"Helter-skelter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... looked at it, the heap of blankets and rugs on the stove moved, first in one place and then in another. Then there was a little laugh. Then another. And suddenly there was a great stir in the blankets, and they were all thrown back helter-skelter, and there were dozens and dozens of little queer children, laughing and laughing and laughing, and looking at the old man. And every child had a little turnip, and showed it to the old ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... thing is the rage, Helter-skelter runs the age; Minds on this round earth of ours Vary like the leaves and flowers, Fashion'd after certain laws; Sing thou low or loud or sweet, All at all points thou canst not meet, Some will ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... Blenkiron behind me, evidently mortally unhappy about the pace we set and the mount he sat. He used to say that horse-exercise was good for his liver, but it was a gentle amble and a short gallop that he liked, and not this mad helter-skelter. His thighs were too round to fit a saddle leather. We passed a fire in a hollow, the bivouac of some Turkish unit, and all the horses shied violently. I knew by Blenkiron's oaths that he had lost his stirrups and was sitting ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... visiting his friend, whom he usually found in bed. It was William Clerk who sat for the picture of Darsie Latimer, the hero of Redgauntlet,—whence we should suppose him to have been a lively, generous, susceptible, contentious, and rather helter-skelter young man, much alive to the ludicrous in all situations, very eager to see life in all its phases, and somewhat vain of his power of adapting himself equally to all these phases. Scott tells a story of Clerk's being once baffled—almost for the first ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... silently retired I turned and watched them still, And they came helter-skelter out, Driven forward like a rabble rout Into the world they had so desired By the ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... lately been erected a campanile which is admirable in both color and proportion. Indeed, when a fanfaronnade of sunset is blown wide behind it, you suffer a sudden tinge of homesickness for Venice or Ravenna. It is good enough for that. But beside it is a helter-skelter wooden edifice which reminds you of Surf Avenue at Coney Island. Indeed, the Settlement as a whole exhibits still an overwhelmment of the unaesthetic, and appalls the eye of the new-comer from a ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... plumb out of the gates of Paradise, Bill fell. And now the still air was lashed into a fury of sound-waves, tearing this way and that in twenty keys; now the sleeping garden was torn by rushing figures, helter-skelter for ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... lantern, and ran off and pushed his head into a currant bush; Fancy scudded up the path; and Mr. Shiner floundered away helter-skelter among the cabbages. Geoffrey stood his ground, unmoved and firm as a rock. Fancy was the first to return, followed by Enoch picking up the lantern. Mr. Shiner still ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... weariness to flight," interrupted the host. "Aleksasha, do you run helter-skelter to the kitchen, and there tell the cook to serve the fish pasties. Yes, and where have that gawk of an Emelian and that thief of an Antoshka got to? Why have they ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... the pit-like recesses among the tussocks. At first it was supposed to be a dead bullock, but the beast on being disturbed rose upon his fore flippers, and, displaying a formidable array of teeth, roared loudly* at the disturbers of his rest, who, being unarmed, rushed helter-skelter to the boat and went off to the ship. They returned immediately with an assortment of pikes, muskets, and pistols sufficient to ensure the destruction of a host of sealions; but after cautiously investing the place, it was discovered that the beast had very prudently ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... horsewhips, to chase away all the old women out of his Grace's path, for truly Sidonia might be amongst them. From this, it came to pass that as soon as it was rumoured in the town, "His Grace is coming," all the old mothers seized up their pattens, and scampered off, helter-skelter, to get out ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety-two, Did the English fight the French,—woe to France! And the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter through the blue, Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks pursue, Came crowding ship on ship to St. Malo on the Rance, 5 With ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... verily "reeked" again. Maddened by the torment, he began to lay about him lustily with a long whittle which he carried for domestic purposes. They gave back at so unexpected a reception. Taking courage thereby, Robin followed, and they fled, helter-skelter, like a routed army. Through loop-holes and windows went the obscene crew, with such hideous screeches as startled the whole neighbourhood. He gave one last desperate lunge as a parting remembrance, and felt that his weapon had made a hit. Something ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... comfortably seated at the tea-table, enjoying their waffles, cold tongue, and canned peaches, and asking and answering questions helter-skelter in the delightful confusion of reunion after long separation, let us briefly inform the reader who and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... he. "Men and women, priests and pretty girls, all helter-skelter. It's enough to make one die ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... fault," said Paul, taking aim. His bullet struck the right shoulder of the savage, who went spinning round down the hill, and was soon in the midst of his followers, who now took to flight helter-skelter, and were soon lost to ...
— The Young Berringtons - The Boy Explorers • W.H.G. Kingston
... destroyed. Women and men were to be seen hurrying out of the burning buildings in their night clothes, furniture was thrown into the street, costly pianos, richly upholstered furniture, valuable pictures and a great many other expensive articles were dropped in the snow in a helter-skelter manner. Although nearly every room in the hotel was occupied and rumors flew thick and fast that many of the guests were still in their rooms, fortunately no lives were lost and no one was injured. The coolest person in the building was a young man by the name of Pete O'Brien, the night watchman. ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore
... manuscript from a literary point of view the poor General did not exaggerate. Anything more hopeless as a continuous narrative I have never read. But it supplied facts, hit off odds and ends of character, and—what the autobiography seldom does—it gave the ipsissima verba of conversations written in helter-skelter fashion with flowing pen, sometimes in excellent French, sometimes in English, which beginning in the elaborate style of his letter broke down into queer vernacular; it was charmingly devoid of self-consciousness, so that the man as he was, and not as he imagined himself to be or would like ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety-two, Did the English fight the French,—woe to France! And, the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter thro' the blue, Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks pursue, Came crowding ship on ship to St. Malo on the Rance, With ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... other side were brought to a momentary halt. That moment meant life and liberty to Blakeney; already he had crossed the antichambre. Quite coolly and quietly now he took out the key from the inner side of the main door and slipped it to the outside. The next second—even as the four men rushed helter-skelter into the antichambre he was out on the landing and had turned ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... used only when he had a large supply to dispose of hurriedly, and not always then. Meeko is a careless fellow and soon forgets. When I gave him only a few to dispose of, he hid them helter-skelter among the leaves, forgetting some of them afterwards and enjoying the rare delight of stumbling upon them when he was hungriest—much like a child whom I saw once giving himself a sensation. He would throw his penny on the ground, go ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... machines plowed in among them, hurling them helter-skelter on all sides, the occupants continuing ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... there being not more than three or four hundred people in Palace Yard, a number of Press messengers, rushing helter-skelter out of the court and into waiting cabs, indicated the arrival of some critical juncture within the jealously guarded portals. Presently it was whispered that the Lord Chief Justice had finished his summing up, and that Mr. Justice Mellor was addressing the jury. ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... had never recurred to him since the day on which they had been done or said, mischievous practical jokes played off upon some unlucky school-fellow, mess-room jests and tattle, and a thousand other absurdities, at which he laughed aloud. Then disconnected words and phrases rushed helter-skelter through his seething brain, having no meaning, yet causing him the keenest annoyance, because he believed he had heard them before, and was anxious to connect them with the circumstances of their utterance. There was one in particular which ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... kitchen, the two older Peckham boys set to work up-stairs, under Jean's direction. Kit had made for her father's room the first thing. When Jean opened the door she found her piling the contents of the desk and chiffonier drawers helter-skelter into blankets. ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... mean by 'basic form'? In truth it is hard to define. Only, this world, that seems such a heterogeneous helter-skelter of mournful promiscuities, is in fact the pattern that flows from the loom of an Eternal Weaver: a beautiful pattern, with its rhythms and recurrences; there is no haphazard in it; it is not mechanical,—yet still flawless as the configuarations of a crystal or the petals ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... spoil to his tent, or dig the hole to hide it. His friends walked across the floor without suspicion of what was beneath. No doubt, he held his place in his tribe as an honourable man, and his conscience traced no connection between that recently disturbed patch on the floor and the helter-skelter flight from Ai; but when the lot began to be cast, he would have his own thought, and when the tribe of Judah was taken, some creeping fear would begin to coil round his heart, which tightened its folds, and hissed more loudly, as each step ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... feet above the level of the sea. On the plains, it will often blow for forty-eight hours, accompanied by torrents of pelting, pitiless rain, and is sometimes so violent, that there is hardly any possibility of making headway against it. Sheep race before it as hard as they can go helter-skelter, leaving their lambs behind them to shift for themselves. There is no shelter on the plains, and, unless stopped by the shepherds, they will drive from one river to the next. The shepherds, therefore, have a hard time of it, for they must be out till the wind goes down; ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... the world!" said the voice in emphatic accents of supreme contempt—"What braying asses!—What earth- snouting swine! Saw you not yon crowd of whimpering idiots flying helter-skelter like chaff before the wind, weeping, wailing, and bemoaning their miserable little sins, scattering dust on their addled pates, and howling on their gods for mercy,—all forsooth! because for once ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... the Secretary was gone. We then proceeded into the Secretary's office in search of it. The Secretary's habit was to take the papers from his table, and after marking on them with his pencil the disposition he wished made of them, he threw them helter-skelter into a large arm-chair. This chair now contained half a bushel; and the President and I set to work in quest of the letter. We removed them one by one; and as we progressed, he said with an impatient smile, "it is always sure ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... gentlefolk, seemed to incarnate her vague conjectures of the social atmosphere in which Doggie had his being. Her peasant blood impelled her to suspicion, to a half-grudging admiration, to self-protective jealousy. The Englishwoman's ease of manner, in spite of her helter-skelter French, oppressed her with an angry sense of inferiority. She was also conscious of the blue overall and close-fitting cap. Yet the Englishwoman's smile was kind and she had lost her husband.... And Peggy, looking at this girl with the dark, tragic eyes and refined, pale face and graceful ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... and are not infected by it, who watch others achieving prizes of riches and pleasure and are not disturbed, who look on the world and the universe they are born in with quite other eyes. To them it appears not as a bazaar to buy and to sell in; not as a ladder to scramble up (or down) helter-skelter without knowing whither or why; but as a fact—a great and mysterious fact—to be pondered over, studied, and perchance in some small measure understood. By the multitude these men were sneered at as eccentric or feared as supernatural. Their calm, clear, contemplative attitude seemed either ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... with three hundred men to spend a couple of days exploring the country, and finding out where the Indians were. After marching a few miles, they came across two Indians. Both were killed by the advanced horsemen. All four of the field officers of the militia—two colonels and two majors—joined helter-skelter in the chase, leaving their troops for half an hour without a leader. Apparently satisfied with this feat, Trotter ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... side of the road, Morrison and Cary shrank down beside the wall to let the Union riders pass; on the other, all that was left of the Rebel force ran helter-skelter for a screen of protecting trees. But before the last one disappeared he threw up his gun and fired, haphazard, in the direction whence ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... gave the signal to draw in all sails except one and to remove the uppermost parts of the masts. The ships were being scattered far apart. In the cabins all articles, though tied fast, were broken loose and were thrown helter-skelter, the occupants likewise, many with bruised limbs, and there was no end to the spells of seasickness and of misery made ridiculous. The storm was ever growing worse. On the second day the last sail was drawn in, and the rudder bound ...
— The Voyage of The First Hessian Army from Portsmouth to New York, 1776 • Albert Pfister
... to see the plain thus suddenly fill'd with rabble, all running from the south, and the silly startled sheep rushing helter-skelter, and huddling together on the tors above, that I forgot my own likely danger if any of this revengeful crew should come upon me lying there: and was satisfied to watch them as they straggled over the moors toward the road. Some pass'd close to the cottage; ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... advantage over most of the men who were being driven helter-skelter by the grateful lash of the West: he was a trained money-getter. Back of him were generations of shrewd business men, while dormant in his own being was the half-stunned thing called natural ability. ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... knock at the front door, followed by the sound of someone entering. Prudence set Baby on her feet and bolted helter-skelter across the square hall, flinging herself into the arms of a stout man with a brown beard, who returned her embrace so warmly that Mollie wondered if he had been away from home for some time. He removed his tall silk ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... to survey the wreckage. Not a compartment had been missed. Even the mattresses on the accelleration cots had been torn open, the spring-stuffing tossed about helter-skelter. Tom went through the lock into the Scavenger; the scout ship too had been ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... our little tent when a violent wind which swept up the canyon, followed by a downpour of rain interrupted our work; and if anything missed a soaking before, it certainly received it then. The sand was beaten into our cameras and everything was scattered helter-skelter over the shore. We were fortunate in only one respect. The wind was away from the river instead of toward it. We finally got the tent up, then threw everything into it in an indiscriminate pile, and waited for the storm to pass. Emery proposed that we do a song and dance just to show how good we ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... fierce roar from our chests, and the only bugler left alive in our company sounds the charge. Away we go with our bayonets. We scarcely reach them when the bouches are put to rout. Some of them escape helter-skelter, throwing down rifles and knapsacks. "Halt!" commands our Captain. We lie down and keep up the firing on the retreating remnants of the enemy. "Back to the trenches!" is the next command. A few more volleys ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... the bear had been seen the previous night. The two large hounds, Ringwood and Jowler, kept at their master's heels, being trained to understand and perform all the duties required of them, while the curs and terriers were running helter-skelter far ahead, or striking out into the woods without aim, and always returning without effecting any thing. At length the two hounds paused, and scented the earth, giving certain information that they had arrived at the desired ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... France has introduced into the Dumas theatre some preeminently un-Dumas-like stage-business: the characters, between assignations and combats, toy amorously with ideas. That is the difference which at a stroke dissevers them from any helter-skelter character in Dumas as utterly as from any of ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... who was left in charge of the boat, away we all went, helter-skelter, in the direction the outlaw had taken. He made, it appeared, straight inland, for we could hear his shouts ahead of us as we rushed on, hallooing to each other from among the trees. Not one of the party seemed inclined to get before the other—not so ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... them like strong drink. In the midst of the pandemonium came a deafening explosion, a vivid flash of red, a volume of acrid suffocating vapour. Another explosion and men came rushing from Mountchance's laboratory—terror written in their faces. Helter-skelter the crowd darted from the house forcing Sally Salisbury with them whether she would or not. In the mad fight for gold large glass bottles filled with acids, alcohol and other inflammable liquids had been upset and smashed, and the smouldering fire in the furnace did the rest. What ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... of Jane Map rushing towards him and of Jane Map kissing him rapturously on the mouth. 'Come on,' cried Jane Map, and pulled him by the hand, helter-skelter, until they came in front of a blaze of light and the noise crashed at ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... In its own little lake. And thence at departing, Awakening and starting, It runs through the reeds, And away it proceeds, Through meadow and glade, In sun and in shade, And through the wood-shelter, Among crags in its flurry, Helter-skelter, Hurry-skurry, Here it comes sparkling, And there it lies darkling; Now smoking and frothing Its tumult and wrath in, Till, in this rapid race On which it is bent, It reaches the ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... and the vibration of the shaky old walls! Once I had begun I couldn't leave off for my life, but went on tugging and tugging and quaking and quaking until—have you forgotten it?—all the people came running helter-skelter under the impression that the town was afire. And then, behold, it was only little me, trembling like a leaf and crying like a ninny! I remember I was scolded and smacked and dismissed into outer darkness (it was the chip vault, I think), for that first outbreak of fame, and now, lest ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... eaten up by the extra weight owing to the excessive freight rates from the coast and on the branch line to Meadows. More than that, Jennings had disobeyed his explicit orders to box the smaller parts of each machine together. All had been thrown in the car helter-skelter. ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... did for three hours, worked with a kind of frenzied delight in action and pricked on by a ravenous hunger. In and out of the combers they dashed, playing a desperate game of chance with Death. Helter-skelter, hit-or-miss, in a blind orgy of rescue, at first they pulled out everything they could reach. Repeatedly, Frank Merrill stopped to lecture them on the foolish risks they were taking, on the stupidity of such a waste of energy. "Save what we need!" he iterated and ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... kitchen, a hot, steaming place, where men, mostly cooks, in dirty white jackets, rushed helter-skelter into each other ...
— Eric - or, Under the Sea • Mrs. S. B. C. Samuels
... honest, helter-skelter terrier, that none like to see brought into their drawing-rooms, throwing over all their dainty little ornaments, upsetting their choicest Dresden, that nobody guessed was cracked till it fell with the mended side uppermost, and keeping every one in incessant ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... abundance. Apparently he was like the woodcutter entering the thick forest and saying, "Where shall I begin?" The same obstacle appeared in a minor degree to cling about his verbal exposition, and accounted perhaps for his rather helter-skelter choice of remarks bearing on the number of unaddressed letters sent to the post-office; on what logic really is, as tending to support the buoyancy of human mediums and mahogany tables; on the probability of all miracles under ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... rubbish—boilers, car wheels, fragments of locomotives, household furniture, dead animals, clothing, sewing machines, goods from stores, safes, passenger and street cars, some half buried in the sand, some all exposed, helter-skelter. ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... figures. Riding into Lambach this morning, I am about wheeling past a horse and drag that, careless and Austrian-like, has been left untied and unwatched in the middle of the street, when the horse suddenly scares, swerves around just in front of me, and dashes, helter-skelter, down the street. The horse circles around the market square and finally stops of his own accord without doing any damage. Runaways, other misfortunes, it seems, never come singly, and ere I have left Lambach ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... on the green sward, planks raised a foot or so, for every one would sit on the grass. Some of the Indian women had booths, and were already selling birch and sassafras beer, pipes and tobacco, and maple sugar. Little ones were running helter-skelter, tumbling down and getting up without a whimper. Here a knot of men were playing cards or dominoes. It was a pretty scene, and needed only cavaliers and the glittering, stately stepping dames to make it ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... fear of bungling in her diplomacy, and so losing the flag. She knew Mr. Simpson well, and a pleasanter man was seldom to be met. She recalled an afternoon when he came home and surprised the whole school playing the Revolutionary War in his helter-skelter dooryard, and the way in which he had joined the British forces and impersonated General Burgoyne had greatly endeared him to her. The only difficulty was to find proper words for her delicate mission, for, of course, if Mr. Simpson's ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... heavens were darkened with a tempest of missives. Bang! went the guns; whack! went the broad-swords; thump! went the cudgels; crash! went the musket-stocks; blows, kicks, cuffs, scratches, black eyes and bloody noses swelling the horrors of the scene! Thick thwack, cut and hack, helter-skelter, higgledy-piggledy, hurly-burly, head-over-heels, rough-and-tumble! Dunder and blixum! swore the Dutchmen; splitter and splutter! cried the Swedes. Storm the works! shouted Hardkoppig Peter. Fire the ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... is! One wild race for the crest, one headland charge down the slope beyond, and they are rolling over a band of yelling, scurrying, savage horsemen, whirling them away over the opposite ridge, driving them helter-skelter over the westward prairie, until all who escape the shock of the onset or the swift bullet in the raging chase finally vanish from their sight; and then, obedient to the ringing "recall" of the trumpet, slowly they return, ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... palace was alive with people. Guardsmen, officers, courtiers, servants, and slaves ran helter-skelter through the corridors and apartments carrying messages and orders, and searching for signs of ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... such intention. To relieve the strain, he became facetious and told funny stories; but this was an unlucky experiment, for his witticisms fell with a ghastly hollowness. No one laughed save the grandmother and the Guatemalan cousin, who could not understand, and at this Kirk fled helter-skelter ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... gay companionship. I cannot quite explain the charm of the man. He had a roving blue eye, a ruddy and glowing complexion, and a laugh that seemed to kick all gloomy fancies into flinders, and to carry those who heard it in a helter-skelter gallop of mirth. And then what stories the fellow could tell! He had the General and me in perpetual convulsions, and even ALEXANDER, a somewhat awkward and taciturn youth, much weighed down by the responsibilities ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 5, 1892 • Various
... evenings a week. As many as twenty or five-and-twenty youths, however, attended them, glad of the warmth and light, though bored by the instruction. They were mischievous and inattentive; they kept close watch on the clock, and as soon as half-past nine came they were up and off helter-skelter, as if the gloomy precincts of the shop or the public-house were, after all, less ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... till at last one of the gentlemen descried the fox running down a double furrow in the middle of the field. He had got into this, and so made his way more smoothly than his four-footed pursuers could. The dogs were laid on, and away they went helter-skelter. ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... hammer-handles," said one of the soldiers afterward. "It was inky dark—darker than I have ever known it to be anywhere on the plains. The water made a muddy pond of the whole camp, and the trenches were half filled in no time. Everything was blown helter-skelter by the furious wind, and some of our outfits we never recovered. In the midst of the confusion some fellows reported that the Spaniards were trying to break through our lines, but the report was false,—the ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... food-supplies, thus showing the possession of a memory of locality and route. It is very interesting to watch a marked ant during her journey back to her nest, after she has been carried away and placed among unfamiliar scenes and surroundings. At first, owing to her fright, she will dash away helter-skelter; but soon recovering, she will head in the direction of home, and moderate her pace until she creeps along at a very cautious and circumspect gait, indeed. Every now and then she will climb a tall grass-blade or weed and take observations. ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... drove the fog helter-skelter across to Green Bay, where the gray ranks curled themselves down and lay hidden until morning. 'I'll go with the wind,' thought Waring, 'it must take me somewhere in time.' So he changed his course and paddled on. The wind grew strong, then stronger. He could see a few stars ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... was their canoe! The moment that the ship's boat grounded, its passengers tumbled out, helter-skelter, into the mud, and raced for land, lugging their bed-rolls, to swell the bevy already landed. Mr. Grigsby shouldered his own bedroll, gave Charley a hand with the other, and together ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... than we. My boy brought your girl to Castle Raincy as to a city of refuge, and why should not you and I, sir, copy them? Will you do me the honour to walk to Castle Raincy with me and take dinner? 'Zounds, sir, we ought to have thought of this long before. They put us to shame, these helter-skelter ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... unless we take a broad survey of conditions in Germany from the year 1750; not only from the political but also from the social and domestic side, as represented in 300-odd German principalities that like a crazy-quilt were thrown helter-skelter from Hamburg on the North to Vienna ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... whole band broke up and rushed helter-skelter in all directions. Not that the bullies feared the watch one whit. The watchmen were mostly poor, old, worn-out men, who could do little or nothing to impose order upon these young braggarts. Indeed, they were so often maltreated themselves, that they just ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... light until the sights were lined up fine, then swung back for a snap-shot at Lynch; and as the rifle belched and kicked he caught a flash of a tumbling form and clutching hands thrown up wildly against the sky. Then he stooped down and ran, helter-skelter down the wash, regardless of what might be in his way; and as he plunged around a curve he stampeded a pack-mule which had ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... goin' to pull 'em down the van started as they had heard and seen it. After a while he got on to his knees and managed to wrench a corner; of the front curtain clear of the button and get his head out. And there was the van going helter-skelter, and feeling like Tam o'Shanter's mare (the old man said), and he on her barebacked. And there was no horses, but a cloud of dust—or a spook—on ahead, and the bare pole steering straight for it, just as the professor had said it would be. The old man thought ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... and staggered to her feet to go with them, but she was fat and slow of motion, so that by the time she was fairly standing, they were far down the field and running helter-skelter by the side of the fence. As she stared dully after them she could see the twenty-two curly tails bobbing along, and she heard the soft patter of eighty-eight sharp little double hoofs on ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... tied across many brows. Helmets swung clanking like iron pipkins from saddle-bows, and men rode wearily with their arms in slings, drooping haggard faces upon their chests. But all passed rapidly enough up the steep street, and tumbled with noise and shouting, helter-skelter into the great court-yard beneath me as I watched, secure as God in heaven, from my perch ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... the chief sins of our time is hurry: it is helter-skelter, and devil take the hind-most. Off we go all too swift at starting, and we neither run so fast nor so far as we would have done, had we taken it cannily at first. This is true of a boy as well as of a blood colt. Not only are boys ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... Imagine the helter-skelter of those thousands of trees over the roaring, rushing waterfalls, or along the rapidly flowing cataracts and flooded rivers. To prevent these wooden horses getting caught-up on the banks along their ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... Puff in thy teeth, most recreant coward base! Sir John, I am thy Pistol and thy friend, And helter-skelter have I rode to thee, And tidings do I bring and lucky joys And golden times and happy ...
— King Henry IV, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Chiswick edition]
... living thing, now on these dreary trudging days fell apart into remote bays and slips and rivers, hours of weary travel apart and each without any connection with any other that I could see. Railroad tracks wound in and out with no apparent purpose, dirty freight boats crawled helter-skelter this way and that. All seemed a meaningless chaos ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... inhabitants now were rushing helter-skelter out of London, and very often to seaside towns where the smell of fish destroyed them. And those who could not get away were shuddering at the blinds drawn down, and huddling away from the mutes at ...
— George Bowring - A Tale Of Cader Idris - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... certain amount of this was part of the family fun. "Come on, folks!" Professor Marshall would call, rising up from the breakfast table, "Tuesday—day to clean the living-room—all hands turn to!" In a gay helter-skelter all hands turned to. The lighter furniture was put out on the porch. Professor Marshall, joking and laughing, donned a loose linen overall suit to protect his "University clothes," and cleaned the bare floor with a big oiled mop; ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... counter, and the car-man his waggon; the butcher throws down his tray; the baker his basket; the milkman his pail; the errand-boy his parcels; the school-boy his marbles; the paviour his pickaxe; the child his battledore. Away they run, pell-mell, helter-skelter, slap-dash: tearing, yelling, screaming, knocking down the passengers as they turn the corners, rousing up the dogs, and astonishing the fowls: and streets, squares, and courts, re-echo ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... from side to side, gave a couple of leaps and with a swish of its tail disappeared into the skirt of the wood. At the same instant, with a cry like a wail, first one hound, then another, and then another, sprang helter-skelter from the wood opposite and the whole pack rushed across the field toward the very spot where the wolf had disappeared. The hazel bushes parted behind the hounds and Daniel's chestnut horse appeared, dark with sweat. On its long back sat Daniel, hunched ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... little mouth, showing the pearly teeth within. He gave the bag a sounding thump, and instantly it burst asunder, and a perfect cataract of candies and sugar-plums poured down upon the carpet. Quick as a flash every child in the room was clustered together upon the sheet helter-skelter, head-over-heels, laughing, screaming, dashing after the candies; and then—the bubble burst, and Charley ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... here—there, go back to your places,—that looks a little better; now these curtains must come down, and I may as well shut the shutters too—and now this tablecloth must be content to hang straight, and mamma's box and the books must lie in their places and not all helter-skelter. Now, I wish mamma would wake up; I should think she might. I don't believe she is asleep, she don't look as ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... languidly. "I met no one, saw no one, while I was out. Here comes your shadow," she added, as Tiny, having heard his beloved master's voice, came helter-skelter, head over heels, and leapt on Stafford's lap. "How fond ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... prayers rhymed, how exhilarating it was to lay stress on each rhyme and double rhyme, shouting them fervidly. And sometimes, instead of rhyming, they ended with the same phrase, like the refrain of a ballad, or the chorus of a song, and then what a joyful relief, after a long breathless helter-skelter through a strange stanza, to come out on the old familiar ground, and to shout exultantly, "For His mercy endureth for ever," or "The appearance of the priest!" Sometimes the run was briefer—through one line only—and ended on a single word like "water" or "fire." And what pious fun it ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... accident of absolution given by one of their priests, who marched in the rear file of the first company, with his cassock tucked up and his Roman hat over his eyes. These country fellows walked briskly, a little helter-skelter, like their ancestors in the time of Stofflet and M. de la Rochejaquelin, but with a firm step and their muskets well placed upon their shoulders, by Ste. Anne! They looked ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... confusion followed. The only field-pieces with Keane were two light 3-pounders, not able to cope with the Carolina's artillery; the rocket guns were brought up, but were speedily silenced; musketry proved quite as ineffectual; and in a very few minutes the troops were driven helter-skelter off the levee, and were forced to shelter themselves behind it, not without having suffered severe loss. [Footnote: General Keane, in his letter, writes that the British suffered but a single casualty; Gleig, who was present, says (p. 288): "The deadly shower of grape swept down numbers ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... jackal howled and shrieked to the tiger to stop,—the noise behind him only frightened the coward more; and away he went, helter-skelter, hurry-scurry, over hill and dale, till he was nearly dead with fatigue, and the jackal was quite ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... sprang forward like one man. A French squad was already fixing bayonets noisily and excusing their rattle and cursing on account of the dark; the Austrians had deployed and were already advancing. "Pas de charge," called a French middy. Somebody started tootling a bugle, and helter-skelter we were off down the street, with fixed bayonets and loaded magazines, a veritable massacre ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... until an officially sanctioned newspaper article specified its exact position. A few days after the article appeared, in fact, as soon as a copy of the paper reached Germany, a thunderstorm of shells broke on the brewery. Out of it poured a helter-skelter stream of stark-naked men, who ran wherever they could for cover. From one point of view it was vastly comic. In the meanwhile the building containing all their clothes, and all the spare clothing for a brigade, was being scientifically ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... touched Jack's nose. This was a bad business! Jack trembled with fear, and in his terror clutched the wolf's tail with both hands and held on with all his might. The wolf was frightened, too, and took to flight, dragging the cask after it. You ought to have seen the wonder; helter-skelter went the brute, banging the cask against the trees, up hill and down dale. The wolf running, the cask following, Jack holding tight to the tail—that was worth seeing! Suddenly, helter-skelter the cask struck against a wall and burst open. The wolf ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... That's disposed of. Everything in its turn. We old operators, go by order and system—no helter-skelter business with us. What's the next thing on the docket? The carrying on of the materialization—the bringing it down to date. I will begin on that at ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... style, till it is time for the matutinal meal—vulgarly called breakfast; when the whiskey, eggs, toast, and tea as strong as Hercules, with ham, fowl, beef-steaks, or mutton-chops, all pour in upon us in the full tide of hospitality. Helter-skelter, cut and thrust, right and left, we work away, till the appetite reposes itself upon the cushion of repletion: and off we go once more, full an' warm, to the delicate employment of adjudicating upon sin and transgression, until dinner comes, when, having despatched ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... here. You can't fool me," he yelled. "I saw the spot your eyes lit on when I first came into the room. Is it behind these books?" he growled, pulling them out and throwing them helter-skelter over the floor. "Women is smart in the hiding business. Is it behind ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... seemed striking on a ledge; the sail collapsed and exploded; a .. gush of scalding vapor shot up near by; something rolled and tumbled like an earthquake beneath us. The whole crew were half suffocated as they were tossed helter-skelter into the white curdling cream of the squall. Squall, whale, and harpoon had all blended together; and the whale, merely grazed by the iron, escaped. Though completely swamped, the boat was nearly unharmed. Swimming round it we picked up the floating oars, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... the surgeon, calmly. "You must remember, that on such an occasion as this, there is nothing so important as presence of mind—self-command. If I alarm your servants, all the guests assembled here will take the alarm; and they will rush helter-skelter to Yarborough Tower, to testify their devotion to Sir Oswald, and to do him all the harm they possibly can. What would be the effect of a crowd of half-drunken men, clustering round him, with their noisy ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... dust and draped with ancient cobwebs. In one corner dismally reposed a literary junk heap—old magazines, broken-backed works of reference, novels once unanimously read but now unanimously forgotten. The desk was a helter-skelter of papers. One of the two chairs had its burst cane seat mended by an atlas of the world; and wherever any of the floor peered dimly through the general debris it showed a complexion of dark and ineradicable greasiness. Altogether, it was a room hopelessly ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... pierced the darkness, and now and again the very air seemed to kindle, and brilliant sheets and shreds of flame blazed and crackled round us. Above there was a noise as though thousands of devilish creatures were rushing along, helter-skelter, with inconceivable rapidity, howling, shrieking, screaming, wailing, laughing, ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... they are not fit to care for a herd of swine. Heretofore I have held that where something was to be proved by the Scriptures, the Scriptures quoted must really refer to the point at issue. I learn now that it is enough to throw many passages together helter-skelter, whether they are fit or not. If this is to be the way, then I can easily prove from the Scriptures that beer is better ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... empty and dead. Those who had rushed hitherward seeking gold were gone; be the explanation where it might, shacks stood with doors flung wide; tents had been torn down, outworn articles discarded, dumped helter-skelter into the road. The atmosphere was like that of a circus grounds when the circus was moving on, only a few things left for the last crew to ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... and oaths, barely audible above the mad yells of the Serbians. Nevertheless, they gave way before the gleaming line of bayonet blades before them. Some few rose to fight, stirred by some long-submerged instinct generated in the days of Genghis Khan. But the majority turned and fled, helter-skelter, down the sides of the mountains toward the valleys, leaving behind guns, ammunition, and cannon. One regiment, the Hundred and Second, stood its ground and fought. As a result it was almost completely ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... simplification was their method, and that simplicity is their excellence." Indeed, as we have already noted in passing, simplification is the method of every art. Every artist, in his own way, simplifies life: first by selecting essentials from the helter-skelter of details that life presents to him, and then by arranging these essentials in accordance with a pattern. And we have noted also that the method of the artist in narrative is to select events which bear an essential logical relation to each other and then ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... defend her good name, and cleared it, right or wrong, and beat him down on his knees, and then started for her spell of the merry canter over turf: an example to the English of the punishment they get for their stupid Puritanic tyranny—sure to be followed by a national helter-skelter down-hill headlong. And Mrs. Lawrence was not one of the corrupt, he argued; she concealed what it was decent to conceal, without pouting hypocritical pretences; she had merely dispensed with idle legal formalities, in the prettiest curvetting ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sobered him and induced him to listen at last to Noreen's entreaties and angry demands from the Englishmen who bade him order the mahouts to take the visitors away from the horrible spectacle. As they left they saw the Rajah's golden chariot and the carriages of the officials being driven helter-skelter across the grass with their blood-stained and terrified occupants. And the madly fanatical crowds surged wildly around the altar, while their cries to ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... surrounded yet by a swarm of longshoremen who yelled and fought, Lady Isobel Saffren Waldon and her Syrian maid stood at bay. Her two Swahili men-servants were overwhelmed and already being carried to a boat. Her luggage was being borne helter-skelter after them, and another boat waited for her just beyond the belt of surf, the rowers standing up to yell encouragement at the sweating pack that dared not close in on its victims. Lady Isobel Saffren Waldon appeared to have no other weapon than a parasol, but she ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... decision of mon chef. Let Luc remain; he has courage enough to have the thing done with the soldiers at the very stockades." And the two rode away helter-skelter, till a dozen miles lay between ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... running away, yelling with terror. The space around the guillotine was cleared. And the prefect of police, rallying his men, drove everybody back to the prison, helter-skelter, like a disordered rabble: the magistrates, the officials, the condemned man, the chaplain, all who had passed through the archway ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... my departure and includes the discovery of The Delectable Mountains, two of which—The Wanderer and I shall not say the other—have already been sighted. It is like a vast grey box in which are laid helter-skelter a great many toys, each of which is itself completely significant apart from the always unchanging temporal dimension which merely contains it along with the rest. I make this point clear for the benefit of any of my readers who have ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... brother of Jane Clemens and Patsey Quarles, hastily saddled a horse and set out, helter-skelter, for Hannibal. He arrived in the early dusk. The child was safe enough, but he was crying with loneliness and hunger. He had spent most of the day in the locked, deserted house playing with a hole in the meal-sack where the meal ran out, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... named Queen Anne's Chapel,[9] in honor of the sovereign "at home," the last of the direct Stuart line, whose royal person, it is said, having grown too unwieldy to permit horseback exercise, she was in the habit of following the hunt, of which she was passionately fond, driving herself, helter-skelter, in a one-horse chaise. She has the credit of having bestowed some endowment upon the Chapel, and the Bishop of London presented it with a bell; which, if all accounts be true, still hangs in the ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... to your places that looks a little better; now, these curtains must come down, and I may as well shut the shutters too and now this tablecloth must be content to hang straight, and Mamma's box and the books must lie in their places, and not all helter-skelter. Now, I wish Mamma would wake up; I should think she might. I don't believe she is asleep either she don't ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... murder! murder! Oh!" Then off we went, all at once, in solid column. The enemy took to their heels, and we pursued. Over the fence we bounded like stags. Down the hill went the British. Down the hill went we; helter-skelter, man and horse, we flew; roaring through the woods like the sound ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... which had already flung itself upon the prey, was seen to spring head over heels into the air, and fall back dead; another lay writhing in agony upon the ground, and uttering strangely human shrieks; whilst the others, terrified by the noise, turned and fled back helter-skelter to the cave. ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... she brings to her guidance she has picked up helter-skelter. They are the crumbs gathered from the table of the Uneasy Woman, or worse, of the pharisaical and satisfied woman, from good and bad books, from newspaper exploitations of divorce and scandal, from sly gossip with girls whose ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... Helter-skelter the men rushed out, Tony and his mates in front. On the rise at the end of the township the flames gleamed as they flared from the wooden building, which burned like matchwood. From the distance in the opposite direction came the sounds of horses, ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... Scattered helter-skelter over an immense surface, cut up into scalene triangles, the oddity of its plan makes Washington a succession of surprises which never fail to vex and astonish the stranger, be he ever so highly ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... Sevier, "if those I met coming back helter-skelter over the Wilderness Trace had been of that stripe, they'd have more men in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... most fiendish noise broke out below. The negroes had charged, and the Lugarenos, struck with terror at the unforeseen catastrophe, were rushing helter-skelter through the gate. The screaming of the maids was frightful. They ran up and down the galleries with their hair streaming. O'Brien passed me by swiftly, muttering ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... high. A luminous ceiling, decorated with delicate arabesques, distributed a soft, clear daylight over all the wonders gathered in this museum. For a museum it truly was, in which clever hands had spared no expense to amass every natural and artistic treasure, displaying them with the helter-skelter picturesqueness that distinguishes ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... messes somewhat helter-skelter in a big tent. We have very tolerable rations. Sometimes luxuries appear of potted meats and hermetical vegetables, sent us by the fond New Yorkers. Each little knot of fellows, too, cooks something savory. Our table-furniture is not elegant, our plates are tin, there is no silver ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... jargon of the craft at his finger-tips; not one, too, but was rancorous and admiring in a breath, now detecting flaws as many as motes in a beam, now heaping praise. The spirited talk, flying thus helter-skelter through the gamut of opinion, went forward chiefly in German, which the foreigners of the party spoke with various accents, but glibly enough; only now and then did one of them spring over to his mother-tongue, to fetch a racy ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... bodies nor empty saddles, but nevertheless the Turks appeared anxious to escape—the more so because Ranjoor Singh with his forty men was heading them off. As I watched, one of them blew a trumpet and they all retreated helter-skelter toward us—straight toward us. There was nothing else they could do, now that they had given way. It was like the letter Y—thus, sahib,—see, I draw in the dust—the Kurds coming this way at an ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... went together into a small blue chamber, the walls of which were ornamented with gold stars placed helter-skelter. The room was entirely empty save for an hour-glass near twice the height of ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... destruction that the marauders had wrought in the rooms within, while on the graveled terrace lay various articles of furniture that had been hurled from the stoop. Particularly noticeable was a drawing-room suite in sky-blue satin, its sofa and twelve fauteuils piled in dire confusion, helter-skelter, on and around a great center table, the marble top of which was broken in twain. And there were zouaves, chasseurs, liners, and men of the infanterie de marine running to and fro excitedly behind the buildings and in the alleys, ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... think bread-making is a simple task; that the ingredients can be thrown together helter-skelter and good results obtained; or that any kind of flour will make good bread. This is a great mistake. To make good palatable bread it requires good materials, a reasonable amount of care and attention. But first of all must come the knowledge of ...
— Mrs. Wilson's Cook Book - Numerous New Recipes Based on Present Economic Conditions • Mary A. Wilson
... King, with their horses at full speed, dashed from either side upon the helpless mob of countrymen. A few pikes feebly levelled met them; but they shot the pikemen, drew swords, and helter-skelter leaped into the shattered and scattering mass. Right and left they hacked and hewed; I could hear the snapping of scythes beneath them, and see the flash of their sweeping swords. How it must end was plain enough, ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... Tartar-like picturesqueness; a sort of pagan abandonment and assurance. Here reigned the dashing and all-fusing spirit of the West, whose type is the Mississippi itself, which, uniting the streams of the most distant and opposite zones, pours them along, helter-skelter, in one ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... remaining to me. I turned and hobbled away as fast as my wounded limb would let me, plunged into the nearest pool, sprawled through the next bog, crashed through the rushes, hopped along the dry ground upon one foot, and scrambled helter-skelter towards the river, expecting every moment to hear the report of the firearms, and to feel a handful of slugs in my body. Never shall I forget the horrors of that chase. I distanced my pursuers, however, and arrived at the margin ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... shoulder-blades of bears, brought possibly by the ice in winter. Turning again from the sea, we resumed our search for deer; but two or three hours' more very stiff walking produced no better luck. Suddenly a cry from Fitz, who had wandered a little to the right, brought us helter-skelter to the spot where was standing. But it was not a stag he had called us to come and look upon. Half imbedded in the black moss at his feet, there lay a grey deal coffin falling almost to pieces with age; the lid was gone—blown off probably by the wind—and within were stretched the bleaching bones ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... every sunny afternoon, to ignore the thickets where game was hiding plentifully and take her cubs to the dry, sunny plains on the edge of the caribou barrens. There for hours at a time they hunted elusive grasshoppers, rushing helter-skelter over the dry moss, leaping up to strike at the flying game with their paws like a kitten, or snapping wildly to catch it in their mouths and coming down with a back-breaking wriggle to keep themselves from tumbling over on their heads. Then on again, ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... of newly laundered clothes, under the mistaken idea that they, too, were for the orphan, all rushed at the same instant for the same portal, and jammed together between the door-posts. The Duke of Wellington, still grasping the rescued pipe, threw herself upon the human wedge and drove it, helter-skelter, down the steps; and simultaneously there arose, loud and clear, not from Cameron's Crossing, some miles distant, but just from the ravine bridge, scarcely a quarter of a mile away, the shrill ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... Ho! Divorces! We'll put them through at Dexter speed, And, this late day, there is no need Of flying off to Indiana In such a helter-skelter manner; We're going to have a train, you know, 'Twill stop, (with patients passing through,) Five ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 13, June 25, 1870 • Various
... the lady of the caravan, scooping the crumbs out of her lap and swallowing the same before wiping her lips. 'Yes, to be sure—Who won the Helter-Skelter Plate, child?' ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... others, Irene judged that luckless Peachy must have been on the verge of betraying some secret. She tactfully turned the conversation with a remark upon the beauty of the sunset, and the clanging of the garden bell opportunely broke up the gathering, and sent the girls hurrying helter-skelter along the terrace in the direction of the house. Irene paused for a moment to look back at the sea and the sky, and the distant twinkling lights, and to curtsy to the crescent moon that hung like a good omen in the dome ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... smoke whether the newcomers were friend or foe, till a deadly volley struck home at less than eighty yards. Down went the gunners to a man; down went the teams to a horse; and off ran the Zouaves and the other supporting battalion, helter-skelter for ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... particular zest The Latin hymns, which I understand Quite as well, I think, as the rest. And at night such lodging in barns and sheds, Such a hurly-burly in country inns, Such a clatter of tongues in empty heads, Such a helter-skelter of prayers and sins! Of all the contrivances of the time For sowing broadcast the seeds of crime, There is none so pleasing to me and mine As a pilgrimage ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... railway station was a dingy place of cobwebbed murk. It was also the express office, and in helter-skelter disarray lay a litter of uncalled-for plow-shares and such articles as go from the end of the rails into that hinterland where lies an isolated world ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... in the usual order. The discussion grew hotter, and went helter-skelter from subject to subject. Such is said to be the Russian manner in argument. Perhaps it is the universal manner of people when discussing ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... In its own little lake; And thence at departing, Awakening and starting, It runs through the reeds, And away it proceeds Through meadow and glade, In sun and in shade, And through the wood-shelter, Among crags in its flurry, Helter-skelter, Hurry-scurry. Here it comes sparkling, And there it lies darkling; Now smoking and frothing Its tumult and wrath in, Till in this rapid race On which it is bent, It reaches the place ...
— The Nursery, Volume 17, No. 100, April, 1875 • Various
... instant we heard the boatswain roaring to the men to come on deck. "Aft for the hose there, Bill," we heard. Feet rushed aft along the deck, helter-skelter. Some one shoved the skylight open with a violent heave. Looking up, we saw the carpenter's head. He looked as scared ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... At the point where Bryce paused a malignant growth had developed on the trunk of the tree, for all the world like a tremendous wart. This was the burl, so prized for table-tops and panelling because of the fact that the twisted, wavy, helter-skelter grain lends to the wood an extraordinary beauty when polished. Bryee noted that the work of removing this excrescence had been accomplished very neatly. With a cross-cut saw the growth, perhaps ten feet in diameter, had been neatly sliced off much as a housewife ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... Clucking and gobbling, Mopping and mowing, Full of airs and graces, Pulling wry faces, Demure grimaces, Cat-like and rat-like, Ratel and wombat-like, Snail-paced in a hurry, Parrot-voiced and whistler, Helter-skelter, hurry-skurry, Chattering like magpies, Fluttering like pigeons, Gliding like fishes,— Hugged her and kissed her; Squeezed and caressed her; Stretched up their dishes, Panniers and plates: "Look at our apples Russet ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... Loutre, who had thrown up a breastwork along the shore and manned it with his Indians and his painted and be-feathered Acadians. Nevertheless the English landed, and, with some loss, drove out the defenders. Le Loutre himself seems not to have been among them; but they kept up for a time a helter-skelter fight, encouraged by two other missionaries, Germain and Lalerne, who were near being caught by the English.[111] Lawrence quickly routed them, took possession of the cemetery, and prepared to fortify himself. The village of Beaubassin, consisting, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... Mansfeld, Lalain, Hoogstraaten; and Vilain, at the same time made a furious attack upon the front. The French cavalry wavered with the shock so vigorously given. The camp followers, sutlers, and pedlers, panic-struck, at once fled helter-skelter, and in their precipitate retreat, carried confusion and dismay throughout all the ranks of the army. The rout was sudden and total. The onset and the victory were simultaneous, Nevers riding through a hollow with some ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... should rejoice. But she can't. As for languages, music, art—bah! She is as ignorant as if she had been brought up in a home in the slums. A thin society veneer such as the typical fashionable boarding-school washes over the outside and a little helter-skelter reading and travel is all Cynthia has acquired. A real education entailed too much effort. So she is what we see her,—a thoughtless, extravagant, pleasure-seeking creature. She is a great disappointment ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... come to interfere, the Riding officer and the hussar crept out from their place of concealment and advanced towards the band of smugglers. But, alert as hares, the latter, so soon as they realised their own danger, took to their heels and ran helter-skelter away. Thomas, however, was too wrath to hasten, and began to curse his men. He began by complaining that the kegs which had been brought forth were wonderfully "slack," that is to say they were not as full as they might have been, hinting that someone had been helping himself ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... ahead of me, and I knew I was in for a long wait. I will never forget it. For three days, with the exception of two brief sleep-spells, I had been in a fierce helter-skelter of excitement, and I had eaten no very satisfying food. As I stood in that sullen crowd I swayed with weariness, and my legs were doubling under me. Invisible hands were dragging me down, throwing dust in my eyes, hypnotising ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... Ch'un and Hsi Ch'un interposed with an ironic laugh, "what's the use of the hurry-scurry you're in the whole day long! Even when you're having your meals, or your tea, you're in this sort of fussy helter-skelter!" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... short miles away. The herd of cattle we had passed came into view, and caught sight of the water in the dam. It was curious to see the whole herd, some five or six hundred beasts, break into a clumsy canter, and, with a bellowing noise, dash helter-skelter to the water—big oxen with huge branching horns, meek-eyed cows, young bullocks, and tiny calves, all joining in the rush for a welcome drink after a long ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson |
