"Twisting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... prophet!" spoke out one of the Bedouins, "it is necessary to prevent this son of Iblis from twisting our necks. We are taking a viper to the Mahdi. What do you intend to do ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... more beautiful live ghost could not be seen than Meg Drummond. She did look a fearsome thing. I have put the old cloak and the Cameron's cocked hat in a wee oak trunk in the ghost's hut. Here is the key of the trunk, Jasmine. You run along and lock it. Now run, run, for I hear Leucha twisting and turning in her sleep. I must get back to her. You manage Meg, and lock the trunk, and we are ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... was her husband. Over Loki Siguna stood, holding in her hands a cup into which fell the serpent's venom, thus sparing him from the full measure of anguish. Now and then Siguna had to turn aside to spill out the flowing cup, and then the drops of venom fell upon Loki and he screamed in agony, twisting in his bonds. It was then that men felt the earth quake. There in his bonds Loki stayed until the coming of Ragnaroek, the Twilight of ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... are!" she cried; and so they went on, she decking him with every virtue, and twisting his words to make him play the part, in the way that I knew so well. Before he was done I could see that his head was buzzing with her beauty and her kindly words. I thrilled with pride to think that he should think ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... images in the glass, the furniture of the room, but of me no reflection at all. Was I bewitched? Surely I must be in my chair, sleeping, dreaming, for suddenly in the glass, moving as in a mist, there were shadows—a bed and a man lying on it, and bending over him was another man whose hands were twisting ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... content with twisting the leg, it would go to any absurd extreme imaginable. Suppose, for example, that the doctor's twisting of the victim's leg should so enrage him that he would leap upon the doctor and bite the torturer's leg in the manner ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... did not second the invitation, but stood moodily twisting his tawny moustache, and staring out into the garden in an ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... eight miles. At least one mile of that, added together, was climbing straight up. Another mile was straight down. The rest was boulder-strewn, twisting, donkey-wide, slanting, slippery stone. But there was no sign of anyone but themselves. The sky remained undisturbed. No planes. They saw no sign of the raiding force from across the border, and ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... After twisting and turning till the Sheriff's bewildered head sat dizzily upon his shoulders, the greenwood men passed through a narrow alley amid the trees which led to a goodly open space flanked by wide-spreading ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... that fairy tales might be true, after all, for how could he know that the strange woman was an Italian servant, in her native dress, with a distaff in her hand? After pausing a moment, to rub his eyes, he took another look, and made fresh discoveries by twisting his head about. A basket of oranges stood near the Princess, a striped curtain hung from a limb of the tree to keep the wind off, and several books fluttered their pictured leaves temptingly before Johnny's ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... the curt directness of his speech. His defiance wilted visibly. "I—didn't mean to break the window, Dicky," he said, twisting and cracking his fingers in ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... his gun and game, Souwanas quickly gathered some of the sweet fragrant grass which is there so abundant, and skillfully twisting it into little coils he wound one around each of the bunches of flowers which the children had gathered, and which they were still having trouble to hold on account ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... I was cheered with the sight of the Crisis, as she came drifting through the tiers, turning, and twisting, and glancing along, just as the Amanda had done before her. The pilot carried her to moorings quite near us; and Talcott, Neb and I were on board her, before she was fairly secured. My reception ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... steps. Reluctantly, almost resistingly, the visitor stumbled after him, casting backward amazed glances at the beautiful lady. Fred thrust him into the seat beside the chauffeur. Pointing at the golf-cap and automobile goggles which the stranger was stupidly twisting in his hands, Fred ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... enjoy the magnificent view. I took care to have a clear day for this excursion, and the whole valley was seen stretched out like a map, and spreading far away to the feet of its stupendous mountain boundaries. The lakes like huge mirrors reflecting a dazzling radiance. The Jhelum twisting like a "gilded snake" and forming at the foot of the hill the original of the well-known shawl pattern; miles upon miles of bright and verdant fields, divided and marked out by the banks and hedges; clumps and groves of lofty trees diminished by distance to the appearance of mere ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... Look, for example, at the stem and leaves. The nettle has found its chance in life, its one fitting vacancy, among the ditches and waste-places by roadsides or near cottages; and it has laid itself out for the circumstances in which it lives. Its near relative, the hop, is a twisting climber; its southern cousins, the fig and the mulberry, are tall and spreading trees. But the nettle has made itself a niche in nature along the bare patches which diversify human cultivation; and it has adapted its stem and leaves to the station in life where it has pleased ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Lord. It is also closed, but not so much, in those who from love of the world are in the insane greed of possessing the goods of others. These loves shut the spiritual degree, because they are the origins of evils. The contraction or closing of this degree is like the twisting back of a spiral in the opposite direction; for which reason, that degree after it is closed, turns back the light of heaven; consequently there is thick darkness there instead of heavenly light, and truth ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... vex, rail, swear and cavil at every thing; on the other side Democritus, and his Company rejoice and laugh, as if they were created for that purpose. On one side you may see the Mimick screwing and twisting his Body into several Postures, which he perswades himself adds either to the Swiftness or Slowness of his Bowl; On the other side the senseless Orator, with his perswasive Intreaties of Rub, O Rub a little; Or, Flee, ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett
... the 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 ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... to my own views. In this Court I am subject to the Bench. In my own chamber I am subject only to the law of the land." The judge looking over his spectacles said a mild word about the profession at large. Mr. Chaffanbrass, twisting his wig quite on one side, so that it nearly fell on Mr. Serjeant Birdbolt's face, muttered something as to having seen more work done in that Court than any other living lawyer, let his rank be what it might. When the little affair was over, everybody felt that Sir Gregory ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... pitched my last cigar-stump to one of the dogs chained to the wall, who caught it in his mouth. When the door was opened by my guide, I saw a big blaze like a prairie fire, red and gloomy; and big black smoke was curling and twisting and spreading, and the flames a-licking the walls, going up to a point, and breaking into a wide blaze, with white and green ends. There was bells a-tolling, and chains a-clinking, and mad howls and screams; but the old gentleman's ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... in the novels and plays which women adored. Now he believed himself to be in the throes of such a love and was secretly proud of his passion, but the pain of seeing Prince Vanno with Mary was rather too real, too sharp for analytical enjoyment; and when he could, Dick avoided twisting ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... suddenly quiet, hanging motionless in space in the middle of the still-twisting wreckage. The huge bank of atomic motors, the largest single unit on the ship, had already begun to swing around the small moon Deimos in an orbit, while other shattered remains of the once sleek ship began a slow circle around the ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman
... in wait for her as she came into a comparatively secluded drive of Central Park. In itself the surprise was the most trifling of events—so slight a matter as a person twisting his vertebrae some hundred-odd degrees, and silently smiling. But that person ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... prow of a Norse galley, one with Roland and Horatius, Sir Nigel and Ted Coy, scraped and stripped into trim and then flung by his own will into the breach, beating back the tide, hearing from afar the thunder of cheers... finally bruised and weary, but still elusive, circling an end, twisting, changing pace, straight-arming... falling behind the Groton goal with two men on his legs, in the only touchdown ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... it is a good plan to trim the tops of plants when setting them. This can be done readily with some plants, such as cabbage and lettuce, by taking a bundle of them in one hand and with the other twisting off about ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich
... she meant to read it in her own way. She was as different from her father as possible in everything else, but in a despotic determination to do exactly as she liked, she resembled him. Nino was glad that he was not called upon to use his own judgment, and there he sat, content to look at her, twisting his hands together below the table to concentrate his attention and master himself; and he read just what she told him to read, expounding the words and phrases she could not understand. I dare say that with his hair well brushed, and his best coat, and his eyes on the book, ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... trembled more or less every day for over two months, and I kept a bucket of water on my table to learn what I could of the movements. The blunt thunder in the depths of the mountains was usually followed by sudden jarring, horizontal thrusts from the northward, often succeeded by twisting, upjolting movements. More than a month after the first great shock, when I was standing on a fallen tree up the Valley near Lamon's winter cabin, I heard a distinct bubbling thunder from the direction of Tenaya Canyon Carlo, a large intelligent St. Bernard dog standing beside me seemed ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... the mother—can take the child out of the father's custody," he said, "except with the father's consent. His authority is the supreme authority—unless it happens that the law has deprived him of his privilege, and has expressly confided the child to the mother's care. Ha!" cried Mr. Sarrazin, twisting round in his chair and fixing his keen eyes on Mrs. Presty, "look at your good mother; she sees what ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... I presume, know the toy called a whirligig, made by stringing a button on a loop of thread, the twisting and untwisting of which by approaching and separating the hands causes the button to revolve. Upon this design, and by substituting a jagged disk of slate for the button, the senior 'Bull-dogs' (we were all called 'Burney's bull-dogs') ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... in his excellency's courtyard unseemly, told the dragoons to take it away. Two dragoons took it by its distorted legs and dragged it along the ground. The gory, dust-stained, half-shaven head with its long neck trailed twisting along the ground. The ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... followed; and the governor led them down a long gallery to a heavy iron door, which flew open at its own accord. But what a sight met the prince's eyes! The lady whom he had last beheld in peerless beauty was sitting in a chair wrapped in flames, which were twisting like hair about her head. Her face was swollen and red; her mouth was open as if gasping for breath. Only her arms and neck were as lovely as ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... bench—gloomily sawing at a violoncello. Robert,—nine now, with all his pretty baby roundness gone, a lean little burned, peeling face, and big teeth missing when he smiled, stood in the bay window, twisting the already limp net curtains into a tight rope. Each boy gave Margaret a kiss that seemed curiously to taste of dust, sunburn, and freckles, before she followed a noise of hissing and voices to ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... of a pitiful fear for her, I saw a head appear above her quarter-railing, a very round head whereon was a mariner's red cap. Came a puff of smoke, the sharp crack of a caliver, and one of the officers beside Don Miguel threw up his hands and, twisting on his heels, fell clashing in his armour. When I looked again for the red cap, it was gone. But Don Miguel waited, silent and impassive as ever. Suddenly he gestured with his hand, I saw the heave of the steersmen's shoulders as they obeyed, while the air rang with shouts ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... distant corner, there sounded a deprecating, cough, and those nearest Cuthbert Banks saw that he had stopped twisting his right foot round his left ankle and his left foot round his right ankle and was sitting up with a light of almost human intelligence ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... sighed Johan; "a new part, a man's part and a woman's part all in one! It's a most difficult part, indeed." He was muttering the words to himself, and, under his cloak, Lindley could see his hands twisting nervously. ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... snort of fury, the diplomat struck backward. The glasses and the solemn face behind them dodged smartly. The next moment, Herr von Plaanden felt his neck encircled by a clasp none the less warm for being not precisely affectionate. He was pinned. Twisting, he worked one ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... to abandon my towel, I ran to open the door, but hardly had I done so when I remained petrified and dumb with surprise, hardly able to believe my own eyes. There stood the Breton twisting his battered cap nervously between his bony fingers. The little oil lamp, which we always kept lighted at night in the passageway, illuminated his pale face and ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte
... the door, as if it were saluting him, and determined to give him a trial of its force, a blast leaped upon him, like an embodiment out of the cloud in full possession of both world and sky, and started his gown astream, and twisting his hair and beard into lashes whipped his eyes and ears with them, and howled, and snatched his breath nearly out of his mouth. Wind it was, and darkness somewhat like that Egypt knew what time the deliverer, with God behind him, was trying strength with the King's ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... had recrossed to the opposite bank before I arrived at the place of bivouac, and, having no time, I had to retrace my steps without his enforced attendance. It had been arranged that the column should only go fifteen miles the first day. What with winding and twisting to avoid flooded khors or shallow gulleys we marched over twenty miles I fancy. At any rate, with no protracted halting for meals or for baiting the animals, we trudged on throughout the heat and worry of the day until sunset. It was putting both men and animals ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... picked a corn buttercup; the flowers were much smaller than the great buttercups which grew in the meadows, and these were not golden but coloured like brass. His foot caught in a creeper, and he nearly tumbled—it was a bine of bindweed which went twisting round and round two stalks of wheat in a spiral, binding them together as if some one had wound string about them. There was one ear of wheat which had black specks on it, and another which had so much black that the ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... particular little soul, and the way Meg took hold of the new blue satin ribbons of her leghorn flat, hurt her as much as if Meg had given her one of the twisting little pinches she knew so well how to inflict. Hatty was going to twitch away, but instead of the twitch came a bright blush on her cheek, that she should have so soon been near being out of patience, when ...
— Hatty and Marcus - or, First Steps in the Better Path • Aunt Friendly
... that wig.—We will burn it, and get drunk; for what is joy without drink? Wagers are laid in the city about our success, which is yet, as the French call it, problematical. Well—but, seriously, I think, I shall be glad to see you in your own hair; but do not take too much time in combing, and twisting, and papering, and unpapering, and curling, and frizling, and powdering, and getting out the powder, with all the other operations required in the cultivation of a head of hair; yet let it be combed, at least, once ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... of squirrels and the moaning of the wind in the tree tops. How near was freedom and yet how difficult of attainment! She wriggled gently in her bonds but each motion seemed to make them tighter, until they began to cut more and more cruelly into her tender flesh. She tried by twisting her hands and bending her body to touch the knots at her knees but her elbows were fastened securely and she couldn't reach them. And at last she gave up the attempt, half stifled from her exertions and suffering acutely. Then she lay quiet, sobbing gently to herself, ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... carpet, her fingers playing with her braid, twisting and untwisting its strands. He stood waiting to close the door. She said, without lifting her eyes—said in a quiet, expressionless way, "I have killed ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... waiting in a little rock-rimmed hollow. He shot from the hip, using a heavy revolver. Barbee stood a moment looking foolishly at the sky as he slowly leaned back against the rock. Then he lurched and fell, twisting, spinning so that he lay half in the fissure, his rifle clattering to the ledge outside, his body falling so that his head and shoulders were ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... he was capable of; and the monkey made frantic efforts to escape, as if he would enjoy twisting his paws ...
— Toby Tyler • James Otis
... fenne Of all the maladies breeding in all men: That you are utterly without a soule; 505 And for your life, the thred of that was spunne When Clotho slept, and let her breathing rock Fall in the durt; and Lachesis still drawes it, Dipping her twisting fingers in a boule Defil'd, and crown'd with vertues forced soule: 510 And lastly (which I must for gratitude Ever remember) that of all my height And dearest life you are the onely spring, Onely in royall hope to kill ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... centre of the region over which this hurricane swept stood a small cabin. It was occupied by an aged Christian widow, with her only son. The terrible wind struck a large tree in front of her humble dwelling, twisting and dashing it about. If the tree should fall it would crush her home, and probably kill herself and son. The storm howled and raged, and the big trees were falling on every hand. In the midst of all the danger the widow knelt in prayer, and asked God to spare that tree, and protect her home, and ...
— The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young • Richard Newton
... lazily up in one or two spirals from a glowing wood-coal here and there. Then he began to move forward. His limbs were bound so tightly that they had no power of separate movement, but he succeeded in twisting his body in such a way that, very slowly and with an expenditure of great energy, he managed to get nearer and nearer the fire. It took the bound man two hours to cover a distance of three yards. Once the mind of a savage is made up to do a thing, time is of no object at all. An eye-blink, the ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... done, and our friend again Was out in the raging wind and rain. Swift through the twisting street he passed And came to the Market Square at last, And climbed and stood On a block of wood Where a pent-house, leant to a wall, gave shelter From the brunt of the blizzard's helter-skelter, And, waving ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... most "elegant" writers most freely employ), "Mr. Payne laboriously searches out a corresponding term in English 'Billingsgate,' and prides himself upon an accurate reproduction of the tone of the original" (p. 178). This is a remarkable twisting of the truth. Mr. Payne persisted, despite my frequent protests, in rendering the "nursery words" and the "terms too plainly expressing natural situations" by old English such as "kaze" and "swive," equally ignored by the "gutter" and by "Billingsgate": he also omitted an offensive ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... I don't care! I'm sure you're just as bad twisting about and looking at yourself in the glass, for that's being vain, and I'd rather be greedy than vain, ...
— Naughty Miss Bunny - A Story for Little Children • Clara Mulholland
... Norwegian answered, twisting his quid from the left to the right cheek, "she vas foundtz; and vat is droltz de bags of flour she have in de praam, dough dey been long timetz in de vater, vere quite ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... Missus, I give persedince to Mr. Ahghustuss, who, bean the only sun in the house, is natrally looked up to by everybody in it. He as bean brot up a perfick genelman, at Oxfut, and is consekently fond of spending his knights in le trou de charbon, and afterwards of skewering the streets—twisting double knockers, pulling singlebelles, and indulging in other fashonable divertions, to wich the low-minded polease, and the settin madgistrets have strong objexions. His Pa allows him only sicks hundred a-year, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... the orderlies once more took hold of my head and heels, and after much tugging and twisting, managed to lift me up into the bed. This time the pain seemed even greater to bear than before, but, summoning all my will power, I managed to take the brutal treatment in silence, and said no more. Back upon ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... was put on board in Salem, and on the passage to Brazil, after we reached the pleasant latitudes, all hands were employed from eight o'clock in the morning until six o'clock in the evening in knotting yarns, twisting spunyarn, weaving mats, braiding sinnett, making reef-points and gaskets, and manufacturing small rope to be used for "royal rigging," for among the ingenious expedients devised by the second mate for keeping the crew employed was the absurd and unprofitable one of changing the snug ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... much disturbed last night by the motion; the ship was pitching and twisting with short sharp movements on a confused sea, and with every plunge my thoughts flew to our poor ponies. This afternoon they are fairly well, but one knows that they must be getting weaker as time goes on, and one longs to give them a good sound rest with the ship on an even keel. Poor ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... said Beulah, seating herself for the first time and twisting up the veil of hair which swept ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... Trent, Sirena dwelleth: Shee to whom Nature lent All that excelleth: By which the Muses late, And the neate Graces, 170 Haue for their greater state Taken their places: Twisting an Anadem, Wherewith to Crowne her, As it belong'd to them Most to renowne her. Cho. On thy Bancke, In a Rancke, Let the Swanes sing her, And with their Musick, 180 Along ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... execution of the Duke d'Enghien (on the morning of the 7th of April) General Pichegru was found dead in prison: a black handkerchief was tied round his neck, and tightened by the twisting of a short stick, like a tourniquet. It could not appear probable that he should have terminated his own life by such means; and, accordingly, the rumour spread that he had been taken off in the night by some of the satellites of Savary; or, according to others, ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... said, 'from what I heard the white hakim say, that the blood flowed through those little white tubes. By twisting the tourniquet very tight, that flow of blood is stopped. The great thing is to find those little tubes, and tie them up. As you would notice, the large ones in the inside of the arm could be seen quite plainly. When they cannot be seen, ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... making an arc of metal on which the graduated scale was etched. A pair of dividers was improvised from a piece of hickory, by making the centre thin, bending it over, putting pins at the points, and regulating its spread by twisting ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... brief instant Jack was stunned; then he dashed to the edge of the roof and peered over. He saw Blosberg's twisting, tumbling body crash head-first upon the hard walk, and ...
— The Boy Allies Under the Sea • Robert L. Drake
... I believe, because the rocks are harder there than here, and more tossed about by earthquakes which happened ages and ages ago, long before man lived on the earth. I will show you the work of these earthquakes some day, in the tilting and twisting of the layers of rock, and in the cracks (faults, as they are called) which run through them in different directions. I showed you some once, if you recollect, in the chalk cliff at Ramsgate—two set of cracks, sloping opposite ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... bad," he replied serenely, and nodding to Geraldine and Duane he entered the house, his young wife strolling beside him and twisting up ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... Michael meant to kill him. The long, scarred hands had him by the throat, were twisting themselves in the silk tie Fay had knitted for him. He tore himself out of the grip of those iron fingers. But Michael only sobbed and wound his arms round him. And Wentworth knew he was trying to throw ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... a force of torsion to act upon the promontory at its southern extremity near Europa Point, and suppose the rock to be of a partially yielding character; such a force would twist the strata into screw-surfaces, the greatest amount of twisting being endured near the point of application of the force. Such a twisting the rock appears to have suffered; but instead of the twist fading gradually and uniformly off, in passing from south to north, the want of uniformity in the material has ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... twisting like snakes under our feet, and cut figure eights, till I felt like soapsuds, and lay down on my face. Then I sat up, and looked at the Helen Mar, which shook and groaned like a live thing. We heard the trees crack ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... descent begins just below Boca del Monte (Mouth of the Mountain), where the height above the Gulf of Mexico is about eight thousand feet, and the distance from Vera Cruz a trifle over one hundred miles. Here also is the dividing line between the states of Puebla and Vera Cruz. The winding, twisting road built along the rugged mountain-side is a marvelous triumph of the science of engineering, presenting obstacles which were at first deemed almost impossible to be overcome, now crossing deep gulches by spider-web trestles, and now diving into and out of long, ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... moonlit night, so beautiful indeed that, twisting a shawl about her shoulders, she went to her father's den, where he usually smoked alone, and, taking his arm, led him out for a walk into the park over that gravelled drive where, upon such nights as that, 'twas said that the unfortunate Lady Jane ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... 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, ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... sinews my mother pulled out a single one. With an awl she pierced the buckskin, and skillfully threaded it with the white sinew. Picking up the tiny beads one by one, she strung them with the point of her thread, always twisting it carefully after ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... captors were obdurate. "Tell it to the Lieutenant," they rejoined grimly forcing him to go before them by twisting his arms, "Our orders were to seize ...
— The Romance of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... then looking down at her, turning and twisting and preening herself in the dark hall like some shining white bird, he burst into ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... yours," she continued. Then, with a quick gesture of the hand: "No, don't get up. Set right still now. One o' your friends here can get me a chair, I guess," and she looked very meaningly into the face of a foppish young courtier who stood near her, twisting his thin yellow beard. ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... too, and who'd ha' thought That they who had such non-resistance taught, Should e'er to arms against their prince be brought Who up to heav'n did regal power advance; Subjecting English laws to modes of France Twisting religion so with loyalty, As one could never live, and t'other die; And yet no sooner did their prince design Their glebes and perquisites to undermine, But all their passive doctrines laid aside, The clergy their own ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... mahogany box, was a square clock with a large dial, huge figures and bulky hands. Beside it, under glass covers, were two candlesticks formed by three silver swans twisting their necks around a golden quiver. Near the fireplace an easy chair a la Voltaire, covered with one of the pieces of tapestry of checker-board pattern, which little girls and old women make, extended its ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... money. No storied fisherman of Bagdad, catching enchanted princes disguised as fishes in the sea, ever hooked such a treasure as this defendant hooked when he hooked that basket of eels! [Rustling appreciation of the pun among the jury.] If a squirming, twisting, winding, wriggling eel, gentlemen, can be said at any given moment to have a back, we may distinguish this new-found species as the green-back eel. It is a common saying that no man can hold an eel and remain a Christian. I should like to have viewed ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... told you, that there are other roads to some of the hermitages above, which, by twisting and turning from side to side, are every week clambered up by a blind mule, who, being loaded with thirteen baskets containing the provision for the hermits, goes up without any conductor, and taking the hermitages in their ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... at a trot, Jean twisting his cheroot round and round, and grunting now and again. The old man's face said, plain ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... in French, fiercely twisting his mustache. At any other time the humorous side of the situation must have struck the lieutenant, but just then he felt little inclination for mirth. He thereupon explained to the captain that they were prisoners, ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... had been resolved upon by the English, it might have been expected that active operations would have been commenced forthwith. Such was not the case. An English soldier remarked:—"We were kept on the Neck twisting our tails and powdering our heads, while the Yankees were gathering in our front and in our flanks like clouds." It seems to be generally acknowledged that this inactivity was fatal to the cause of the British arms in America, and that ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... degree. An atom of any kind is not the inert thing it has been supposed to be, for it can do something. Even at absolute zero, when all its vibratory or heat energy would be absent, it would be still an elastic whirling body pulling upon every other atom in the universe with gravitational energy, twisting other atoms into conformity with its own position with its magnetic energy; and, if such ether rings are like the rings which are made in air, will not stand still in one place even if no others act upon it, but will ...
— The Machinery of the Universe - Mechanical Conceptions of Physical Phenomena • Amos Emerson Dolbear
... know Bud." She had one end of the shawl between her fingers and was twisting it aimlessly. Every eye in the room ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... illustration of them; what tends to unity is more prominent and is more carefully treated than what tends to separation. There is no trace of any side glances at persons and events of the day, as, e.g., at the unseemly occurrences at the court of David, and as little of any twisting or otherwise doctoring the materials to make them advance this ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... I rode with my eyes turned upwards, and thus I presently saw far ahead many aeroplanes that flew in strange, zigzag fashion, now swooping low, now climbing high, now twisting and ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... when the tide came gurgling o'er the surface, 'Twas like a resurrection of the dead: From graves innumerable, punctures fine In the close coral, capillary swarms Of reptiles, horrent as Medusa's snakes, Cover'd the bald-pate reef; then all was life, And indefatigable industry: The artisans were twisting to and fro. In idle-seeming convolutions; yet They never vanish'd with the ebbing surge, Till pellicle on pellicle, and layer On layer, was added to the growing mass. Ere long the reef o'ertopt the spring-flood's height, And mock'd the billows when ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 279, October 20, 1827 • Various
... directly in front of the oncoming car, a young girl had fallen from her bicycle. She seemed to be stunned, and the car was rushing upon her swiftly, although the frantic motorman was banging the gong and twisting away at the brake ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... saddle and pulling himself along the cable by his hands. With him he carried the monkey-wrench and short iron bar and a few spare feet of rope. It was a slightly up-hill pull, but this he did not mind so much as the wind. When the furious gusts hurled him back and forth, sometimes half twisting him about, and he gazed down into the gray depths, he was aware that he was afraid. It was an old cable. What if it should break under his weight and the pressure of ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... margined with sapphire blue. All along its twisting course two broad bands of jet margined the cerulean shore. It was spanned by scores of flashing crystal arches. Nor were these bridges—even from that distance I knew they were no bridges. From them ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... from them deduced laws to regulate the entire world. They strove to subject life, multiple and many-sided, to the unity of the mind, that is, to their mind. The time-serving trickeries of a sophistical profession facilitated this imperialism of the reason; they knew how to handle ideas, twisting, stretching, and tying them together like strips of candy; it would have been child's play for them to make a camel pass through the eye of a needle. They could also prove that black was white, and could find in the works of Emanuel Kant the ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... she gave it to him, kissing him. He is not quite such a nuisance as he was; he has got some backbone and can sit up quite nicely, and he loves his bath now and splashes unsmilingly in the water instead of twisting and shrieking. Oh, shall I ever forget those first two months! I don't know how I lived through them. But here I am and here is Jims and we both are going to 'carry on.' I tickled him a little bit tonight when I undressed ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... old flinty wretch whom he found in a corner of a public coach, at length addressed him: "Friend, I have tried you on politics, literary matters, religion, fashionable news, etc. etc., and all to no purpose." The dry old rogue, twisting his muzzle into an infernal grin, replied, "Can you claver about bend leather?" The man, be it understood, was a leather merchant. The early history of Caledonia is almost as hopeless a subject, but off it goes. I walked up the Glen with Tom for my companion. Dined, heard Anne reading a paper ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... utmost art, she failed this day in turning and twisting Sir John Hunter's conversation and character so as to make them agreeable to Mr. Palmer. This she knew by his retiring at an early hour at night, as he sometimes did when company was not agreeable ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... 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. ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... he was lifted round, his left hand was freed. In a flash it fumbled at his breast. Twisting his head aside, he got something between his teeth, and through the fetid fog went the shiver and whine of the Metropolitan Police Call. Three times he blew, with ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... spin even better than Black Marianne—Black Marianne has said so herself. She always got a skein more out of a pound than anybody else, and it was always so even—not a knot in it. And do you see that ring up there on the ceiling? It was beautiful to see her twisting the threads there. If I had been old enough to know then, I would not have let them sell mother's spindle—it would have been a fine legacy for me. But there was nobody to take any interest in us. Oh, mother dear! Oh, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... on the bridge, the guide lets down a lighted paper into the deep abyss; it descends twisting and turning, lower and lower, and is soon lost in total darkness, leaving us to conjecture, as to what may be below. Crossing the bridge to the opposite cave, we find ourselves in the midst of rocks of the most gigantic size lying along the edge of the pit ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt
... and twisting the wire, he succeeded after many attempts and innumerable straightenings of the wire, in joggling the stubborn hasp free from the padlock eye on ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... contrivance. He always keeps a Leyden jar, about the size of a boiler, ready charged, wherewith he kills geese, turkeys, and even lamb; which, he affirms, is a much less shocking method of neutralizing the vital spark than the vulgar butchery of twisting and sticking. He has lost three of his fingers, through incautiously handling a self-acting rat-trap of his own construction; and had his left eye blown out, while investigating the exact ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various
... of Pentecost is neither the sound and fire, nor the speaking with other tongues, but the communication of the Holy Spirit. The sign and result of that was the gift of utterance in various languages, not their own, nor learned by ordinary ways. No twisting of the narrative can weaken the plain meaning of it, that these unlearned Galileans spake in tongues which their users recognised to be their own. The significance of the fact will appear presently, but first note the attestation of it by ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... had ignored her, but now, both masters failing him, she alone was left. He went over to her and snuggled his head in her lap, nudging her arm with his nose—an old trick of his when begging for favors. He backed away from her and began writhing and twisting playfully, curvetting and prancing, half rearing and striking his fore paws to the earth, struggling with all his body, from the wheedling eyes and flattening ears to the wagging tail, to express the thought that was in him and that was ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... were to write a book that should go through twenty editions, why, I should be the very first to sneer at my reputation. Say I could succeed at the bar, and achieve a fortune by bullying witnesses and twisting evidence; is that a fame which would satisfy my longings, or a calling in which my life would be well spent? How I wish I could be that priest opposite, who never has lifted his eyes from his breviary, except when we were in Reigate tunnel, when he could not see; or that old ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... way for him to pass them at the head of the twisting stairs which led down to the parlour. Constance ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... design over the doorway, bearing the simple legend, "A. MILLIGAN." Even the word "Dressmaker" was considered superfluous. Also there was one window, near the door, which from time to time displayed wonderfully coloured plates of terribly twisting and elegantly elongated females purporting to be the ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... trouble you, sir," said The Chobb, twisting his mustaches, "to be a little more particular in your recollection of what I said. How could any person think I could talk such nonsense as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... forest: 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... and ever and anon brandishing the rusty dagger in the midnight air. Finally he reached the corner of the passage that led to luckless Washington's room. For a moment he paused there, the wind blowing his long gray locks about his head, and twisting into grotesque and fantastic folds the nameless horror of the dead man's shroud. Then the clock struck the quarter, and he felt the time was come. He chuckled to himself, and turned the corner; but no sooner had he done so than, with a piteous wail of terror, he fell back, and hid his blanched face ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... gauged the distance to a nicety, and before the German could cry out, one of the lad's hands sank deep into his throat. But the latter was a powerful man and not to be overcome easily. He hurled the lad from him with a quick shove, at the same time twisting on the wrist of the hand ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... the entrance to the narrow harbor. Others, led by the skipper himself, set to work at drilling holes in several of the great rocks that lay in the green tide beyond the mouth of the harbor, their heavy crowns lifting only a yard or two above the surface of the twisting currents. All this was but the beginning of a task that would require weeks, perhaps months, of labor to complete. It was Black Dennis Nolan's intention to construct, by means of great iron rings, bolts and staples, ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... second sentry to himself. And by turning his head slightly—for a sentry learns to see all around like a horse, without twisting his neck—he watched ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Maria had got out their paddles, and laboured away with all their strength, Maria's stout arms indeed being a very efficient help. Domingos kept working away with his paddle, now on one side, now on another, now steering astern as he saw was requisite, twisting his features into a hundred different forms, and showing his white teeth as he shouted out in his eagerness. The tall trees were bending before the blast as if they were about to be torn from their roots and ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... she should not feel bound to make this talent of her father's a crime, by twisting into a secret what he used to do as an amusement. Mr. Cramp urged mildly the folly of this, when she had a defence to make; but she stood all the more firmly upon what she fearlessly considered the dignity of right and truth; at the same time assuring him, she would to the last contest ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... she had walked from Echo, Idaho. Lorraine had had enough of that road. If she went north she would—well, she would not meet Mr Lone Morgan again, for she had tried it twice, and had turned back because there seemed no end to the trail twisting through the sage and rocks. West she had not gone, but she had no doubt that it would be the same dreary monotony of dull ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... as he was requested. Desmond straightened out the fine wire wrapped round the centre thread, doubled, and again doubled it, and finally twisting it together, reduced it to a length of about an inch, and the thickness of a pin. The others looked on, wondering what ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... order to prevent, by exercise, taking cold, threatening in his turn the constable, that if his clothes were spoiled he should come upon him for the damage. Poor Basset, quite confounded by these harrowing events, had not a word to answer, and replied only by shrugging and twisting his shoulders with pain. The departure of Tom made it necessary for him to assist the negro in rowing back the boat, which he did with a handkerchief tied about his head, which Primus lent him and wincing with ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... suffers most, for he has to live, eat, sleep, and work in the mud. The plain of dragging slime that stretches from Switzerland to the sea is far worse to face than the fire of machine guns or the great black trench-mortar bombs that come twisting down through the air. It is more terrible than the frost and the rain—you cannot even stamp your feet to drive away the insidious chill that mud always brings. Nothing can keep it from your hands and face and clothes; there is no taking off your ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... sleepy answer and stumbling feet of the younger sister, as she ran for the merciful pill that would send Miss Mary, spent with long endurance, into deep and heavenly sleep. Susan had two or three times seen the cruel trial of courage that went before the pill, the racked and twisting body, the bitten lip, the tortured eyes ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... machine behind sat white-lipped, tense, as the whirling shocks of sudden turns at terrific speed twisted the gyroscopic seats around like peas in a rolling ball. Up, down, left, right, the darting machine ahead was twisting with unbelievable speed. Then suddenly the nose was pointed for the zenith again, and with a great column of flame shooting out behind him, he ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell |
