"Writhing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her victim trains, Jews, Moors and Christians, clank alike their chains, Read their known sentence in her fiery eyes, And breathe to heaven their unavailing cries; Lash'd on the pile their writhing bodies turn, And, veil'd in doubling smoke, begin to burn. Where the flames open, lo! their limbs in vain Reach out for help, distorted by the pain; Till folded in the fires they disappear, And not a ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... two by the bullets which struck it. Ten thousand men fell on each side. Men in hundreds, killed and wounded together, were piled in hideous heaps, some bodies, which had lain for hours under the concentric fire of the battle, being perforated with wounds. The writhing of the wounded beneath the dead moved these masses at times; while often a lifted arm or a quivering limb told of an agony not quenched by ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... leaving the devil writhing on the ground, and went back to his servants, who were still enjoying themselves, as they had been doing when he left. They were much frightened to see their master sweating and out of breath, and with his face all scratched, ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... about on a dromedary after linen wicks, dipped in oil, had been inserted in his body in several places;—and they took pleasure in the thought of the large animal wandering through the streets with this man writhing beneath the fires like a candelabrum blown ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... anchored fast as an oak on land, and the branches clutched and the tendrils quickened, And bound us writhing like snakes to the spars! Ay, we hacked with our knives at the boughs in vain, And Bacchus laughed loud on the decks below, as ever the tough sprays tightened and thickened, And the blazing hours went by, and we gaped with thirst and our ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... loon from the listener's mind. It was a shriek of agony, that came either from one of the female sex, or from a boy so young as not yet to have attained a manly voice. This appeal could not be mistaken. Heart rending terror—if not writhing agony—was in the sounds, and the anguish that had awakened them was as sudden as it was fearful. The young man released his hold of the rush, and dashed his paddle into the water; to do, he knew not ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... expect no help, I made at the brute: then as it stooped and reached out one of its bunches of tentacles, I sprang back, and slashed at them, and immediately I followed this up by a thrust in the stomach, and at that it collapsed into a writhing white ball, that rolled this way and that, and so, in its agony, coming to the edge of the cliff, it fell over, and I was left, sick and near helpless with the hateful ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... arm in such a way as to show that she was not a little satisfied with the beauty of that member. I observed she had about nine bracelets and bangles, consisting of chains and padlocks, the Major's miniature, and a variety of brass serpents with fiery ruby or tender turquoise eyes, writhing up to her elbow almost, in the ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... have tumbled down dead, it was such a sudden fall; but a moment later she saw it flutter on the ground, in battle with the poisonous reptile, whilst the Snake wriggled, and coiled its body into hoops and rings. The Kookooburra's strong wings, beating the air just above the writhing Snake, made a great noise, and the serpent hissed in its fierce hatred and anger. Then Dot saw that the Kookooburra's big beak had a firm hold of the Snake by the back of the neck, and that it was ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... thorns. Conspiracy succeeded conspiracy, and Schouisky felt compelled to enlist all the terrors of the dungeon, the scaffold and the block to maintain his place. Six months only passed away, ere he too was writhing upon the royal couch in the agonies of death, whether paralyzed by poison or smitten by the hand of God, the day of ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... been seized with cramps. Still, he had sense enough to cling to the door, and, when the first spasm of the cramp had passed, to sprawl himself upon it. There he lay for a while, lapped by the water that came over the door, and writhing in his fat nakedness. ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... maddened brute bent down his huge head and delivered a sweeping stroke with his tusk. The great sharp spear of ivory struck the man in the back and was driven clean through the body. The elephant raised his head and swung the man high above the ground. Jack shuddered as he saw the writhing figure impaled on that ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... and pale themselves, and wearing a certain air of fixed calm, the type of an eternal quiet. At the base of the hills lay the city, a dirty mass of bricks and smoke and dust, and at its far edge flowed the river,—deep here, tinted with green, writhing and gurgling and curdling on the banks over shelving ledges of lichen and mud-covered rock. Beyond it yawned the opening to the great West,—the Prairies. Not the dreary deadness here, as farther west. A plain, ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... defensive but for an instant; it was an instinctive movement of defence; and finding there was no attack, it glided away into a cleft of the rock. Dolph's eye followed with fearful intensity; and he saw at a glance that he was in the vicinity of a nest of adders, that lay knotted, and writhing, and hissing in the chasm. He hastened with all speed to escape from so frightful a neighbourhood. His imagination was full of this new horror; he saw an adder in every curling vine, and heard the tail of a rattlesnake in every dry ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... 1682, the ninth in 1684, the tenth in 1685. The help of the engraver had early been called in; and tens of thousands of children looked with terror and delight on execrable copperplates, which represented Christian thrusting his sword into Apollyon, or writhing in the grasp of Giant Despair. In Scotland, and in some of the colonies, the Pilgrim was even more popular than in his native country. Bunyan has told us, with very pardonable vanity, that in New ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... were writhing up the walls before the dynamiters could reach the spot. Yet they made their way to the foundations, carrying their explosives, despite the furnace-like heat. The charge had to be placed so swiftly and the fuse lit in such a hurry ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... by reason of Finn's crushing weight, the frenzy of despair filled the dingo, and he fought like ten dogs, snarling, snapping, writhing, and scratching, all at the same time. Despite Finn's vice-like hold, the dingo did considerable execution with his razor-edged fangs in the lower part of the Wolfhound's fore-legs. But his race was run. Finn gradually shifted his hold, till his front teeth ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... the bitterness of the envy of an incapable, but self-seeking nature, of one with the burning ambition of genius but destitute of the divine fire. To such come unholy torture, which is unspeakable at the knowledge of another's success. Margaret Edes was inwardly writhing. To think that Annie Eustace, little Annie Eustace, who had worshipped at her own shrine, whom she had regarded with a lazy, scarcely concealed contempt, for her incredible lack of wordly knowledge, her provincialism, ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... during one of my lonely journeyings, amid a far distant region of mountain locked within mountain, and sad rivers and melancholy tarns writhing or sleeping within all, that I chanced upon a certain rivulet and island. I came upon them suddenly in the leafy June, and threw myself upon the turf beneath the branches of an unknown odorous shrub, that I might doze as I contemplated the scene. ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... irae, dies illa), when, according to the sentiments of the Middle Ages, the doomed were subjected to every variety of physical suffering, and when this agony of pain, rather than agony of remorse, was expressed in tortured limbs and in faces writhing with demoniacal despair. Such was the variety of tortures which he expressed, showing an unexampled richness in imaginative powers, that people came to see it from the remotest parts of Italy. It made a great sensation, like the appearance ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... sin-stained man. It had not yet become unlawful, as it did with the Arabs afterwards, to represent the human form in sculpture. Human nature was not looked on as so contemptible, that it would be appropriate to represent human bodies writhing under gargoyles, as in Gothic churches, or beneath pillars, as in Stirling Palace. The human form was then considered diviner than the forms of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... went down a steep bank into the broad, bright, river, and putting out from the shore, went into the middle, and shortly the elephant gently dropped down and was entirely submerged, moving majestically along, with not a bit of his huge bulk visible, the end of his proboscis far ahead, writhing and coiling like a water snake every now and then, the nostrils always in sight, but having no apparent connection with the creature to which they belonged. Of course we were sitting in the water, but it was nearly as warm as the air, and so we went ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... Two writhing, panting figures reeled about the living-room. . . . They broke. . . . Shane, livid with rage, side-stepped, and with the agility of a wild-cat leaped again at his adversary. His arm encircled and tightened ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... a fresh inmate into our veranda in the person of a fine young boa constrictor. A man who had caught it in the forest left it for our inspection. It was about ten feet long, and very large, being as thick as a man's thigh. Here it lay writhing about for two or three days, dragging its clog along with it, sometimes stretching its mouth open with a most suspicious yawn, and twisting up the end of its tail into a very tight curl. We purchased it of its captor for 4s. 6d. and got him ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... had made her frantic dash to their shelter. No one would come—no one would see her—no one would hear her, beneath them it was almost dark. Bereft, broken and betrayed, a little mad thing, she pushed her way into their shadow and threw herself face downward, a small, writhing, rose-coloured heap, upon the damp mould. She could not have explained what she was doing or why she had given up all, as if some tidal wave had overwhelmed her. Suddenly she knew that all her new world had gone—forever and ever. As it had come ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... or paste beads attained great celebrity as amulets under the name of serpents' eggs; it was believed that serpents, coiling together in a wriggling, writhing mass, generated them from their slaver and shot them into the air from their hissing jaws. If a man was bold and dexterous enough to catch one of these eggs in his cloak before it touched the ground, he rode off on horseback with it at full speed, pursued by the whole pack of ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... blinding snow in their faces, hurling the decayed limbs and trunks of the older tenants of the wood to the earth around them, in the fury of its blasts, and rattling and creaking through the colliding branches of the writhing green trees, as it swept over the wilderness,—yet, for all these difficulties of the way and commotions of the elements, they faltered not, but continued to move forward in stern and moody silence, hour after hour, in the footsteps of their indomitable leader, until they reached ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... ground one or two at a time. As the intended victim was all the time sitting on the ground it was no difficult achievement in this way to empty the bowl completely by the time he had finished the cocoa-nut. Miru waited in vain to see her intended victim writhing in agony and raging with thirst. Her practice on such occasions was to direct the tortured victim-spirit to dive in a lake close by, to seek relief. None that dived into that water ever came up alive; excessive anguish ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... castigate such a slight thing as Hervey, that "mere white curd"? But Pope has suffered too much from Hervey's insolence to stay his hand, and he now proceeds to lay on the lash with equal fury and precision, drawing blood at every stroke, until we seem to see the wretched fop writhing and shrieking beneath the whip. And then with a magnificent transition he goes on (ll. 332-337) to draw a portrait of himself. Here, he says in effect, is the real man that Sporus has so maligned. The portrait is idealized, of course; one could hardly expect a poet speaking ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... on, I would creep along their pavements as through some city of the dead, thinking of the eyes I saw not watching from the thousand windows; starting at each muffled sound penetrating the long, dreary walls, behind which that close-packed, writhing life lay hid. ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... translation.' Here nothing whatever in favour of the performance was affirmed, and yet the writer was not shocked. A printed Ode to the Warlike Genius of Britain, came next in review; the bard was a lank bony figure, with short black hair; he was writhing himself in agitation, while Johnson read, and shewing his teeth in a grin of earnestness, exclaimed in broken sentences, and in a keen sharp tone, 'Is that poetry, Sir?—Is it Pindar?' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, there is here a great ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... repentance. Have not prayers against sudden death a tendency to interfere with or obstruct that daily walk with God, which alone can fit us to meet the king of terrors? When heart and strength fail; when the body is writhing in agony, or lying an insensible lump of mortality; is that the time to make peace with God? Such persons must he infatuated with strange notions of the Divine Being. No, my reader, life is the time to serve the Lord, the time to insure the great reward. Sudden death is a release from much ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... her within the chamber, and though held back by shame, bold desire kept urging her on. Thrice she made the attempt and thrice she checked herself, the fourth time she fell on her bed face downward writhing in pain. And as when a bride in her chamber bewails her youthful husband, to whom her brothers and parents have given her, nor yet does she hold converse with all her attendants for shame and for thinking of him; but she sits apart in her grief; and some doom has destroyed him, before they have ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... blow of a hammer, the heart ceases its motion at once. And such seemed to be the principle illustrated here. But why the agonized dancing on the sward of the inferior part of the reptile?—why its after painful writhing and wriggling? The young eel scooped from the stream, whose motions it resembled, is impressed by terror, and can feel pain; was it also impressed by terror, or susceptible of suffering? We see in the case of both exactly the same signs,—the dancing, the ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... midst of the laughter that greeted the conclusion of Grinder's story it was seen that Mr Bosher had become black in the face. He was waving his arms and writhing about like one in a fit, his goggle eyes bursting from their sockets, whilst his huge stomach quivering spasmodically, alternately contracted and expanded as if ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... goats is the most horribly cruel that can be conceived. A negro hangs the living animal up by the horns, and makes a circular incision round his neck, which, however, goes no further than to the flesh. He then draws the skin from the body of the writhing animal, which utters the most frightful cries. When the skin is completely removed, and not till then, is the suffering animal killed. The negroes assert that the skin is most easily removed in this manner, and that the odres[50] become thereby more durable. ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... each revolution, scattering earth, gravel and underbrush with the force of a cyclone, leaping at last with a crushing roar into the very midst of the stupefied army. There was a sickening, grinding crash, an instant of silence, then the piteous wails and groans and the spectacle of a writhing, rolling, leaping, struggling mixture of human forms. Almost as the first volley of rocks left its position to roll upon the vanguard of the ambushed horde, the howling devils on the hill tops were scurrying toward the second row, farther to the right. Down poured this second ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... tender hands held my writhing ones, her pitying eyes looked into mine; but she turned from me the next moment in amazement, for Robert Gordon, the mysterious man who had loved my mother, appeared, as if from nowhere, at her side, twisting his hands together and muttering words ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... the speed of a pin-wheel, was on top of his man. He had momentarily released his hold on the Greek's wrist, however, and he had to fight for another hold now—in the dark. Presently he captured it, twisted the arm in the terrible hammer-lock, and broke it; then, while the Greek lay writhing in agony, Mr. O'Leary leaped to his feet and commenced to play with his awful boots a devil's tattoo on that portion of his enemy's superstructure so frequently alluded to in pugilistic circles as "the slats." After five or six kicks, however, he paused, due to a difficulty ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... done both," cried Pauline, indignantly. "Have you not sold my happiness? Have you not bartered perhaps my eternal welfare, that I might lay my aching head upon the downy pillows of the rich, that you might see me a wretched slave, writhing under chains not the less heavy because they ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... awake and listen to when a boy, wondering all the while if the angels were keeping a Fourth of July in heaven. In the midst of it, when the earth and the sky appeared to have met in true Waterloo fashion, and the dark branches of the pines seemed writhing and tossing in a sea of flame, a loud knock came at the hall-door (bells are not the fashion in Dixie), and a servant soon ushered into the room a middle-aged, unassuming gentleman, whom my host received with a respect and cordiality ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... fearful and the hatred of the Government most bitter. What is so lamentable in the history of those times is the undisciplined wildness and feebleness of the attempts made by the people to better themselves. Nothing is more saddening than the spectacle of a huge mass of humanity goaded, writhing, starving, and yet so ignorant that it cannot choose capable leaders, cannot obey them if perchance it gets them, and does not even know how to name its wrongs. The governing classes are apt to mistake the absurdity of the manner in ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... a Chinese warrior, mounted on a writhing dragon, combating an eagle. Japan is seen under the great umbrella. Two more Oriental figures ...
— Palaces and Courts of the Exposition • Juliet James
... writhing shame tortured her, so she was not easy till she had again quarrelled with Theresa and had almost shaken her sister's ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... sigh, then the noise of a fall, and one of the sentries at the mouth of the cave came rolling to our feet. A random shot had struck him, and as he just fell in, a ray of light which entered the grotto, we were able to see him writhing in the agonies of death. Mademoiselle Zephyrine seized my hands, and I felt that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... last to be thus flung aboard was our cocassier Leroy. He fell soft upon a heaving, writhing mass of humanity, which only gradually shook down and sorted itself out on the bottom of the lighter when the hatches overhead were being nailed down. Yet by an odd chance the young Capuchin and Leroy, who had been companions in the ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... Christian writers may be cited as maintaining that this is to be a principal element in the felicity of the redeemed, gloating over the tortures of the damned, singing the song of praise with redoubled emphasis as they see their parents, their children, their former bosom companions, writhing and howling in the fell extremities of torture. Thomas Aquinas says, "That the saints may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more richly, a perfect sight of the punishment of the damned is granted to them."24 Especially did the Puritans seem to revel in this idea, that "the joys ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... lost. Children cried aloud for bread—women moaned, and knelt, and prayed. Their last hope was leaving them. Lee's army was starving and dying. Hour by hour, nearer and nearer came the roar of the gulf of destruction. A sort of stupor descended. The country—prostrate and writhing—tried to rise, but could not. The government knew not where to turn, or what course to pursue. Grant was growing in strength hourly. Lee's little force was dwindling. Sherman was streaming through South Carolina. Grant was reaching out toward Five Forks. All-destroying war grinned hideously—on ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... we planned to skirt the mountains under the cover of darkness, in desperate hope of finding somewhere food and water with which we could return to our boat and defy death by putting out to sea; but ere the brief twilight of the tropics had settled into night, Neddie Benson was writhing and groaning in mortal agony. We were alarmed, and for a time could think of no explanation; but after a while black Frank looked up from where he crouched by the luckless ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... greatness of our country, and of its ability finally to maintain itself against the vast and powerful conspiracy by which it has been so vigorously assailed. At this moment, the domestic foe, notwithstanding his defiant attitude, is actually writhing in the grasp of an outraged nation; and the foreign enemies of our cause, so recently rejoicing in our misfortunes and elated with the envious anticipation of our utter overthrow, are now looking on with silent apprehension and ill-concealed chagrin at the growing strength we ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... body of the shield there were twenty bosses of white tin, with another of dark cyanus in the middle: this last was made to show a Gorgon's head, fierce and grim, with Rout and Panic on either side. The band for the arm to go through was of silver, on which there was a writhing snake of cyanus with three heads that sprang from a single neck, and went in and out among one another. On his head Agamemnon set a helmet, with a peak before and behind, and four plumes of horse-hair ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... and strong again time only can tell. A. has devoted herself to me in the sweetest way. What she has been to me all winter and up to this time, tongue could not tell. My doctor is as kind as a brother. He was a perfect stranger to me, and was brought to my bedside when I was writhing in agony; but in ten minutes his tenderness and sympathy made me forget that he was a stranger, and, through that long night of distress and the long day that followed, he did every thing that mortal could do to relieve and comfort me. He brought his wife up to see me ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... which the main strength of Grenville lay. The official drudge, even on his own chosen ground, was utterly unable to maintain the fight against the great orator and philosopher. When Chatham reappeared, Grenville was still writhing with the recent shame and smart of this well-merited chastisement. Cordial cooperation between the two sections of the opposition was impossible. Nor could Chatham easily connect himself with either. His feelings, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... pain shook Eudemius and turned him livid. He kicked savagely at the writhing figure on the floor and clapped his hands thrice loudly. Two slaves came running, with faces pale with apprehension. Eudemius, almost beyond speech himself, raised a shaking hand and ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... of the dying day was gone, and a sickly, pallid moon glimmered dully among drifts of scudding black clouds. An icy blast wailed up from the sea, and the rocking trees were like dryad specters in writhing agony. The distant Beech Walk looked black and grim and ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... sword-hilt high mid the kings of men, I, lord of the golden harness, the flame of the Glittering Heath, Must snarl to the she-wolf's snarling, and snap with greedy teeth, While my hands with the hand-bonds struggled; my teeth took hold the first And amid her mighty writhing the bonds that bound me burst, As with Fenrir's Wolf it shall be: then the beast with the hopples I smote, When my left hand stiff with the bonds had got her by the throat. But I turned when I had slain her, and there lay Sigi dead, ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... Canterbury property, and has in vain tendered back his 6s. 8d. for taking the oath. The Archbishop refuses to accept it; and feeling himself light and disencumbered, wisely keeps the saddle upon the back of the writhing and agonized scrivener. I have talked it over with several Clergymen, and the general opinion is, ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... in deepest darkness, those thronging figures, weirdly distorted, sprang at him afresh, sending ignominious trickles down his spine. Walls, window slabs, door beams—the vast building was encrusted with them from base to summit; a nightmare of prancing, writhing, gesticulating unrest; only one still face repeated at intervals—the Great God holding ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... plasters." Claude's uncle, Mark Clark joined the Northern Army. His master did not go to war but remained on the plantation. One day at noon during the war the gin house was seen to be afire, one of the slaves rushed in and found the master badly burned and writhing in pain. He was taken from the building and given first aid, but his body being burned in oil and so badly burned it burst open, thus ended the life of the ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... England and France! "Sebastopol falls, or we die!" Now the death-storm pours, and the smoke up-soars, And the battle rages with furious might, And the red blood streams, and the fire-flash gleams, And the writhing thousands—God! God! what a sight. The hoarse-throated cannon belch fiery breath, And hurl forth the murderous rain, Which dances along on its message of death, And sings o'er the dying and slain! Crash! Crash! Then a leap ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... Mr. Bultitude, with the breath half beaten out of his body, lay writhing and spluttering on his hard, rough bed till long after silence had fallen over the adjoining beds, and the sleepy hum of talk in the other bedrooms had ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... shoots of the honeysuckle; in short, all the innocent creatures have that is most tangled, wayward, wild,—flames and triple darts, leaves lanceolated or jagged, stalks convoluted like passionate desires writhing in the soul. From the bosom of this torrent of love rises the scarlet poppy, its tassels about to open, spreading its flaming flakes above the starry jessamine, dominating the rain of pollen—that soft mist fluttering in the air and reflecting the light ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... which has cost many a life ere now, and will cost more. And I am sorry to tell you, my little man, that even now too many people have no more sense than they had, and die in consequence. If you could see a battle-field, and men shot down, writhing and dying in hundreds by shell and bullet, would not that seem to you a horrid sight? Then—I do not wish to make you sad too early, but this is a fact that everyone should know—that more people, and not strong men only, but women and ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... are standing straight In the state Of Freedom's foremost acolyte, Yet keep calm footing all the time On writhing bond-slaves,—for this crime This is the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... The snake had flopped from its hollow, plunged at full length aside; had started to crawl, writhing, dragging its hinder parts. But with a swoop the pony arrived before we were noting; the recruit plumped into the hollow; and bending over in his swift circle the courier snatched the snake from the ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... Roon, his evil gaze upon the bed, held the candle aloft, the mulatto, with a curious preparatory writhing movement of the mighty shoulders, lowered his outstretched fingers to the disordered ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... of mortal anguish that no tongue of man can utter, nor pen can shadow. Chained sane amongst the mad; on his wedding-day; expecting with tied hands the sinister acts of the soul-murderers who had the power to make their lie a truth! We can paint the body writhing vainly against its unjust bonds; but who can paint the loathing, agonised soul in a mental situation so ghastly? For my part I feel it in my heart of hearts; but am impotent to convey ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... aim and even as I spoke, he pulled the trigger. This time his shot took effect for we saw the beast loose his hold on the beaver and roll over writhing in agony. ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... from the afterdeck with a screaming figure in its grasp and vanished into the water beyond the yacht. There were others writhing about the decks. Thorpe saw them as he made his ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... descending stick. He tried to tear it from her, and they fought each other almost in silence, except for the sound of their quick, painful breath. He grew frantic, twisting and writhing. He began to curse her as his father cursed Christine. But her slim brown wrists were like steel. And suddenly, looking into her eyes he saw that she wasn't angry now. She knew that she was stronger than he. She was just ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... heavy breathing and struggling of the men on the floor seemed to Elmur loud enough to alarm the whole Castle, in spite of the furious screaming of the gale. He sprang to the writhing heap and tried to pinion Colendorp, but as he touched him the wounded man fell back. In a moment Sagan was on his feet calling on Elmur to bring the lamp. He seized Colendorp under the arm and shoved him roughly towards the wall, where throwing back a curtain he opened a door ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... swarm of their native followers, and now the end was very near. From behind the barrier, and around the lip of the great trap, the hillmen fired their hardest into the seething mass of soldiers and followers writhing in the awful Gehenna on which the calm moon shone down. On the edges of this whirlpool of death the fell Ghilzais were stabbing and hacking with the ferocious industry inspired by thirst for blood and lust for plunder. It is among the characteristics of ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... paused on the threshold. In the whirl and dust of the tumult he could discern the digger's wilderness of hair, the bulky form of Garsett, and the thin American, in a tangled, writhing mass. His friend Cathro was looking on with open mouth and trembling hands, ineffectual, inactive. But Scarlett, making a sudden rush into the melee, seized the lucky digger, and dragged him, infuriated, struggling, swearing, from the unwieldy Garsett, on whose ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... a big fellow enough, was never over ready to put his head in chancery. He stood in the street, shaking his fist, and writhing his face ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... strangled whoop and charged straight at the man behind the hose. The two clinched. While they struggled, the writhing hose slapped back and forth between them like an agitated snake. Clay had one advantage. He was wet through anyhow. It did not matter how much of the deluge struck him. The janitor fought to keep dry and he had not a ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... were racing up the steps that led to the bridge and the pilot house. One lay with arms outstretched, face down on the deck. Another was sliding down the rail of the steps, his face writhing with pain. ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... rails, hastily piled, between assailants and the assailed. At this juncture another gallant act was performed by Captain Winthrop, of Alexander's Battery. Sitting on his horse in our rear, watching the battle as it ebbed and flowed, and seeing the deadly throes in which the Third was writhing, only a few feet separating them from the enemy, by some sudden impulse or emotion put spurs to his horse and dashed headlong through our ranks, over the breastworks, and fell desperately wounded in the ranks of the Federals, just as their lines gave way or surrendered. This was only one ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... any form to be seen; no animal or bush or blade of grass. There was only the barren floor of the chasm, made a harsh green shade by the two suns and writhing and undulating with heat waves like a nightmare sea, while above them the towering cliffs shimmered, too, and sometimes seemed to be leaning far out over their heads and already ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... prevent his cries, Lorenzino doubled his fist into the Duke's mouth. Alessandro seized the thumb between his teeth, and held it in a vice until he died. This disabled Lorenzino, who still lay upon his victim's body, and Scoronconcolo could not strike for fear of wounding his master. Between the writhing couple he made, however, several passes with his sword, which only pierced the mattress. Then he drew a knife and drove it into the Duke's throat, and bored about till he had ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... Parliament to save the kingdom and to govern alone." But the Parliament showed no will to "govern alone." It looked on the rising and the intervention of the Scots as means of freeing it from the control under which it had been writhing since the expulsion of the eleven. It took advantage of the crisis to profess its adherence to Monarchy, to reopen the negotiations it had broken off with the king, and to deal the fiercest blow at religious freedom which it had ever received. The Presbyterians ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... thus be seen that Paine was forging reasons—his active brain was at work, and his sensitive spirit was writhing under a sense ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... garden hung very high above the lane, and its end was steep and sharp, like a fortress. Beyond was a roll of real country, with a white path sprawling across it, and the roots, boles, and branches of great gray trees writhing and twisting against the sky. But as if to assert that the lane itself was suburban, were sharply relieved against that gray and tossing upland a lamp-post painted a peculiar yellow-green and a red pillar-box that stood exactly at the corner. Inglewood was sure of the place; ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... with more blows, when suddenly a bullet whistled, followed by a loud report. Mautang dropped his rifle, uttered an oath, and clutching at his breast with both hands fell spinning into a heap. The prisoner saw him writhing in the dust with blood spurting from ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... collection of plants in pots, which imparted an earthy flavour of their own to the establishment. However choice examples of their kind, too, these plants were of a kind peculiarly adapted to the embowerment of Mrs. Pipchin. There were half-a-dozen specimens of the cactus, writhing round bits of a lath, like hairy serpents; another specimen shooting out broad claws, like a green lobster; several creeping vegetables, possessed of sticky and adhesive leaves; and one uncomfortable flower-pot hanging to the ceiling, which appeared to have boiled ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... out and seized the woodbine spray, cut it savagely and then shut the window. She came back with the spray in her hand, took off the stove cover and thrust it in, twining and writhing as if it had life and rebelled ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... And dark and darker glooms the scene. Through the thicket streaming, Lightnings now are gleaming; Thunders rolling dread, Shake the mountain's head; Nature's war Echoes far, O'er ether borne, That flash The ash Has scath'd and torn! Now it rages; Oaks of ages, Writhing in the furious blast, Wide their leafy honours cast; Their gnarled arms do force to force oppose Deep rooted in the crevic'd rock, The sturdy trunk sustains the shock, Like dauntless hero firm ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... after writhing about, in a great many strange attitudes, and often twisting his face and eyes into an expression like that which is usually produced by eating gooseberries very early in the season, was by this time awake also. Seeing that Mr Quilp invested himself in his every-day ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... masters failing him, she alone was left. He went over to her and snuggled his head in her lap, nudging her arm with his nose—an old trick of his when begging for favors. He backed away from her and began writhing and twisting playfully, curvetting and prancing, half rearing and striking his forepaws to the earth, struggling with all his body, from the wheedling eyes and flattening ears to the wagging tail, to express the thought that was in him and that was ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... comprehend the case, and eloquent to plead it, and powerful to win pardon whatever were the guilt. Hilda witnessed what she deemed to be an example of this species of confidence between a young man and his saint. He stood before a shrine, writhing, wringing his hands, contorting his whole frame in an agony of remorseful recollection, but finally knelt down to weep and pray. If this youth had been a Protestant, he would have kept all that torture pent ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... colored woman in a Georgia village, hearing a commotion in a neighbor's cabin, looked in at the door. On the floor lay a small boy writhing in great distress while his mother bent solicitously ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... resent the vilest insults heaped upon them by noble-owned and protected menials—and now equally with the common herd obliged to submit to the strong argument of sword and lance, as, every little while, the soldiers along the line drove the whole writhing crowd, without distinction, into smaller and more confined compass. Here and there, knights and soldiers of high rank—riding up on horseback, and pushing through the struggling mass of slaves to the front, or more leisurely, but to equal purpose, waiting until their own menials had gone before, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of the mob recoiled as a charge of electricity at a voltage just short of that required to take life coursed through their bodies. Shrieks of agony rang out. Files of writhing ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... fence, and something that had flashed in Rance's hand dropped at her feet; for another flash and report rolled him over in the dust; and across his writhing body two men strode, and caught her ere ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... into the arms of trouble. He strolled along the main street, peering every yard of his way through the writhing gloom. Nobody was about. He reached Bell Yard, and turned into it. Then he heard something. Something that brought him to a sharp halt. Before he saw or heard anything more definite, he felt that he was surrounded. To place direction of sound was impossible. He heard, ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... weather is thrust upon us. Santone, then, cannot be blamed for this cold gray fog that came and kissed the lips of the three thousand, and then delivered them to the cross. That night the tubercles, whose ravages hope holds in check, multiplied. The writhing fingers of the pale mist did not go thence bloodless. Many of the wooers of ozone capitulated with the enemy that night, turning their faces to the wall in that dumb, isolated apathy that so terrifies their watchers. On the red stream of Hemorrhagia a few souls drifted away, leaving behind pathetic ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... They lay against their food like stupendous slugs, huge, greasy hulls, eating greedily and noisily, with a sort of sobbing avidity. They seemed monsters of mere fatness, clumsy and overwhelmed to a degree that would make a Smithfield ox seem a model of agility. Their busy, writhing, chewing mouths, and eyes closed, together with the appetising sound of their munching, made up an effect of animal enjoyment that was singularly stimulating to ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... bitter-sweet despair for the last chords of that ineffable, passionate strain—the swoon of sorrow ending that brief, palpitating ecstasy, the proper, dirge-like close to that triumphant hymn of love and youth and beauty. All the frantic rushing and tortured writhing and uproar of noisy anguish of the usual stage ending seemed utter desecration to me; but Garrick was an actor, the first of actors, and his death-scene of the lovers and ending of the play is much ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... would intimidate Ascyltos with a brush dipped in satyrion. Then a catamite appeared, clad in a myrtle-colored frieze robe, and girded round with a belt. One minute he nearly gored us to death with his writhing buttocks, and the next, he befouled us so with his stinking kisses that Quartilla, with her robe tucked high, held up her whalebone wand and ordered him to give the unhappy wretches quarter. Both of us then took a most ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... and indignation, the king hastily withdrew from the banquet into the palace-garden: while the offender, who was too well acquainted with the countenance of his master not to perceive that "there was evil determined against him," writhing in all the agonies of despair, produced by a consciousness of guilt, and a dread of merited punishment, implored the queen to intercede for his safety. He who was profuse of the lives of others, with a consistency which is characteristic of villany and despotism cannot ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... mingling with the gay throng at Washington. Immodesty, Mrs. Markham called it, with sundry reflections upon the time when she was young, and what young married women did then. And while she talked poor Ethelyn lay upon the lounge writhing with pain and passion, wishing that she could die, and feeling in her heart that she hated the entire Markham race, from Richard down to the innocent Andy, who heard of the quarrel going on between his mother ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... indomitable Shade of Care. But the truth is that Kirkwood's brain comprehended little that his eyes perceived; his thoughts were with his heart, and that was half a world away and sick with pity for another and a fairer city, stricken in the flower of her loveliness, writhing in Promethean ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... manoeuvres. Each detachment walked round its stretcher twice, then stood at ease again, then at attention, then dressed up and arranged itself, and brushed, itself down. All this while their wounded comrades lay writhing, and appealing for help in vain. It was with difficulty that, lame as I was, I could be restrained from dashing to their aid. But at last everything was in order. Stretchers were solemnly lifted. The detachments marched slowly forward, and deposited their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... full arm chords with sudden fury, writhing upon the stool as he struck the angry notes from the piano. Pearl's ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... their thousand miles through England with Mrs. Devar as a shield of innocence!... Mrs. Devar!... Can't you hear the long and loud guffaw that would convulse society as soon as her name cropped up? Ah, you are writhing under the lash now, I fancy! It is dawning on you that a peril greater than the sword or bullet may be near. Dozens of people in Paris and London know, or guess, at any rate, that I was Cynthia Vanrenen's suitor, but as many hundreds as there ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... mother's footsteps, we have been routed night after night from our warm quarters, in the dead of winter, to kindle fires and fill frosty kettles from water-pails thickly crusted with ice, that we might get the writhing pedal extremities of our little heir into a tub of water as quickly as possible. But lately we have learned that all this work and exposure is needless. We simply wring a towel from salted water—a bowl of it standing in ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... long I remained in this condition, but at last, while writhing on the bed in a fit of spasmodic fury, I suddenly perceived the Abbe Serapion, who was standing erect in the centre of the room, watching me attentively. Filled with shame of myself, I let my head fall upon my breast and covered my face ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... equinoctial storms had careered over the country; first, wind and snow; then wind and sleet, the latter dissolving into icy tears, encircling captive Nature in thousands of weird, glossy crystals; every tree of the forest, according to its instinct, its nature, writhing in the conqueror's cold embrace—rigid, creaking, ready to snap in twain rather than bend, as the red oak or sugar maple, or else meekly, submissively curving to the earth its tapering, frosted limbs, like the silver birch— elegant, though fragile, ornament of the Canadian ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... utmost to turn the table on end, or side, with the legs out in the room. Before the "grabber" could get the lay of things and get past it, the spooks would have gone through the trap, closed it, pulled up the ladder, and the "grabber" would have found the medium writhing and groaning and bleeding from the mouth. The bleeding was for effect, and was caused by sucking very hard on ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... have seen—all may see—that noble picture of Israel in Egypt which now hangs in the Royal Academy; in which the Hebrews, harnessed like beasts of burden, writhing under the whips of their taskmasters, are dragging to its place some ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... did not doubt his terrible ability, he unwrapped his coils from the Kabit. His head, with its graceful antennae searching the air, and the tentacles around his mouth writhing hungrily, reared itself ten times a man's height from the ground. His small red eyes flashed like precious stones. Beyond, the mighty greenish coils slashed the rotting weed as he unwrapped ...
— The Terror from the Depths • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... was he that the world looked like a ball. Until then he had not known the earth was round. The seas enveloping the greater part of the globe looked like writhing serpents. ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... the girl's writhing lips she clutched at her throat: she seemed to fight a moment for breath, for life: then with a stifled shriek fell in a swoon to ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... gazing in silence at the unwonted spectacle of a man who had lately been mincing with the gait of a worldling or a military fop now writhing in dishevelment and despair as he poured out upon the hostile forces by which human ingenuity so often finds itself outwitted ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... certain it is, that at day-break he was found in the same painful position by a clergyman returning from attendance on a death-bed, who, as he advanced, thought he heard groans, and bending over the dyke, discovered a child seated on a stone, writhing from pain, and with ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... of fire. Later still Hansen came again to say that now it was quite extraordinary. No words can depict the glory that met our eyes. The glowing fire-masses had divided into glistening, many-colored bands, which were writhing and twisting across the sky both in the south and north. The rays sparkled with the purest, most crystalline rainbow colors, chiefly violet-red or carmine and the clearest green. Most frequently the rays of the arch were red at the ends, and changed higher ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... ought to send those children to school, Mrs. McAravey?" asked the clergyman, whose kind heart had been touched, on the occasion of a recent pic-nic, to see the half-drowned little ones toiling amid the heaps of wet and writhing sea-wrack. ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... filled him with the greatest wonder, for at the moment that he saw her, the she-ape leaped upon the glistening body of the snake, and as the mighty folds encircled her as well as her offspring, she made no effort to escape, but instead grasped the writhing body in a futile effort to tear it from ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of happiness or pain. Here is where it may be seen, cheek to cheek, now in all the shivering ecstacies of intense rapture, or again moping carelessly along, with pale brow and flashing eye, sometimes writhing in the agony of undying attachment, or chanting its mad lay of hope and love in a spirit of fearful happiness more affecting than either ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... point is this," pursued the professor. "An earthquake is a continuous series of intricate twistings and oscillations in all possible directions, up and down, east and west, north and south, of the greatest irregularity both in intensity and direction. This writhing of the earth—of the very foundations of the ground we walk on—caused our ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... Irony couldn't have devised a more intolerable situation. So thought Steele Weir as he strode away from the dwelling, still laboring under the emotions provoked by the girl's disclosure, wincing at his own biting thoughts and writhing at his own helplessness. It needed only this revelation to cap the whole ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... on their shores the bones of human beings; heard unknown wild voices in the mountain ravines; made out the fires over miry swamps of the will-o'-the-wisps; witnessed burning lakes; gazed upward to mountains whose peaks could not be scaled; came across great balls of writhing snakes in the ditches in winter; met with streams which are eternally frozen, rocks like petrified caravans of camels, horsemen and carts; and over all saw the barren mountains whose folds looked like ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... tactics, but the cavity revealed no lurking form within. Naturally, his companions were absorbed in McCulloch's actions, because they knew that any instant a blinding sheet of flame might leap out of the darkness and a bullet send him prostrate and writhing. Of the three, Curtis was most inured to an environment that was unusual and weird, and he it was who first noticed that the barge was altering its position with regard to the white discs of light which the lamps of the automobile formed in the mist, and a splash caused ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... trees or holding up the withered, lifeless trunks of others long dead. They filled the space between the tree-tops and the undergrowth, entangled, crisscrossed, festooned, like a petrified mass of writhing snakes. ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... I sat alone, with her shrouded body, in that fantastic chamber which had received her as my bride.—Wild visions, opium-engendered, flitted, shadow-like, before me. I gazed with unquiet eye upon the sarcophagi in the angles of the room, upon the varying figures of the drapery, and upon the writhing of the parti-colored fires in the censer overhead. My eyes then fell, as I called to mind the circumstances of a former night, to the spot beneath the glare of the censer where I had seen the faint traces of the shadow. It was ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... things sent from Ghost-land. They met in Lone Sahib's room in shrouded and sepulchral gloom, and their conclave was broken up by clinking among the photo-frames on the mantelpiece. A wee white kitten, nearly blind, was looping and writhing itself between the clock and the candlesticks. That stopped all investigations or doubtings. Here was the Manifestation in the flesh. It was, so far as could be seen, devoid of purpose, but it was a ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... vast mass of earth, a slice of the mountain side that had been torn loose by that last mighty writhing of tortured nature and that now held him as securely a prisoner as though he were in ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... through him, that he did not. It may have been a good thing for him, as a future king; it may be a good thing for many a man now, to learn the sinfulness of sin, by feeling its effects in his own person; by writhing under those miseries of body and soul, which wicked men can, and do ...
— David • Charles Kingsley
... courageous child. I would beg hard to have a single pair of shutters held slightly open by two persons ready to shut them in a second, and so snatched glimpses of the tortured, flying clouds and writhing trees, while old Si' Myra, one of the freed slaves who never had left us, crouched in a ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... undressed, was vainly trying to violate Rosa, who was half choking with laughter. The two pumps were holding him by the arms and trying to calm him, as they were shocked at such a scene after that morning's ceremony; but Raphaele and Fernande were urging him on, writhing and holding their sides with laughter, and they uttered shrill cries at every useless attempt that ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... answered. Such expeditions with the boys were sources of tears and tribulations. Elizabeth was always meeting with disaster. She was not satisfied unless she was manipulating a rod and line, and she did not know which filled her with the greatest heartrending compunction, the sight of the poor worm writhing on the hook or the poor fish. Then she was always being thrown into a panic of terror by the sight of a snake or a frog or a mud-turtle, and when real dangers did not menace, the boys supplied imaginary ones ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... de meanest trick yet, servin' a decent prisoner dis way. I'll cowhide ebery one ob you. Oh, dear, I wish I had de whip!" he muttered, writhing and rolling in helpless ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis
... from being the view of Rome or of Spain, of the Catholic missionaries, or of the Irish exiles abroad. They represented and perhaps believed the Irish people to be writhing under a religious oppression which it was burning to shake off. They saw in the Irish loyalty to Catholicism a lever for overthrowing the heretic Queen. Stukely, an Irish refugee, had pressed on the Pope and Spain as early as 1571 the policy of a descent on Ireland; and ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... partial gloom of this species of chapel, lighted by many burning, smoky joss-sticks, with its glint of many-coloured silks, and gold embroidery; the whining, nasal, half-spoken, monotonous drone of the singers with their writhing figures bespangled with gold and vivid colour; the incessant stream of shrill tones from the wind instruments; the wavering, light clatter of the musical stones broken by the steady crash of gongs and the deep booming of large drums; while from ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... I also! Almost as much a stranger here as you, though born here, I came from Marseilles a little while ago. Don't be cast down.' The face looked up at him imploringly, as he rose from wiping it, and gently replaced the coat that covered the writhing figure. 'I won't leave you till you shall be well taken care of. Courage! You will be very much better half ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... like the sides of the letter V, with a deep pit at the narrow end. Then forming a circuit for miles around, they drove the game—buffaloes, zebras, gnus, antelopes, and the like—into the mouth of the hopo, and along its narrowing lane, until they plunged pell-mell in one confused, writhing, struggling mass into the pit, where ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... Darkness was fast gathering as I reached the street and began to walk madly. Word by word I rehearsed the scene in the drawing-room over the Park, but I could not think calmly, for the pain of it. Little by little I probed, writhing, until far back in my boyhood I was tearing at the dead roots of that cherished plant, which was the Hope of Her Love. It had grown with my own life, and now with its death to-day I felt that I had lost all that was dear to me. Then, in the midst of this abject self-pity, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... wrist and closed, the fingers like bands of iron. Joyce screamed wildly, her nerve swept away in a reaction of terror. She fought like a wildcat, twisting and writhing with all her supple strength to break the grip ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... to that writhing heart! Fling the life back to that whitening cheek! Let not the pent breath forever stay From the lips, too white ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... one high mass Ever met disaster with so cheerful a smile Every one sees what you seem, few perceive what you are Evil has the advantage of rapidly assuming many shapes Famous fowl in every pot Fed on bear's liver, were nearly poisoned to death Fellow worms had been writhing for half a century in the dust Fled from the land of oppression to the land of liberty For his humanity towards the conquered garrisons (censured) For us, looking back upon the Past, which was then the Future French seem madmen, and are wise ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Sesame!"—Nature flamed with gladness. The sun boiled. The liquid sky ran like a clear river. The earth steamed and cried aloud in delight. The plants, the trees, the insects, all the innumerable creatures were like dazzling tongues of flame in the fire of life writhing upwards. Everything ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... one of Emma's letters for months. But somehow I couldn't help reading these. I had forgotten what a gift for the expression of sentiment Emma had. She fairly revelled in it, Tom. Those letters were simply writhing with clinging female adjectives. ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... a rocket went streaking up toward heaven and a second later a slender rope fell writhing across the deck, where Roy stood swinging ...
— The Boy Scouts on Picket Duty • Robert Shaler
... she spoke, as she had wept, more freely for the darkness. He fancied that she was writhing on her seat, that she was tearing her handkerchief with her hands. 'But—it may not be he,' he said after a silence broken only by the rumble of wheels and the steady trampling ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... one long gamble for every wolf that appeared; he had gruesome recollections of the many coyotes he had seen in traps. But those things gave him small concern. It was still another menace—the poison baits put out by wolfers—which held him back. Not that he feared poison for himself, but coyotes writhing in convulsions and frothing at the mouth had always filled him with a terrible dread. It was an epidemic of this sort which had driven him to leave the sagebrush land of the coyotes for the heavily timbered country of the wolves. ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... over the city. The sun was low, glaring through a narrow rift between the hill-crests and the clouds that spread green and heavy across the sky. I could see the lower fringes of the clouds working and writhing in the wind, but not a sound or a breath was in the air about me. Around me over my roof flew the night-hawks. They were crying peevishly and skimming close to the chimneys, not rising, as usual, to ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... her assistance the lance of light of the ideal? Is she condemned to hear the fearful approach of Evil through the density of the gulf, and to catch glimpses, nearer and nearer at hand, beneath the hideous water of that dragon's head, that maw streaked with foam, and that writhing undulation of claws, swellings, and rings? Must it remain there, without a gleam of light, without hope, given over to that terrible approach, vaguely scented out by the monster, shuddering, dishevelled, wringing its arms, forever chained to the rock of night, a ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the same horrid silence sprang Wully, and savagely tore him again and again before a deadly blow from the fagot-hook disabled him, dashing him, gasping and writhing, on the stone floor, desperate, and done for, but game and defiant to the last. Another quick blow scattered his brains on the hearthstone, where so long he had been a faithful and honored retainer—and Wully, bright, fierce, trusty, treacherous Wully, quivered a moment, then straightened ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the arms, and would have forced her forwards to touch Lois, possibly esteeming that as a cure for her being bewitched. But Prudence had hardly been made to take three steps before she struggled out of their arms, and fell down writhing as in a fit, calling out with shrieks, and entreating Lois to help her, and save her from her torment. Then all the girls began 'to tumble down like swine' (to use the words of an eye-witness) and to cry out upon Lois and her fellow-prisoners. These last were now ordered to stand with their hands ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... introduced. Mr. ——— is a young-looking man, dark, with a mustache, rather small, and though he has the manners of a man who has seen the world, it evidently requires an effort in him to speak to anybody; and I could see his whole person slightly writhing itself, as it were, while he addressed me. This is strange in a man of his public position, member for the county, necessarily mixed up with life in many forms, the possessor of sixteen thousand pounds a year, and the representative of an ancient name. Nevertheless, I liked him, and felt as if I ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... green tarn lapping the edge of some rocky shore. Oak, beech and ash, hawthorn, sycamore and elder, went to make the solid bosses of verdure that filled the valley, while at one end a grove of furs stood up blackly, winter and summer. Giant laurels, twisted and writhing creations of a nightmare, spread their snake-like branches beneath the rocky wall at one side of the wood, and in spring they shook their pale, sickly tassels in a gloom that was as green, as freckled ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... tumbling race, where the waters came up writhing and boiling from strife with hidden rocks below,—past the dark chasm between Brecqhou and the mainland of Sark, through which the race roared with the voice of many waters—and so into a quiet haven where hard-worked boats lay resting from ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... day I had gnawed my chain, Till I sharpened the stubborn link; But when I had pierced the swollen vein, And was writhing in death's last dreadful pain, ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... lights, and executing the whole with admirable diligence. In it were the two Emperors on the seat of judgment, condemning to the cross all the prisoners, who were turned towards the tribunal, some kneeling, some standing, and others bowed, but all naked and bound in different ways, and writhing with piteous gestures in various attitudes, revealing the trembling of the limbs at the prospect of the severing of the soul from the body in the agony and torment of crucifixion; besides which, there were depicted in those heads the constancy of faith in the ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... a human fantastic, struggling, writhing, twisting with maniacal might, the while the horrible quicksand held him by the legs, and swallowed him, ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels |
