to the beach, on which there was little trouble in landing as ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... thin and peculiar face, with two long, pendant, yellowish moustachios which reached far beneath his chin. His beard was closely clipped, and they noted that he held a pair of small scissors, and as he drew back one of his twisted moustachios, he was occupied the while carefully snipping off the greyish stubble that just ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn

... believed to be preliminary to a refusal. For a moment or two they consulted together, then Tamas put his hand into a pouch and drew from it something wrapped in dry leaves, which he undid, revealing a quaint and beautiful necklace, fashioned of twisted gold links, wherein were set white stones, that they had no difficulty in recognising as uncut diamonds of considerable value. From this necklace also hung a crucifix moulded ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard

... shoulder there was a large wing like that of a stork. In the inside was seen the statue of a man, completely armed in the manner of the country, having a quiver of arrows at his back, a bow in his left hand, and an arrow in his right. The tail of this strange idol was very long, and twisted three or four times round the body of the man. It had been called Nasil Lichma, by its worshippers, and the prior said that it was made of gold; but the author of this voyage suspected it was only gilded. The ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... ragged-backed in the moon-haze. For the life of me I couldn't tell you what it was she said. There was the drip of water from the paddle as I lifted it, stroke after stroke; the tiny hiss of smother at the prow, and twisted through it all, like a gathering string, Natica Melsford's voice, letting me down easy—as ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... elbow and shoulder, twitching the strong fabric into a knot, and burrowing into the soft meat of his arm. Already the fan was pulled up, while the belt slipped and smoked on the drum pulley above. The blade of my knife was just touching the twisted nucleus of linen, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... called out, pulling at the sleeve of his younger brother; "we've got no more time to waste here, jawing. Right now I'm some twisted in my bearings, and we might have a tough time gettin' to ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman

... Brighteyes suspended at one end of a string by his tail; one while swinging backward and forward, at another pulled up and down, then suffered to feel his feet on the ground, and again suddenly snatched up as the cat advanced, then twisted round and round as fast as possible at the full length of the string: in short, it is impossible to describe all his sufferings of body, or my anguish of mind. At length a most dreadful conclusion was put to them, by the entrance of a gentleman booted ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner

... plant from which our briar pipes are made. The stem is slender, but the root expands to a considerable extent, and I have seen parts of these, which our men have dug up when clearing the ground, about 4 to 6 inches thick. The fibres are twisted in all directions, giving the wood the well-known bird's eye appearance. What is exposed to the weather seems quickly ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson

... uneasiness they had given their mothers. She repeated several times—"Oh, how difficult it is to do good!" While she and Paul were taking refreshment, it being already night, Domingo kindled a fire: and having found among the rocks a particular kind of twisted wood, called bois de ronde, which burns when quite green, and throws out a great blaze, he made a torch of it, which he lighted. But when they prepared to continue their journey, a new difficulty occurred; Paul and Virginia could no longer ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre

... on, the subject of employing Mr. Rhythm to teach a singing-school was discussed. Mr. Quaver, a tall, slim man, with a long, red nose, had led the choir for many years. He had a loud voice, and twisted his words so badly, that his singing was like the blare of a trumpet. On Sundays, after Rev. Mr. Surplice read the hymn, the people were accustomed to hear a loud Hawk! from Mr. Quaver, as he tossed his tobacco-quid into a spittoon, ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin

... landscape, although it was very well suited and expressive, from its crooked and antique simplicity. The overhanging, also, of the hawthorn-tree (not ruddy yet, but russety with its coloring crop of coral), and the shaggy freaks of ivy above the twisted trunk, and the curve of the meadows and bold elbow of the brook, were such as an artist would have pitched his tent for, and tantalized poor London people with a ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore

... tiny vine-clad cabin and there were times when he seemed frail and to need care, and the doctor said he was rheumatic. This, however, he denied, declining companionship while he insisted that the sharp pains which occasionally twisted his brow were only growing pains which he was glad to endure as not having got his growth in his first childhood, he was "'bleeged to wrastle wid it in de second," and, "of course," he added, "it comes harder when a ...
— Daddy Do-Funny's Wisdom Jingles • Ruth McEnery Stuart

... the boy who, I am afraid, was rather rude. He caught the Elephant up by his trunk, and twisted the poor animal around. ...
— The Story of Calico Clown • Laura Lee Hope

... whose, education had been accomplished simply by a New Testament and three-inch rope, sat, or rather twisted through the rhapsody, as a dunce twists through his Greek roots, and at the first pause, drawing himself erect with the self-complacent air of a man who applies the clincher, ejaculated, with the Western twang: 'What do you think of Hi-awathy?' The ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... that served as lodging-house, saloon, and dining-room, a shack for a stable, and a shack for a shed, together with a rough corral, comprised the entire group of buildings at the place. Six or eight fine cottonwoods and a number of twisted apple trees made the little place decidedly inviting. Behind these, rising almost sheer from the level yard, the mountains heaved upward grayly, their vast bulk broken, some hundred yards away, by a yawning rock ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... first measure was to ride to Willow Lawn. Knocking at the door of his sister's morning-room, he found Maurice with a pouting lip, back rounded, and legs twisted, standing upon his elbows, which were planted upon the table on either side of a calico spelling-book. Mr. Kendal stood up straight before the fire, looking distressed and perplexed, and Albinia sat by, a little worn, a little irritable, ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... I was sucked down, and as I came up I was pushed out again and twisted around by a large wave, coming up in the midst of a great deal of small wreckage. As I pushed my hand from my head it touched the cork ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various

... push and surge. Jane felt herself lifted and swung to her feet on the seat where she had been sitting, and the Irishman's big body was spread like a shield before her. His hands were clamped upon the thin shoulders of the girl in the middy blouse, but he twisted his head to speak to Jane. "It will be all right ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... knocked off his feet by a gray ball of fury that leaped at him wielding a stiletto-thin knife. He caught at the Rumi's arm with both hands but the creature was not only fast but strong. It twisted out of his grasp and slashed at him and only a quick sideward roll saved him. Desperately he brought his fist ...
— Narakan Rifles, About Face! • Jan Smith

... twisted the course of true love This ditty explains, No tangle's so tangled it cannot improve If the ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling

... conducted their friend into the place like anxious relatives who conduct a physician into a sick-chamber. The poor patient lay on the floor in a very bad way. Two wheels were off, the axle was bent, the wire spokes were twisted, the saddle was off, and the brake was all ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed

... work for you," he remarked grimly. "Aren't you ashamed of yourself?" He put his hand upon Ronnie, and twisted him round to face the light, looking at him piercingly. "Aren't you ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... accommodate a carbon plate, say 5 in. long by 2 in. wide, 1/4 thick. From the centre of this bed a gimlet hole pierces the board. The denuded end of an insulated wire is drawn through this gimlet hole from without inward (toward the bed) and twisted in the form of a spiral to prevent its slipping back, as well as to insure its more certain connection with the carbon. The carbon is now placed in the bed, and kept there by a piece of muslin drawn ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig

... had stood they saw a shattered trunk not more than twenty feet high. Upon the ground in every direction lay torn and twisted limbs and smaller branches, just as they had been violently hurled when that terrible electric bolt struck ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster

... mostly deserted. The board houses seemed to have been spared, while the sun-burned huts thatched with palm were still smoking, also the roundhouse in which there were two railroad locomotives, warped and twisted from the heat. The Spanish evidently fired everything they ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward

... press of business, the task was entrusted on this occasion to the head prompter,—a clever man in his way, but wholly unfitted to bring out, or even to understand, Mr. Browning's meaning. Consequently, the delicate, subtle lines were twisted, perverted, and sometimes even made ridiculous in his hands. My "cruel father" [Mr. Elton] was a warm admirer of the poet. He sat writhing and indignant, and tried by gentle asides to make me see the real meaning of the verse. But somehow ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... dreamed that in that fragrant and soothing herb there was a richer source of revenue than the spices of the East. They passed acres of growing cotton and saw in the houses piles of yarn waiting to be woven into rude cloth or twisted into nets for hammocks. But they found neither cities nor kings, neither gold nor spices, and after a tedious quest returned, somewhat disappointed, to ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske

... Ah, but theirs was different! This absolute oath of fidelity one to the other, each with his own will and his own desire,—this irredeemable contract of union between man and woman,—it was not always a binding sacrament. Often twisted and broken, men and women promising in the belief of the best within them what was beyond their power to perform. There were those in that very chapel who had said these words and broken them, furtively or legally... With them, of course, it ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... dramatically, at a gathering of New Yorkers, brought together for hilarious purposes, including a little supper, in the Washington Square apartment of Bobby Vallis—her full name was Roberta. There were soft lights and low divans and the strumming of a painted ukulele that sang its little twisted soul out under the caress of Penelope's white fingers. I can still see the big black opal in its quaint setting that had replaced her wedding ring and the yellow serpent of pliant gold coiled on her thumb with two bright rubies for its eyes. Penelope Wells! ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett

... bottom unconscious. She was picked up and put to bed. When she came to herself she exclaimed, "Do not send the carriage away; I must get my work done and go on." But when she attempted to rise, she fainted again. The visible injuries resolved themselves into a bad sprain and twisted ankle. After the fourth day she had herself bound up and conveyed to the train. She travelled straight through to Turin. There she had to be carried to an inn, as she was too ill to go on. The next day she insisted on being packed ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins

... man of science, an inventor, an electrician of rare ability, and a person of serious purpose and strict probity, but it was possible for a man of great attainments and of the highest moral character to become a little twisted in his intellect. ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton

... Phillips had been denominated "shiftless and slack-twisted" by all who ever had any dealings with him in his unlucky, aimless life—one of those improvident, easygoing souls who sit contentedly down to breakfast with a very faint idea where their dinner ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... they dressed the corpse with a belt and shell armlets, cut off the nails of the fingers and toes, and kept them as relics. They spread the grave with a mat, and buried all the body but the head. After ten days the friends twisted off the head, extracted the teeth to be kept as relics, and preserved the skull also. In cases of sickness and other calamities they presented offerings of food to the skulls of the dead. The teeth of the old women were taken to the yam plantations and were supposed to fertilise them; and their ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... into Wales, it was enacted that no man should guide a plough that could not make one; and that the driver should make the ropes of twisted willows, with which it was drawn. It was usual for six or eight persons to form themselves into a society for fitting out one of these ploughs, providing it with oxen, and every thing necessary for ploughing; and many curious laws were made for the regulation ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 542, Saturday, April 14, 1832 • Various

... no! Nothing of the kind! I fell and twisted my ankle—very painful, but not serious. Since you are here, sit ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... examined it, loosened it for a moment, twisted it again, and bade Harvey Chase take him on his ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers

... of the Ducal Palace is the Cathedral, built in the 11th cent., but repeatedly restored. The exterior and interior are of black and white marble in alternate bands. The faade consists of three large portals resting on spiral, plain, and twisted columns. The arch of the centre porch has an immense span, bordered by bold fascicled work, while over the doorway is the Martyrdom of St. Laurence in relief. In the interior there is a strange mixture of styles. The nave is ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black

... pains, and a serpent in his cruelty. The notice come out as promised, and, my God! the author was laughed and mocked at from beginning to end. Even confidentses he had given to the creature was twisted to his ridicule, and his very appearance joked over. And the mess got wind of it, and made a rare ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes

... exerted their influence through the years. The new system includes, also, the interpretation of dreams, their effect upon the conscious life and their influence upon the mentality. Very wonderful results are reported from the pursuit of this method. Many a badly warped and twisted life has been straightened out and renewed when the searchlight has revealed the hidden influences that have been at work and which have made trouble. The repression of conscious or unconscious feelings can no doubt ...
— The Untroubled Mind • Herbert J. Hall

... this at length, that if any one hereafter finds this "Politeuphuia" in the British Museum (which is welcome to have my copy if it lacks one), and years hence accuses my innocence of having stolen from it, he may know that I have thus taken the bull by the horns and twisted ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... appeared he had not mistaken the nature of her supplication, which, indeed, was easy to be understood from her situation and gestures. The younger apparition disappeared, and immediately after lowered a ladder of twisted osiers, about eight feet in length, and made signs to David to hold it fast while the lady ascended. Despair gives courage, and finding herself in this fearful predicament, Lady Staunton did not hesitate to risk the ascent by the precarious means which this accommodation afforded; ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... restless, You ever so driven by princes and priests? So I stand here Enwrapped of this face of you, frail little frame of you, And think of your work—how nothing could balk you Or quench you or damp you. How you twisted and turned, Emerged from the fingers of malice, emerged with a laugh, Kept Europe in laughter, in turmoil, in fear ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters

... with the greatest eagerness, and whipping out at intervals some luckless fish of about three or four ounces in weight with a tremendous haul, fit for the capture of a forty-pounder. They get a coarse sort of hook in the bazaar, rig up a roughly-twisted line, tie on a small piece of hollow reed for a float, and with a lively earth-worm for a bait, they can generally manage in a very short time to secure enough ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... took out these bodies are confident that 150 bodies are lying buried in the sand and under the debris on those low-lying bottom lands. Some of the bodies were horribly mangled, and the features were twisted and contorted as if they had died in the most excrutiating agony. Others are found lying stretched out with ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... person crossed the brightness of the window and turned toward the bed. And when at last he did look up into the narrow, sunken face, it was with eyes which carried in them no light of friendship, nor even the faintest air of recognition. Thayer put forth a gnarled, frost-twisted hand. ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... her in two strides. Seizing her arm he twisted it with a savage wrench and flung her tottering behind him. The pain forced a cry from the girl, and Ahmara laughed. That was more than the men could stand, for to them Sanda was always the White Angel, Ahmara the Black; and over there by the fire they had discussed ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson

... of the footman, and the mystery of the death-chamber began to grow lighter, for it was evident that for some reason he had entered the room in the night. For no good mission, certainly, a short whalebone-handled life-preserver hanging by a twisted thong from ...
— The Dark House - A Knot Unravelled • George Manville Fenn

... bed-room, afterward occupied for several years by his eldest son, the detestable John, my cruelest oppressor, the most crafty and cowardly of the Hamstringers. I was filled with a sense of terror and disgust on recognising the furniture, even the very bed with twisted posts on which my grandfather had given up his blackened soul to God, amid all the torments of a lingering death agony. The arm-chair which I was sitting in was the one in which John the Crooked (as he was pleased to call himself in his facetious days) used to ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... sat dumb. He twisted his thick neck, and looked round at the door to see if it was shut. He would not have liked to have any of those fellows outside hear him, but there is no saying what sum of money he would not have given if his wife ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... did not attempt to rise, but she twisted very gracefully on her seat, smiling on the poet, who was not a little fluttered by the serpentine quiverings; her manner was distinguished, he thought. For Mme. de Bargeton, she was impressed with Lucien's extreme beauty, with his diffidence, with everything about him; for her ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac

... For the second row, knot alternate pieces of cord. Continue until there are twelve rows of knots. Be careful to make the meshes the same size. Leave about three inches unknotted and attach these ends to the second ring. Make a twisted cord (of four thicknesses of macrame) of some contrasting color and run through the meshes of each side, taking it twice through each mesh and attaching it to rings at the ends of the hammock. The meshes should be about an inch square. Make the cords a little shorter than the sides of the ...
— Construction Work for Rural and Elementary Schools • Virginia McGaw

... difference, that whereas in the former the wretched People lay flat on their Bellies, here they sat only on their Buttocks, some whereof were surrounded with fiery Dragons, gnawing and biteing them after a lamentable manner. Others had fiery Serpents twisted about their Heads and Necks, fixing their Stings in their Hearts. Others in fine had monstrous big Vultures perching upon their shoulders, and sticking their horrid Bills in their Breasts as if they ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... low building of one large room, rudely constructed of logs; the windows partly glazed, and partly patched with leaves of old copybooks. It was most ingeniously secured at vacant hours, by a withe twisted in the handle of the door, and stakes set against the window shutters; so that though a thief might get in with perfect ease, he would find some embarrassment in getting out,—an idea most probably borrowed by the architect, ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving

... place in the library. Through the open window Honora perceived the form of Joshua asleep in the hammock, his Sunday coat all twisted under him. It worried her to picture his attire when he should wake up. Once Mrs. Robert looked in, smiled, said nothing, and went out again. At length, in a wicker chair under a distant tree on the lawn, Honora beheld the dejected outline of the Vicomte. He was trying to read, but every ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... hawking. The other members sent therefore a message to inform him of what was going on, and to desire his presence and advice. On his return to the city, he met the messengers of Don Diego, and having learnt the state of affairs, he twisted off the head of an excellent falcon which he carried on his fist, saying that fighting must now be followed, not the sports of the field. After a secret consultation with the rest of the Cabildo on the proper measures to be pursued on the present emergency, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr

... his memory fancy supplied, stamping it with the validity of conviction. In the maddening attempt to recall such scraps of the woman's history as he had heard, the muscles of his arms and hands were strained to a painful tension, as by an effort to lift a great weight. His body writhed and twisted with the exertion. The tendons of his neck stood out as tense as whip-cords, and his breath came in short, sharp gasps. The catastrophe could not be much longer delayed, or the agony of anticipation would leave nothing ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce

... gun, with two pointers playing round him, was passing up the hill and within a few yards of Marianne, when her accident happened. He put down his gun and ran to her assistance. She had raised herself from the ground, but her foot had been twisted in her fall, and she was scarcely able to stand. The gentleman offered his services; and perceiving that her modesty declined what her situation rendered necessary, took her up in his arms without farther delay, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... gap at 6 a.m. with anxious hearts as well as weary bodies. If the farther slope had proved impassable our situation would have been almost desperate; but the worst was turning to the best for us. The twisted, wave-like rock formations of Husvik Harbour appeared right ahead in the opening of dawn. Without a word we shook hands with one another. To our minds the journey was over, though as a matter of fact twelve ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton

... sloping garden was full of spring flowers. Vines, not yet in leaf, were trained all over the back of the house, clematis and jasmine, climbing up them and over them, were pouring themselves down again in great twisted strands; windows peeped out of ivy, and the old red-tiled roof, warm and mossy, looked homely and comfortable. A certain air of old-fashioned, easy comfort pervaded the whole place; large bay windows, with little roofs of their own, came boldly forth, and commanded a good ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow

... consolation at Wildrake, whose countenance expressed much alarm, which he endeavoured to bear out with his usual look of confidence. But the weight within was too great; he shuffled with his feet, rolled his eyes, and twisted his hands, like an unassured witness before an acute and not ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... stood in the narrow lane, headed toward the broad highway from which Jessie and Amy had come. It was a fine car, and the engine was running. A very unpleasant looking, narrow-shouldered woman sat behind the steering wheel, but was twisted around in her seat so that she could look ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose

... saw us 'is face twisted a bit! But talk about cold! We slapped the poultice on to 'im, and, if you'll believe me, inside o' ninety seconds the thing 'ad froze 'ard on 'im, and formed a splint, and—saved 'is life, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 28, 1917 • Various

... with his relatives at Kingsmill. His father and mother both lived; the latter very infirm, unable to leave the house; the former a man of seventy, twisted with rheumatism, his face rugged as a countenance picked out by fancy on the trunk of a big old oak, his hands scarred and deformed with labour. Their old age was restful. The son who had made himself a 'gentleman', ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... there is at present the skull of a Narwal at the Stadthouse at Amsterdam, with two teeth. The tooth, or, as some are pleased to call it, the horn of the Narwal, is as straight as an arrow, about the thickness of the small of a man's leg, wreathed as we sometimes see twisted bars of iron; it tapers to a sharp point; and is whiter, heavier, and harder than ivory. It is generally seen to spring from the left side of the head directly forward in a straight line with the body; and ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous

... man. The lower part of his cheek—that side on which I sat—was sunk in, as if he had no teeth there. The effect was to give his whole face a twisted appearance. The greater part of his head, of course, was concealed by the flowing white kaffiyi, but his skin was considerably darker than that of the Palestine Arab. He had no eyebrows at all, having shaved them off—for a vow I supposed. Instead of making him look comical, as you might ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy

... man can never attain ultimate knowledge of anything, and that the mystery of beauty was no less than that of life—nay, more that the fibres of beauty and life were intertwisted, and that he himself was but a bit of the same nonunderstandable fabric, twisted of sunshine and star-dust ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... sat on the piazza by the hour, contemplating the mountain-top that had such a fascination for him. He had a prodigious amount of information on all manner of subjects, and a quick and accurate judgment; but he was generally very reticent, as he tipped back in his chair and twisted his fingers in and out of that fine gold chain. My mother-in-law, from her shady nook of the piazza, would glance at him occasionally from her work or her book, as much as to say, "It is strange people can't make some effort to be agreeable, ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous

... whereupon he was taken with ...[A], whereof he was ill for twelve days; they also found forty-four witches' spells in her child's pillow, some of which were made like hedgehogs, others round like apples, and others again flat like the palm of the hand; and they were of hempen thread twisted ...
— Witchcraft and Devil Lore in the Channel Islands • John Linwood Pitts

... bandages; then the Pharaohs swallowed up nations, that they might build themselves a tomb; and he beheld Moses and the Hebrews and the desert, and a solemn antique world. Fresh and joyous, a marble statue spoke to him from a twisted column of the pleasure-loving myths of Greece and Ionia. Ah! who would not have smiled with him to see, against the earthen red background, the brown-faced maiden dancing with gleeful reverence before the god Priapus, wrought ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac

... environment: the relation of form and material. The perceptions of the artist, what he sees and how he sees it, can be transmitted to others only through processes as various as themselves: hair seen as colour is best imitated with paint, hair seen as form with twisted metal wire. It is as impossible to embody certain perceptions in some stages of handicraft as it would be to construct a complex machine in a rudimentary condition of mechanics. Certain modes of vision require certain methods of painting, and these require ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... and squalid in their beards, and they had rough ears, and crooked nebs, and fierce eyes, and foul mouths; and their teeth were like horses' tusks; and their throats were filled with flame, and they were grating in their voice; they had crooked shanks, and knees big and great behind, and twisted toes, and cried hoarsely with their voices; and they came with such immoderate noise and immense horror, that him thought all between heaven and earth resounded with their voices. And they tugged and led him out of the cot, and led him to the swart fen, and threw and sunk him in the muddy waters. ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... put the twisted end of a towel into her hand again— she had loosed it; and she pulled, pulled, enough to break cables. And then she shrieked. It was for pity. It was for some one to help her, at any rate to take notice of her. She was dying. Her soul was ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... chant, ballad, or baracolle; She thinketh of her song, upon the whole, Far more than of her flax; and yet the reel Is full, and artfully her fingers feel, With quick adjustment, provident control, The lines, too subtly twisted to unroll, Out to a perfect thread. I hence appeal To the dear Christian Church, that we may do Our Father's business in these temples mirk Thus, swift and steadfast; thus, intent and strong; While, thus, apart from toil, our souls pursue Some ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... us nearly in the middle, and we tilted sideways, and the fellows in the right-hand galley unhitched their hooks and ropes, and threw things on to our upper deck—arrows, and hot pitch or something that stung, and we went up and up and up on the left side, and the right side dipped, and I twisted my head round and saw the water stand still as it topped the right bulwarks, and then it curled over and crashed down on the whole lot of us on the right side, and I felt it hit my ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... laughing, so I couldn't glimpse 'em. Say, I was struck in half a dozen places. I've got a lump on my head nearly as big as a hen's egg; and my elbow hurts like everything. I was so flustered that I must have got twisted in a vine, or else struck a root, for I fell, and barked my shin something fierce. I wanted to chase after the cowards, but knew it was silly to think of such a thing. Then I tried to keep on, but it wasn't any use, and I gave it up as a bad job. ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson

... go in, or else abandon his cherished Glorioso. But the man who bent over the counter and twisted himself like a crane to open the door and snarl these words at our young hero did not have a face that advised anything like turning back. He was angry. At first Walter had not had the courage to go in; now he did not dare to turn back. ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli

... youths, whose forfeit lives should be The bloody fine for slain Patroclus paid. Helpless from fear, as fawns, he brought them forth; Their hands secur'd behind them with the belts Which o'er their shirts of twisted mail they wore, And bade his comrades lead them to the ships. Then on again he dash'd, athirst for blood; And first encounter'd, flying from the stream, Lycaon, Priam's son; him once before He by a nightly onslaught had surpris'd, And from ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... which is generally used for clothing; and the thick and stronger sort serves to sleep on, and to make sails for their canoes, &c. Among other useful utensils, they have various sorts of baskets; some are made of the same materials as their mats; and others of the twisted fibres of cocoa-nuts. These are not only durable but beautiful; being generally composed of different colours, and studded with beads made of shells or bones. They have many little nick-nacks amongst them; which shews that they neither want taste to design, nor skill ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr

... but Paul, instantly realizing what had happened, quickly stuck the two halves together, gave the pup first aid and bandaged him up. With careful nursing the dog soon recovered and then it was seen that Paul in his haste had twisted the two halves so that the hind legs pointed straight up. This proved to be an advantage for the dog learned to run on one pair of legs for a while and then flop over without loss of speed and run on the other pair. Because of this he never tired and anything he started ...
— The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan • W.B. Laughead

... are!" he said, in a tone of vast contempt. "But you're about what I'd expect folks like that friend of th' Professor's, th' Cacique, t' worship. It takes a low sort of a heathen, even in his blindness, t' bow down to a stone like you—with your twisted head, an' your stubby legs, an' your little fryin'-pan over your stomach. Why, where I come from they wouldn't have you even for a stone settee in a park. No, you're not fit even t' sit on—unless, maybe, it's on th' flat top of your crooked ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier

... behind. The remainder of the dress consisted of a cotton shirt, figured and sprigged on a dark ground, that fell unconfined over the person; a close deer-skin hunting-coat, fringed also at its edges; and a coarse common felt hat, in the string of which (for there was no band) were twisted a number of variegated feathers, furnished by the most beautiful and rare of the American autumnal birds. Outside this hunting-coat, and across the right shoulder, was flung an ornamented belt, to which were appended, on the left side, and ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... link by link, the chain of alliances which Louis XIV. had but lately twisted round Holland. France, in her turn, was finding herself alone, with all Europe against her; scared, and, consequently, active and resolute; the congress of Cologne had broken up; not one of the belligerents ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... him, blistering mounds of rock, wind-drifted stretches of burning sand, dry gulches and gorges which one's wildest imagining could not fill with rushing waters. Here and there were growing things, but they were grey with desert dust and looked dead, greasewood dwarfed and wind-twisted, iron-fanged cacti snarling at the clear hot sky and casting no more ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory

... beside the bubbling Clear Creek,—clear no longer in the memory of the oldest inhabitant; but soiled by the silica from ore deposits that, churned and rechurned, gave to the stream a whitish, almost milk-like character, as it twisted in and out of the tortuous canon on its turbulent journey to the sea. But Fairchild failed to notice either that or the fact that ancient, age-whitened water wheels had begun to appear here and there, where gulch miners, seekers after gold in the silt ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... latter. I answered, "I will be amply revenged on the sharpers, who pretended that my calf was a she-goat, and force from them, at least, a thousand times the price they gave me." After this, I skinned the tail, cut the leather into thongs, and twisted them into a whip with hard thick knots. I then disguised myself in female attire, taking pains to make myself look as handsome as possible with the assistance of my mother, who put soorma into my eyelids, and arranged my eyebrows, stained my hands with hinna, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... then the cry of MARAT! MARAT! and the "Friend of the People" entered. Now I shall spare a few minutes to tell you, that no one has made frightful enough his large bony face, his thin lips and his livid complexion. He wore an old carmagnole, a dirty handkerchief twisted about his neck, leather breeches, shoes without stockings, and a piece of red cotton round his head, from which there hung a few locks of greasy hair. A nervous twitching keeps him constantly moving, and he has the leprosy:—this is well known. He walked straight ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr

... all the air with its stirring scarlet strain. The quaint melody of "Hob y deri dando" moves the feet of youth to restlessness: not that it is a jig, in spite of the jiggy look of the words to English eyes, but because it has been twisted into the service of Terpsichore by a famous band-master in his "Welsh Lancers." "Hob y deri dando" is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... proscenium what looked exactly like a turkey's insides (I hope you aren't shocked, Mamma!). I once saw the marmiton taken out at Arrachon, when I was a little girl and got into the kitchen,—just those awful colours, and strange long, twisted, curled-up tuby-looking things. They are massed on the boxes, too, and were, ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn

... was come in which he was to try this hanging experiment. His friends did not fail him at the appointed hour to see it put in practice. Habakkuk brought him a smooth, strong, tough rope, made of many a ply of wholesome Scandinavian hemp, compactly twisted together, with a noose that slipped as glib as a birdcatcher's gin. Jack shrank and grew pale at first sight of it; he handled it, he measured it, stretched it, fixed it against the iron bar of the window to try its strength, but no familiarity could reconcile him to it. ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot

... laid with tiles of dark blue veined with white; pilasters of twisted silver stood out against the blue walls; the clearstory of round-arched windows above them was hung with azure silk; the vaulted ceiling was a pavement of sapphires, like the body of heaven in its clearness, sown with silver stars. From the four corners of the roof hung four golden ...
— The Story of the Other Wise Man • Henry Van Dyke

... was lean and wizened, twisted like a vine-shoot, with long, dust-coloured hair and a melancholy, impassive face that seemed carved out of old oak. He put in an appearance at Saint-Elophe once every three or four months. He knocked at the doors of the houses ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc

... crowded on the marble of the fireplace, which was opposite to the bed, were so grotesquely hideous that she dared not fix her eyes upon them, fearing to see them move, or to hear a startling laugh from their gaping and twisted mouths. ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac

... about her, I raised her up and set her upon her feet again. She had twisted her ankle. She balanced herself upon it. The pain of it eased ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings

... tend the fore-sheet his leg gave way under him as if it had been stabbed, and he rolled into the scuppers in intolerable anguish. For a week after this Nicky-Nan nursed himself ashore, and it was given out that he had twisted his knee-cap. He did not call in a doctor, although the swelling took on a red and angry hue. As a fact, no medical man now resided within three miles of Polpier. (When asked how they did without one, the inhabitants answered ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... body, shook with a kind of motion like the effect of palsy. He appeared to be frequently disturbed by cramps or convulsive contractions of the nature of that distemper called St. Vitus' dance. He wore a full suit of plain brown clothes, with twisted hair buttons of the same colour, a large bushy greyish wig, a plain shirt, black worsted stockings and silver buckles. Upon this tour when journeying he wore boots and a very wide brown cloth great-coat with pockets which might almost have held the two volumes of his folio dictionary, ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... total inaction had told heavily against her river worthiness; the sun had cracked her roof and sides, the rigour of the Winnipeg winter left its trace on bows and hull. Her engines were a perfect marvel of patchwork—pieces of rope seemed twisted around crank and shaft, mud was laid thickly on boiler and pipes, little jets and spurts of steam had a disagreeable way of coming out from places not supposed to be capable of such outpourings. Her capacity ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... in, with sheets, blankets, and every thing complete. Neither can I found my claim to notice upon any thing odd or unusual in my appearance: I am not a negro doll, with wide mouth and woolly hair; nor a doll with a gutta-percha face, which can be twisted into ...
— The Doll and Her Friends - or Memoirs of the Lady Seraphina • Unknown

... "Mother Monroe," as wise as she was good, and as tender as she was strong, who had nursed two generations of mothers in our village, was engaged at that time, and I was compelled to take an exotic. I had often watched "Mother Monroe" with admiration, as she turned and twisted my sister's baby. It lay as peacefully in her hands as if they were lined with eider down. She bathed and dressed it by easy stages, turning the child over and over like a pancake. But she was so full of the magnetism of human love, giving the child, all ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... creature, with brown eyes, a soft white skin, and a slight figure with a reed-like grace. A great quantity of brown hair was twisted into an ugly coil on the top of her delicate little head; and she wore an ugly muslin gown of Miss Chickie's make. For some time the meal progressed in dead silence; but at length Lucia ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... I laved his pain-twisted face with the cool water and let a few drops trickle into his open mouth. He gasped a few times, then, gathering strength again, went on with ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... fortunate: he got two inches of his knife into Dodd's left shoulder, at the very moment Dodd caught him in his right-hand vice. And now one vengeful hand of iron grasped him felly by the throat; another seized his knife arm and twisted it back like a child's. He kicked and struggled furiously, but in half a minute the mighty English arm and iron fingers held the limp body of Jacques Moinard with its knees knocking, temples bursting, throat relaxed, eyes protruding, and livid tongue lolling down to his ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... contemplation of the scarlet letter, I had hitherto neglected to examine a small roll of dingy paper, around which it had been twisted. This I now opened, and had the satisfaction to find recorded by the old Surveyor's pen, a reasonably complete explanation of the whole affair. There were several foolscap sheets, containing many particulars respecting the life and conversation of one ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Mr. Rogers' pale and placid countenance, you would hardly have thought he lived; but turning to Luttrell, whose mouth twisted and whose eye rolled at the fun of the mistake, he simply whispered, 'Non tali auxilio, &c.' Barton survived it, and is still alive ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various

... But a twisted truth is more formidable than a lie; and intuition warned Quita that Lenox was in no mood to appreciate the fine shades of distinction between the literal facts and Max Richardson's free translation of the same. His frankly masculine comments fired her cheeks; ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... She'll think all the more of the fellow that's piloting her. And look here, Clavvy; ride her with spurs. Always ride a trained mare with spurs. Let her know that they're on; and if she tries to get her head, give 'em her. Yes, by George, give 'em her." And Captain Boodle, in his energy, twisted himself in his chair, and brought his heel round, so that it could be seen by Archie. Then he produced a sharp click with his tongue, and made the peculiar jerk with the muscle of his legs, whereby he was accustomed ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope

... a long pack-thread to this, and then hung the apple by a loop at the other end of the string, to a hook in the woodwork over the fireplace. The apple, suspended in front of the blazing fire, began a succession of swift revolutions; first in one direction and then in the other, as the string twisted ...
— What She Could • Susan Warner

... my feet swinging close to the carpet, glowing with heat from the compression of my clothes and the novelty of my situation, and all that was around me. Mr Drummond helped me to some scalding soup, a silver spoon was put into my hand, which I twisted round and round, looking at my face reflected in miniature ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... Skinner. Not a word of this to them, Gus! Not—a—whisper!" And he winked one eye and twisted up the corner of his mouth knowingly. Mr. Redell nodded his promise and Cappy went on: "Now Gus, my dear young friend, start in at the beginning and tell me everything. I assume, of course, that ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... tankards, a sauce-pan of the same metal, a few tall, slender, Venetian glasses, a little pewter, and some rare shells. A few high-backed chairs were ranged against the wall; there was a tall "armory," i.e. a linen-press of dark oak, guarded on each side by the twisted weapons of the sea unicorn, and in the middle of the room stood a large, solid-looking table, adorned with a brown earthenware beau-pot, containing a stiff posy of roses, southernwood, gillyflowers, pinks and pansies, of small dimensions. On hooks, against the wall, hung a pair ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... it. I don't know what you may be—I am the most opinionated man in existence. Sheer waste of time, my dear sir, to attempt convincing Me. Now, just look at that child!" Here Mr. Nugent Dubourg's attention was suddenly attracted by the baby. He twisted round on his heel, and addressed Mrs. Finch. "I take the liberty of saying, ma'am, that a more senseless dress doesn't exist, than the dress that is put, in this country, on infants of tender years. What are the three main functions which that child—that charming child of yours-performs? ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins

... soul! I saw it fling And twist about inside, and not a hole Or cranny for escape. Oh, it was sad. I cried, and shouted out, "Let out that soul!" But he turned round, and, sure, his face went mad, And twisted up and down, and he said "Hell!" And ran away.... Oh, mammy! ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps

... and the king rode his careless chase; and by the sweet French rivers their long ranks of poplar waved in the twilight, only to show the flames of burning cities on the horizon, through the tracery of their stems; amidst the fair defiles of the Apennines, the twisted olive-trunks hid the ambushes of treachery; and on their valley meadows, day by day, the lilies which were white at the dawn were washed ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... the squirrel over the bowl, and prepared to dip his ears into the dye. It was a strange situation for a squirrel to be in, and he did not like it at all; and just at the instant when his ears were going into the dye, he twisted his head round, and planted his little fore teeth directly upon Jonas's thumb. As might have been supposed, teeth which were sharp and powerful enough to go through a walnut shell, would not he likely to be stopped ...
— Rollo at Play - Safe Amusements • Jacob Abbott

... day Big Tom stayed at home, dozing away the time on his bed. Such days were trying ones for Johnnie. Seated at the kitchen table, his large hands blue with the cold, hour upon hour he twisted cotton petals on wire stems to make violets—virtually acres of them, which he fashioned in skillful imitation, though he had never seen a violet grow. Violet-making tired him, and often he had a stabbing pain ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... I can swim like a fish, Dave, and it was more a nuisance to me than a help; but, we can both hold on to it, you know, if it comes to the worst. How's your leg, Dave? I thought it was broken when you got it twisted in ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson

... Honeycutt's shanty, ancient, twisted, warped, and ugly like himself, stood well apart from the flock of houses, as though, like himself even in this, it were suspicious and meant to keep its own business to itself. Only one other building had approached ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory

... identical. Now language is made up of about 120 roots combined in various ways. The words supposed to express more abstract conceptions, some of them highly important in theology, are mere metaphors founded upon previous metaphors, twisted and changed in meaning from century to century. Nothing remains but an almost absolute scepticism, for on such terms no certainty can be obtained. In a letter he states that the only problems which we can really ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... and whole trainloads of costly machinery were shipped out of the country. I saw the inside of many of these buildings where high explosives were used and all that was left was the shell of the building, the inside being one mass of twisted ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols

... rowdy, delightful, laughing evenings which can happen sometimes. They were all three in the minute kitchen together, Desmond taking off his coat and rolling up his sleeves to cook, and excellently he cooked, too. Julia tied an apron around him, and Marie twisted up a cook's cap from grease-proof paper, and they laughed like people who have discovered the finest jokes in the world. There was no care; there was no worry; no time-table. No Jove-like husband, no fretting, asking wife, no shades of grocers ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton

... trimmed it up till it was nearly circular in form, and then began to cut a strip two inches wide round and round till he reached the centre. This gave him a thong of over a hundred feet long. Tying one end to a ring in the wall he twisted the long strip until it assumed the form of a rope, which was, he was sure, strong enough to bear many times ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty

... of the spectators on the hill looked in that direction. A cloud of smoke rose in the air, and at the same moment, almost, the explosion of a shell was seen on the riflemen's hill. The branches of the trees were cut off and twisted, and the sharpshooters rushed down the declivity as though their own weapons ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic

... offender among a group of boys dancing delightedly up and down, Percy made a sudden rush and pounced upon him like a hawk on a chicken. Holding him by the collar, he cuffed his ears soundly. The criminal wriggled and twisted, loudly and ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman

... monogram outside," said Silvia, with enthusiasm, "and one of those twisted chains—oh, how fine!" She shook out her silver bracelets till they jingled all her enthusiasm; and the entire committee joining, the vote was taken to propose to the rest of the "Salisbury girls," on the morrow, the gift of a watch and chain to ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney

... especially the former. They appear as pin-head-sized, whitish or grayish elevations, consisting of accumulations of epithelial matter about the apertures of the hair follicles. Each elevation is pierced by a hair, or the hair may be twisted and imprisoned within the epithelial mass; or it may be broken off just at the point of emergence at the apex of the papule, in which event it may be seen as a dark, central speck. The skin is usually dry, rough and harsh, and in marked cases, to the ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon

... our "environment," this patched up and piecemeal panorama of mad chaotic blunderings, which pushes us hither and thither; and they call it our "heredity," this confused and twisted amalgam of greeds and lusts and conscience-stricken reactions, which drives us backward and forward from within. But there is more in the lives of the most wretched of ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... was broken in pieces. Bananas started back with a sudden hoarse cry and he looked at the girl. She was standing there with a look of triumphant hatred on her face. A horror came into his eyes. His heavy features were twisted in agony, and with a thud, as though he had taken a violent poison, he crumpled up on to the ground. A great shudder passed through his body and he was still. She leaned over him callously. She put her hand on his heart ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham

... opened on the wall that fronted them; and the Colonel gave the word to run the gun out of the trenches. They ran it out into the cloud of smoke their own guns were belching forth, unseen by the enemy; but they had no sooner twisted it into the line of Long Tom than the smoke was gone, and there they were, ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... tried two forms of toe bindings—the B.B. and the B.B.B. and gave them up for the following reasons. Firstly, I think it a dangerous binding. There is practically no give at all so that in a bad fall when the foot is twisted under one, if the Ski does not move the leg has to give way and may be broken. I think surgeons agree that there are more accidents as a result of wearing a B.B. binding than any other—so that it seems ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse

... fact that a lamp stood flaring and smoking on the centre table. Beside it sat the dead man, leaning back in his chair, his thin beard projecting, his spectacles pushed up on to his forehead, and his lean dark face turned towards the window and twisted into the same distortion of terror which had marked the features of his dead sister. His limbs were convulsed and his fingers contorted as though he had died in a very paroxysm of fear. He was fully clothed, though there were ...
— The Adventure of the Devil's Foot • Arthur Conan Doyle

... my best to get something rigged which may help us; I wanted a little difficulty, and feel much better. - The short length we have picked up was covered at places with beautiful sprays of coral, twisted and twined with shells of those small, fairy animals we saw in the aquarium at home; poor little things, they died at once, with their little bells and delicate ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson

... to Einstein's theory, because it leaves us entirely free as to the way in which we wish to represent the phenomena, we can imagine an idea of the solar system in which the planets follow paths of peculiar form and the rays of light shine along sharply bent lines—think of a twisted and distorted planetarium—but in every case where we apply it to concrete questions we shall so arrange it that the planets describe almost exact ellipses and the rays of light almost ...
— The Einstein Theory of Relativity • H.A. Lorentz

... took an uncertain step forward. His legs rattled as he moved, and Wyley saw that the links of broken fetters were twisted ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason

... of a razor, and for sloppiness she had no mercy. Careless maids trembled before her tirades, and strong men shook in their shoes under her biting phrases. At seventy, with her snowy hair, little face that had gone into as many lines as a dried pippin, bent, fragile body and tiny hands twisted by rheumatism, she looked like one of the old women in a Grimm's fairy tale who frightened children and scared animals and turned ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... He immediately jumped down to the chief mate's cabin and told him what he had seen. They both went on deck, the mate armed with a loaded pistol and my brother with a cutlass. By this time the serpent—for it was a sea-serpent—had twisted itself round the bowsprit of the vessel, and was about twenty feet long. Its eyes were about the size of the scuppers and shined like the morning star." "Why, Bill," said one of the listeners, "clap a stopper on that yarn; ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman

... who pulled over the accelerating lever and instantly the Falcon responded. Now indeed the race was on in earnest. The smugglers must have understood this, for they tried all their tactics to throw the pursuing airship off the track. They dodged and twisted, now going up, and now going down, and even trying to turn back, but Tom headed them off. Ever the great beam of light shone relentlessly on them, like some avenging eye. They could ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton

... elder, whose, education had been accomplished simply by a New Testament and three-inch rope, sat, or rather twisted through the rhapsody, as a dunce twists through his Greek roots, and at the first pause, drawing himself erect with the self-complacent air of a man who applies the clincher, ejaculated, with the Western twang: 'What do you think of Hi-awathy?' The professor, giving him one look, to be sure of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... which we now need to open our windows. The exiled evangelist of Ephesus saw it one day as the surf of the Icarian sea foamed and splashed over the bowlders at his feet, and his vision reminded me of a wedding-day when the bride by sister and maid was having garlands twisted for her hair and jewels strung for her neck just before she puts her betrothed hand into the hand of her affianced: "I, John, saw the Holy City, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven prepared as a bride adorned for her husband." ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... trying to catch a yellow-winged woodpecker in its nest when my arm became twisted and lodged in the deep hole so that I could not get it out without the aid of a knife; but we were a long way from home and my only companion was a deaf-mute cousin of mine. I was about fifty feet up in the tree, in a very uncomfortable ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman

... the chancel; nor the beautiful Leggare chapel, with its oak screen, carved in its upper part in fifteenth-century tracery, its faded frescoes and ancient altar tomb. The glass of the upper portion of the great west window and the window of St Thomas' chapel are indeed "labyrinths of twisted tracery and starry light" such as would delight the fastidious taste of Ruskin. Several pages might easily be written in describing the wonderful and grotesque example of alabaster work known as the Tanfield tomb. The ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs

... heart-shaped opening that was cut in the shutter the sun poured into the darkened room like a fiery column, straight on the brow of the sleeping lad. He wanted to doze longer and twisted about, trying to avoid the light; suddenly he heard a knocking and awoke; cheerful was his awakening. He felt blithe as a bird and breathed freely and lightly; he felt himself happy and smiled to himself. Thinking of all that had happened to ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz

... said Jane. 'On Friday we had an uproar in the schoolroom about her hemming, and on Saturday she tumbled into a wet ditch, and tore her bonnet in the brambles; on Sunday, she twisted her ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge

... removed the tissue paper. At last the precious contents of the box were revealed—a white chiffon dress, delicately broidered with tiny gold beads, with a twisted girdle of blue with cloth of gold, a dainty blue comb set with brilliants. In a separate wrapper at one end of the box, gold slippers and stockings ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson

... over on the one hand, or exaggerated on the other. For instance, the little variety called "ladies' tresses" [Spiranthes], which throws a spiral head of pale green blossoms out of dry pastures, appears here with small bells hanging on a twisted stem, as accurately as the best photograph could give it, although the process of woodcutting, as then practised in England, was very rude, and although almost all other English illustrations of the period are rough and inartistic. It is plain that in every instance the ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse

... Tom twisted uneasily on the chair and twirled his hat in his hands. He was mad at the way the Bishop had cornered him, and at what he had said. But he was also afraid of this man who knew so much and seemed to read his inmost thoughts. He began to dread the questions which he knew ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody

... you have said so?" He hung his head and twisted his hands. "Oh, Johnnie, what was it? Was it only the going along ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge

... sake! We slept in Mosehezi Bay. I was storm-stayed in Kifwe Bay, which is very beautiful—still as a millpond. We found 12 or 13 hippopotami near a high bank, but did not kill any, for our balls are not hardened. It is high rocky tree-covered shore, with rocks bent and twisted wonderfully; large slices are worn off the land with hillsides clad with robes of living green, ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... went to the Crematory to see the dissolution of a poor, twisted, deformed, and tortured body of a woman past fifty, in which had dwelt a soul so serene, cheerful, and patient, that the beatitudes clustered around her, like doves in a garden of roses. It required no ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck

... his wheat ears some splendid stalks of ragwort and chamomile, like a cluster of yellow and white stars, and twisted tendrils of bindweed, with frail, trumpet-shaped blossoms already drooping, around the completed bunch. His thick old fingers fumbled over the niceties of the task, but he pushed the women's officious hands aside, and by the ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... merely to allow workmen to replace loose tiles, it was impossible to say. It was certainly within the bounds of probability to imagine a Jacobite, with a price set on his life, creeping through the little opening to find a more secure hiding-place among the twisted chimneys, while King George's soldiers searched ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil

... moonlight they seemed unfathomable pools, deep, mysterious, holding something which he could almost but not quite discern. In the pale light her face lost colour. It was idealized, purified, the face of a dream. Her marvellous crown of hair shone strand by strand as of twisted gold; it shimmered with halolike glory. Her slightly parted lips, vivid against the white of the ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm

... much in the Turkish manner, except that their clothes are wider, and their drawers cover their legs. Their robes are always full of gold and silver embroidery. They are most exact about their hair, which is long and twisted, and their care of it is such that they go bare-headed whilst they are young for fear of spoiling it, but afterwards wear red caps, and sometimes ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo

... was roughly handled," said Laval, pointing with his stick to the twisted rose-stalk covered with buds, over whose blighted promise she ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... train were John Powell, better known as "Songbird," because he had a habit of reciting newly made doggerel which he called poetry, Hans Mueller, a German youth who frequently got his English badly twisted, Fred Garrison, who had graduated with the Rovers, ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)

... Mrs. Kittridge; "but I'm sure I don't see what Mary Pennel is goin' to do with that boy, for she ain't got no more government than a twisted tow-string." ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... occupied for several years by his eldest son, the detestable John, my cruelest oppressor, the most crafty and cowardly of the Hamstringers. I was filled with a sense of terror and disgust on recognising the furniture, even the very bed with twisted posts on which my grandfather had given up his blackened soul to God, amid all the torments of a lingering death agony. The arm-chair which I was sitting in was the one in which John the Crooked (as he was pleased to call himself ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... rushing along with turbulent strength. There was no house within five miles. His business was imperative. He dared not leave the child until he came back. Crouching upon the saddle, he clasped one arm about her while he twisted his other hand firmly in and out of ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black

... not affect you as decadent, but as something vigorously perfect in its sort, somberly authentic, and ripe from a root and not a graft. In its sort, the high altar, a gigantic triune, with massive twisted columns and swagger statues of saints and heroes in painted wood, is a prodigy of inventive piety, and compositely has a noble exaltation in its powerful ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells

... her hands clasped on the nun's knee, Isabel told her all her struggles; disentangling at last in a way that she had never been able to do before, all the complicated strands of self-will and guidance and blindness that had so knotted and twisted themselves into her life. The nun was amazed at the spiritual instinct of this Puritan child, who ranged her motives so unerringly; dismissing this as of self, marking this as of God's inspiration, accepting this and rejecting that element of the ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... was music, one of the crew having made a banjo, the strings of which were twisted from the smaller intestines of the last sea-elephant they had killed; and by the aid of this instrument harmonic meetings were organised in the evenings, Mr Lathrope developing an almost forgotten talent he possessed, and ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... shirt, and almost as near as his skin. It was the kris. As a matter of course, Saloo had one, and luckily for his old shipmate, "Multa," he knew how to handle it with skill, so that, in driving its twisted blade through the python's throat, he did not also impale upon its point the jugular vein of the Irishman. He did the one dexterously without doing the other, and the consequence was that the huge snake, suffering keenly from having its throat pierced through, quickly uncoiled itself from ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid

... till it resembled the shell of a walnut; then he twisted his shoulders first to the left, then to the right, and followed up that movement by hitching up his trousers, staring hard at his young officer ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn

... in an instant both could never rise again. My furious grip sobered him, and he made desperate efforts to break free, struggling vainly to utter some cry for rescue. Once I felt him groping at his waist for a knife; but I got first clasp upon its hilt, though I twisted helplessly for some minutes before I could loosen his hold at my wrist so as to strike him with the blade. His teeth closed upon my hand, biting deep into the flesh like a wildcat, and the sharp sting of it yielded me the desperate strength I needed to wrench my ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish

... the most difficult and dangerous operation known to surgery. A clergyman called upon him to remove an enormous tumor in the neck, in which were imbedded and twisted many of the great arteries. In this operation it became necessary to take out entire the right clavicle or collar bone, to lay bare the membrane which surrounds the lungs, to search for and dissect around the ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... indication of such an instrument as the plough; and one would have concluded from the garments of the people, that the loom was among the yet uninvented arts. The harnessings of the horses formed a curiously tangled web of thong, and rope, and thread, twisted, tied, and knotted. It would have puzzled OEdipus himself to discover how a horse could ever be got into such gear, or, being in, how it ever could be got out. There seemed a most extraordinary number of beggars and vagabonds in Peter's patrimony. A little congregation of these worthies waited our ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... and the breadth of the bonnets is only equalled by that of the accents. Every second man has a mighty plaid over his shoulder. It may serve as a sample of his wool, for invariably it is home made. Some carry long twisted crooks such as we see in old pastoral prints; others have massive gnarled sticks grasped in vast sinewy hands on the back of which the wiry red hairs stand out like prickles. There is falling what in the south we should reckon as a very respectable pelt of rain, but the Inverness ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... given; she turned and twisted much, but said that on this subject she had said all she possibly could; if she said anything else, it ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... thence to the ground. He had come on business, and having talked it over slowly with the old man he turned to depart. Though he was a genteel man, I heard him sigh heavily as, with the remark, "Ay, weel, I'll be movin' again," he began to rescale the wall. The patriarch, twisted round the pump, made no reply, so I ventured to suggest to the bellman that he might find the gate easier. "Is there a gate?" said Snecky, in surprise at the resources of civilization. I pointed it out to him, and he went his way chuckling. The old man told me that he had sometimes wondered ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie

... realization that he had been attained on another side—that of his family affection. This man had also killed for him his only child. For the child had renounced him, had thrust him outside herself into the lonely and ruined temple of his pride. At the first thought his face twisted with emotion, then hardened ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White

... fourth generation afterwards, one "Friedrich the Second," not unknown to us,—a sharp little man, little in stature, but large in faculty and renown, who is now called "Frederick the Great,"—clutched hold of the Imperial fist (so to speak), seizing his opportunity in 1740; and so wrenched and twisted said close fist, that not only Jagerndorf dropped out of it, but the whole of Silesia along with Jagerndorf, there being other claims withal. And the account was at last settled, with compound interest,—as in fact such accounts are sure to be, one way or ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle

... distance from the ground and were covered thick with orchids, which I mistook for large birds roosting for the night. Each tree was bound to the next by vines like tangled ropes, some drawn as taut as the halyards of a ship, and others, as thick as one's leg; they were twisted and wrapped around the branches, so that they looked like boa-constrictors hanging ready to drop upon one's shoulders. The moonlight gave to this forest of great trees a weird, fantastic look. I felt like a knight entering an enchanted wood. But nothing ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis

... seen you scratch yourself ever so deep and not so much as wink; and I mind that time when you twisted your ankle and you didn't even pretend you ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade

... he awoke and threw a startled glance upward to the twisted branches of the oak that bent above, sifting down sunshine on his brown face and close curled hair. Slowly he remembered the loneliness, the fear and wild running through the dark. He laughed in the bold courage of day and ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois

... objects to be seen in the Abbey is the stone Sanctuary seat—the Frid Stool, or seat of peace—at which fugitives, fleeing from their enemies, might find refuge. It is believed that this was the "Cathedra" of St. Wilfrid himself. The arms and back of the chair are ornamented with a twisted knot-work pattern. The right of Sanctuary extended for a mile round the Abbey, the boundaries being marked by crosses, one at each point of the compass at ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry

... fried ham. (I was out at grandpap's one time when they butchered. They had a chunk-fire then, too, to heat the water to scald the hogs. And say! Did your grandma ever roast pig's tails in the ashes for you?) And there were crullers. No, I don't mean "doughnuts." I mean crullers, all twisted up. They go good with cider. (Sometimes my grandma cut out thin, pallid little men of cruller dough, and dropped them into the hot lard for my Uncle Jimmy and me. And when she fished them out, they were all swelled up and "pussy," and ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood

... any rate, don't cry, pretty one! Your grandmamma is worked with hard thoughts. We old folks are twisted and crabbed and full of knots with disappointment and trouble, like the mulberry-trees that they keep for vines to run on. But I'll speak to her; I know her ways; she shall let you go; I'll ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... Ophrydea, (C. 2210,) this resemblance to the contorted tribe is carried so far that "the corolla of the veronica becomes irregular, the tube gibbous, the faux (throat) hairy, and three of the laciniae (lobes of petals) variously twisted." The spire of blossom, violet-coloured, is then close set, and exactly resembles an ophryd, except in being sharper at the top. The engraved outline of the blossom is ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... after the events narrated, it was empty. Mary was a comely maiden of forty-three, of comfortable proportions and goodly to look upon. Her cheeks were still attractively round; her glossy black hair was, with much placidity, smoothed over her temples, cunningly brought above her ears, and twisted in an alluring knot at the back of her head. Her eyes were of that deep peculiar blue which generally is such a menace to the peace of the sterner sex, and over which lovers are wont to expatiate so ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith

... suddenly, as a song that wholly escapes Remembrance, at one note, wholly returns, There, as I knocked, memory returned to me. I knew it all—the little twisted street, The rough wet cobbles gleaming, far away, Like opals, where it ended on the sky; And, overhead, the darkly smiling face Of that old wizard inn; I knew by rote The smooth sun-bubbles in the worn green paint Upon ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... about one-half inch long, slender, twisted, stuffed, white then brownish, rather mealy. The spores are elliptical, smooth, 3x2u. ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard

... fraielty. Yet I have heard the way to cure the scare Has bin the deed; at truth the scruples vanish. I speake not, Madam, with a thought to suffer A foule breath whisper your white name; for he That dares traduce it must beleeve me dead, Or my fame twisted with your honour must not Have pitty on the ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various

... conical gap in one side, like an open door, and it was my custom—as it had doubtless been that of innumerable children of ages gone—to enter this door and "play house" in the spacious interior. Meanwhile my father would seat himself on the twisted roots without, and let his thoughts drift back to the time when this huge hulk had first cast a slender shadow over the greensward of primitive, Saxon England. It was a massive tree before the Domesday Book was begun; Chaucer would not be heard of for four hundred years to ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... "sapucaias," one hundred and fifty feet high, buttressed by natural arches, which, starting from three yards from their base, rejoin the tree some thirty feet up the stem, twining themselves round the trunk like the filatures of a twisted column, whose head expands in a bouquet of vegetable fireworks made up of the yellow, purple, and snowy ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne

... generation, whose great delight is in the wine shop; for they have good wine (albeit it be boiled), and are great topers; in truth, they are constantly getting drunk. They wear nothing on the head but a cord some ten palms long twisted round it. They are excellent huntsmen, and take a great deal of game; in fact they wear nothing but the skins of the beasts they have taken in the chase, for they make of them both coats and shoes. Indeed, all of them ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... earth twisted away until it was lost in the fringe of a small copse on the left and had dipped behind a hillock on the right. Flat open country stretched ahead, grass lands and fields of stubble, ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various

... and disordered, was soiled with dust and with gore; her hair, wildly dishevelled, fell in, elf-locks on her brow and shoulders, and a single broken and ragged feather, which was all that remained of her headgear, had been twisted among her tresses and still flowed there, as if in mockery, rather than ornament. Her eyes were fixed on the litter where Damian was deposited, and she rode close beside it, without apparently wasting a thought ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... three Indians leaning on their dark, silver-braceleted arms. But as they were slow to sell and buy and go, so were others slow to come in. Their voices were soft and low and it seemed to Shefford they were whispering. He liked to hear them and to look at the banded heads, the long, twisted rolls of black hair tied with white cords, the still dark faces and watchful eyes, the silver ear-rings, the slender, shapely brown hands, the lean and sinewy shapes, the corduroys with a belt and gun, and the small, close-fitting ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey

... rug spread by the carved mahogany lions at the bed-foot, where she had flung them off in her weariness after the ball. A crumpled gown hung over a chair, the sleeves touching the floor; stockings which a breath would have blown away were twisted about the leg of an easy-chair; while ribbon garters straggled over a settee. A fan of price, half unfolded, glittered on the chimney-piece. Drawers stood open; flowers, diamonds, gloves, a bouquet, a girdle, were littered about. The room was full ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac

... accessories only a few shapeless fragments remained. The funnel had gone, the dome, the steam chest; there was nothing but torn plates, broken, twisted tubes, split cylinders, and loose connecting rods—gaping wounds in ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne

... in stature any race of men I have seen. The white-haired man, who I knew was a good six feet in height, sat a head below any one of the three. I found afterwards that really none were taller than myself; but their bodies were abnormally long, and the thigh-part of the leg short and curiously twisted. At any rate, they were an amazingly ugly gang, and over the heads of them under the forward lug peered the black face of the man whose eyes were luminous in the dark. As I stared at them, they met my gaze; and then first one and then another ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells

... fight. That buffalo seemed to do everything to me which a buffalo could do under the circumstances. It tried to horn me, and partially succeeded, although I ducked at each swoop. Then it struck me with its nose and drove me to the bottom of the pool, although I got hold of its lip and twisted it. Then it calmly knelt on me and sank me deeper and deeper into the mud. I remember kicking it in the stomach. After this I remember no more, except a kind of wild dream in which I rehearsed all the scene in the dwarf's hut, and his request ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard

... twenty-eight-foot incline, hurled its rider to instant death and crashed into the packed grandstand. Before the whirling mass of steel was halted by a deep-set iron pillar four men lay dead and twenty-two others unconscious and severely injured. Then the twisted engine of death rebounded from the post and rolled down the saucer-rim of ...
— Psychology and Achievement • Warren Hilton

... she, with a sad smile, "it is long since you flattered me thus! But I will arrange my hair for you alone," added she, blushing, as with deft fingers she twisted her raven locks into a coronal about her head. "I would once have gone with you to the end of the world to hear you say you were proud of me. Alas! you can never be proud of me any more, as in the old happy days at Grand Pre. Those ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... gossip and surmise. And in Hone's pocket lay the twisted note which the woman he loved had left behind—the note which he had read with an unmoved countenance under a host of ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell

... will keep much better if the green crown at top be twisted off. The vegetation of the crown takes the goodness from the fruit, in the same way that sprouts injure vegetables. The crown can be stuck ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child

... a peculiar-looking man. The lower part of his cheek—that side on which I sat—was sunk in, as if he had no teeth there. The effect was to give his whole face a twisted appearance. The greater part of his head, of course, was concealed by the flowing white kaffiyi, but his skin was considerably darker than that of the Palestine Arab. He had no eyebrows at all, having shaved them ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy

... the easy swinging motion of the car soothed their spirits. They felt that already they had reached the luxuriously appointed home which, after all, they knew awaited them. McCurdie no longer railed, Professor Biggleswade forgot the dangers of bronchitis, and Lord Doyne twisted the stump of a black cigar between his lips without any desire to relight it. A tiny electric lamp inside the hood made the darkness of the world to right and left and in front of the talc windows ...
— A Christmas Mystery - The Story of Three Wise Men • William J. Locke

... to the rescue, but Emily was already scrambling into sitting posture, scared, bruised and furious. She had torn her dress, twisted her ankle, bumped her head and scratched her face. And Rodney had ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston

... is particularly hard on what is called blackmail. It is therefore essential that the applicant should write nothing that might afterwards be twisted to incriminate him.—ED.] ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm

... open, and think that they give thus an idea of the death or ecstasy of martyrs. Now you would think you hear the neighing of horses, now the voice of a woman. With this "all their body is agitated by histrionic movements"; their lips, their shoulders, their fingers are twisted, shrugged, or spread out as they think best to suit their delivery. The audience, filled with wonder and admiration at those inordinate gesticulations, at length bursts into laughter: "It seems to them they are at the play ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... behold these talents of their hair, With twisted metal amorously empleach'd, I have receiv'd from many a several fair, (Their kind acceptance weepingly beseech'd,) With the annexions of fair gems enrich'd, And deep-brain'd sonnets that did amplify Each stone's ...
— A Lover's Complaint • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... tranquility but zealous to pay court to a powerful minister and—provided they can obtain advantages—unconcerned should the means of obtaining them prove ruinous to the King's service.' These pettifoggers so turned and twisted the law about for the sake of screwing out the maximum of fees that Carleton pointedly refused to appoint Livius as a member of the Legislative Council. Livius then laid his case before the Privy Council in England. ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood

... tree right away over there with horrid twisted arms that look as if they are trying ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell

... were 'crusted with ormolu,' and parquet-floors were 'so glossy that, were Narcissus to come down from heaven, he would, I maintain, need no other mirror for his beaute.' I wish that we could see the pier-glasses and the girandoles and the twisted sofas, the fauns foisted upon the ceiling and the rident goddesses along the wall. These things would make Georges memory dearer to us, help us to a fuller knowledge of him. I am glad that the Pavilion ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm

... into the valley of the brook, and he turned to follow it. The stream was a break-neck, boiling Highland river. Hard by the farm, it leaped a little precipice in a thick grey-mare's tail of twisted filaments, and then lay and worked and bubbled in a lynn. Into the middle of this quaking pool a rock protruded, shelving to a cape; and thither Otto scrambled ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson

... portrait,[1134] we see a spare body, whose narrow shoulders under the uniform wrinkled by sudden movements, the neck swathed in its high twisted cravat, the temples covered by long, smooth, straight hair, exposing only the mask, the hard features intensified through strong contrasts of light and shade, the cheeks hollow up to the inner angle of the eye, the projecting cheek-bones, the massive, protuberant jaw, the sinuous, mobile lips, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... motioned to the bachelor that he would come on the other side, and speak to him. They gently unlocked his fingers, which he had twisted in his grey hair, and ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... say that if you found some remarks about breaking the bones of your enemy, and have twisted it out of its connection, it would be particularly bad ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... grind herrings and broth; first of all, all the dishes full, then all the tubs full, and so on till the kitchen floor was quite covered. Then the man twisted and twirled at the quern to get it to stop, but for all his twisting and fingering the quern went on grinding, and in a little while the broth rose so high that the man was like to drown. So he threw open the kitchen door and ran into the parlour, but it wasn't long before ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various

... muck and misery of war before and had seen the death carts coming back from the battlefield and the convoys of wounded crawling down the rutty roads—from Adrianople—with men, who had been strong and fine, now shattered, twisted and made hideous by pain. The flowers carried by those cavalry officers seemed to me like funeral wreaths upon men who were doomed to die, and the women who sprang out of the crowds with posies for their men were offering ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs

... their way over London Bridge, and struck down the river, and held their still foggier course that way. As they were going along, Jennie twisted her venerable friend aside to a brilliantly lighted toy-shop window, and said: "Now, look at ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... of uniforms was bothering him again. They were dashing, militant, these paladins, a bal masque of luxurious oddity and color. They twisted waxed moustaches, and their coursers cantered to and fro in the gay parade, and among them only the charro cavaliers with a glitter of spangle let one guess that this could be Mexico. There was the Austrian dragoon with his Tyrolean feather, and the ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... no way of telling where they were, Cecil took a definite course through the jungle. They scrambled over and through the twisted tangle of undergrowth, creepers and lianas, and, in less than an hour, reached a small foot-path, ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... books, Betwixt us and the hard and bitter world. Sometimes—for we need not be anchorites— A distant friend shall cheer us through the Post, Or some Gazette—of course no partisan— Shall bring us pleasant news of pleasant things; Then, twisted into graceful allumettes, Each ancient joke shall blaze with genuine flame To light our pipes and candles; but to wars, Whether of words or weapons, we shall be Deaf—so we twain shall pass away the time Ev'n as a ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod

... against a gnarled and twisted oak, His soul a listening intensity, And all his strength, seemed leaving him; he drew A quick and stifled breath of sharpest pain, As they rode on, and thought of Agathar, Watching and ...
— Under King Constantine • Katrina Trask

... opened everywhere, into the heart and innermost recesses of the wood; beginning with the likeness of an aisle, a cloister, or a ruin open to the sky; then tangling off into a deep green rustling mystery, through which gnarled trunks, and twisted boughs, and ivy-covered stems, and trembling leaves, and bark-stripped bodies of old trees stretched out at length, were ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... to stop talking to catch at his breath. His arm twisted into Raut's with benumbing tightness. He had come striding down the black path towards the railway as though he was possessed. Raut had not spoken a word, had simply hung back against Horrocks' pull with all ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... to the results of his long and anxious thoughts: I have purposely twisted his exordium into an ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton

... they were so many sticks fastened into a metacarpus made of wood; and these muscles were like old strings of catgut, drier, stiffer, harder to bend than if that they had been used for a turner's wheel; but I have so twisted and broken and bent them. What, thou wilt not go? And I ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley

... man full of vigour, and well worthy of his Herculean origin. His head was joined to his shoulders by a neck massive as a bull's, and almost without a curve; his hair, black and lustrous, twisted itself into rebellious little curls, here and there concealing the circlet of his diadem; his ears, small and upright, were of a ruddy hue; his forehead was broad and full, though a little low, like all antique foreheads; his eyes full of gentle melancholy, ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier

... ways in which it may have been done; the difficulty is not to account for the doing of it; but for the showing of it in some crystals, and not in others. You never by any chance get a quartz crystal broken or twisted in this way. If it break or twist at all, which it does sometimes, like the spire of Dijon, it is by its own will or fault; it never seems to have been passively crushed. But, for the forces which cause this passive ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... entire absence of curiosity which in no way deceived me I waited impatiently. Minnie had not improved since I last saw her. Her face was thin and anxious, her dress—and even in the remoter corners of the prairie this was unusual—was torn and shabby, and she twisted her fingers nervously before ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss

... thought that a great deal depended on a good lock, and quite as much on the key. He had observed that the fault very often lay with the key, especially if the wards were in any way twisted. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... makin' up to the dock when I see the general agent standin' in the door o' the dock office—an' all of a sudden I didn't feel so chipper about havin' crossed Humboldt bar in a sou'easter. I saw the old man runnin' his eye along forty foot o' twisted pipe railin', a wrecked bridge, three bent stanchions an' every door an' window on the starboard side o' the ship stove in, while the passengers crowded the rail lookin' cold an' miserable, pea-green an' thankful. No need for me to do any explainin'. He knew. ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... true that he does not think it clever of the author to have written it. Tom Jones contains useful matter for thought on the subject. Something prodigious out of the lumber-room of the theatres impresses him far more. In England the explanation of this may be a strangely twisted feeling of utilitarianism, which causes us to object to thinking without being paid for thinking; wherefore it seems an act almost of impudence to ask us to pay money to see a play which cannot be understood or appreciated ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

... in a grasp the giant Swede could not break, though he struggled to do so, and he was holding him as easily as Malbihn might have held a little child, yet Malbihn was a huge man, mightily thewed. The Swede began to rage and curse. He struck at his captor, only to be twisted about and held at arm's length. Then he shouted to his boys to come and kill the stranger. In response a dozen strange blacks entered the tent. They, too, were powerful, clean-limbed men, not at all like the mangy ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... the handling of small pieces of the most varied sorts of material, most of it perishable. The materials must be measured, cut, turned, twisted, and draped into innumerable designs and color combinations, and sewed with various kinds of stitching. The main processes are making, trimming, and designing. Making consists in fashioning a specified shape from wire or buckram and covering it with such materials ...
— Wage Earning and Education • R. R. Lutz

... particularly successful with the magnificent Fine Arts Palace, both in his groupings and in his use of individual trees. About the lagoon he did some particularly attractive planting, utilizing the water for reflection. There was a twisted cypress that he placed alone against the colonnade with a skill that showed the insight and the feeling of an, artist. On, the water side, the Marina, he used the trees to break the bareness of the long esplanade. And here and there on the grounds, for pure decoration, he reached some of his ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry

... itself in a manner that did not promise much assistance to Mrs Dale's project. When Lily got upon any subject, she was not easily induced to leave it, and when her mind had twisted itself in one direction, it was difficult to untwist it. She was now bent on a consideration of the smaller social habits of the high and mighty among us, and was asking her mother whether she supposed that the royal children ever carried ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... a pinnace "which was five and fortie foot by the keele." They seem to have brought their sails and tackling with them, but had they not done so they could have made shift with the rough Indian cloth and the fibrous, easily twisted bark of the maho-tree. Having built this little ship, they went aboard of her, and dropped downstream to the Pacific—the first English crew, but not the first Englishman, to sail those waters. Six negroes came with them to act as guides. As soon as they ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield

... ought not to be communicated to a single person. It is one of those ideas that a man should keep in his own mind, for he alone can apply them. A statesman must do in our political sphere as Napoleon did in his; he stooped, twisted, crawled. Yes, Bonaparte crawled! To be made commander-in-chief of the Army of Italy he married Barrere's mistress. You should have waited, got yourself elected deputy, followed the politics of a party, sometimes ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac

... did not see the choking wretch whose wrist Narcissus twisted, until he struck at Narcissus again and, trying to follow him, ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy

... slender, and with a perfect head and small ears, and one could see that he was quick and agile in every movement. He was well groomed, too. The long, heavy mane had been parted from ears to withers, and then twisted and roped on either side with strips of some red stuff that ended in long streamers, which were blown out in a most fantastic way when the pony was running. The long tail was roped only enough to fasten at the top a number of strips of the red that hung almost to the ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe

... upon four wooden posts. The floors are made of canes, and strewed with fresh mulberry-leaves: the corner posts, and other occasional props, for sustaining the different floors, are covered with a coat of loose heath, which is twisted round the wood. The worms when hatched are laid upon the floors; and here you may see them in all the different stages (if moulting or casting the slough, a change which they undergo three times successively before they begin to work. The silk-worm is an animal of such ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... wrist watch, twisted about to confirm its unwelcome news by the big clock. Quarter to ten, and no Chris. Norma settled down again to waiting ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris

... feet when the shed door rattled open, expecting to see the Judge, or the boys at least. But each time it was the bulging face of the saloon-keeper that peered in at him by the sickly light of a tallow candle. And each time the joyful bark that trembled in Buck's throat was twisted ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London

... taking possession of my quarters by shoving them off the front porch, results in my being seized roughly by the throat by one determined assailant and cracked on the head with a stick by another. Ignorant of a Ferenghi's mode of attack, the presumptuous individual, with his hand twisted in my neck-handkerchief, cocks his head in a semi-sidewise attitude, in splendid position to be dropped like a pole-axed steer by a neat tap on the temple. He wears the green kammerbund of a seyud, however; and ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... fish-boat is not constructed to take explosions even half a mile away. But the first thing is to find the fuse and I cannot make out how Gilgamesh is lying and therefore cannot find the door through this bulkhead; everything is ripped and twisted. In the end I find a gap between the bulkhead itself and the hull, and ...
— The Lost Kafoozalum • Pauline Ashwell

... lark begin his flight, And singing startle the dull night From his watch-tower in the skies, Till the dappled dawn doth rise; Then to come, in spite of sorrow, And at my window bid good-morrow, Through the sweet-briar, or the vine, Or the twisted eglantine; While the cock, with lively din, Scatters the rear of darkness thin, And, to the stack or the barn-door, Stoutly struts his dames before: Oft listening how the hounds and horn Cheerly rouse the slumbering Morn, From the side ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various

... generation more refined Improved the simple plan, made three legs four, Gave them a twisted form vermicular, And o'er the seat, with plenteous wadding stuffed, Induced a splendid cover green and blue, Yellow and red, of tapestry richly wrought And woven close, or needlework sublime. There might ye see the peony spread wide, The full-blown ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... ears, too, the occasional rumble that told of some palpitating soul being at that moment hurled and twisted and joyously thrilled, ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... far gone, lying in a dreadful twisted heap, his head, with its bloodstained bandages, resting on his arm. Yet Durant saw that he still lived, and tried with gentle hands to ease ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... huge symmetrical pile of thick white and red blankets twisted and rolled to accentuate their woolly richness, heaped up in a warm disorder, with large window tickets inscribed in blazing red letters: "Cosy Comfort at Cut Prices," and "Curl up and Cuddle below ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... tears should come from pleasure; but whether from pleasure or from sorrow (mixed as they are in the twisted strings of a man's heart, or a woman's), great tears fell from my stupid eyes, even on ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... animal came in front of him, arching its back in anger as it was wont to do. The king lifted up his foot, thinking nothing would be so easy as to tread on the tail, but he found himself mistaken. Minon—that was the creature's name—twisted itself round so sharply that the king only hurt his own foot by stamping on the floor. For eight days did he pursue the cat everywhere: up and down the palace he was after it from morning till night, but with no better success; the tail seemed made of quicksilver, so very lively ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)

... came to the withered form in brave red coat, and green pantaloon whom Lopez had carried off the field. One of the nurses had placed a handkerchief over his face, because of the stinging flies, but Jacqueline recognized the thin white hair and the twisted wig as of the old man whom she had sent ahead in her coach. At first he seemed to be dead, for he lay very still on the floor, though a surgeon was probing his wound, and his blood was fast filling the bowl held by the nurse. But now and again, the straining cords in his emaciated ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... stood thus, slightly swaying, and then instinctively Jack, gagging a little now, felt the minutest relaxation of the arm. Quick as thought he changed the position of his right leg, bringing into play the leverage of his hip. He twisted suddenly sideways, his neck slipping around in the encircling arm. His hand closed upon the back of a thick, perspiring neck. The next instant a figure catapulted over his back, bringing up with a bone-racking crash against ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry

... not venture to disturb them, and accordingly came into the inner room, where she found Hseh Pao-ch'ai in a house dress, with her hair simply twisted into a knot round the top of the head, sitting on the inner edge of the stove-couch, leaning on a small divan table, in the act of copying a pattern for embroidery, with the waiting-maid Ying Erh. When she saw her enter, Pao Ch'ai hastily ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... factor is recessive to the normal allelomorph carried by the other chromosome that the daughters get from their father. This normal factor is recessive for notch but dominant for life. This same figure (b) is used here to show three other sex linked characters. The spines on the thorax are twisted or kinky, which is due to a factor called "forked". The effect is best seen on the thorax, but all spines on the body are similarly modified; even the minute hairs are also affected. Ruby eye color might be here ...
— A Critique of the Theory of Evolution • Thomas Hunt Morgan

... Buck twisted a bunch of dried reeds into a rude torch and lighted it. "Let's have a look at the boss," he said, and they crossed to the great tiger, still crouching as if about to spring. There was no mark of injury on him save a small patch of blood ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore

... to be used, prepared as follows: Place a tin cup containing the turpentine in a vessel containing hot water. This will keep the turpentine warm. Dip a piece of flannel into very hot water and wring it out in a twisted towel, and after it is perfectly dry and no dripping, dip it into the hot turpentine and wring it out again to free it from too much of the drug. Apply the cloth while hot and allow it to remain until it causes discomfort. Then withdraw it or it will ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... Burmese, Chinese, mostly a gaily-clad ever-changing multitude. Among them were shaven priests in yellow robes. Shans in flapping hats; right in front of him stood a stalwart Burman, wearing a white jacket, a pink silk handkerchief, twisted jauntily around his bullet head, and a yellow Lungi, girded to the knee, displayed a three-tailed cat tattooed on the ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker

... made by incorporating alternate layers of red hot steel and iron, which are then twisted into the shape of a screw while at white heat. The bar thus made is twisted in a cold state by steam power round a bar into a barrel shape, ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney

... was left alone, Horace turned out the gas. Then he stood near the door, trembling with amorous anticipation. But minutes went by; his impatience grew intolerable; he stamped, and twisted his fingers together. Then of ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing

... in the way the boys hold out before they strike it, somethin' awful pretty in the face o' rocks, an' clay an' alkali. Oh, Lord, what a life it is anyway! They eat dirt, they sleep in dirt, they breathe dirt 'til their backs are bent, their hands twisted an' warped. They're all wind-swept an' blear-eyed I tell you, an' some o' them jest lie down in their sweat beside the sluices, an' they don't never rise up again. I've seen 'em there!" She paused ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco









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