"Twisting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... situated at the sides or back; and either open upon flower-beds, grounds of the above description, or some kind of enclosure, shaded by peach or pear-trees, trained trellis-fashion overhead; or by cedars, with one solitary bough twisting fantastically over the ground, showing, in its unnatural contortions, the skill of the artist, the other branches having been lopped off, or stunted, to facilitate the growth and training of ...
— Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs • J. M. W. Silver
... talking to Beatrix's mother, his dear, fond, constant mistress—for hours—for all day long—pouring out his flame and his passion, his despair and rage, returning again and again to the theme, pacing the room, tearing up the flowers on the table, twisting and breaking into bits the wax out of the stand-dish, and performing a hundred mad freaks of passionate folly; seeing his mistress at last quite pale and tired out with sheer weariness of compassion, and watching over his fever for the hundredth time, ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... moment the exhausted mutineer made a tremulous motion of his cramped jaws, and then painfully twisting round his head, said in a sort of hiss, 'What I say is this—and mind it well—if you flog me, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... fire was built, and one of the Indians told off to keep it up. The Scouts thought it was very soldierlike. They talked excitedly for a while, and being weary fell into an early deep sleep. Later there was a good deal of restlessness and turning and twisting. Then through the starlight, occasionally a mysterious figure could be dimly discerned stealing silently toward the boats. There was a quiet grin on the face of Swiftwater, who had bunked on one of the boats, when ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... time Paco remained seated upon his pile of casks, feasting his eyes with the sunshine, to which they had so long been strangers; his ear on the watch, his fingers mechanically plucking and twisting the blades of grass that grew in through the window. He was arranging in his mind what route he should take, and considering where he was most likely to find Count Villabuena, when he was surprised by the sound of words, proceeding apparently ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... bole of the tree, until called elsewhere by some more promising field of operations. Before taking flight from one tree to another, they stop the insect search and gaze inquisitively toward their destination. If two of them meet, there is often a sudden stopping in the air, a twisting upward and downward, followed by a lively chase across the open to the top of a dead tree, and then a sly peeping round or over a limb, after the manner of all Woodpeckers. A rapid drumming with the bill on the tree, branch or trunk, it is said, serves for a love-song, and it has a ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various
... looked puzzled for a moment. "You mean for himself, for his own self?" There is a lawyer who comes to see papa. I've been in the room sometimes, when they don't mind. Such talk about schemes, and how to do this and that, and twisting about. And not a word about anything any of the time. And one day when he was waiting for papa I talked with him. You would have ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... silver Trent SIRENA dwelleth; She to whom Nature lent All that excelleth; By which the Muses late And the neat Graces Have for their greater state Taken their places; Twisting an anadem Wherewith to crown her, As it belong'd to them Most to renown her. On thy bank, In a rank, Let thy swans sing her, And with their music Along ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... just as well for ye that ye don't," said Oakum Otie, twisting his straggly beard into a spill and blinking nervously. "There I was, headed straight and keeping true course, and then she looked at me and there was a tremble in her voice and tears in her eyes—and the next thing I knowed I was here in this telegraft ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... his conscience between the feeling that he ought not to discuss the question in a secular conversation and a feeling of reverence for his bantering friend who was an ecclesiastic of mature age and a professor in the Episcopal seminary of P—-, was twisting himself about ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... reason still more plainly claims the man for an ally. Commentators have given themselves a great deal of trouble to reconcile this saying with the other—'He that is not with Me is against Me.' If by reconciling is meant twisting both to mean the same thing, it cannot be done. If preventing the appearance of contradiction is meant, it does not seem necessary. The two sayings do not contradict, but they complete, each other. They apply to different classes of persons, and common-sense has to determine their application. This ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... silently over her sandy bed, between two large banks of pebbles, and the rocky debris which she tears out of the heart of the Alps, and with which she furrows the plains in her days of anger. A semi-circle of fertile hills, overspread with those long festoons of twisting vine that suspend themselves from all the trees in Venetia, made a near frame to the picture; and the snowy mountain-heights, sparkling in the first rays of sunshine, formed an immense second border, standing, ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... likes without affecting his standing in the political communion of saints of which he professes himself a member. "Party lines" are as terribly confused as the parallels of latitude and longitude after a twisting earthquake, or those aimless lines representing the competing railroad on a map published by a company operating "the only direct route." It is not probable that this state of things can last; if there is to be "government by party"—and we should be sad to think that so inestimable ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... and the hapless creature is tormented on principle. I have frequently witnessed the cruelty with which parents will sometimes amuse their children, by catching young birds or animals, that they may disjoint their limbs to make them struggle in a lingering death. And a child is often seen twisting the neck of a young duck or goose, under the laughing encouragements of the mother for hours together, before it is strangled. At one moment he satisfies the cravings of nature from the breast of ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... he suspects himself of indisposition. Nothing serious,—let us just rub our fore-feet together, as the enormous creature who provides for us rubs his hands, and all will be right. He rubs them with that peculiar twisting movement of his, and pauses for the effect. No! all is not quite right yet. Ah! it is our head that is not set on just as it ought to be. Let us settle that where it should be, and then we shall certainly be in good trim again. So he pulls his head about as ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... of men, young and old, the little things (she regarded a grand wine as a little thing) twisting and changing them, amazed her. And these are they by whom women are abused for variability! Only the most imperious reasons, never mean trifles, move women, thought she. Would women do an injury to one they loved ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... see how the Third Act of a comedy which had tied itself in this kind of a knot simply could not be played. The author had completely sacrificed plausibility, and it was not uninteresting to see him twisting and turning, hedging and bluffing to save it; and a little uncomfortable to note the conviction oozing away out of the performers.... Queer also that it isn't more generally recognised that to come to the theatre with a loud persistent cough is a form of premeditated ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... for making baskets, indeed fit for anything better than firewood; however, there were some bushes which were of a harder texture, and which burnt well. It was Jackson who told me that the former were called willow and used for making baskets, and he also shewed me how to tie the faggots up by twisting the sallows together. They were not, however, what Jackson said they were—from after knowledge, I should say that they were a species of Oleander or ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... noticed the blue threads in his fifty-dollar bill. In fact, there was not much about it that he had not noticed while twisting and ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... the stranger, who had been wrinkling his brows and twisting his mustaches with well-bred patience, took advantage of an ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... trees whose freakish branches and large, glossy, dark-green leaves spread perhaps ninety feet above his head, he reached the nearer boughs with an omei, a very long stick with a forked end to which was attached a small net of cocoanut fiber. Deftly twisting a fruit from its stem by a dexterous jerk of the cleft tip, he caught it in the net, and lowered it to the kooka on the ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... wish I could clear him of other sins as easily as this. The object he was turning and twisting in his left breeches pocket was not a house-key, nor a jimmy, nor a club, nor a tomahawk, nor any infernal machine: It was a small piece of paper containing fourteen stivers, which he had raised on his New Testament with Psalms at the grocer's on the "Ouwebrug"; and the thing that ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... Nyoda began twisting up her felt outing hat in her hands. As she did so she came upon something hard in the inside of the crown. Investigating she drew out her Wohelo knife. "I had forgotten I had it in there," she said. "I put that pocket in my hat just for fun and slipped the knife ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... And there, not ten feet away, stood Lamborn. His mouth became a scrawl, he uttered a growl, he swayed with passion, he moved his hands at his side in a sort of twisting motion. And I thought: there are Zoe and Dorothy, and I may create a feud against me that will follow me for years ... yet this man must die. And I drew my pistol and fired ... Lamborn sank to the ground without a groan. Some of the McCall boys ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... safe in the boom. Brent looked about for Mallows, but Mallows was already gone. Alexander herself was among the last to start along the ill-lighted and twisting street that climbed along, the broken levels of the town toward the tavern. It was, at best, a squalid village and a tawdry one. Now it was to boot a wholly demoralized town, cut off from the other world by inundated highways and the washing out of its railroad bridge. The ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... not in the abolition of foreign languages in this country. I have heard loyal patriots who found English twisting their tongues, and Bolshevism has come from the lips of those of New England culture like Foster. This country has not only been remiss in failing to teach the foreigner but in teaching the native. I believe ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... who they can be," interrupted Mrs. Stratton, twisting herself free, her face as red as Josie's shawl. "There's Nellie's voice. They'll be wondering what we're doing here. Do come along!" And seizing a tray of cups and saucers, on which she had placed the coffeepot and the saucer ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... sight of what the fiends had done. MacRae whitened, but the full import of Piegan's words stunned him to silence. The bare possibility of Lyn Rowan being at the dubious mercy of those ruthless brutes was something that called for more than mere words. He hesitated only a moment, nervously twisting the saddle-strings with one hand, then straightened up and tore loose the ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... A miserable smile twisting his lips, old Jake stooped, picked up a roll of bills, and, mumbling and crooning to himself, laid it on the table. Jimmie Dale immediately ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... Nightingale. Having heard this he set all his servants to work, spread on every twig of his hazels and chesnut trees a quantity of bird-lime, and set throughout the orchard so many traps and springs, that the nightingale was shortly caught. Immediately running to his wife, and twisting the bird's neck, he tossed it into her bosom so hastily that she was sprinkled with the blood; adding that her enemy was now dead, and she might in future sleep in quiet. The lady, who, it seems, was not fertile in expedients, submitted to the loss of her nightly ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... spring forward to throw myself before him, but the smugglers held me back, though the action, instead of making them angry, seemed to gain we more respect from them, as they held me less rudely than before, and no longer amused themselves by twisting the handkerchief, Thug ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... will lap and scratch As I swallow it down; And I shall feel it as a serpent of fire, Coiling and twisting in my belly. His snortings will rise to my head, And I shall be hot, and laugh, Forgetting that I have ever ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... a slave, and no more worthy of heed than the dog which had followed Hadrian, or than the pillows on which the Emperor had been reclining. The man, who was handsome and well grown, stood for some time twisting the ends of his long red moustache, and stroking his round, closely-cropped head with his bands; then he drew the open chiton together over his broad breast, which seemed to gleam from the remarkable whiteness of the skin. He never took his eyes ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... book on the table, raised his head and gazed calmly at his wife. In spite of all his efforts, his face had assumed an expression which would have frightened her if she had noticed it, but her eyes were fastened upon the cup which he was twisting in his hand as if it were ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... plain "Smithy," but of course such an elegant fellow had a handle to the latter part of his name. It was Edmund Maurice Travers Smith; but you could never expect a parcel of American boys to bother with such a tremendous tongue-twisting name as that. Hence ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... "when I was between three and four years old, sitting one day in my high chair at the table, and twisting one foot under the little step of the chair. The next morning I felt lame; but nobody could tell what was the matter. At last, the doctors found out that the trouble all came from that twist. It had gone too far to be cured. ...
— Child's Health Primer For Primary Classes • Jane Andrews
... led the way up a flight of dark and twisting stairs, along a musty hall. She paused before a door ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... advanced slightly, so that when he smiled his teeth met edge to edge, and the little black moustache, to which he often gave an absent upward twist, lent an ironic quality to this chill, gay smile, at times almost Mephistophelian. He sat twisting the moustache now, leaning his head to listen, amidst the babel of voices, to Betty Jardine's chatter, and the thrills of infectious expectancy that passed over the audience like breezes over a corn-field left him unaffected. ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... shouldn't wonder if they got married some time along in the summer." She pronounced the word married as if her voice caressed it. It seemed a rustling covert leading to enchanted glades. A pang shot through Ethan, and he said, twisting away from her in his chair: "It'll be your turn next, ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... the rains had stained, frosts cracked, suns blistered it; but what of those? A vine covered with thorns and stemmed with cords had wreathed about it and bound it closely in serpent-coils. I stayed and tore apart the fetters till my hands bled, cut away the twisting branches, and set the god free from his bonds. Triumph rose to my lips, for I said, "So will I free my country!" Ah, there was my error,—the shackling vines would grow again, and infold the marble image that had consecrated the forest-glooms; there is the flaw in all my work,—I have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... fastened together, and Jan saw this was a much harder task than he had ever attempted before. He grabbed the edge of a plank in his powerful jaws and twisting sharply, struck back, for land. Several times the force of the water and the weight of the little raft made him let go, but each time he caught the driftwood and fought his way toward the beach. Land was still quite distant when he heard a faint noise, and then ...
— Prince Jan, St. Bernard • Forrestine C. Hooker
... NED. [Twisting moustache fiercely, regarding her dubiously, hesitating a moment, then drawing up chair and sitting down.] I . . ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... one variety has fruit so like, both externally and internally, the fruit of a perfectly distinct species, namely, the cucumber, as hardly to be distinguished from it; another has long cylindrical fruit twisting about like a serpent; in another the seeds adhere to portions of the pulp; in another the fruit, when ripe, suddenly cracks and falls into pieces; and all these highly remarkable peculiarities are characteristic of species ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... were the men who dotted its green sward with gray and solemn black! The deeper interest Allis had over there on the course where was the little mare, seemed to lift her to a great height above them. How like ants they were, crossing and recrossing each other's paths, twisting and turning without semblance of an objective point, creatures of an impulse almost lower than instinct, devoid of this well-directed governing motive. Yes, they were like an army of ants that had been suddenly thrown into confusion. She saw one of them come hurriedly out of the paddock, ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... ground, and it did not take long; but it seemed hours since she had fired that shot, though she knew the time had been measured by scarcely more than a minute. And now, on the lower platform, waiting for that queer, double, twisting shadow of the two men to join her, she heard the Adventurers s voice ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... was twisting my parrot's neck another proof of your kindness? What had the poor bird ...
— The Two Story Mittens and the Little Play Mittens - Being the Fourth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... the power, and prosperity of the real life which it confers. It is the imitation, the false and prejudiced presentation of religion that men endeavour to dress up attractively. In that they never succeed, for cramping the soul and twisting the intellect ever are opposed ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... to this thought there enveloped him a blind frenzy of hatred for these creatures who dared thwart his purpose and menace the welfare of his wife. With a savage growl he threw himself upon the warrior before him twisting the heavy club from the creature's hand as if he had been a little child, and with his left fist backed by the weight and sinew of his giant frame, he crashed a shattering blow to the center of the Waz-don's face—a blow that crushed the bones and dropped the fellow in his tracks. Then he swung ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... had betrayed this trust, or whether some jealous enemy had spoken or written to Mr. Brookes on the subject; but certain it is that one joyful day when Meason, Sally, and Maggie were eating oysters, and Frank was twisting the corkscrew into a bottle of Chablis, there came an ominous ringing at ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... amidst rain, wind, sleet, and hail, there might be seen, in a thoroughfare about the centre of the town, a cripple, apparently paralytic from the middle down, seated upon the naked street, his legs stretched out before him, hirpling onward; by alternately twisting his miserable body from right to left; while, as if the softer sex were not to be surpassed in feats of hardihood or heroism, a tattered creature, in the shape of woman, without cap, shoe, or stocking, accompanied by two naked ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... he did, twisting it up and setting it to the flame of the candle. "And now," he said, continuing his address, "I'll tell you what I am here for. I was sent to ask if you're man enough to take your life in your hands and to go with me in that boat down ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... ledge like the steps of a colossal staircase. Fortunately I struck the deep channel—my only safe course. I was covered with foam and spray and could not see. All I could do was to trust to Providence and the depth of water, and I shortly found myself twisting around in a great pool below. Half stunned and almost smothered by frequent submerging and the weight of the volume of water that had fallen on me, I drifted helplessly toward the bank. The next thing I remembered was hearing sounds above me and a hand reaching ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... little vineyard Mollie could see a path winding up the hill, twisting in and out between vines and overhanging trees till it lost itself in a flower-garden, which made such a splash of rosy pink and flaming scarlet that Mollie thought it might have been spilt out ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... the gallery she turned to the right, and later to the right again, and twisting the handle of the first door on the left opened it wide. Instead of the firelight she expected the room was brilliantly lighted, and before she could move, a man who was standing in the centre started forward. His ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... raised her hands to touch her disordered hair; she stood there naively twisting it into shape again, her eyes constantly reverting to the sun-tanned ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... position till, instead of her full face, her profile was turned toward him. Looking away toward the paddock that lay brilliant in sunshine on the skirts of the apple orchard, she asked in low slow tones, twisting her hands ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... chest, and a black satin stock obliged him to hold his head high, in soldierly fashion. A handsome gold chain hung from a waistcoat pocket, in which the outline of a flat watch was barely seen. He was twisting a watch-key of the kind called a "criquet," which Breguet had ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... conclusion which fits a real experience. I may represent my trip from New York to Boston by a straight line on a map, just as a man may regard his triumph as the end of a straight and narrow path. The road by which I actually went to Boston may have involved many detours, much turning and twisting, just as his road may have involved much besides pure enterprise, labor and thrift. But provided I reach Boston and he succeeds, the airline and the straight path will serve as ready made charts. Only ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... what is the matter with me tonight. I have positively been to bed, without going to sleep! After tossing and twisting and trying all sorts of positions, I am so angry with myself that I have got up again. Rather than do nothing, I have opened my ink-bottle, and I mean to go on with my journal. Now I think of it, it seems likely that the exhibition of works ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... mammy," said Polly, at last, twisting her hands in the vain attempt to keep from rubbing the aching, inflamed eyes that drove her nearly wild with their itching, "there isn't ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... cushion seat to enjoy the trip. You marvel how he, standing at the stern, with his single oar fitted into a shallow notch of his steering post, propels the craft so swiftly and guides it so surely by those short, twisting strokes of his. Really, you reflect, it is rowing by shorthand. You are feasting your eyes on the wonderful color effects and the groupings that so enthuse the artist, and which he generally manages to botch and boggle when he seeks to commit them to canvas; and betweenwhiles you ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... was the answer, and on the instant a horrible shriek rent the air. Jimmie had quickly grasped both of the Professor's arms at the wrists and was slowly twisting them in a grip of iron. Kell's face went white, the lips writhed back over toothless gums, the eyes closed in the supreme effort to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... Honey bluntly, twisting the ring around her finger. "He only likes two people to sing—Delia and my mother. Was that ruby ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... witness; and having, in tender infancy, been suddenly seized upon in Sunday school by the superintendent, and placed in a conspicuous situation of disgrace for looking at a companion who was performing some strange antic, but who possessed one of those india-rubber faces that, after twisting themselves into all possible, or rather impossible shapes, immediately become straight the moment any one observes them—having, I say, met with this mortifying exposure, it gave me a shock which I have not to this ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... am all of a perspiration." There were several other bathers undergoing this process of fermentation; and when the coffee was finished, and the pipe laid aside, two fellows placed me gently on my back, and commenced rubbing, squeezing, and twisting my arms, ribs, and legs till I thought every joint would be dislocated. I soon felt satisfied with this sort of discipline, though, upon the whole, the sensations were rather disagreeable than painful. The room where we underwent the operation ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... interchange of the buds and blossoms, with which they always took care to be provided. Several weeks passed thus, Henry and Julia seeing each other every day; but long vacation would arrive; and on the evening preceding his departure from ——, the lovelorn student, twisting round the stem of a spicy carnation, a leaf which he had torn from his pocket book, thus conveyed, with his farewell to Julia, an intimation that he designed upon his return to college next term, to effect ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 372, Saturday, May 30, 1829 • Various
... neck!" he cried. "I'm not going without you, so argument is useless and will only waste time. It will give you a bit of a twisting, I know. Now, stick tight!" And he started to run with the wounded ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... little artists who found Dickens too sane for their sorrows and too clear for their delights. But we have a long way to travel before we get back to what Dickens meant; and the passage is a long, rambling English road, a twisting road such as Mr. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... said she, without looking, and twisting her long, bright hair. "I was with Angus but now in the garden. He can bear it no longer, and he touched my brow with his lips that I promised to urge his cause; for he loves you, he loves you, Alice! Am I not kind to think of it now? Ah, if ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... got to get started now. All ready, fireman!" he called to Laddie, who was inside the barrel. "Start the steam going. I'm going to steer the boat," and Russ took his place astride the front end of the barrel, and began twisting on a stick he had stuck down in one of the cracks. The stick, you understand, was the steering-wheel, even if it ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandma Bell's • Laura Lee Hope
... whole body of his work, as known to us from several signed vases, could be here presented, it would be easily seen that his proficiency was well in advance of that of Clitias. Obvious archaisms, however, remain. Especially noticeable is the unnatural twisting of the bodies. A minor point of interest is afforded by the Amazon's shield, which the artist has not succeeded in rendering truthfully in side view. That is a rather difficult problem in perspective, which was not solved ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... We laid hold doggedly of little cedars; we dug our fingers into little crevices, and felt for the same with our toes; we perspired in streams and breathed in gasps; we held the strained muscles of our necks rigid, for the twisting of a pack meant here a dangerous fall; we flattened ourselves against the face of the mountain with always the heavy, ceaseless pull of the tump-line attempting to tear us backward from our holds. And so at ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... himself and worked through tortuous lanes down towards the abandoned Customs Inspectorate and the Austrian Legation. We reached the rear of the Customs compounds without a sound being heard or a living thing seen. All along hundreds of yards of twisting alleyways the native houses stood empty and silent, abandoned by their owners just as they are. Even the Peking dog, a cur of great ferocity, who in peaceful times abounds everywhere and is the terror of our riding-parties, had fled, as if driven away by the fear of the coming storm. ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... no outcry for help. But 4434 knew his precinct too well to wait for that. He quietly walked to the left corner and down toward the couple. As he neared them the mist of the eddying snowflakes became less dense; he could discern a short man twisting the arm of a tall woman, who seemed to be top heavy from an enormous black-plumed hat. The faces of the twain were still indistinct. The man whirled the woman about roughly. She uttered a subdued moan of pain, and 4434, as he softly approached them, his footfalls muffled ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... you down," she said firmly. "Feel how strong my arms are. Not that I shall rest your weight on them. But see, on each side of the window is a marble column. By twisting the rope around one of them, I can let you slip down ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... whispered again and swung on his heel. He paused for a moment just within the gateway where on the only level part of the garden lay a miniature lake, hedged round with bamboo, clumps of oleander, fed by a little twisting stream that came tumbling and splashing down the hillside in a series of tiny waterfalls, its banks fringed with azalea bushes and slender cherry trees. Then he walked slowly along the path that led upward, winding ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... hank-dyeing process the hanks are wrung by placing one end of the hank on a wringing horse placed over the dye-tub, a dye stick on the other end of the hank giving two or three sharp pulls to straighten out the yarn, and then twisting the stick round, the twisting of the yarns puts some pressure on the fibres, thoroughly and uniformly squeezing out the ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... lake assumed now an extraordinary aspect. Its surface was raised into long, sweeping waves that curved sharply and broke upon themselves. In their tops the silver phosphorescence glowed and whirled until the whole surface of the lake seemed filled with a dancing white fire, twisting, turning and seeming to leap out of the water high into ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... more generous toward your cousins, I fear, than they could be toward you," said the reporter, twisting his pencil nervously. After all, it WOULD create a sensation, this remarkable statement of ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... insects, at a time. I made three groups, because the atavists show two different types. Some specimens have decussate stems, others bear all their leaves in whorls of three, but in respect to the hereditary tendency of the twisting character this difference does not seem ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... from the centre of revolution, by which arrangement every part of the charge of materials on the bed was subjected to their action—which was crushing, grinding, mixing and compressing; grinding and mixing from the twisting motion which followed from so large a diameter revolving in so small a circle, and crushing and compressing from the weight ...
— History of the Confederate Powder Works • Geo. W. Rains
... But Peter sat absorbed, twisting its silk cord round his finger. 'Don't let's go yet,' he said, and the constrained silence fell between them again. 'I want ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... the rear with us, was ever twisting his hatless head to scowl back at the Hussars; and he talked continually in a loud, confident ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... aided Addison's plan. Thus, the issue of the Guardian for June 17th, 1713, was devoted to the habits of coffee-house orators, and especially to the objectionable practice so many had of seizing a button on a listener's coat and twisting it off in the course of argument. This habit, however, was more common in the city than in the West-end coffee-houses; indeed, Steele added, the company at Will's was so refined that one might argue and be argued with and not be a button ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... words. The like of him for making intimate friends of total strangers at the shortest notice I have never met with before or since. Cautious as the Scotch are, Mr. Dark seemed to have the knack of twisting them round his finger as he pleased. He varied his way artfully with different men, but there were three standing opinions of his which he made a point of expressing in all varieties of company while we were in Scotland. ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... bending over the fire. When he dreamed, there she was, floating in an atmosphere of blue stars. Sometimes she was smiling on him, sometimes gazing sadly, but never otherwise than sweetly. Presently he saw her sitting on Dick's knee, twisting his great moustache with her delicate hand, and he was about to ask Dick how he had managed to get back so soon, when he (the Wild Man) suddenly changed into March's own mother, who clasped the vision fervently to her breast and called her her own darling son! There was ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... the river, going down a small hill, the way became stony, and he had to walk with care, for fear of going into some hole, or twisting an ankle. It was hard work, especially with the suit-case, and he half wished he had hidden the baggage somewhere near ...
— Dave Porter and the Runaways - Last Days at Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... upon his knee, and now, laying hold of one of the ungloved hands, she began twisting a large seal ring which presented itself to her mind as a pleasing novelty. Presently her attention seemed arrested by the device of the seal, and she ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... thirty feet each way, on the mountain side, as if it were a pendulum of watery lace. Once in a while, too, the wind manages to get back of the fall, between it and the cliff, and then it will whirl it round and round for two or three hundred feet, as if to try the experiment of twisting it ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the opinion of Virgil [who speaks of the bitter roots of the endive[840]], the fibres of endive are here extremely sweet, and encircled by their twisting leaves are caked together with ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... roaster specification covered a gold, silver, platinum, or alloy-lined roasting cylinder and traversing carriage on an overhead railway to move the roaster in and out of the roasting oven; and the "decoction" specification covered an arrangement for twisting a cloth-bag ground-coffee-container in a coffee biggin, or applied a screw motion to a disk within a perforated cylinder containing the ground coffee, so as to squeeze the liquid out of the grounds after infusion had ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... man with an air of finality. The lumberman still lingered uneasily, twisting his cap in ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... trinket was, she always kept it hidden under her dress. Once or twice, while she sat silently thinking, she removed one of her hands from before her face, and fidgeted nervously with the ribbon, clutching at it with a half-angry gesture, and twisting it backward ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... Mrs. Pepper began to act in a very queer way, rubbing her eyes and twisting one corner of her black apron in a decidedly nervous manner that, as the old gentleman looked up, he saw with astonishment presently communicated itself to ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... wall decorations fell. The sensation was as if the buildings were stretching and writhing like a snake. The darkness was intense. Shrieks of women, higher, shriller than that of the creaking timbers, cut the air. I tumbled from the bed and crawled, scrambling toward the door. The twisting and writhing appeared to increase. The air was oppressive. I seemed to be saying to myself, will it never, never stop? I wrenched the lock; the door of the room swung back against my shoulder. Just then the building seemed to breathe, stagger and ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... large arteries is a common complication of machinery and railway accidents. The violence being usually of a tearing, twisting, or crushing nature, such injuries are seldom associated with much haemorrhage, as torn or crushed vessels quickly become occluded by contraction and retraction of their coats and by the formation of a clot. A whole limb even may be avulsed ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... would have swept away the pyramids like grains of dust, the waters rose like liquid walls and left free between them a broad way which could be traversed dry shod. Through their translucency, as behind thick glass, were seen marine monsters twisting and squirming, terrified at being surprised by daylight in the mysterious depths of ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... morning, true November, with its driving grey wind clouds, through which the cool sunbeams straggled fitfully; with trees shorn of their golden honours, and brown branches waving and twisting in the wind, and only mere specks of blue here and there overhead. The gulls sailed to and fro above the Mong as if they rejoiced in the fierce gusts of northern wind; the vessels shortened sail, or ran under bare poles. The wind shook ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... tree, he heard a slight noise above. He looked up, and there he saw (oh! oh! what I hope you may never see except in a Menagerie or Barnum's Museum) an enormous boa constrictor, at least fifty feet long, suspended from the top boughs of the tree, twisting about. With a fierce and horrible hiss, which froze the blood in Harry's veins, he twisted, and turned, and looked at ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... had stood there in the edge of the bleak spruce forest, with the wind moaning dismally through the twisting trees—midnight of deep December—the Transcontinental would have looked like a thing of fire; dull fire, glowing with a smouldering warmth, but of strange ghostliness and out of place. It was a weird shadow, helpless and without motion, ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... of day, an old French sailor lay twisting and turning in his hammock, unable to rest. There was quite a sea on, and the ship's timbers creaked incessantly; but it was certainly not this that kept him from falling asleep. He and his mates occupied a large but exceedingly low compartment between decks. It ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... Dupont crouched himself for his vengeance. Never to the people of Lac Bain had he looked more terrible. He was the gorilla-fighter, the beast fighter, the fighter who fights as the wolf, the bear and the cat—crushing out life, breaking bones, twisting, snapping, inundating and destroying with his great weight and his monstrous strength. He was a hundred pounds heavier than Reese Beaudin. On his stooping shoulders he could carry a tree. With his giant hands ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... South-East for about fourteen miles to a stony low range, thence East-North-East and east and south for six miles, turning and twisting, looking for water. Windich found some in a gully and we camped. Spinifex for the first fourteen miles, and miserable country. The prospect ahead not very promising. Barometer 28.06; thermometer 83 degrees at 5 p.m. Every appearance of rain. Latitude ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... default of all imagination, fancy, and expression, how was the writer to turn these words into poetry or rhyme? Simply by diverting them from their natural order, and twisting the halves of the sentences each before ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... shook the boy's frame, and his face blenched. Then he struggled again to free himself—turning and twisting himself this way and that; tugging frantically, fiercely, desperately—but uselessly—to burst his fetters; and all the while the old ogre smiled down upon him, and nodded his head, and placidly whetted his knife; mumbling, from time to time, "The moments ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... all but grinding under their wheels, neither Grandpa nor Johnnie could withstand longer the temptation to push forward to wonderful Niagara itself. With loud hissings, toot-toots, and guttural announcements on the part of the conductor, the wheel chair drew up with a twisting flourish—at the sink. ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... ill-advised as to attempt a stand against her domineering authority. When her tall, gaunt figure—invariably arrayed in the blackest of black silks—was sighted in a room, those present either scuttled out of the way or judiciously held their peace, for everyone knew Mrs Pansey's talent for twisting the simplest observation into some evil shape calculated to get its author into trouble. She excelled in this particular method of making mischief. Possessed of ample means and ample leisure, both of these helped her materially to build up her reputation of a philanthropic bully. She literally ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... you hurt me—you are cross: leave me alone," screamed Fina, twisting her little body to free ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... opinion is ripe for a complete working understanding with us. We've got to work up our end—get rid of our ignorance of foreign affairs, our shirt-sleeve, complaining kind of diplomacy, our sport of twisting the lion's tail and such things and fall to and bring the English out. It's the one race in this ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... a girl, approached the dumb little man on the floor, and twisting the corner of his coat, inquired in a trembling voice, "Does ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... his newspaper in his hands again and was twisting it up. His eyes didn't once seek her face. But they might have done so in perfect safety, because her own were fixed on his hands and ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... Lat. anfractuosus, winding), twisting and turning, circuitousness; a word usually employed in the plural to denote winding channels such as occur in the depths of the sea, mountains, or the fissures (sulci) separating the convolutions of the brain, or, by analogy, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... office, but the induction of the person into the office. And if in this case the person is not subject to any one, surely the same is true in absolution. But in all their doings and glosses and interpretations, their minds are in a whirl, and they say now this and now that; and in their twisting of God's Word they lose its true sense, forget where they are, go completely astray, and yet they ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... Chauncey Cramer singing last Sunday night?" broke out the third girl with a side glance at the strangers. "He was perfectly killing. He was twisting the words all around in every hymn. He had girls' names and fellers' all mixed up, and made it rhyme in the neatest way. I thought I'd choke laughing, and Dr. Tarrant was just coming in, and looked at me as if he'd eat me. Oh, my goodness! There he comes ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... a master-stroke. While he was weighing out the peppermints his heart got soft, and just as he was twisting up the corner of the paper bag, Dora said, 'What lovely fat peppermints! ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... hundreds of nervous hands that touch papers or fidget to and fro. Every man uses his hands, particularly when he speaks, not clenched as a European would do, but open, with the slim fingers speaking a language of their own, twisting, turning, insinuating, deriding, a little history of compromises. It would be interesting to write the story of China from ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... instant before hissed over the precipice in a small, transparent ribbon of clear grass-green, sprinkled with white foam, and then threaded its way round the large rocks in its capacious channel, like a silver eel twisting through a desert, now changed in a moment to a dark turgid chocolate colour; and even as we stood and looked, lo! a column of water from the mountains, pitched in thunder over the face of the precipice, making the earth tremble, and driving up from the rugged face of the everlasting ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... horse, heeding not the plunging, crushing, and thrusting of the excited cattle. Down under the bulks of the herd, half hid in the whirl of dust, he would spy a little curly calf running, dodging, and twisting, always at the heels of its mother; and he would dart in after, following the two through the thick of surging and plunging beasts. The sharp-eyed pony would see almost as soon as his rider which cow was wanted and he needed small guidance from that time on. He would follow ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... South Wales and brought the widow and her two little boys up north to Llanystumdwy, where he lived. He installed them in his cottage, a little two-story residence with a tiny workshop abutting from it at the side where he carried on his shoe-mending. In front the main road ran by, twisting its way through the village, and thence through woods and meadows, and giving access within a mile on either side to park-lands attached to the big country houses of wealthy people to whom the village cobbler was a nonentity and a person of a ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot |
