"Crooked" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was it a few weeks—after his mother's death, the father married again. The stepmother was no improvement on the mother. She had lofty ideas of discipline and being "minded." No doubt that little Stephen, crooked in eyes, crooked in body, short and swart, with brown, bare legs, was stubborn and wilful. He looked the part all right. His brown, bare legs were a temptation for the stepmother's willow switch. He decided to relieve everybody of the temptation to switch his legs by running away to sea and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... pumpkins (Plate 52, Figs. 2 and 3) are similar to those used by the Roro coast people and in Mekeo, except that the usual form, instead of being rather short and broad with a narrow opening, is longer and narrower, some of them being, say, 3 feet long, and often very curved and crooked in shape. ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... one themselves? He then asserts that he has no need of the aid of the gods to account for the making of the world. Everything that exists, he says, was made by Nature: not agreeing with that other philosopher who teaches, that the universe is a concrete mass of rough and smooth, and hooked and crooked bodies, with the addition of a vacuum: this he calls a dream of Democritus, and says that he is here not teaching, but wishing;—but he himself, examining each separate part of the world, teaches that whatever exists, and whatever is done, is caused, or has ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... bald was showing; and just then a carriage drove up to the door, and we heard visitors and the footsteps in the hall. I had just time to cry to Lord Valmond, "Keep them back while I wake her!" and then I rushed to Lady Farrington, and shouted in her ear, "Visitors! and—and—your cap is a little crooked!" "Eh! what?" she screamed, and her teeth as nearly as possible jumped on to the carpet. She simply flew to the mirror, but, as you know, it is away so high up she couldn't see, so she made frantic efforts with her hands, and just got it to cover the bald, ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... mountain, there is one which is distinguished by its size, about 20 paces long, and more than 15 broad and high." Details still more accurate are given by Schulz in the Leitungen des Hoechsten, Th. 5, S. 186, 303. According to him, the road is pure rock, and very smooth, and so crooked, that those going before cannot see those who follow them. "When we were only ten paces distant from each other, we heard each other's voices, indeed, but were invisible to each other, on account of the winding ways made in consequence of the intervening by-hills.... Everywhere ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... the right course in the discharge of his professional duties. If a man is lacking in probity of character, it is said the discussion of legal ethics will do him no particular good, because if he is tempted to a crooked path or an unjust act by his pecuniary interest, he will yield, and neither lectures on ethics nor the establishment of an ethical code will make him good; whereas the upright man will either not be so tempted, or ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft
... and a real open kill. No changing, you know. We did go through the Daisies, but I'll swear to its being the same fox." All of which set Tregear wondering. How could she swear to her fox? And if they had changed, what did it matter? And if it had been a little crooked, why would it have been less enjoyable? And was she really so exact a judge of pace as she pretended to be? "I'm afraid we shan't have anything like that to-day," she continued. "The wind's in the west, and I never do like ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... weep no more; but speak, and banish thy dismay. Of man is guilt; but grace is God's, that purgeth guilt away. If all our little being's bound were filled and stuffed with sin, 'Twere nothing to the holiness His mighty heart within; And in this wilderness of life there's no such crooked road, But from it may a path be found straight to the throne of God. The penitent that mourns like thee, that path will surely take. What needeth but to own thy sin and straight thy sin forsake?' 'Yet must I weep. Mine inward plight is one that stands alone. The outward ill the tempted wight may ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... on the crooked curtain looked above and beyond them all. It was a caricature of the Sphinx, but could ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... former condition. This plan accepted, but not to be put into execution at once, now, should in course of time have been approaching completion; and, meanwhile, the city oddly enough wavered between form and formlessness. If, for instance, a crooked side of a street was to be straightened, the first man who felt disposed to build moved forward to the appointed line, perhaps, too, his next neighbor, but perhaps, also, the third or fourth resident from him; ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... -you think so; very well, just try it," replied the good man, yielding his place to the First Consul, who took the plow-handle, and making the team start, commenced to give his lesson. But he did not plow a single yard of a straight line. The whole furrow was crooked. "Come, come," said the countryman, putting his hand on that of the general to resume his plow, "your work is no good. Each one to his trade. Saunter along, that is your business." But the First Consul did not proceed without paying for the lesson he had received. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... which does them greatest harm, Their spiritual gizzards are too warm, Which puts the over-heated sots In fevers still, like other goats. 670 For though the Whore bends Hereticks With flames of fire, like crooked sticks, Our Schismaticks so vastly differ, Th' hotter th' are, they grow the stiffer; Still setting off their spiritual goods 675 With fierce and pertinacious feuds. For zeal's a dreadful termagant, That teaches Saints to tear ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... call that a disease where the whole body is corrupted; they call that sickness where a disease is attended with a weakness, and that a defect where the parts of the body are not well compacted together; from whence it follows that the members are misshapen, crooked, and deformed. So that these two, a disease and sickness, proceed from a violent concussion and perturbation of the health of the whole body; but a defect discovers itself even when the body is in perfect health. But a disease of the mind is distinguishable only in thought from a sickness. But ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... would raise a noble love must find Ways to beget a passion for her mind; She must be that which she to be would seem, For all true love is grounded on esteem: Plainness and truth gain more a generous heart Than all the crooked subtleties of art. She must be—what said I?—she must be you: None but yourself that miracle can do. At least, I'm sure, thus much I plainly see, None but yourself e'er did it upon me. 'Tis you alone that can my heart subdue, To you alone ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... scarcely any diminution from year to year. Drilling has been found difficult, as a great portion of the rock is broken shale lying obliquely. The tools slip to one side very easily, and a number of "crooked holes" have resulted. One driller lost his tools altogether in a well, and finished it with new ones. The cost of putting down a well is from $5,000 to $7,000, depending upon depth, etc. Most of the wells are from 1,200 to 1,500 feet, but some have yielded at a much less depth. One ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... never be, if it please the Madonna!" cried Paoluccio. "A relation? Thank God we have always been honest people in my father's house! No, it was not a relation. She came of a crooked race. Her mother took a lover, and her father killed him, here on the Frascati road, and almost killed her too; but the law gave him the right and ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... twelve hours in the porter's room of the Bishop's palace, wearing the ass's head. This Dr. Williams was the very able but far from faultless man who was treated so harshly by Laud, and gave the King such crooked counsel in the case of Strafford, and spent his last years in mute sorrow at the death of his royal master, and had his life written by the wise, witty, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... fears ain't got no foundation about that feller being crooked, and he won't listen to reason," ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... be up to something crooked or he wouldn't be so anxious to have us stop following him," went on the ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum
... were, in the territory where vegetation ceased, compensatory shelves on which the best part of a large pie and likewise of a cold joint were plainly discernible among other solids. The room itself was large, though low; and the heavy frames of its old-fashioned windows, and the heavy beams in its crooked ceiling, seemed to indicate that it had once been a house of some mark standing alone ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... between the supports, as straight as is procurable; cut in it two circular slots about an inch deep by 2 in. wide to fit into the forks; at one end cut a straight slot 2 in. deep across the face. Now get a crooked bough, as nearly the shape of a handle as nature has produced it, and trim it into right angular shape, fit one end into the barrel, and you have a windlass that will pull up many a ton ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... were taking refreshment, Domingo kindled a fire, and having sought among the rocks for a particular kind of crooked wood, which burns when quite green, throwing out a great blaze, he made a torch, which he lighted, it being already night. But when they prepared to continue their journey, a new difficulty occurred; Paul and Virginia could no longer walk, their feet being violently swelled and inflamed. Domingo ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... Full of crooked streets Death is ye market-place Where all must meet If life was merchandise That man could buy The rich would always ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... he commanded Theodore, and he nudged the gun under his ribs. "That's the key, that crooked one—use ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... crooked, winding between doubled rows of pebble-houses, and full of dark shadows even in the crimson noon. I walked aimlessly, favoring the arm the guard had crushed. I was no closer to settling things with Rakhal, and I had slammed at least ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... ever did a crooked thing in his life, poor devil. He wouldn't dream of coming to ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... soul to darksome deeds Of violence and greed, of hate and ruth. His God, a God of wrath, a tyrant force To mete to helpless souls eternal doom; A Juggernaut, a hard unsentient power,— But yet less potent than the yellow gold Those crooked talons clutch, and for the which The miser Shylock fain would ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner
... saw in my dream that Christian asked him to help him off with the burden that was upon his back, and Goodwill pointed to a narrow way running from the wicket gate, and said, "Do you see that narrow way? That is the way you must go. Keep to it, and do not turn down any of the wide and crooked roads, and you will soon come to the place of deliverance, where your burden will fall from your ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... sure of that," said Mr. Adair, who seemed to be in low spirits. "Look at my two sisters, and lots of other girls. How many men has Margaret refused? She will take up with some crooked stick at last." ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... The old lady pricked herself into an ominous majesty. "Nonsense, indeed! Katje, beware of pride. Beware of puffing yourself up. Aren't there witches in the Bible, and weren't they horrible and wicked? Didn't King David see the dead corpses come up out of the ground when the witch crooked her finger, like dogs running to ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... on the envelope is to be punctuated according to the above given rules. An interrogation point (?) should be used at the end of all questions. It is in truth, as the small boy said, "A little crooked thing that asks questions." The exclamation point (!) expressing astonishment, the dash and parenthesis, need only be employed by those thoroughly understanding their use. Quotation marks (" ") should always be placed at the beginning and end of words quoted from another; ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... believe this, for although it was too dark in this narrow lane to see anything, the abominable odour of the place told me pretty well what its condition must be. We plodded on for nearly ten minutes, winding hither and thither, and penetrating deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of dark, crooked lanes, but gradually edging nearer to the harbour, while, as I thought, working our way a considerable distance to the westward. Presently my guide, who had been humming some negro melody to himself, lifted up his voice in a louder key and began to chant the praises of a certain "lubly ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... one of these sort of gentlemen-apprentices make an attempt to begin, and set up his trade—he was a dealer in what they call Crooked-lane wares: he got about L300 from his father, an honest plain countryman, to set him up, and his said honest father exerted himself to the utmost to send him up ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... as a passage for canvases, frames, packing-boxes and other professional gear. The main entrance was through the house and his own apartments, and this approach had the charming effect of admitting you first to a high gallery, from which a crooked picturesque staircase enabled you to descend to the wide, decorated, encumbered room. The view of this room, beneath them, with all its artistic ingenuities and the objects of value that Lyon had collected, never ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... began to laugh. "Yes," said she, "you must have remonstrated very feelingly. Your tie's all crooked, Olaf dear, and your hair's all rumpled, and there's dust all over your coat. You would disgrace a rag-bag. Oh, I'm glad you reasoned—that way! It wasn't dignified, but it was dear of you, Olaf. ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... retorted the other, again turning his face quickly toward his companion. "Am I not distinguished enough in appearance? Do I look like the mob? True, I am a scrawny, humpbacked crooked-faced, scarecrow of a man—but what matters that, if I do not look like the mob? What is called fame is as scrawny and humpbacked and crooked-faced as my body—but what matters that? Famous or infamous—to not look like the mob is ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... the red cock crew, But never came the day: And crooked shapes of Terror crouched, In the corners where we lay: And each evil sprite that walks by night ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... the stump of an old tree, an idol of wood, more ugly than the representation of the devil himself: its head resembled no living creature; its ears were as big and as high as goat's horns, a crooked nose, four-cornered mouth, and horrible teeth: it was clothed in sheep skins, had a great Tartar bonnet, with two horns growing thro' it, and was eight feet high, without feet, legs or proportion. Before this idol their lay sixteen or seventeen people, who brought ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... are represented; most of them are allied to greyhounds; at the later of these periods a dog resembling a hound is figured, with drooping ears, but with a longer back and more pointed head than in our hounds. There is, also, a turnspit, with short and crooked legs, closely resembling the existing variety; but this kind of monstrosity is so common with various animals, as with the ancon sheep, and even, according to Rengger, with jaguars in Paraguay, that it would ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... different pitches. They were held and played, like the classical one, with either hand of the performer. There can be little doubt that they were in reality quite straight, though sometimes they have been awkwardly represented as crooked by the artist. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... anaemic consumptives and great hairy beasts of burden, wan faces from which vampire society had sucked the juice of life, bloated forms swollen with physical grossness and corruption, withered hags and death's-heads bearded like patriarchs, festering youth and festering age, faces of fiends, crooked, twisted, misshapen monsters blasted with the ravages of disease and all the horrors of chronic innutrition—the refuse and the scum of life, a raging, ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... will not hold me still; My tongue, though not my heart, shall have his will. He is deformed, crooked, old, and sere, Ill-fac'd, worse bodied, shapeless everywhere; Vicious, ungentle, foolish, blunt, unkind; Stigmatical in ...
— The Comedy of Errors • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... line, straight or crooked, suitable for a National boundary upon which to divide. Trace through, from East to West, upon the line between the Free and Slave Country, and we shall find a little more than one third of its length are rivers, easy to be crossed, and populated, or soon to be populated, ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... now, you know all about it! But for Mary, here—well, thank God, Mary saved him! But for her, the truth would never have come to light. But directly I knew that Paul was free, I left you, determined to make the crooked places straight. I hastened to London, and after doing what needed to be done there, I hurried on to Cornwall. I saw my adopted father—he's an old man now, but he's lost none of the strength of his younger manhood. I fought a hard battle with him, but that's nothing—the result ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... completing a verb, and referring to or explaining the subject: "A bent twig makes a crooked tree." ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... Expect he meant he had an engagement not to meet the sheriff. I rec'lect when Shorty was a mighty promisin' young fellow before Brad Steelman got a-holt of him. He punched cows for me twenty years ago. He hadn't took the wrong turn then. You cayn't travel crooked trails an' not reach a closed ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... God, in things of an indifferent nature, being such, as absolutely considered, are neither good nor evil; some few SUCH, say you, we have under the gospel, namely, that of coming to God by Christ, &c. I am the more punctual in this thing, because you have confounded your weak reader with a crooked parenthesis in the midst of the paragraph, and also by deferring to spit your intended venom at Christ, till again you had puzzled him, with your mathematics and metaphysics, &c., putting in another page, betwixt the beginning and the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and crooked, no room for vehicles, so we had to trek about two miles to the railroad station, the baggage being sent there by teams. After getting on the train we ran through orange, fig, olive, lemon, pomegranate and date groves, then over a great flat, fertile plain, ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... the patron of talents. His pet animal is a spotted fawn. He travels about a good deal to find and reward good boys, who are diligent in their studies, and men who are fitted to rule. In one hand he carries a crooked staff of bamboo, at the top of which is hung a book or roll of manuscript. His dress is like that of a learned doctor, with square cap, ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... Lords, was there ever such a discovery made of the arcana of any public theatre? You see here, behind the ostensible scenery, all the crooked working of the machinery developed and laid open to the world. You now see by what secret movement the master of the mechanism has conducted the great Indian opera,—an opera of fraud, deceptions, and harlequin tricks. You have it all laid open before you. The ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of fun in command myself, and good experience. I have taken her out on patrol up to Norfolk twice, where the channel is as thin and crooked as a corkscrew, then into dry dock. Later, escorted a submarine down, then docked the ship alongside of a collier, and have established, to my own satisfaction at least, that I know how to handle a ship. All this may not convey much, but ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... price of Patent Pasteurized Feeder, for which I had paid 20. But this, Mr. Beverly assured me, was a normal and even healthy course for a new stock. 'Had they gone up too soon and too high,' he explained, 'I should have suspected some crooked manipulation and advised selling at once. But this indicates a healthy absorption preliminary to a natural rise. I should not dream of letting mother part ...
— Mother • Owen Wister
... whole of a rake, the bows, teeth, head and staff. Besides, it had medicinal virtues; it was good for nose-bleed ever since it staunched the royal nose of King James, the Second. Although the most elastic of wood it never grew crooked, but shot up a trunk as straight as an arrow. It is a tree prophetic of archery. Uncle Lyman made me many a bow from a selected piece of ash, each year of my age a little longer and stouter. He measured the length the bow should be by my height. What a joy it was at length to shoot an arrow almost ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... meaning of all Vedanta-texts setting forth Brahman's nature.—That Brahman is represented as having different forms, as it were, is due to its connexion with its (unreal) limiting adjuncts; just as the light of the sun appears straight or crooked, as it were, according to the nature of the things he illuminates (15).—The B/ri/hadara/n/yaka expressly declares that Brahman is one uniform mass of intelligence (16); and the same is taught in other scriptural passages and in Sm/ri/ti ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... also, O monarch, hast never done them any injury. Why should, therefore, these tigers among men, who are ever truthful, give thee wicked advice, especially when thou hast never injured them? Endued with wisdom these foremost of men, O king, will never give thee counsels that are crooked. O scion of Kuru's rate, this is my firm conviction that these two, acquainted with all rules of morality, will never, tempted by wealth, utter anything betraying a spirit of partisanship. What they have said, O Bharata, I regard ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... good God, we belonged to each other—and I let you go! It's fabulous. I've fought for things since that weren't worth a crooked sixpence; fought as well as other men. And you—you—I lost you because I couldn't face a scene! Hang it, suppose there'd been a dozen scenes—I might have survived them. Men have been known ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... wall, and a paraffin lamp hung from the roof of their stone-age dwelling. Olga was kind and helpful, but she looked tiny and pathetic, like a ruffled hen; it pained me to watch her flit about the room, tiny and crooked, as she looked for a pair of reindeer ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... the scent by steering crooked courses Drake at last landed at what is now Drake's Bay, near the modern San Francisco, where the Indians, who had never even heard of any craft bigger than canoes, were lost in wonder at the Golden Hind and none the less ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... interrupted prosperity. In the 'Religio Medici' he indulges in some disparaging remarks upon marriage. 'The whole world,' he says, 'was made for man; but the twelfth part of man for woman. Man is the whole world and the breath of God; woman the rib and crooked part of man.' He wishes, after the fashion of Montaigne, that we might grow like the trees, and avoid this foolish and trivial ceremony; and therefore—for such inferences are perfectly legitimate in the history of a humorist—he married a lady, of whom it ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... of antiquity, from the morning of man's cupidity and avarice, two sinister figures have crawled with crooked talons through history, leaving a trail of blood and fear most horrible which has not halted yet. These are the monarch and the priest. The one is symbolical of despotic or oligarchic power, the other typifies the sordid ignorance and fearful superstition of the credulous masses which maintains ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... case of the very same sort, though simpler, and better adapted to illustrate natural selection; because the change of direction—your necessity—acts gradually or successively, instead of abruptly. Suppose I hit a man standing obliquely in my rear, by throwing forward a crooked stick, called a boomerang. How could he know whether the blow was intentional or not? But suppose I had been known to throw boomerangs before; suppose that, on different occasions, I had before wounded persons by the same, or ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... end doth make Of Christmas, merry, merry vein-a, Is child Rowlan, and a straight young man, Though he come out of Crooked-lane-a. ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... taste. It's the way he looks at you and moves his crooked mouth and the way he bends his ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... Prince lodged then in one of the four grand suites of apartments, on the same level as the Salon, the suite that was broken up during an illness of Madame la Princesse de Conti, to make way for a grand stair case, the narrow and crooked one in use annoying the King when he ascended it. The chamber of the Dauphine was there; the bed had its foot towards the window; by the chimney was the door of the obscure wardrobe by which I entered; between the chimney ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... sequence of human history from any thing which we can call irresistible or inevitable. Did one dare to deal in epithets, crooked, wayward, mysterious, incalculable, would be those which would rather suggest themselves to a man looking steadily not at a few facts here and there, and not again at some hasty bird's-eye sketch, which he chooses to call ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... pitiful little contraption of slender boughs that she had bound together with grasses and called a door—only a few inches lay between the thing and her. Rising to her knees she reached out with her left hand and felt until she found a place where a crooked branch had left an opening a couple of inches wide near the center of the barrier. Into this she inserted the point of her spear. The thing must have heard her move within for suddenly it abandoned its efforts ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... into a crooked little street near the outskirts of the city. Chester also turned the corner, just in time to see the man descend a pair of steps into the basement of what was apparently an ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... we walked up the main aisle of the old church, around the altar where Madame Guyon used to kneel, and by a crooked, little passageway entered a house fully as old as the church. A woman who might have been as old as the house was setting the table in a little dining-room. She looked up at me through brass-rimmed spectacles, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... replied: 'I'll try, but I don't believe they can spell it.' 'Draw a straight line, then,' said I. 'I'll be content with a single line an inch long.' She laughingly retorted: 'It's hard to draw a straight line.' 'Very well, draw a crooked line. Draw a zigzag—like a stroke of lightning. Draw it in yellow. Draw a circle.' She said no more, but became silent, and we waited without change of position. Remember that I was holding the slate during all this talk. It ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... rock, on which winged Pegasus is pawing the ground," though why this action of a horse should be called "pawing" (the animal notoriously not possessing paws) it is hard to say. Round this graceful design is the inscription [Greek text] (straight not crooked). In his ordinary mood Blinton could only have admired 'Tirante il Bianco' from a distance. But now, the demon inspiring him, he rushed into the lists, and challenged the great Mr. -, the Napoleon of bookselling. The price had ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... not be always necessary to use the line A—B but if the edge of the stream or road is crooked it is necessary in order to make B—D a straight line at right angles ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... a lie!" roar'd out a Stentorian voice, "I never takes my seat before I sees my vay clear upon the board. I put a crooked ha' penny." ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... and Crooked Islands, Bimini, Cat Island, Exuma, Freeport, Fresh Creek, Governor's Harbour, Green Turtle Cay, Harbour Island, High Rock, Inagua, Kemps Bay, Long Island, Marsh Harbour, Mayaguana, New Providence, Nichollstown and Berry Islands, Ragged Island, Rock Sound, Sandy ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... setting fast, and eager to reach Villafranca, where I had determined on resting, and which was still distant three leagues and a half, I made no halt at this place. The road was now down a rapid and crooked descent, which terminated in a valley, at the bottom of which was a long and narrow bridge; beneath it rolled a river, descending from a wide pass between two mountains, for the chain was here cleft, probably ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... spare a roome in this Suruey, to the poore, of whom few Shires can shew more, or owne fewer then Cornwall. Ireland prescribeth to be the nurserie, which sendeth ouer yeerely, yea and dayly whole Ship-loades of these crooked slips, and the dishabited townes afford them rooting: so vpon the matter, the whole County maketh a contribution, to pay those Lords their rent. Manie good Statutes haue beene enacted for redresse of these abuses, and vpon the first publishing, heedfully and diligently put in practise: ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... solitary occupant of the place—a wild, bloodshot-eyed, athletic man in torn and ragged half-open shirt and trousers, who cowered on the rough bed trying to force himself closer into the corner, his crooked fingers scratching at the wall, while all the time his head was wrenched round so that he stared wildly at imaginary dangers, evidently vividly seen, and ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... whose views of life Are crooked, wrong, perverse, and odd, Who looks upon all with jaundiced eyes— Sees himself ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... the northern tribes to the east and north of the Mississippi valley, but earthen jars and vessels were made by the Dakota-Siou group in the valley of the Mississippi. Amongst these agricultural Indians the hoe was made of a buffalo's blade bone fastened to a crooked wooden handle. The Ojibwes manufactured chisels out of beavers' teeth. The Eskimo and some of the neighbouring Amerindian tribes used oblong "kettles" of stone—simply great blocks of stone chipped, rubbed, and hollowed out into receptacles, with handles at both ends. (It is suggested ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... we used to live. And the eyes are exactly like Sherm's and Sherm always twisted his mouth crooked ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... had gone out; he lighted it with steady and deliberate fingers before he said: "I am giving you facts. The fighting has not been all on my side. For instance, I haven't hired men to drop tools in his wells or run crooked holes, and that sort of thing, as he has. Not that I wouldn't follow his lead if he forced me to, but I haven't had to resort to petty annoyances. I haven't had to make any 'small change,' for I have originality, imagination—even a small amount of daring, ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... mother Venus iealous of my health, Conuaid me from their crooked nets and bands: So I escapt the furious Pirrhus wrath: Who then ran to the pallace of the King, And at Ioues Altar finding Priamus, About whose withered necke hung Hecuba, Foulding his hand in hers, and ioyntly both Beating ...
— The Tragedy of Dido Queene of Carthage • Christopher Marlowe
... work; onwards they press with eager spirit, disentangling the line, double or treble, as the case may be. (23) To and fro they weave a curious web, (24) now across, now parallel with the line, (25) whose threads are interlaced, here overlapped, and here revolving in a circle; now straight, now crooked; here close, there rare; at one time clear enough, at another dimly owned. Past one another the hounds jostle—tails waving fast, ears dropt, and ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... are less than $3,000 per mile.—Chicago, Burlington and Kansas City Railway; Chicago, Ft. Madison and Des Moines Railway; Chicago, Iowa and Dakota Railway; Crooked Creek Railroad and Coal Company; Des Moines and Kansas City Railway; Des Moines, Northern and Western Railway; Humeston and Shenandoah Railroad; Iowa Northern Railway; Mason City and Fort Dodge Railroad; Minneapolis and St. Louis Railway; St. Louis, Keokuk and Northwestern Railroad; Tabor ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... She and Jennie were swinging, with Katie between them, and Susy and Prudy were playing croquet. They all ran to see what the man wanted. He was not ragged, and if it had not been for the green shade over his eyes and the crooked walking-stick in his hand, the children would not have thought of his being a beggar. He was a very fleshy man, and the walk seemed to have taken ...
— Dotty Dimple at Her Grandmother's • Sophie May
... Peel bay, a wide stretch of beach, with a gentle slope to the left, dotted over with grey houses; the little town farther on, with its nooks and corners, its blind alleys and dark lanes, its narrow, crabbed, crooked streets. Behind this the old pier and the herring boats rocking in the harbour, with their brown sails half set, waiting for the top of the tide. In the distance the broad breast of Contrary Head, and, a musket-shot outside of it, the little rocky islet whereon stand the stately ruins of the ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... are progressing properly; and if you get the correct form of your boat in these four positions, you will be almost certain to make a good boat. If, on the other hand, you go to work without drawings, the probability is that your boat will be lopsided, which will prevent it from floating evenly; or crooked, which will tend to check its speed in sailing, besides being clumsy and not "ship-shape," as ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... hygiene. How were they treated formerly? Many, no doubt, can still remember certain practises that were regarded as indispensable by the masses. An infant had to be strapped and swaddled, or its legs would grow crooked; the ligament under its tongue had to be slit, to ensure its speaking eventually; it was important that it should always wear a cap to keep its ears from protruding; the position of a recumbent baby was so arranged as not to cause permanent ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... arbour, whose battered doorway was almost barricaded by the fallen timbers. The steps of the arbour and the planks of the floor had sunk, and rotten planks cracked under her feet. Of its original furniture there was nothing left but two moss-grown benches and a crooked table. ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... frames divined what kind of a to-morrow his day was preparing? All knew the pass of La Tir well, and if all had not won decisive battles they would have been hung in the outer office or even in the corridors, where a line of half-forgotten or forgotten generals crooked down the stairways into the oblivion of the basement. That unfortunate one whom the first Galland had driven through the pass was quite obscured in darkness. He would soon be crowded out to an antique shop for sale as an example of the portrait ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... of those things they deemed worthy of record in the life and death of Christ, and of the sayings and doings of several of his friends and enemies. Now every person knows that it is impossible to make two crooked boughs tally, or two false witnesses agree. You never saw two lying reports of any considerable number of transactions agree, unless the one was copied ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... Blake, in the "Marriage of Heaven and Hell": "Improvement makes straight roads; but the crooked roads, without improvement, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... comes to-morrow,' said Otto. 'I am so glad. I was weary of that old Master Hoffman, with his crooked problems and ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... undeviatingly pursued;" or "In the beginning His plan was formed and from it He has never swerved in any particular" (Agassiz and Gould, 'Principles of Zoology').) who may have written here, as a Portuguese proverb says "straight in crooked lines."* (* "Deos escrive direito em linhas tortas." To read this remarkable writing we need the spectacles of Faith, which seldom suit eyes accustomed to the Microscope.) I cannot but think that ...
— Facts and Arguments for Darwin • Fritz Muller
... Larry and Jack cooked the dinner, Fox-Foot penetrated the woods, returning with some crooked little brown roots, which he bound about Jack's forehead and made him inhale. They exuded a peculiar sweetish odor, that seemed to wash the eyeball like water, and when the afternoon was half spent, Jack remarked that his eyelids ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... relic first appeared with a terrible example in that country, through the foolish and absurd blowing of Bernard, a priest, as is set forth in our Topography of Ireland. Both the laity and clergy in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales held in such great veneration portable bells, and staves crooked at the top, and covered with gold, silver, or brass, and similar relics of the saints, that they were much more afraid of swearing falsely by them than by the gospels; because, from some hidden and miraculous power ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... Tappingham Marsh, next below him, to come higher, left the writhing nozzle in the latter's possession, swung himself out upon the grappling-ladder, imitating the chief's gymnastics, and immediately, one hand grasping the second rung, one knee crooked over the lowest, leaned head down and took the nozzle from Marsh. It was a heavy weight, and though Marsh supported the line beneath it, the great stream hurtling forth made it a difficult thing to manage, for it wriggled, recoiled and struggled as if it had been alive. ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... white: the under parts are yellow, crossed with single bars of black on the chin and throat, and double clouded ones on the belly: the toes are five in number on each foot, barred across with black and yellow, as the legs, and each furnished with a crooked black claw: the tail measures more in length than the whole of the body; towards the base, clouded and marked as the rest; but the further half banded with black and yellow, each band three inches broad, the end running to ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... Toby filled his second pipe; and had it not been, that he now and then wandered from the point, with considering whether it was not full as well to have the curtain of the tennaile a straight line, as a crooked one,—he might be said to have thought of nothing else but poor Le Fever and his boy the ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... Sella Curulis was a chair on which the principal magistrates sat in the tribunal upon solemn occasions. It had no back, but stood on four crooked feet, fixed to the extremities of cross pieces of wood, joined by a common axis, somewhat in the form of the letter X; was covered with leather, and inlaid with ivory. From its construction, it might be occasionally folded together for the convenience of carriage, and set down ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... started cutting the ribbon straight through the middle. If the scissors slipped and cut through the selvage, the player was out of the game. It was not easy, for the ribbon was narrow, and there was a strong impulse to hurry, which made for crooked cutting. The middle of each piece of ribbon was marked by a knot, and whoever reached the knot first, was the winner of that pair. The one who finished first of all, received ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... oven, and dough actually on the kneading-tray. In a tanner's vat he found fresh bark. In a blacksmith's shop he entered next the fire was out, but there was coal heaped beside the forge, with the ladling-pool and the crooked water-horn, and on the anvil was a horseshoe that had cooled before ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... kinds of bears, wolves and foxes, the celebrated sable whose skin is sold for so great a price, and the native wild sheep, which inhabits the tops of the highest mountains. It attains the size of a large goat; the head resembles that of an ordinary sheep, but is furnished with strong, crooked horns: the skin and form of the body are like the reindeer, and it feeds chiefly on moss. It is fleet and active, achieving, like the chamois, prodigious springs among the rocks and precipices, and is, consequently, with difficulty killed or taken. In preparing for these ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... chicken home to my nest in the big oak on the hill yonder. My nest is a very simple affair,—just a few crooked sticks. The lining is of leaves and a few pieces of loose bark which we ...
— Stories of Birds • Lenore Elizabeth Mulets
... good old merchant, over whose shoulder we were peeping, while he read the newspaper. Let us now suppose him putting on his three-cornered gold-laced hat, grasping his cane, with a head inlaid of ebony and mother-of-pearl, and setting forth, through the crooked streets of Boston, on various errands, suggested by the advertisements of the day. Thus he communes with himself: I must be mindful, says he, to call at Captain Scut's, in Creek Lane, and examine his rich ...
— Old News - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... presented itself. Think not so meanly of me, Chamisso, as to imagine that I would have shrunk from any sacrifice on my part. In such a case it would have been but a poor ransom. No, Chamisso; but my whole soul was filled with unconquerable hatred to the cringing knave and his crooked ways. I might be doing him injustice; but I shuddered at the bare idea of entering into any fresh compact with him. But here a circumstance took place which entirely changed the face of things ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... It was a thing monstrous, possessing none of the forms familiar to the eye, yet not devoid of a hint of some new unknown form. On a thin tortuous little branch, or rather an ugly likeness of one, lay crooked, strange, unsightly, shapeless heaps of something turned outside in, or something turned inside out—wild fragments which seemed to be feebly trying to get away from themselves. And, accidentally, ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... Crow" cars, and chafed at the color-line that hemmed in him and his. A tinge of sarcasm crept into his speech, and a vague bitterness into his life; and he sat long hours wondering and planning a way around these crooked things. Daily he found himself shrinking from the choked and narrow life of his native town. And yet he always planned to go back to Altamaha,—always planned to work there. Still, more and more ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... ruffles, rather than a human being,—such are the ordinary subjects. Beside them hang a few engravings: portraits of Khosrev-Mirza in his sheepskin bonnet, and of truculent generals with cocked hats and crooked noses. Bundles of coarse prints, on large paper broadsides, are suspended on either side the door. Here we have the Princess Miliktris Kirbitierna;[25] yonder the city of Jerusalem, its houses and churches smeared with vermilion, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... call (seeing that science has not yet solved this problem) criminal neurosis, which is very analogous to epileptic neurosis, but which is not in itself sufficient to make one a criminal. Our adversaries had the idea that the mere possession of a crooked nose or a slanting skull stamped a man as predisposed by birth to murder or theft. But a man may he a born criminal, that is to say, he may have some congenital degeneration which predisposes him toward crime, and yet he may die ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... with beautiful and fantastic forms by men whose names were long ago forgotten. Common dwellings are adorned with picturesque dormer windows. Even the narrow crooked streets hold their share of beauty, for here are fountains so exquisite in their workmanship that their like is not to be found elsewhere. Here it is the Beautiful Fountain, gay with sculptures of heroes and saints, and there it is the Little Gooseman's Fountain where humor is added to beauty. ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... with the highest and most general applauses, as all such things are in the beginning, not as a system of persecution, but as masterpieces of the most subtle and refined politics. And to say the truth, these laws, at first view, have rather an appearance of a plan of vexatious litigation and crooked law-chicanery than of a direct and sanguinary attack upon the rights of private conscience: because they did not affect life, at least with regard to the laity; and making the Catholic opinions rather the subject of civil ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... weighed in the balance and found wanting. Thoughts, ere they are expressed, are even seen and censured. Actions are pronounced false and defective. Appearances are judged as realities, and realities as nonentities. Things straight are seen as crooked, and things beautiful as deformed. Where wiser men perceive order, strength, utility, he perceives confusion, weakness, and uselessness. An enterprise of which the community approve and co-operate in he ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... escape from an embarrassing situation, and in desperation he used it. "Things are always going crooked in a bank like ours," he said, avoiding her despondent stare. "Men in my business take risks, you know. Things run smoothly at times, and then —then they ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... whose perfidy and duplicity were only equalled by his self-complacency and power of self-deception, who never looked facts in the face, but placidly expected them to conform to his own petty desires, and whose dignified death failed to atone for a life devoted to ignoble personal ends, by crooked ways and treacherous means; a king peculiarly incapable of taking a broad statesman-like view of any question, who manifested no thought for the interests of the people of whom he regarded himself ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... lived somewhere in a cave with the topology of an dodecahedron's edge/vertex graph (later versions supported other topologies, including an icosahedron and M"obius strip). The player started somewhere at random in the cave with five 'crooked arrows'; these could be shot through up to three connected rooms, and would kill the wumpus on a hit (later versions introduced the wounded wumpus, which got very angry). Unfortunately for players, the movement necessary to ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... easy one to understand, as you may see for yourselves, and it didn't get finished that day. They argyed over it a full week. When there wasn't no more witnesses to carve up, one lawyer made a speech, an' he set that crooked case so straight, that you could see through it from the over-shot wheel clean back to Brown's grandfather. Then another feller made a speech, and he set the whole thing up another way. It was jus' as clear, to look through, but it ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... through! You knew it was crooked. And you call yourself a man! And you took a letter to Pat that called him out to be shot down by that coyote! Do you know that Pat's gun was loaded when I found it; that he didn't ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... her little crooked, sarcastic smile. She had telegraphed and written both—and the second letter had been registered. He had probably forgotten that little fact. But it was of little consequence now. The sting lay ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... O gloriously free Am I in freedom from three crooked things:— From quern, from mortar, from my crook-back'd lord! Ay, but I'm free from rebirth and from death, And all that dragged me back ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... his plate and a knife and fork in his hands, would commence to eat. That this was not done in obedience to thought or knowledge was shown by the fact that his dinner could be at once interrupted by awakening a new train of feeling by a new external impulse. Put a crooked stick resembling a gun into his hand, and at once the man was seized with a rage comparable to that produced in the Strasburg dog by taking hold of his tail. The fury of conflict was on him: with a loud yell he would recommence the skirmish in which he had been ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... howsever, it reads all square, so ittle do. If I had been the inventer o' writin' I'd have had signs for a lot o' words. Just think how much better it would ha' bin to have put a regular D like that instead o' writin' s-q-u-a-r-e. Then round would have bin far better O, like that. An' crooked thus," (draws a squiggly line); "see how significant an' suggestive, if I may say so; no humbug—all fair an' above-board, as the pirate said, when he ran up the black ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... often with great rapidity, though even the poor creature herself might scarcely have been able to explain the burden of her song. The gentle breeze, pleasant in the cheerful sunshine, sighed through the rents in the tottering walls, and amid the branches of the solitary, crooked pine-tree, which bent its riven head over the building, its distorted limbs creaking and groaning as they swayed to and fro; while an owl shrieked his twit-to-hoo to the departing sun, as he prepared to go abroad with other creatures of the night in search of prey; ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... which all previous plans of pacification had split. There was but one way to secure the advantages of permanent peace, and that was an upright observance of the treaties formed with the Huguenots. But Catharine was slow to learn the lesson. Crooked paths, to her distorted vision, seemed to be the shortest way to success. Her Italian education had taught her that deceit was better, under all circumstances, than plain dealing, and she could not unlearn ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... o' force; but he'd got it crooked, and it was just as if the joint had gone fast, so that I was afraid that if I pulled too hard I might break something; and it was just while I was hanging fire like that you came, and he let it come then quite easy. ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... intently for a moment. He lay stretched out on the sand, his elbow crooked to support his head. He looked ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... brought to pass within the narrow circle of less than forty years! What a difference since NOW and THEN. The country is the same only in name. Its aspect is wholly changed. The rough has become smooth, the crooked has been made straight, the forests have been converted into fruitful fields, the rude log cabin of the woodsman has been replaced by the handsome, well-appointed homestead, and large populous cities have pushed the small ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... Katy's feet; but, to the wonder of all, she would not even pick them up to look at them. People shook their heads, and wondered whom Katy Stephens expected to get, and talked about going through the wood to pick up a crooked stick,—till one day she astonished her world by marrying a man that nobody ever thought of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... wretched, crooked bunch has been swept out, and the nation aired and disinfected, and when the burden of taxation is properly distributed, and business dares lift its head again, then start your debates and propaganda and try to educate your enemies if you like. But ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... seemed to us most unattractive places. The houses were crowded close together. The streets were only narrow crooked lanes between the houses. In the rear room of each house were the stalls of the family ox and ass. The brays of the ass were the alarm clock in the early morning. There was no drainage. Garbage was thrown into the street. There were smells of all varieties. One is not surprised ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... A cross-eyed rifle is one made with a crooked stock for the purpose of shooting from the right shoulder, aim being taken ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various
... immediately into a new country, the river bank high and firm, a bank of rather vivid yellow clay, with trees thickly covering the rising ground beyond. The passage of a few hundred yards revealed the mouth of Rassuer Creek, a narrow but sluggish stream, so crooked and encroached upon by the woods as to be practically invisible from the center of the river. The water was not deep, yet fortunately proved sufficiently so for our purpose, although we were obliged to ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... buying hooks? I will let her down to the bottom of the well and pull up the buckets with her old carcase, for she's crooked enough for that. ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... three years, and a great deale of that silly discourse), and by and by Mrs. Pierce did tell her that such discourses should not trouble her, for there went as bad on other people, and particularly of herself at this end of the towne, meaning my wife, that she was crooked, which was quite false, which my wife had the wit not to acknowledge herself to be the speaker of, though she has said it twenty times. But by this means we had little pleasure in their visit; however, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... mosquito hawk, and describe their parts as accurately as a spectacled student with a scalpel and microscope could talk about a cadaver. The entire Third District, with its swamps and canals and commons and railroad sections, and its wondrous, crooked, tortuous streets, was an open book to Titee. There was not a nook or corner that he did not know or could not tell of. There was not a bit of gossip among the gamins, little Creole and Spanish fellows, with dark skins and lovely eyes, like spaniels, that Titee could not tell ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... imperfect ovals. These movements could be detected only by being traced on a bell-glass placed over the plant. Sometimes the shoots stood still for hours; during some days they moved only in one direction in a crooked line; on other days they made small irregular spires or circles, one being completed in about 4 hrs. The extreme points reached by the apex of the shoot were only about one or one and a half inches asunder; ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... voice of the judge rose in violent objurgation, and all eyes were fixed upon him, the chauffeur crooked his leg tightly about the brass pole, and, like the devil in the pantomime, sank softly and ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis
... I wish it would convene to Congress, to do somethin' or another about our niggers, but I am not quite certified how that is to be sot to rights; I consait that you don't understand us. But," said he, evading the subject with his usual dexterity, "we deal only in niggers—and those thick-skulled, crooked-shanked, flat-footed, long-heeled, wooly-headed gentlemen, don't seem fit for much else but slavery, I do suppose. They ain't fit to contrive for themselves. They are jist like grasshoppers; they dance and sing all summer, and when winter comes they ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... into the open air and found ourselves in a narrow, crooked street along which men were hurrying in great numbers and at high speed. On both sides of it were enormously tall houses. There was just one building, right opposite to us, which was of English height. It was not ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... he said. "And there's my pipe at the foot of the rock, just where I dropped it," he added, in a tone of great satisfaction. Then, with mud-patched, swollen faces, and crooked but cheerful smiles, the two refugees emerged into the golden light of the afternoon, and stretched themselves. But, as Uncle Andy surveyed first the Babe and then himself in the unobstructed light, his ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... His piping voice his long crooked nose his white hair falling over the shoulders of his faded blue coat his shuffling shambling gait as he hobbled up to Carletons Grocery with his basket all this I shall remember as ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... him. Then God wil say, Wheir are the souls thou hest won by your ministery heir thir 17 years? He no wal what to answer to this, for, Sirs, I cannot promise God one of your souls: yet Ile say, behold my own Soul and my crooked Bessies (this was his daughter), and wil not this be a sad matter. Yet this was not so ill as Mr. John Elies note of a Minister was, who prayed for the success of the Kings navy both by sea ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... ready to be frank with you," he said. "The game's still in my hands. I want Lucille. I'm willing to take you and Parrish back, provided you agree she shall be mine. I'll have to trust you, but I shall have means of evening up if you play crooked." ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... to be any crooked work in the matter of the slips, I will take good care to head it off. I might be swindled out of thousands of dollars ...
— The Missing Tin Box - or, The Stolen Railroad Bonds • Arthur M. Winfield
... of man—for which rights in their proper application the poet himself had fought so valiantly—caused him great unhappiness. He now saw his fairest concepts (as is made clear in his own introduction) distorted as in some crooked mirror, and so, filled with anger, grief and disgust, he conceived and wrote his lyrico-satiric masterpiece, "Atta Troll." The poem has been misunderstood to this very day, for the mechanics and theorists have practically won. The day it ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... table by the door. She places my armchair at impossible angles between the fire and the light, and the tablecloth—the one with Trinity Hall stains—she puts on the table in such a fashion that when I look at it I feel as if my tie and all my clothes were on crooked and awry. She exasperates me. Her very silence and meekness are irritating. Sometimes I feel inclined to throw the inkstand at her, just to bring an expression into her watery eyes and a squeak from ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various |
