"Topsy-turvy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... declared for beer, and drank solemnly with the driver, imitating him in finishing their mugs at a draught, and turning them topsy-turvy. There was now a great deal of talking, and many questions were asked. Tom and Peter modestly said that there was really nothing to tell. They saw that the gentleman next to them intended to use his pistols; but, not seeing a good opportunity, put them down behind the tarpaulin, ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... Here's Topsy-Turvy, upside down, The ceiling seems the base: Reverse the ground and 'twill be found The things are ...
— The Royal Picture Alphabet • Luke Limner
... Yes, I mean Anna. What nonsense for us to attempt to keep up the Miss Moore and Mr. Sanderson business. I used to scoff at love at first sight and say it was all the idle fancy of the poets. Then I met you and remained to pray. You've turned my world topsy-turvy. I can't think without you, and yet it would be folly to tell this to my Governor, and ask his consent to our marriage. He wants me to finish college, take the usual trip around the world and then go into the firm. Besides, he wants me to eventually marry a cousin of mine—a girl with a ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... past eleven," replied Miss Nora, with a giggle. "Do you suppose they pay any attention to clocks in this house? Everything here is topsy-turvy." ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... yawn for two hours. The characters are tolerably kept up, but the humour is for ever attempted and missed. The best thing in it is a Sermon, oddly coupled with a good deal of coarseness, and both the composition of a clergyman. The man's head, indeed, was a little turned before, now topsy-turvy with his success and fame. Dodsley has given him six hundred and fifty pounds for the second edition and two more volumes (which I suppose will reach backwards to his great-great-grandfather); Lord Fauconberg, a donative of one hundred and sixty pounds a-year; and Bishop ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... that stumps and stones are stumps and stones. You'd better take a person—like me, you know," he said, winking comically at Hetty—"who won't mistake a frightened squirrel for the king of the brown elves off on a hunting spree, or for anything else that never was born, except inside of your topsy-turvy head." ...
— Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... been in that boat, dear," she said sweetly, "you would realize the topsy-turvy condition of our brains. Even Mr. Gray himself, the coolest man on board, imagined we might sink any moment. So what can you expect of those excitable Chileans? Besides, the thing was done so quickly that we were swept away by the tide before any one fully ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... Not so fast, however, as we shall in the next three. Science—chemistry—is going speedily to change all the conditions of life because it will turn topsy-turvy all the ways of producing things—food, clothing, shelter. Less than two generations ago men lived much as they had for thousands of years. But it's very different to-day. It will be inconceivably ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... to the Kempt family now and then, if they will let me. I must get away for a time and think. My life has suddenly become all topsy-turvy, and I need to get my bearings, as does a ship that has been through a ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... Hellenic sky and hills of Hymettus, with its paradoxical antitheses: of flowers and flannels; strawberries and sealskin sacks; open fires with open windows; snow-capped mountains and orange blossoms; winter looking down upon summer—a topsy-turvy land, where you dig for your wood and climb for your coal; where water-pipes are laid above ground, with no fear of Jack Frost, and your principal rivers flow bottom side up and invisible most of the ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... Michu, "M. Sauvager, without consulting the public prosecutor, has issued a warrant for the apprehension of one Comte d'Esgrignon, in order to serve a grudge borne against him by one du Croisier, an enemy of the King's government. It is a regular topsy-turvy affair. The President, for his part, goes away, and thereby puts a stop to the preliminary examination! And we know nothing of the matter. Do they, by any chance, mean ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... I know that in my absence you could have behaved badly! Another in your place would have turned the house topsy-turvy, but you have only broken a pane of glass! God bless you for your considerateness. Go on in the same way and you will earn ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... indulge in a few reflections on the effect of this mental explosion in the noddles of John and James and Richard, upon reviewers, publishers, and the world in general. This change of lodging in the author will turn many things topsy-turvy, and conjure the spirit out of much long-established facetiousness. Pictures of poets in garrets will soon not be understood; bathos will be at a premium! the bard will be known, not by the brownness of his beaver, but by the gold band that encircles it. The historian shall ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... Everything was topsy-turvy in the excitement of getting the injured father, and weary, distracted mother started on their brief journey; but finally they were off, and a row of sober-faced children stood on the bluff overlooking the flats below, watching ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... in the heart of this woman? By what measure did she weigh her love? She took off her ducal coronet, and flung it on the platform of a clown! She took from her brow the Olympian aureola, and placed it on the bristly head of a gnome! The world had turned topsy-turvy. The insects swarmed on high, the stars were scattered below, whilst the wonder-stricken Gwynplaine, overwhelmed by a falling ruin of light, and lying in the dust, was enshrined in a glory. One all-powerful, revolting against beauty and ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... classic, according as the humor took it. When we received this intelligence, we could not close our eyes all night. Two years of peaceful conviction had vanished like a dream. All our ideas were turned topsy-turvy; for it the rules of Aristotle were no longer the line of demarcation which separated the literary camps, where was one to find himself, and what was he to depend upon? How was one to know, in reading a book, which school it belonged ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... amusement and a hint of surprise in the bright-blue eyes. He knew only that he had toiled from before sunrise until after sunset; that the waking hours to which he had been long accustomed had been turned topsy-turvy; that instead of spending money he had been making money; that he had earned his board and lodging and one dollar! And even while he ached and throbbed throughout his whole weary body he ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... I did have. Isn't it queer how sometimes, do what you can, work will keep getting in the way until you can't get anything done? That is how it was with me those few days before the wedding; so much so that when Wednesday dawned everything was topsy-turvy and I had a very strong desire to run away. But I always did hate a "piker," so I stood pat. Well, I had most of the dinner cooked, but it kept me hustling to get the house into anything like decent order before the old dog barked, and I knew my moments of liberty were limited. It was ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... vent to a sigh of perplexity. There rose up in his mind a sort of uncomfortable feeling that everything was going topsy-turvy. Somehow or another he seemed to see Robbie's mother sitting by the side of Elsie's bed when she had the fever last winter, and bustling about to get nice things for her, hushing the others with a strange look in her eyes that made them quiet at once, for they could see she was troubled. Or he seemed ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... in Maggie, who had stolen to her father's elbow again, listening with parted lips, while she held her doll topsy-turvy, and crushed its nose against the wood of the chair—"father, is it a long way off where Tom is to go? Shan't we ...
— Tom and Maggie Tulliver • Anonymous
... though more or less occult, head of the present Administration in France. 'M. Ferry,' said a caustic French Radical to me in Paris, 'ought to be the mask of M. Carnot. Nature gave him a Carnival nose for that purpose. Everything is topsy-turvy now in France, and so M. Carnot is the mask of M. Ferry. But the nose will come through ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... was led to a corner of the corral, or stable yard, and tied. Then the foreman made ready to try to stay in the saddle longer than had any of his men, for when a bronco bucks it is like trying to hold on to a swing that is turning topsy-turvy. ...
— The Curlytops at Uncle Frank's Ranch • Howard R. Garis
... August, everything in the Rostovs' house seemed topsy-turvy. All the doors were open, all the furniture was being carried out or moved about, and the mirrors and pictures had been taken down. There were trunks in the rooms, and hay, wrapping paper, and ropes were scattered about. The peasants and house serfs carrying ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... of a copy of some celebrated poseur—I'll tell you those! Speaking as a man of liberal—or lax—morality, you surprise me. You are godly and cleanly men; yet, when you saw in me a gem of purest ray serene, did you appeal to my better nature? Nary! In a wild and topsy-turvy world, did you implore me to devote my splendid and unwasted energies in the service of Good, with a capital G? Nix! You appealed to ambition, egotism, and greed.... Fie! A fie upon each ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... saw, [p 26] And had heard she had lately come out of the straw. But the GOOSE of their tale not a word understood, And still cackled away to her terrified brood; While immers'd in a pond, to complete their ill luck, Topsy-turvy appear'd, at ...
— The Peacock and Parrot, on their Tour to Discover the Author of "The Peacock At Home" • Unknown
... let it go:—it will one day be found With other relics of "a former World," When this World shall be former, underground, Thrown topsy-turvy, twisted, crisped, and curled, Baked, fried, or burnt, turned inside-out, or drowned, Like all the worlds before, which have been hurled First out of, and then back again to chaos— The superstratum which ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... by her sudden return on the following day, in a pouring rain which beat her face without her apparently minding it. Penelope at a full gallop was observed by every one, and Jacquelin's grin, the early hour, the parcels stuffed into the carriole topsy-turvy, and the evident impatience of Mademoiselle Cormon were ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... nice little business. She sold feed for horses and she rejoiced in the thought that she was married to a man of learning. True, she has a tongue. That she always had, but over there it was not so bad. She has become a different woman here. Alas! America is a topsy-turvy country." ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... odd in it. Most people were busy with their hay, he explained. Towards the end of a week we caught our watchmaker, and obtained a key, but he would not let us pay for it. He said it was one of an old collection, and of no use to him. The etiquette of shopping in Germany seems to us rather topsy-turvy at first. In a small shop the proprietor is as likely as not to conduct business with a cigar in his mouth, even if you are a lady, but if you are a man he will think you a boor if you omit to remove your hat as you cross his ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... murmured GRANDOLPH, looking round at the Party, to which, as he said at Liverpool the other day, he is thoroughly attached, "to see how good Conservatives enjoy CHAMBERLAIN'S Speech. They are as jubilant now as they were a few years ago, when I attacked JOSEPH in connection with Aston-Park Riots. A topsy-turvy world; most of us where we never thought to find ourselves, or be found; oddest of all, surely, is to hear CHAMBERLAIN of Birmingham enthusiastically cheered in House of Commons by great Conservative Party. They mean it, too," GRANDOLPH added, still scanning ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 22, 1893 • Various
... I said; "everything seems topsy-turvy up here. Why, to-day I saw a man come in with a box of apples which the crowd begged him to open. He was selling those apples at a dollar apiece, and the folks were just ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... successively tumbling from the air and were cast together into the basket. The last fragment of all that we saw tumble down was the head, and no sooner had that touched the ground than he who had snatched up all the limbs and put them in the basket turned them all out again topsy-turvy. Then straightway we saw with these eyes all those limbs creep together again, and in short, form a whole man, who at once could stand and go just as before, without showing the least damage! Never in my life was I so astonished ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... so strange and unnatural—so unlike the good old Douglas that she loved, in moleskin trousers and pea-jacket or adicky—that she felt he was somehow different, and that the world was going all topsy-turvy. ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... corners of the rooms; she does not rummage the bed, but restricts herself to patting it with the tip of her fingers, stroking the creases out of the sheets, puffing up the pillows and coaxing them out of their hollows. The man turned everything topsy-turvy; she moves nothing." ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... persons; no Certainty, no Enjoyment of our Possessions; no Justice between Man and Man, no Distinction between Good and Bad, between Friends and Foes, between Father and Child, Husband and Wife, Male or Female; but all would have been turned topsy-turvy, by being exposed to the Malice of the Envious and ill-Natured, to the Fraud and Violence of Knaves and Robbers, to the Forgeries of the crafty Cheat, to the Lusts of the Effeminate and Debauched, ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... poor Wamba, "and for hanging up by the feet, my brain has been topsy-turvy ever since the [v]biggin was bound first around my head; so turning me upside down ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... us into a conflagration," said Jack. "I'm ready to believe anything of this topsy-turvy old planet, and I shouldn't be surprised if the other side is all fire as this one is all frost. I can stand these hairy beasts, but I'll be hanged if I want to be introduced ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... Dunkirk. They did not help us much, 'tis true; they could only approach with their smallest vessels, and that not near enough;—besides, their shot fell sometimes among our troops. It did some good, however! It broke the French lines, and raised our courage. Away it went. Helter-skelter! topsy-turvy! all struck dead, or forced into the water; the fellows were drowned the moment they tasted the water, while we Hollanders dashed in after them. Being amphibious, we were as much in our element as frogs, and hacked away at the enemy, and shot them down as if they had been ducks. ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... midst of topsy-turvy Coqueville, Delphin preserved the laughter of a love-sick boy, who scorned the rest, provided Margot was for him. He followed her zigzags as one follows hares. Very wise, despite his simple look, he wanted the cure to marry them, so that ...
— The Fete At Coqueville - 1907 • Emile Zola
... fig-trees, and all sorts of under-clothing on the roofs, at the windows, and the crooked, sloping balconies; orange and lemon-trees with golden fruit grow in the little gardens, which have neither straight paths nor symmetrical beds. Everything there grows together topsy-turvy. The boys, who in rags that no tailor has darned or mended, clamber over the white vineyard walls, the little girls, whose mothers comb their hair before the doors of the houses, are not so pink and white, nor so nicely washed as the Holland children, but I should like to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... topsy-turvy world it was, to be sure! What alternations between despair and hope! What rebound from the gates of Death to the threshold of Eden! How untrue, after all, was the nebulous philosophy of Omar, the Tentmaker. Surely in the happenings ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... I got from the hotel to the hill in a wagon. The sight from our eminence was one that I shall never forget—that I can never fully describe. The whole world appeared to be topsy-turvy and at the mercy of an angry and destroying demon of the elements. People were floating about on housetops and in wagons, and hundreds were clinging to tree-trunks, logs and ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... was found the question of Wade versus Washington Street was settled. A topsy-turvy sign at the intersection announced that Wade Street was ahead. Emma Sanderson's grandson lived a couple of ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... and so am I on account of my health. In the mean time all goes topsy-turvy with me. The Herr[1] wants to have me with him, and Art is not less urgent in her claims. I am partly in Schoenbrunn and partly here; every day assailed by messages from strangers and new acquaintances, and even as regards art I am often driven nearly distracted by my ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... the hotel was equally friendly, racking his brains to find a way of serving Monte by serving madame. It made him feel quite like those lordly personages who used to come here with a title and turn the place topsy-turvy for themselves and for their women-folk. He recalled a certain count of something who arrived with his young wife and who in a day had half of Nice in his service. Monte felt like him, only more so. There was a certain obsequiousness that the count demanded ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... nuns, and bones, and relics, and miracles, and icons, and calvaries, and cells, and celibacy, and horsehair shirts, and blood, and dirt, and tears, was true after all! What if the world of beauty I had been content to live in was a Satanic show, and the real thing was that dead, topsy-turvy world down there in the cold, gray lake under the reeking mists? I sneaked back into the house to see if the streak hadn't dried yet; but no! it loomed in tell-tale ghastliness, a sort of writing on the wall announcing the wrath ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... stepladder. He and Yardsley go out. The pictures are piled up on the floor, the furniture is topsy-turvy, and the portieres lie in ...
— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs
... barbaric way, and many menaces to Andromachus if he did not forthwith send the Corinthians off, stretched out his hand with the inside upward, and then turning it down again, threatened he would handle their city even so, and turn it topsy-turvy in as little time, and with as much ease. Andromachus, laughing at the man's confidence, made no other reply, but, imitating his gesture, bid him hasten his own departure, unless he had a mind to see that kind of dexterity ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... casts his eyes around what was sometimes called the kitchen, sometimes the tap-room, sometimes the "dancing-flure." Forms which had run by the walls, and planks by way of tables which had been propped before them, were turned topsy-turvy, and in some instances broken. Pewter pots and pints, battered and bruised, or squeezed together and flattened, and fragments of twisted glass tumblers, lay beside them. The clay floor was scraped with brogue-nails and indented with the heel of that primitive foot-gear, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... excuse for his folly. No; all this dirt and confusion, which once a week drives me nearly beside myself, is what K—— calls clearing up the ship; when he and his man Friday, as he calls Kelly, turn everything topsy-turvy, and, to make the muddle more complete, they always choose my washing-day for their frolic. Pantries and cellars are rummaged over, and everything is dragged out of its place, for the mere pleasure of making a litter, and dragging it ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... repugnance. inversion &c 218; the opposite, the reverse, the inverse, the converse, the antipodes, the antithesis, the other extreme. V. be contrary &c adj.; contrast with, oppose; diller toto coelo [Lat.]. invert, reverse, turn the tables; turn topsy-turvy, turn end for end, turn upside down, turn inside out. contradict, contravene; antagonize &c 708. Adj. contrary, contrarious^, contrariant^; opposite, counter, dead against; converse, reverse; opposed, antithetical, contrasted, antipodean, antagonistic, opposing; conflicting, inconsistent, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Riches; that only he, that is, in spite of Hesiod, Homer, nay and Jupiter himself, divum pater atque hominum rex, the father of gods and men, at whose single beck, as heretofore, so at present, all things sacred and profane are turned topsy-turvy. According to whose pleasure war, peace, empire, counsels, judgments, assemblies, wedlocks, bargains, leagues, laws, arts, all things light or serious—I want breath—in short, all the public and private business of mankind is governed; without whose help all ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... pass on the Italian side, was, till lately, a quiet and beautiful village, rising from among great green slopes, which in early summer are covered with innumerable flowers. The place, however, is now quite changed. The railway has turned the whole Val Leventina topsy-turvy, and altered it almost beyond recognition. When the line is finished and the workmen have gone elsewhere, things will get right again; but just now there is an explosiveness about the valley which puzzles one who has been familiar with its former quietness. ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... shattered; then, turning another corner, we came on a poor bourgeois house that had had its whole front torn away. The squalid revelation of caved-in floors, smashed wardrobes, dangling bedsteads, heaped-up blankets, topsy-turvy chairs and stoves and wash-stands was far more painful than the sight of the wounded church. St. Eloi was draped in the dignity of martyrdom, but the poor little house reminded one of some shy humdrum person suddenly exposed in the glare of ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... epigrams, and more particularly his fables, are examples of a thoroughgoing naturalist's insolent indifference to any form of restraint. All things, whether holy or bestial, were material for his topsy-turvy wit, his literally unbridled imagination. No humanistic law of decency, that is to say, a proper respect for the opinions of mankind, and no divine law of reverence and humility, acted for him as a restraining force or a selective principle. An immediate and significant example of this ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... the sages preach Who never have learnt what they try to teach. We are the lights of the age, they say! We are the men, and the thinkers we! So we build up guess-work the livelong day, In a topsy-turvy sort of way, Some with and some wanting a plus b. Let the British Association fuss; What are theirs to the feats to be wrought by us? {354} Shall the earth stand still? Will the round come square? Must Isaac's book be the nest of a mare? ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... school bank-cards and Monday morning pennies. (By the time the children leave school, they will have saved thus, penny by penny, enough to provide them with a new rig-out for service—or Sunday wear.) There was a frizzling in the topsy-turvy little kitchen. ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... cluck, that is but a general expression of affection and oversight. But the moment she finds a worm or a crumb or a splash of dough, the note changes into a quick, eager "Here! here! here!" and away rushes the brood pell-mell and topsy-turvy. If a stray cat approaches, or danger in any form, her defiant, menacing "C-r-r-r-r!" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... sat on the edge of the Laughing Brook and he was very busy, very busy indeed. He was washing his breakfast. Really, it was his dinner, for turning night into day just turns everything topsy-turvy. So Bobby Coon eats dinner when most of the little meadow people ...
— Mother West Wind's Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... place to every individual, in a drove of a thousand, nay, even of ten thousand captured souls; and what difficulty can he have with seven, however dangerous they may be. But though these seven should turn the infernal government topsy-turvy, do you drive them thither instantly, for fear I should receive commands to annihilate you before your time. As for his threats, they are only lies; for although thy end, and that of the old man yonder, (looking at Time,) are nigh at hand, being ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... twenty-five than thirty-five. Her hair was still soft and shining. She had been a pretty girl, she was a beautiful woman. But the greatest change was in her attitude toward life. In Paris her golden-rule philosophy had been turned topsy-turvy. ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... look upon,' said she, 'and I like you for it. The world is fair, but it has robbed me of husband, honor and taken away my children's eye-sight. Henceforward, all that is hideous I will love!' I saw that her brain was topsy-turvy, and it rejoiced me. Her children were still pretty, though they were blind; and it almost made me laugh to see them grope their way to their mother's side, and turning their sightless eyes toward her, ask, in childish accents,—'Mamma, what made the naughty man put out our eyes?' Well, ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... Roosevelt spring from his sense of humor—humor which recognizes the topsy-turvy of life and its swift changes, and still laughs—or from the instinct which knows that even in the sweetest of all experiences there must be a drop of bitterness? Whatever their cause, they proved to be a true foreboding. He had not been home twenty ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... the service of Mass in the good Abbe Leroux's parish church, which is a triumph of imagination and subtle humour. No wonder "the Abbe Leroux was scandalised," when the service had been turned topsy-turvy, the credo put before the gloria, and a young person among his congregation, topping all other voices, was singing a solo! Where was the Beadle? or a Churchwarden? or an Aggrieved Parishioner? Three cheers for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various
... his feet, and stood poised in a perilous position at the end of the roof, like some dark statue hung above its gable. Behind him, huge clouds of an almost impossible purple turned slowly topsy-turvy in the silent anarchy of heaven. Their gyration made the dark figure seem ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... discontent will be far more prevalent than ever. Again, if laboring men can only be made to break their wage contracts soon after every victorious strike, the industries of the whole country will soon be "topsy-turvy." ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... Socratic every dining-room was Attic (Which suggests an architecture of a topsy-turvy kind), There they'd satisfy their thirst on a recherche cold {Greek word} Which is what they called their lunch—and so may you if you're inclined. As they gradually got on, they'd {four Greek words) (Which is Attic for a steady and a conscientious drink). But they ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... people! Half an hour hence I'll be going through a mad march of the incidents of the day, turned topsy-turvy according to the way of dreams. But wae's me! wae's me! If it had all been true—if I had been really homeless and friendless and penniless, instead of having three 'goolden' pounds in my purse, and Providence in the ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... does he?" she said to herself, as she realised that she would be forced to speak out now if he was to be saved from such an alliance. "Then he must marry her, that's all! I can't and won't turn all Maerchenland topsy-turvy on his account! I've done all I could for him, and I shall leave him to go his own way. I'll go up to bed before he arrives, and I expect it will be a long time before I'm able to come down, for I feel sure I am going to be ill—and ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... swiftly through the early night, his brain seething with tumultuous thoughts. The revelations of the day were staggering; the whole universe seemed to have turned topsy-turvy since that devastating hour at Burton's Inn. Somehow he was not able to confine his thoughts to Hetty Castleton alone. She seemed to sink into the background, despite the absolution he had been so ready, ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... momentary uneasiness to see my rustic throne beneath the oak usurped by a noisy group of girls, the silence and decorum of my imaginary realm broken by music and laughter, and, in a word, my whole kingdom turned topsy-turvy with romping, fiddling, and dancing. But I am naturally, and from principle, too, a lover of all those innocent amusements which cheer the laborer's toil, and, as it were, put their shoulders to the wheel of life, and help the poor man along with his load of cares. Hence I ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... man who is too topsy-turvy; Nothing is quite as it should be with Jones, Angular just where he ought to be curvy, Padded with flesh where ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... replied; "but there's generally a lot of complaint about him. He takes more pains dressing himself than he does in looking after guests, the result of which is that after my departure things get topsy-turvy, and by the time I get back, with the exception of Narcissus, there isn't a ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... studied men from my topsy-turvy Close, and, I reckon, rather true. Some are fine fellows: some, right scurvy; Most, a dash between the two. But it's a woman, old girl, that makes me Think more kindly of the race, And it's a woman, old girl, that shakes me When the ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... degrees from the practice of that establishment, and yet be at an inconceivable distance from perfection."[98] Mr. Dunstan observed, "You carry kind treatment too far at the Retreat—beyond safety. If you had many of our patients they would turn you topsy-turvy presently." Mr. Tuke replied, "It is certainly possible to carry a good general principle too far, but we have very few accidents or escapes, and we have many patients who come to us in a very violent state." Mr. Dunstan would not allow his visitor to see some of the rooms, and ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... momentous affair that has just taken place, and it is an event of too great moment in this quiet little world not to turn it completely topsy-turvy. Labour is at a stand. The house has been a scene of confusion the whole evening. It has been beleaguered by gipsy women, with their children on their backs, wailing and lamenting; while the old virago of a mother has cruised up and ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... But the tea is cold—and that shows that everything is topsy-turvy. Bah! But I see something in the window, on a plate." He went to the window. "Oh oh, boiled chicken and rice!... But why haven't you begun upon it yet? So we are in such a state ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... only say the whole question demands much more anxious thought than you seem to have given it. You say that he is a gentleman. He knows how to behave, I admit; but if his morals are as topsy-turvy as his tastes and—er—politics, as I've no doubt they are (rising and moving to L.), then-er—In short, I do not approve of Brian Strange as a husband for my niece and ward. (Knocks ...
— Mr. Pim Passes By • Alan Alexander Milne
... perhaps; not at all; she was pignaute—original; and did the oddest things with the air and look of the highest breeding. Fairies cannot be vulgar, no matter what they do; they may take the strangest liberties—pinch the maids—turn the house topsy-turvy; but they are ever the darlings of grace and poetry. Flora Vyvyan was a fairy. Not peculiarly intellectual herself, she had a veneration for intellect; those fast young men were the last persons likely to fascinate that fast young lady. Women are so perverse; they always prefer the very people ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... straight, so that the eye took in a half mile of it, from the beginning to the point where another turn intervened. The two friends were galloping over this exact section and speculating as to how soon they would strike the open prairie, when all their calculations were knocked topsy-turvy. A party of horsemen charged around the bend in front, all riding at a sweeping gallop directly toward the alarmed Mickey and Fred, who instantly halted and surveyed them. A second glance showed them to be Indians, undoubtedly Apaches, ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... mantles; men with every kind of headgear, turbans, handkerchiefs, cowls; men with hair and beard matted and flying; now one helped himself to a louder yell by tossing in air the dirty garment he had torn from his body, hirsute as a goat's; now one leaped up agile as a panther; now one turned topsy-turvy; now groups of them swirled together like whimsical eddies in a pool. Some went slowly, their arms outspread in silent ecstasy; some stalked on with parted lips and staring eyes, trance-like or in dead drunkenness of soul; nevertheless the great majority of ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... have been reading a ghost-book," said Carlyle. "Wilson's folly has turned the house topsy-turvy. Make your haste, Barbara." ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... planned the funniest kind of a joke On the poor, long-suffering mortal folk; And a few mysterious words he said, His fool's cap close to her flower-crowned head. Then he laughed till he made his cap-bells ring, At the thought of the topsy-turvy Spring. "'Tis a fair exchange," he said, with a wink— "It is!" she said, and what do you think? The flowers that should bloom in the month of May Every one of them came on an April day! And they looked for April showers in vain, But all through May ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... making him into a ridiculous prig. She turned the values of life topsy-turvy with that one ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... your uncle had a deal more money than he owned to, and he managed to send his sister Elodie—and that was a stage name he gave her—to send her to be a workwoman at our place, without my daughter's knowing who she was; and, gracious goodness! but that girl turned the whole place topsy-turvy; she got all those poor girls into mischief—impossible to whitewash them, ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... had finished the door on the birthday, and proud enough they were of it. The griffins, cupids, and so on, were, I must own, most beautiful to behold; though so many in number, so entangled in flowers and devices, and so topsy-turvy in their actions and attitudes, that you felt them unpleasantly in your head for hours after you had done with the pleasure of looking at them. If I add that Penelope ended her part of the morning's work by being sick in the back-kitchen, it is in no unfriendly spirit towards the vehicle. No! ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... he has been charged to recover, and the still more startling incident of the heroine living for some years in disguise as a monk. The following epistle, however, from the heroine to the hero, will show better than anything else the topsy-turvy condition which sensibility had already reached. All that need be said in explanation of it is that the father (who is furious with his son, and not unreasonably so) has shut him up in a dungeon, in order to force him to give ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... saw the money; saw it in the hand of the person who hid it there. Let me look for it, constable. I will not give up the search till I have turned the place topsy-turvy." ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... when he could not make everything fit his rule of thumb, he excused the country tolerantly as a "topsy-turvy" land. He wished to move and act quickly; to make others move quickly. He did not understand that men who had sentenced themselves to exile for the official term of three years, or for life, measured ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... Is that you, dearest? Oh! Carroll, I'm all so topsy-turvy I don't know what I'm doing. But I just couldn't go to bed ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... to think it premature. Her furniture was topsy-turvy, and her hair in curl-papers; she obviously did not expect visitors, and resented this curtailment of the honeymoon. She showed it even when Dorothea, after apologies, came straight ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... justice, not being of that opinion, and having a moral mission, and being no scholar to speak of, and hard up for an authority—why, it was a very great temptation for him. But some people, and I am afraid the professor was one of them, interpret that in a more strange, curious, one-sided, left-handed, topsy-turvy, inside-out, behind-before fashion than even Cousin Cramchild; for they make it mean, that you must show your respect for children, by never confessing yourself in the wrong to them, even if you know that you are so, lest they should lose confidence ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... she began, an almost weak love of praise showing itself for a moment in her eyes; "but I have no room prepared. I have been house-cleaning, and everything is topsy-turvy Mrs. ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... most pretensions in this topsy-turvy of a world regard it as a disgrace to have been obscure and ignorant, and pride themselves upon their persistence in their own kind of obscurity and ignorance! No wonder the few strong men do about as they please with such a race of nincompoopery. If they didn't ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... what are the marsupials as a family, viewed in the dry light of modern science? Well, they are simply one of the very oldest mammalian families, and therefore, I need hardly say, in the levelling and topsy-turvy view of evolutionary biology, the least entitled to consideration or respect from rational observers. For of course in the kingdom of science the last shall be first, and the first last; it is the oldest families that are accounted the worst, while the best families mean always the newest. Now, ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... become a sort of universal guest. With what propriety is this jovial season, placed amid dismal December rains and snows! How one pities the unhappy Australians, with whom everything is turned topsy-turvy, and who holds Christmas at midsummer! The face of Christmas glows all the brighter for the cold. The heart warms as the frost increases. Estrangements which have embittered the whole year, melt in to-night's hospitable smile. There are warmer handshakings on this night than during the by-past ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... thoroughbred, even if she had been born of middle-class parentage. He laughed bitterly. Middle class. A homeless, countryless derelict, and he had the impudence to revert to comparisons that no longer existed in this topsy-turvy old world. He was an upstart. The final curtain had dropped between him and his world, and he was still thinking in the ancient make-up. Middle class! He was no better than a troglodyte, set ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... speak to the wind. She thinks it a great favour to run down to Hiltonbury for the Horticultural Show, turn everything topsy-turvy, keep poor dear Sweet Honey in a perpetual ferment, then come away to Castle Blanch, as if she were rid ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... time thought of writing an Epic Poem upon Friedrich the Great, 'upon some action of Friedrich's,' Schiller says. Happily Schiller did not do it. By oversetting fact, disregarding reality, and tumbling time and space topsy-turvy, Schiller with his fine gifts might no doubt have written a temporary 'epic poem,' of the kind read an admired by many simple persons. But that would have helped little, and could not have lasted long. It is not the untrue imaginary Picture of ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... clever indeed. If you would just turn it topsy-turvy, change all those bitter, truthful speeches into noble sentiments; make your Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs (who never has been a popular character) die in the last act instead of the Yorkshireman, ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... things over which Peter Rabbit had sat and thought and wondered until the brains in that funny little head of his were topsy-turvy, none was more puzzling than the fact that Sticky-toes the Tree Toad could climb. Often Peter had watched him climb up the trunk of a tree or jump from one branch to another and then thought of Old Mr. Toad, own cousin to Sticky-toes, ...
— Mother West Wind "How" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... ... No, to be beloved is a misfortune. It is a misfortune to feel guilty because you do not give something you cannot give. O my God!' he added, with a gesture of his arm. 'If it all happened reasonably, and not all topsy-turvy—not in our way but in a way of its own! Why, it's as if I had stolen that love! You think so too, don't deny it. You must think so. But will you believe it, of all the horrid and stupid things I have found time to do in my life—and there are many—this is one I do not ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... gave, in her place. She begged the latter's forgiveness for what she had done; she could not help it, there must be justice for gentlemen as well as for peasants. If there was no justice the world could not exist, everything would be topsy-turvy, and people would kill one another in the public streets just as the wild beasts did in the woods. She, too, would atone for the sin she had committed that day, and that would be perfectly just. She also sent a message to the gardener, thanking him for all the kindness ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... satisfaction by the colonists. The American elk has been introduced in the South Island, and the mountain goats—the ibex and the thar—are to be acclimatized in the mountains, so that unnatural sport may flourish in this ancient land of quiet and of wondrous birds, turned topsy-turvy by ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... naturally represents them. To mark the fifth, they chose a V, which is made out by bending inwards the three middle fingers, and stretching out only the thumb and the little finger; and for the tenth they used an X, which is a double V, one placed topsy-turvy under the other. From this the progression of these numbers is always from one to five, and from five to ten. The hundred was signified by the capital letter of that word in Latin, C—centum. The other letters, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... had so seldom honored them with her presence, and who always tried so hard to impress them with a sense of her superiority and the mighty favor she conferred upon them by occasionally condescending to bring her aristocratic presence into their quiet, plain household, and turn it topsy-turvy. Still, she was Anna's aunt, and then, too, it was a distinction which Aunt Ruth rather enjoyed, that of having a fashionable city woman for her guest, and so she submitted with a good grace to the breaking in upon all her customs, and uttered no word of complaint when the breakfast table waited ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... strawberry bed. What do you think, Mammy! There are ripe red berries and pretty blossoms, now! On the way home, we saw yellow dandelion blossoms. It isn't summer any more; it is frost-time. Everything seems topsy-turvy!" ...
— Grand-Daddy Whiskers, M.D. • Nellie M. Leonard
... his head. He hated clashing and conflict above all things, and was for peace. Why should they thus rush to thrust themselves into trouble? Let matters abide as they were a little longer; surely life was pleasant enough without turning it all topsy-turvy. Then, with a sort of indignation, why should Myles, who had only come among them a month, take such service more to heart than they who had endured it for years? And, finally, with the hopefulness of so many of the ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... victim of an illusion of the senses? Have I recovered life only to lose reason? No; I know myself, I find myself the same; my judgment is firm and accurate, and can make its way in this world so new and topsy-turvy. It is on but one point that my reason wavers—Clementine!—I seem to see you again, and you are not you! Well, what's the difference, after all? If the Destiny which snatched me from the tomb has taken care to ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... sharp-cut, though they were not very high, and were heavily wooded to their summits. The westernmost peak of this range was separated from the rest by a wide river, which had cut its way through in some of those forgotten ages when, if we are to believe the geologists, every thing was topsy-turvy on this now meek ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... held her gaze, the same thought—almost the same simile—had come into her mind; but she had hardly expected to find a love of the beautiful in this bronzed forester. In fact, she found that a number of her preconceived ideas were being turned topsy-turvy. ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... alone involved a daily recurring struggle, in which the softer emotions would have been altogether out of place, we may suppose. In the present instance she considered it a hard case that her house should be turned topsy-turvy at such an untimely hour, and its general propriety endangered thereby; and Madelon's grief, which at another time would have excited her compassion, had for the moment taken the unexpected form of determined opposition, and could only be ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... the rich materials are not at hand! He was a man of talents, who ran a race with the press; could criticise all the genius of the age faster than it could be produced; could make his own malignity look like wit, and turn the wit of others into absurdity, by placing it topsy-turvy. As thus, when he attacked "The Traveller" of Goldsmith, which he called "a flimsy poem," he discussed the subject as a grave political pamphlet, condemning the whole system, as raised on false principles. "The Deserted ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... mighty host of clouds had followed them; and when the wind did come, it came in no moderate measure, but brought this awful storm upon its wings, which now raged as if all the powers of mischief had got loose, and were bent on turning every thing topsy-turvy indoors ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... time his reverence came to me, leaving the porter just outside the door in order to come to his help should I be violent; and then he read me a very purty lecture on my conduct, saying I had turned the religious house topsy-turvy, and corrupted the scholars, and that I was the cheat of the world, for that, on inspecting the pack, he had discovered the dirty marks which I had made upon the trump cards for to know them by. He said a great ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... by force, nor could she hide it anywhere but what he would hunt it out. At last in despair she dropped the silver in the jug on the wash-hand basin, and had the satisfaction of seeing him turn everything topsy-turvy in a vain attempt to find it. As he never washed, it never occurred to him to look in ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... handsome arms and neat elbows, and to wear Lincoln Green toxophilite hats and feathers, but that they may bring down some "desirable" young man with those killing bows and arrows of theirs? What causes respectable parents to take up their carpets, set their houses topsy-turvy, and spend a fifth of their year's income in ball suppers and iced champagne? Is it sheer love of their species, and an unadulterated wish to see young people happy and dancing? Psha! they want to ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... recognised by routine, or of remedying anything about which no outcry has been made, we are met with, 'I cannot think what you mean by all this disturbance; nobody else among the clergy sees these things, and I have no wish to be the first to begin turning everything topsy-turvy.' And then people call him a sensible man. I have no patience with them. However, we know what we want, and, as I wrote to Dawson the other day, have a scheme on foot which will, I think, fairly meet the requirements of the case. But we want more money, and my first ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... side. Houses were knocked down; streets broken through and stopped; deep pits and trenches dug in the ground; enormous heaps of earth and clay thrown up; buildings that were undermined and shaking, propped by great beams of wood. Here, a chaos of carts, overthrown and jumbled together, lay topsy-turvy at the bottom of a steep unnatural hill; there, confused treasures of iron soaked and rusted in something that had accidentally become a pond. Everywhere were bridges that led nowhere; thoroughfares that were wholly impassable; Babel towers of chimneys, wanting half their ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... place on the first of May, and was long cited in tradition as the grand moving. The anniversary of it was piously observed among the "sons of the pilgrims of Communipaw," by turning their houses topsy-turvy, and carrying all the furniture through the streets, in emblem of the swarming of the parent hive; and this is the real origin of the universal agitation and "moving" by which this most restless of cities is literally turned out of ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... possible to climb to the nearest timber. Nothing definite could be seen. The clouds on the snowy surface and the light electrified air gave the eye only optical illusions. The outline of every object was topsy-turvy and dim. The large stones that I thought to step on were not there; and, when apparently passing others, I bumped into them. Several times I fell headlong by stepping out for a ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... trodden under foot, the same as, conversely, all manly attributes are stripped from the men in hundreds of other occupations. Such are the sequels of social exploitation and of social war. Our corrupt social conditions turn things topsy-turvy. ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... service which he praised highly; it is true there would be trouble with the sergeants; but then the officers were gentlemen, and his own, in particular, one among ten thousand. It sounded so far exactly like an episode in the rakish, topsy-turvy life of such an one as I had imagined. But then there came incidents more doubtful, which showed an almost impudent greed after gratuities, and a truly impudent disregard for truth. And then there was the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as she opened it. "She is the best of them all to write, and her letters sound just like her funny, topsy-turvy self." ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... and we resent his operations as an individual hurt, a personal affront. What business has he to be trampling among our borders and crushing our flowers with his stupid hobnails? Why cannot he carry his zeal for topsy-turvy horticulture elsewhere? He comes and lays a brutal hand on our pet growths, snips off their graces, shapes them anew according to his own ridiculous ideal, paints and varnishes them with a villainous compound of his ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... cadets lost no time in making a thorough examination of the Lodge. In the bedrooms they found everything topsy-turvy, the bed clothes having been hauled near the windows where the incoming snow might fall upon them. In the kitchen they found many of their cooking utensils in the sink, and over them had been poured a mixture of flour, catsup, maple syrup, and condensed ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... uncannily that Jolyon would rather like to pay them—the chap was so loose. Besides, to claim damages was not the thing to do. The claim, indeed, had been made almost mechanically; and as the hour drew near Soames saw in it just another dodge of this insensitive and topsy-turvy Law to make him ridiculous; so that people might sneer and say: "Oh, yes, he got quite a good price for her!" And he gave instructions that his Counsel should state that the money would be given to a Home for Fallen Women. He was a long time hitting off exactly the right charity; but, having pitched ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy |
