"Wriggling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... faithful, isn't it?" she said, wriggling in her chair. "Yours faithfully is a most beautiful ending to a letter. Why is it that faith with a little F is such a perfect thing, and yet Faith, grown-up Faith ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... seemed as unreal as unintelligible. To her they would have looked just what some of my readers will pronounce them, not in the least knowing what they are. She was suddenly roused from her painful reverie by the pulling up of Helen's ponies, with much clatter and wriggling recoil, close beside her, making more fuss with their toy-carriage than the mightiest of tractive steeds with ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... London, she saw a wriggling mass about fifty feet away which, by a process of slow disentanglement, gradually developed into a man's form rising from the ground and raising a ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... leaves in front of their wriggling noses, he coaxed them over to the summer-house, and when they got there, he placed a leaf in one of the dishes, saving the rest for ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... past history, that they were not even aware that she went back into the past; for aught they knew, she might have gone, on Wednesday of last week to see the man who could untie knots by magic, and on Thursday to see the men who could drop canes on the ground that would appear to turn into wriggling serpents. But there was one statement that proved ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... fire came the group of Monumwezis. Again they were gathered together in a compact little mass; but now they were bent nearly double, and were stripped to the red blankets about their waists. Before them writhed Sulimani, close to earth, darting irregularly now to right, now to left, wriggling, spreading his arms abroad. He was repeating over and over two phrases; or rather the same phrase in two such different intonations that they seemed to ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... loud crack, and came down like a broken tree, with the yard and sail; the latter overlapping the deck and burying itself, black flag and all, in the sea; and there, in one moment, lay the Destroyer buffeting and wriggling—like a heron on the water with its long ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... first rustle of a leaf he whirled and poised forward, in the intense attitude an eagle takes when he sights the prey. On the instant he had sighted the cap, wriggling in and out among the low bushes, and swooped for it like an arrow. Just as he dropped his legs to strike, I gave a sharp pull, and the cap jumped from under him. He missed his strike, but wheeled like a fury and struck again. ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... black eyes, a trim figure, and a way of wriggling which showed these to advantage. Fra Battista's fame and the possibility of mischief set her flashing; she led the talk and found him apt: it was not difficult to aim every word that it should go through and leave ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... slip through the hole in the lip, a kind of rivet is formed by twine bound round the inner extremity, and this protruding into the space left by the extraction of the four front teeth of the lower jaw, entices the tongue to act upon the extremity, which gives it a wriggling ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... morning 'Caiaphas' was sitting out on the ice on the port quarter, barking incessantly to the east. I knew there must be something there, and went off with a revolver, Sverdrup following with one also. When I got near the dog he came to meet me, always wriggling his head round to the east and barking; then he ran on before us in that direction; it was plain that there was some animal there, and of course it could only be a bear. The full moon stood low and ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... come into the middle of the ring, and then there would begin such a turning and skipping and stamping, and then he would fall flat on the ground, and imitate the movement of a fish brought out of the water on to dry land; such turning and wriggling, the heels positively clapped up to the head; and then he would get up and shriek—the earth seemed simply quivering under him. At times Alexey Sergeitch, who was, as I have said already, exceedingly fond of watching dancing, could not resist shouting, 'Little Vania, here! coach-boy! Dance ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... looped and suspended with all sorts of lobsters, crabs, sea-turtles, octopi, flounders, etc., wriggling thru it, not seen at first, then in strong evidence, making you wonder why you had not ...
— Palaces and Courts of the Exposition • Juliet James
... newspapers for its sources of information, the public was constantly deceived and blinded, either by the suppression of certain news, or by its being tampered with and grossly colored. This Depew continued as the wriggling tool of the Vanderbilt family for nearly half a century. Astonishing as it may seem, he managed to pass among the uninformed as a notable man; he was continuously eulogized; at one time he was boomed for the nomination for President ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... with the theologians of Rome, Luther found that they were constantly wriggling out of the plain text of the Bible and running for shelter to the traditions, to the fathers, to the decrees of councils ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... True, we eat with avidity oysters and clams (except in the Bapoo-period), knowing that they are not only raw but also alive. In the Filberts it was but a slight step forward to pop into one's mouth a wriggling limpataa (a kind of marine lizard), whose antics after he is swallowed are both pleasant and novel. The hors d'oeuvre course of a Filbert Island banquet is one roar of laughter caused by the interior tickling of the ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... consist of dancing, such as we are accustomed to understand the art, but of graceful posturing and bodily contortions, spinning round like a coryphee, with hand aloft, and snapping their fingers or clashing tiny brass cymbals; standing with feet motionless and wriggling the joints, or bending backward until their loose, flowing tresses touch the ground. Persians able to afford the luxury have their womens' apartment walled with mirrors, placed at appropriate angles, so that when enjoying these exhibitions of his wives' abilities ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... Then I reached down and gripped him with my thumb and forefinger just back of the ears, and lifted him up, and looked his impotent rage in the face. What gleaming eyes, what an array of threatening teeth, what reaching of vicious claws, what a wriggling and convulsed body! But I held him firmly. He could only scratch my hand and dart fire from his electric, bead-like eyes. In the mean time my dog was bounding up, begging to be allowed to have his way with the weasel. But I knew what he did not: I knew that in anything like a fair encounter the ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... running forward, calling out in the language of Opal. The broad-shouldered man kicked the wriggling carcass of the thing out of the way and threw a few sticks upon the coals. They flamed up. The man sat down calmly, though still gasping for breath, and began to wipe the blade of his ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... however, peace had been concluded, and the loyalists, amazed and heartbroken at their threatened desertion, reminded him of his pledges and implored him to respect them, he answered them in a letter which is surely without parallel in the record of self-respecting Governments. The wriggling, the equivocation, the distortion of phrases, the shameless 'explaining away,' are of a character that would again justify the remark of Lord Salisbury (then Lord Robert Cecil) in another matter many years before, that they were 'tactics worthy ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... which, in the memory of living people, was the refuge of a murderer whom the gendarmes were afraid to follow underground, because it was believed that he would knock them on the head one after the other while they were wriggling through the passage, and then quietly walk out by a back way unknown to anyone but himself, I felt a strong desire to explore this cave of evil repute. The idea was all the more enticing because I was assured that nobody had entered it but the murderer. ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... Hotel-de-Ville, crying: Arms! Orders! The Six-and-twenty Town-Councillors, with their long gowns, have ducked under (into the raging chaos);—shall never emerge more. Besenval is painfully wriggling himself out, to the Champ-de-Mars; he must sit there 'in the cruelest uncertainty:' courier after courier may dash off for Versailles; but will bring back no answer, can hardly bring himself back. For the roads are all blocked with batteries ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... whole tribe issues through this single opening and is soon wriggling about, perched on the surface of the caterpillar. The lens cannot perceive the hole, which closes on the instant. There is not even a haemorrhage: the bottle has been drained too thoroughly. You must press it between your fingers to squeeze ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... out the form of a man, his gun pointed toward Chester, who at that moment succeeded in wriggling behind a tree. ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... and short of it is that when it became dark my good lads began to try to rescue my body. Four or five times that one-twentieth of eye saw a wriggling form work through sand-bags and start slowly, flat to the earth, toward me. But the ground was snow-covered and the Germans saw too the dark uniform. Each time a fusillade of shots broke out, and the moving figure dropped hastily ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... Devore either lost his head or else indignation made him reckless. Still half sitting, he kicked out at the wriggling bulk at his feet, and the toe of his shoe took Mink Satterlee in his chest. It was a puny enough kick; it didn't even shake Mink Satterlee loose from where he clung. He gave a bellow and heaved himself up on the stage and, before any of ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... for the proletariat. I heard from the plutocrats next day. Sim Eldredge dropped in on me. After much wriggling about the bush he intimated that he knew of Captain Jedediah's call and what ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... with delight had not such an action seemed to him likely to prejudice his chances of retaining a good situation. He contented himself with wriggling ecstatically. "The young person is not ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... je m'habille." Belmont, a little wizened fellow who understood nothing of this topsy-turveydom, hastened forward, deposited his armful on the table, and selected a finely embroidered waistcoat, which he proceeded to hold for his master. Wriggling into it, Feversham rapped ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... said Davy, eagerly wriggling down on his knees, "I can say them now all right. I ain't scared now to say 'if I should die before I wake,' like I was when I was ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... was on the friendliest terms with things ill-reputed, even abhorrent, and could not understand the qualms of the delicate. He was said to have held up once, in all innocence, before a class of school-girls a wriggling snake. The shrieks and confusion brought him to a sense of what he had done. He apologised elaborately, the foreign peculiarity he never lost running through his confusion. "Poor girls, I vill not do it again. Next time I vill bring in a nice, clean leetle feesh." ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... He seemed as happy, and glad to look about him as he usually did, with half open lips and smiling eyes. As usual, he wore an enormous cap with variegated ribbons, and large petticoats as usual, he walked with short, mincing steps, swaying and wriggling his hips and crupper, and he gesticulated like a coquette, and licked his lips, when they called him Mademoiselle, while in his head, he would have liked too have jumped at the throat of those who called ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... "Because," said Mr. Bultitude, wriggling with embarrassment, "I—that is my father—found out that my young rascal of a son—I mean his young rascal of a son (me, you know) was, contrary to my express orders, keeping a couple of abominable rabbits in his bedroom, and ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... be able to do as well[217] before you think of doing better, and you will find many little helps and hints in the various work of it. Only remember that all engravers' foregrounds are bad; whenever you see the peculiar wriggling parallel lines of modern engravings become distinct, you must not copy; nor admire: it is only the softer masses, and distances; and portions of the foliage in the plates marked f, which you may copy. The best for this purpose, if you can get it, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... first gudgeon, Monsieur Morissot the second, and almost every moment one or other raised his line with a little, glittering, silvery fish wriggling at the end; ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... sir. Why should you be?" said Josh. "We can manage them. A big one has a nasty way of his own of getting loose in the boat and wriggling himself all about under ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... Sign. He must go away and think it out, though where his thoughts would lead him he did not know. This was a more difficult problem than he had ever dreamed of facing. There was no one to ask advice of. Only himself and The Rat, who was nervously wriggling ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... as he did so, and felt the wriggling form underneath him, it began to melt and slip away like air or water. The wood of the arm-chair somehow disentangled itself from between his own arms and those of Mudge. The phenomenon known as the passage ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... to curl herself up in a big chair before the fire that night with "Richard Carvel" in one hand and a box of peanut brittle in the other, she was startled by a loud ringing of the bell. Going to the door she beheld Anne who was fairly wriggling with excitement. Her cheeks were flushed and her ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... bargain, was both galling to his pride and a ridiculous waste of treasure. He knew well what was the right thing to do, but to do it at such a sacrifice, that was the difficulty. He was in a strait betwixt two, wriggling and hesitating, and at last he cries in his bewilderment, "What shall we do for the hundred talents which I have given to the army of Israel?" And the man of God answers, "Never mind the money, let that go; far better forfeit that ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... Binks at last deposited his wriggling burden flat on the pier. 'Now, p'raps ye'll understand the way an honest man dispoges of obstructions in the path o' dooty! You're an obstruction, you are, muster; and if so be as you lay the lesson to heart, the bit o' teachin' on my part will be ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... Mr. Simson," she called. "I'm awful sorry we're late, but them five voters to be was hard to get fixed in time. They know what they're here for and I don't want 'em to miss a word. Sit still there, Jeff!" She jabbed the latter, who was wriggling, back in his place and took from Billy the cap he was nervously chewing, then seating herself between the younger set of twins she again waved ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... baby want it?" she asked enticingly. The General waved his arms and legs wildly; wreathed in smiles, he opened and shut his mouth in quick alternation, chirping and clucking, as she held it up before him; an ecstatic wriggling pervaded him, and he chuckled unctuously. A moment later only his deep-drawn, nozzling breaths could be heard in the room. They watched him in hushed satisfaction; once, as he smiled gratefully at Delia, Ellis ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... insect incessantly turned its head up and down, to right and to left, moved its claws ... then suddenly darted from the wall, flew with a whirring sound about the room, and again settled, again hatefully and loathsomely wriggling all over, without stirring ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... the Governor, wriggling in his great arm-chair, "I grant that they certainly do look like chicken feathers; but then you know, the yellow bird the witches use, may have ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... that it fills badly enough, seeing that there is scarcely any fall of water from the lower quarters of the city to the lake. I never saw water-snakes in numbers to compare with those in the canal, and by the side of it. They were swimming in the water, wriggling in and out; and on the banks they were writhing in heaps, like our passengers forward. Two of our crew tow us along, and we are soon clear of the canal, and of the salt-swamp that extends on both sides of it, where the bottom of the lake was in old times. Once fairly out, we look round ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... the Tarrong Hotel we will not linger. The dirty water, peopled by wriggling animalculae, that she poured out of the bedroom jug; the damp, cloudy, unhealthy-smelling towel on which she dried her face; the broken window through which she could hear herself being discussed by loafers in the yard; all these things are ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... noticed a dark-looking object and thinking it was an ostrich I started off towards it. Very soon, however, I found that it was bigger game than an ostrich, and on getting still nearer made out the form of a great rhinoceros lying down. I continued to advance very cautiously, wriggling through the short grass until at length I got within fifty yards of where the huge beast was resting. Here I lay and watched him; but after some little time he evidently suspected my presence, for rising to his feet, he looked straight in my direction and then proceeded to walk ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... pointed to an imaginary door halfway between them and where Virgie sat on the steps, wriggling with delight. "You kin look in ev'ry room in de house—castle, I means—'cept in des dat one. Orn'estan me? Des dat one! But ef yo' looks in dar,—Gawd he'p you. I gwine cut yo' haid off," and the fearful sword whizzed threateningly through the ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... however, were among the seven "deadly sins" under the regime of Czar Brench. Dropping a book or a slate, wriggling about in your seat, whispering to a seatmate, sitting idly without seeming to study and not knowing your lesson reasonably ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... understood Frank's strategy. The bed-clothes began to heave; they had piled them all atop Dave as he lay on the floor. Frank began on the chorus. A wriggling leg emerged from beneath the comforts. Jerry joined in, his voice a villainous imitation of Frank's discords. Another leg ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... before the king. After sundry jokes, whilst we were all bursting with laughter at the theatrical phenomenon, the Wakungu who were present, some twenty in number, threw themselves in line upon their bellies, and wriggling like fish, n'yanzigged, n'goned, and demaned, and uttered other wonderful words of rejoining—as, for instance, "Hai Minange! Hai Mkama wangi!" (O my chief! O my king!)—whilst they continued floundering, kicking about their legs, rubbing their faces, and ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... hold," drawled Jack Penny. "He's been wriggling and twisting his arms and legs about ever since he lay there. I thought he'd ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... breathless, sprang into the undergrowth upon that side of the pool farthest from the high bank which masked the intruder and there crouched pitifully, watching. Another than she might have failed to discern him, so craftily did he crawl away; but Flamby, daughter of the woods, saw the wriggling figure, and knew it; moreover she knew, by the familiarity with the pathway which he displayed, that this was not the first time Sir Jacques ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... deep embrasures of the window and set Prince Ferdinand William Otto's feet to wriggling. It penetrated the gloomy fastnesses of the old room and showed its dingy furniture, its great desk, its dark velvet portieres, and the old cabinet in which the Crown Prince kept his toys on the top shelf. He had arranged them there himself, the ones he was fondest ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... laughed the other. "Get off your jacket. Give me half a moment start, so that you won't jump on my head." And he went wriggling down into ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... had to strangle their mirth while Mollie reiterated her command to Paul. The latter, after regarding the wriggling Dodo for a minute uncertainly, reluctantly left his refuge and stood ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... very worst, Ran up, and with a DUELISTIC fear (His ire evanishing like morning vapors), Found nim possess'd of one remaining ear, Who in a manner sudden and uncouth, Had given, not lent, the other ear to truth; For while the surgeon was applying lint, He, wriggling, cried—"The deuce ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... devotion of his warmest partisans, as soon as the occasion for their services had passed. What they did for him was quietly appropriated as the reward of superior merit, calling for no return in kind." We are told that while he was "wriggling," he was in effect boarded and clothed for some years by his friend, Hon. W. Butler, at Springfield, and that, when in power, he refused to exercise his patronage in favour of his friend. On that occasion, his biographer tells us, that he considered his ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... dragon. It is, indeed, difficult to imagine what hideous beings these three sisters were. Why, instead of locks of hair, if you can believe me, they had each of them a hundred enormous snakes growing on their heads, all alive, twisting, wriggling, curling, and thrusting out their venomous tongues, with forked stings at the end! The teeth of the Gorgons were terribly long tusks; their hands were made of brass; and their bodies were all over scales, which, if not iron, were something as ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... as you know, with the roots all wriggling about in the darkness, but you can take a risk when you catch an occasional glimpse of the pack running with a breast-high scent; so in and out they dodged until the wood began to thin at the edges, ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and saw the women and children clustering blackly in the deserted trenches. He looked ahead at the silent pit. The men were wriggling nervously, and he ordered every second bale forward. This double line advanced till bale touched bale as before. Then Aab-Waak, of his own will, pushed one bale forward alone. When it touched the barricade, he ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... Four "ushers" moved silently down the side-aisle, halted at the end of the sixth row from the rear, laid hands upon an angry and wriggling little man who screamed to high heaven that he hadn't done nothing, and dropped him out of the open window, which was just five ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... chap, we all worship Joan—at a distance. She is not to be painted. Tears and prayers are useless. She has a flinty father—a fisherman, who looks upon painting as a snare of the devil and sees every artist already wriggling on the trident in his mind's eye. Joan has also a lover, who would rather behold her ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... an' make Tom Kidd so bloomin' sick 'e can't bugle no more. You 'old 'is 'ands an' I'll kick him," said Lew, wriggling on the branch. ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... entered the hallway, the spaniel, wriggling free from the hound's onslaught, fled upstairs, closely pursued by the other dog, and after the two stamped the officer. On the second floor the fugitive faltered, to cast an agonised glance behind him, but sight of Clarion's ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... wife, and I shall never let you go,' he said. But the words were hardly out of his mouth when he found that it was a hare that he was holding by the paw. Then the hare changed into a fish, and the fish into a bird, and the bird into a slimy wriggling snake. This time the prince's hand nearly opened of itself, but with a strong effort he kept his fingers shut, and drawing his sword cut off its head, when the spell was broken, and the girl stood before him as he had seen her first, the wreath upon her head and ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... little know they what a garden is my country compared to this!" The Rais then stumbled over a small solitary herb and exclaimed instinctively, Hamdullah, "Praise to God," picking it up. What attracted our attention was the almost infinite number of small serpentine camel-tracks, wriggling endlessly through the wastes of The Sahara. The Rais said, "Those Touaricks are incarnate Genii! they know all these ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... continued to laugh, but there was no merriment in his laughter, it was merely an even guttural cachinnation, the laugh of a fiend at the aimless struggles of a lost soul. It seemed to give him immense pleasure to see me wriggling on the smooth curved metal plate which formed the front of his car. I grew tired at last and lay still, hoping for a chance to better my position, for I came to the conclusion that in a mere trial of strength he ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... the curtains of her bed, pelted her amain with snowballs. The filthy creature, waking up with a start, bruised and stifled in snow, with which even her ears were filled, with dishevelled hair, yelling at the top of her voice, and wriggling like an eel, without knowing where to hide, formed a spectacle that diverted people more than half an hour: so that at last the nymph swam in her bed, from which the water flowed everywhere, slushing all the chamber. It was enough ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... blazing sunshine, and where they could under the shade of trees, starting crabs running in all directions, fish which had been basking on the wet sand by the water's edge wriggling and flopping back into the lagoon, and birds of brilliant colours from the trees they passed; all of which excited a desire in Jack to begin trying his skill with his double gun; but it was an understood thing that shooting ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... from whose book the foregoing items are gleaned, in telling of a fight which took place at one stage of the service, describes it as "a mass of wriggling, struggling, shrieking priests and soldiers, each apparently endeavoring to do all the possible injury to whomever he could reach. * * * But the fight went on. Greek trampled on Armenian, and Armenian on Greek, and Turk on both. Though doing his very best, the commanding ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes
... spring, Charley was quicker. He dug his spur cruelly into his little pony's flank. With a neigh of pain the animal leaped forward. For a moment there was a tangle of striking hoofs and wriggling coils of the foiled reptile, while Charley leaning over in his saddle struck with the butt-end of his riding whip at the writhing coils. Though it seemed an eternity to the helpless watchers it was really only a few seconds ere the pony sprang away from its loathsome enemy and Charley with ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... from the first. For many centuries, especially for these last two,—ever since that Siege of Metz, which we once saw, under Kaiser Karl V. and Albert Alcibiades,—France has been wrenching and screwing at this Lorraine, wriggling it off bit by bit; till now, as we perceived on Lyttelton junior of Hagley's visit, Lorraine seems all lying unscrewed; and France, by any good opportunity, could stick it in her pocket. Such opportunity sly Fleury contrived, they say;—or more likely it might be Belleisle and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... line, and took a fly-hook from her hat; then, in a trice, she had rigged a fishing-rod, and, creeping out upon a ledge, she whipped the pool below of a half-dozen rainbow trout, which she thrust into his coat while they were still wriggling. Then she as quickly put up her gear, and they resumed their journey, climbing more steeply now, until, when the sun was low, they quit the stream-bed and made through the forest towards the shoulder ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... went out, and I fell asleep, to awaken an hour or two later because of the candle flash in my eyes. In the centre of the room my mother was standing in her grey dressing-gown, with a shawl over her head and the rapturously wriggling body of Samuel in her arms. Too amazed to utter an exclamation, I watched her silently while she made a bed with an old flannel petticoat before the waning fire. Then I saw her bend over and pat the head of the puppy with her knotted hand before she ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... teachings. They did not like the new order, and they wandered off, to join those outcasts who had broken His laws, and had been sent to the smaller land of this world, where it is always warm, and where there are great trees thick with moss, and the earth underfoot steams, and brings forth wriggling life. Neen, we call that land, as this larger land ...
— The God in the Box • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... when Rough happened to be sitting on her haunches close by, it occurred to him that Rough's milk might serve as well as a sheep's. The lamb was put to her and took very kindly to its canine foster-mother, wriggling its tail and pushing vigorously with its nose. Rough submitted patiently to the trial, and the result was that the lamb adopted the sheep-dog as its mother and sucked her milk several times every day, to the great admiration ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... of an early summer afternoon, a little girl came running along the turnpike to where a boy stood wriggling his feet in ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... he retorted, grinning a little. "Honest! I'm trying to go easy, but this infernal bush has sure got a strangle hold on you—and your hair is so fluffy it's a deuce of a job. You keep wriggling and getting it caught in new places. If you could only manage to stand still—but ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... down the hall, tangled his feet in the fragments of the broken chair, and came sprawling a thundering cropper, which knocked every breath of wind out of his capacious body. He lay flat on his face for a couple of minutes, his broad back wriggling convulsively—a pathetic sight!—in the painful effort to get his breath back. Then he sat up, and with perfect frankness burst into tears. He sobbed and blubbered, like a small child that has hurt itself, for three or four minutes. Then, having ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... faithfully acted on from first to last; but Sir Robert Peel and his friends had been brought up in another school, whose maxim was—priusquam incipias, consulta—sed ubi consulueris, mature facto, opus est. The Premier stood unmoved by the entreaties, the coaxings, and the threatenings of those wriggling before him in miserable discomfiture and restlessness on the abhorred benches of Opposition; calmly demonstrating to them the folly and injustice of which they were guilty. Yet the circumstances of the country made his adherence ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... exchanged for their native gloom—uncouth creatures bedight with tasselled fringes like weed-growths waving around them, fathom-long, medusae with coloured spots like eyes clustering all over their transparent substance, wriggling worm-like forms of such elusive matter that the smallest exposure to the sun melted them, and they were not. Lower down, vast pale shadows creep sluggishly along, happily undistinguishable as yet, but adding ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of the Volscian aids, And Metius with the long fair curls, The love of Anxur's maids, And the white head of Vulso, The great Arician seer, And Nepos of Laurentum The hunter of the deer; And in the back false Sextus Felt the good Roman steel, And wriggling in the dust he died, Like a worm beneath the wheel: And fliers and pursuers Were mingled in a mass; And far away the battle Went roaring through ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... up thy pikestaff, man; I can barely fetch my breath—how many? Why, one,—if it be long enough," and, wriggling from his captor, the nimble Lionel tripped him up in turn, and, in sheer delight at his discomfiture, turned a back somersault and landed almost on the toes of two unhelmeted knights, who came from the inner ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... six or eight steps in pursuit of the fleeing spectre when, right over my head, the grey stone curdled with a female darkness; the hard and the angular softening in a putrescent explosion of thick wriggling laughter. I started, looked up, and encountered a window stuffed with four savage fragments of crowding Face: four livid, shaggy disks focussing hungrily; four pair of uncouth eyes rapidly smouldering; eight lips shaking in a toothless and viscous titter. ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... the scene: The thin and deficient shadows stretching themselves across the parched bottom lands as the sun slid down behind the trees of Eden's swamp lot; the heat waves of a blistering hot day still dancing their devil's dance down the road like wriggling circumflexes to accent a false promise of coolness off there in the distance; the ominous emptiness of the landscape; the brooding quiet, cut through only by the frogs and the dry flies tuning up for ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... cried in her clear, piping voice, using, like her father, the island dialect; and he dragged himself up to the first iron hold, wriggling his large, awkward form into strange contortions, till he found a secure position and could wait till his young assistant was beside him once more. She sprang up like a cat and balanced herself safely within reach of him. It was odd ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... hands. But a man has the full responsibility of his freedom, cannot evade a question, can scarce be silent without rudeness, must answer for his words upon the moment, and is not seldom left face to face with a damning choice, between the more or less dishonourable wriggling of Deronda and the ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... didn't lay any stress, either, on the fact that he was found with the cut artery in his wrist—that was all the stabbing that ailed him—bound up as a surgeon would have done it; or that he'd been given just enough morphine to keep him from wriggling off his bandage and bleeding to death before anybody ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... it out," retorted Jimmy, wriggling uncomfortably. "She really isn't half bad once ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... difficulty an idea occurred to Amalatok. Seizing a huge dog by the neck he dragged it to the mat, and bade it lie down. The dog crouched and looked sheepishly round. Next moment he was in the air wriggling. Then he came to the ground, over which he rushed with a prolonged howl, and disappeared among the rocks on ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... direction. The Natal Volunteer, however, was too much interested in the proceedings to forego his view. 'Deah, deah, they've fixed bayonets! Why, they're coming back. They've had someone hurt.' I looked again for a moment. The line of riflemen was certainly retiring, wriggling backwards slowly on their bellies. Two brown forms lay still and hunched in the abandoned position. Then suddenly the retiring Riflemen sprang up and ran for shelter in our donga. One lad jumped right in among us laughing and panting, and the ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... as one drives flies, to hoe out society plats as one hoes garden beds, and thin out the flaunting weeds so that the lilies may find room to grow; to turn the strong light of discerning truth upon hypocrites until, as the microscope changes a globule of dew into the abode of 10,000 wriggling abominations, so the deceitful heart shall stand revealed for what it actually is, rather than for ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... would or not,' exclaimed Mr. Daffy, panting and wriggling, 'it's as plain as plain could be that there's no other course for a man who respects himself. I couldn't live a day with such a burden as that on my mind. A bookmaker! A blackguard bookmaker! To think my ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... to stand and watch what happens along the sunny breakwater. Every three minutes one of the poles jerks out of the water with a wriggling prize ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... "He must have been wriggling out of his coat when he found you wouldn't let go," surmised Frank. "I could see him threshing around just as I came up to the top of the bank. Then you fell and held on tight and the ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... cold. The snow drove against the windows and the wind whistled furiously under the doors. My two aunts, seated at a table in one corner of the drawing-room, gave vent from time to time to deep sighs, and, wriggling in their armchairs, kept casting uneasy glances toward the bedroom door. One of them had taken from a little leather bag placed on the table her blessed rosary and was repeating her prayers, while her sister ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... it! Look at his dear little nose wriggling with joy. Oh Tom! do look at him waggling his ears!" Debby's voice grew shrill again with excitement. Nibbler hopped out of the basket and her ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... quickly and picked up his tiny assailant; and the puppy, suspended by its neck, gurgled and slobbered; then, wriggling desperately round, made its teeth meet in its adversary's shirt. At which M'Adam shook it gently and laughed. Then he set to ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... shore, we ran round in the ELBA to try and help them, letting go the anchor in the shallowest possible water, this was about sunset. Suddenly someone calls out he sees the cable at the bottom: there it was sure enough, apparently wriggling about as the waves rippled. Great excitement; still greater when we find our own anchor is foul of it and has been the means of bringing it to light. We let go a grapnel, get the cable clear of the anchor on to the grapnel - the captain in an agony lest we should drift ashore ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... total length is about three feet. The head is small, as is the eye, while on each side of it are three beautifully plumed gill-tufts. It has no hind-legs; while the front pair are very small, and do not aid it in moving along the ground. This it does in the wriggling fashion of an eel; indeed, when discovered in the soft mud in which it delights to live, the creature, at the first glance, would be taken for an eel. It has many of the habits of that animal, living on worms and ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... it! I can see him wriggling now. Do you remember that just a week after that, Douglas broke his hunting-whip beating a labourer's boy, whom he found trespassing in one of the coverts, and how Sir Arthur paid fifty pounds to get him ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... standing; looks cross, is not civil, and has the true Westphalian grace and accents. The four Mesdames, who are clumsy plump old wenches, with a bad likeness to their father, stand in a bedchamber in a row, with black cloaks and knotting-bags, looking good-humoured, not knowing what to say, and wriggling as if they wanted to make water. This ceremony too is very short: then you are carried to the Dauphin's three boys, who you may be sure only bow and stare. The Duke of Berry(880) looks weak, and weak-eyed: the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... and all seemed to be stained and rotten, for swarms of worms seemed creeping in and out, while the figure grew paler and paler, till my uncle, who liked his pipe, and employed the simile naturally, said the whole effigy grew to the colour of tobacco ashes, and the clusters of worms into little wriggling knots of sparks such as we see running over the residuum of a burnt sheet of paper. And so with the strong draught caused by the fire, and the current of air from the window, which was rattling in the storm, the feet seemed to be drawn into the fire-place, and the whole figure, light as ashes, ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... and Wartje and the others all had their stockings off and stood in the water bending down to look, making funnels of their hands in the water, where it rustled in little streams between two grass-sods through which the fish had to pass. Whenever they felt one wriggling in their hands they yelled and screamed and sprang out of the brook to put it into their wooden shoes, which stood on the bank, scooped full of water. There they loitered examining those beasties from close by: those fish were theirs now; ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... the jostling traffic of the booths that I found her; she was standing before a stall devoted to the sale of gauds and finery, but espying me she made off and I, intent on pursuit, was wriggling my way through the crowd when rose a sudden cry of "Thieves! Robbery! Stop thief!" Rough hands seized me and, checked thus rudely in full career, I was swung around to confront a small, fierce-eyed fellow who cursed and swore, hopped ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... wriggling for the moment and lay there shaking violently, as though he had malaria. Then the paroxysm passed and he took up ...
— Droozle • Frank Banta
... drawing-room on Sunday evening, of cauce it's scandalous. It's terrible! I don't know how ever you'll be saved, after such a sin. And in Manchester House, too—!" He went off into another silent, turkey-scarlet burst of mirth, wriggling in his chair and squealing faintly: "Oh, I love it, I love it! You lost girl! Why of cauce she's lost! And Miss Pinnegar has only just found it out. Who wouldn't be lost? Why even Miss Pinnegar would be lost if she could. Of ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... random: "Two great, grand blue eyes, as blue as the sea itself"; "his little whirl-about of a head"; "long curls floating behind her like a golden cloud, and long robes floating all round her like a silver one"; "came paddling and wriggling back to her like so many tadpoles"; "the shadows of the clouds ran races over the bright blue sky"; "the river widened to the shining sea"; "such enormous trees that the blue ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... been well, indeed, had Harry kept his eyes turned oftener toward the shore end of the wall. In that case he might more speedily have detected the wriggling, snake-like movement of the big negro ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... Manston loosened the plaster with some kind of tool, flinging the pieces into a basket as they fell. Having now stripped clear about two feet area of wall, he inserted a crowbar between the joints of the bricks beneath, softly wriggling it until several were loosened. There was now disclosed the mouth of an old oven, which was apparently contrived in the thickness of the wall, and having fallen into disuse, had been closed up with bricks in this ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... pretty pickle, truly, thought I; abed here in a strange house in the broad day, with a cannibal and a tomahawk! Queequeg! —in the name of goodness, Queequeg, wake! At length, by dint of much wriggling, and loud and incessant expostulations upon the unbecomingness of his hugging a fellow male in that matrimonial sort of style, I succeeded in extracting a grunt; and presently, he drew back his arm, shook himself all over like a Newfoundland dog just from the water, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... knee to his victim with precision and power. The fat man's teeth seemed to rattle under the pounding shocks. The words came joggling out of him, and they were not pretty words. He struck backward with his arms and feet, wriggling to get his plump shoulders free; but he was helpless as a baby in the arms of ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... fact. One moment he saw the thick twisted trunk of a mulga tree with a few broken branches, standing out on an otherwise treeless plain; the next it had gone completely. But, instead of the tree, three wriggling black forms glided between the bushes with the stealth of snakes, making for their lives towards the scrub. They were three warragul blacks, who had crept out into the plain and had used this wonderful but quite common method ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... Or with thy crackers or thy double teeth; So easily may all things be destroyed! But 'tis not in the power of mortal man To mend the fracture of a filbert shell. There were two great men once amused themselves Watching two maggots run their wriggling race, And wagering on their speed; but, Nick, to us It were no sport to see the pampered worm Roll out and then draw in his folds of fat Like to some barber's leathern powder bag Wherewith he feathers, frosts or cauliflowers, Spruce beau, or ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... through to the child, and so it slept contentedly for about an hour in a stranger's arms; it then began to cry and the temporary nurse said: "Will you feel down and see if the baby's feet are out of the blanket! I don't know much about babies but I think their feet must be kept warm." Wriggling down as well as I could, I found its toes exposed to the air and wrapped them well up, when it ceased crying at once: it was evidently a successful diagnosis! Having recognized the lady by her ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... seemed to shiver through its whole length, and turn paler in colour. It struck its head into the grass, endeavouring to hide itself. It was too late. The kite swooped gently downward; and, with open claw, poised himself a moment over the spot. As he rose again, the reptile was seen wriggling in ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... it's all going to be," exclaimed Kitty, wriggling impatiently in her seat. "It will be this way, Gay. They'll all be down at the station to meet us, mother and little Elise and Uncle Harry and his dog. Aunt Allison will probably be there, too, and grandmother, if she feels well enough. And old black fat Butler will be standing by ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... wriggled herself out of the safe crotch where Philip had put her, and it was Heaven's mercy that she had not fallen. But her frock was a stout blue gingham, fortunately, and a projecting branch-stump was thrust through it, holding her in a horizontal position along the bough. She was crying and wriggling, and in another minute or so she might have fallen to the ground. There was a slight chance that she would have struck on ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... spirit-bottle little vipers, scorpions, spiders, and similar creatures, were dropped, Chicory holding the stopper, and throwing back his head and grinning with delight as some wriggling little poisonous creature was popped in. In fact, Chicory was an indefatigable hunter of great things and small, taking readily to natural history pursuits; but he had his drawbacks, one of which was a belief that the little snakes and tiny lizards dropped into the spirits of wine were ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... for fear that she might fall asleep, she cut her finger with a penknife and rubbed salt into the cut, that the pain of it might keep her from sleeping. So she lay awake, and at midnight she saw a snake come wriggling along the ground with some mud from the river in its mouth; and when it came near the bed, it reared up its head and dropped its muddy head on the bedclothes. She was very frightened, but tried to control her ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... against the exaggerated estimate of the conscious pain which so many read into these millions of years of struggle. Probably there was no consciousness at all during the greater part of the time. The wriggling of the worm on which you have accidentally trodden is no proof whatever that you have caused conscious pain. The nervous system of an animal has been so evolved as to respond with great disturbance of its tissue to any dangerous ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... McTurk, wriggling his shoulder-blades all down the corridor. "That was business! The Prooshan Bates has an infernal ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... dimes and quarters. Almost every boat had a boy or two aboard, who immediately jumped over into the water, and paddled around the ship. None of the boys wore any clothing—and how they could swim and dive! It seemed no effort at all for them to stay on top, wriggling their hands and feet a little, like fishes' fins; and when a coin was tossed near them, down went their heads, up went their heels, and through the transparent water they darted, for the money. They could be clearly seen until ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... d'ye hear? Stop it, I tell you," cried Stacy, wriggling from their grasp, red of face, an expression of great ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Ozarks • Frank Gee Patchin
... the other fish darted away in great fright, but Mr. Heron didn't mind. He settled himself in great contentment, for now he was less hungry. By and by some foolish tadpoles came wriggling along. 'I'll just try catching one of them for practice. Maybe they are good to eat,' thought Mr. Heron, and just as before darted his head and great bill downward and ...
— Mother West Wind "How" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... this consideration with a wave of his hand. "You have been proven guilty of a number of crimes. No amount of wriggling on the hook can change that. You should be thankful that your revolting record will have a good use in the end. It will be the lever with which we shall topple the ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... Grace asked, and then, as Allen held up a wriggling candidate for the hook, she shivered ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... a flow of language he had not known he could command, Dane swung into the story of Sargol, of the pest they had carried away from that world. And at the proper moment he thrust a gloved hand into the cage and brought out the wriggling thing which struck vainly with its poisoned talons, holding it above the dark table so that those unseen watchers could witness the dramatic change of color which made it such a menace. Dane continued the story of the Queen's ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... hump-backed blotch, that was sprawling blackly beside a misshapen block, was either wriggling on the floor as if trying to stand upright . . . or else there was something wrong ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... I walked along, found several sorts of fruit, and likewise fresh water, which gave me some hopes of preserving my life. I laid myself down in a shade, and soon after I saw a winged serpent, very large and long, coming towards me wriggling to the right and to the left, and hanging out his tongue, which made me think he had got some hurt. I rose, and saw a serpent still larger following, holding him by the tail, and endeavouring to devour him, I had ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... larks," he said, wriggling joyously, as Mother tucked him up. "I do like moving! I wish we moved once ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... written in story or sculptured on stone, none are more remarkable than those where the serpent appears. Old divines imagined that the creature whose shape Satan borrowed for the temptation had originally no malignant aspect; neither the poisoned fangs, nor eyes of fire, nor cold, scaly, wriggling form which man and beast recoil from with instinctive horror. They fancied that the curse, "Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat," was followed by a sudden metamorphosis, and that till then the appearance of the serpent ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie
... through it, then they were crawling along the dark metal tunnel of an air-conditioning ventilator. It was small, and took some wriggling. ...
— The Day Time Stopped Moving • Bradner Buckner
... fairly organized and under way. The route soon led me into a field of standing rye, every spear of which held its head above my own. Plunging recklessly forward, my course marked to those watching from below by the agitated and wriggling grain, I emerged from the miniature forest just in time to see the runaways disappearing over the top of the hill, some fifty rods in advance of me. Lining them as well as I could, I soon reached the hilltop, my breath utterly ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... the wash-stand and scrutinized it once more. Then he lit his pipe again, and, finally, wriggling himself into the depths of the chair, opened ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... I could see the shadow of the gallows fall across the man's face. What stiffening there was in him oozed out, and he stood there wriggling in an agony of apprehension, like a worm in a chicken's beak. Master Freake knew him to the bottom of his muddy soul. My Lord Tiverton was a man of another mould, but he too was in the hands of his master. Plain John Freake, citizen of London, had taken a hand in this ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... of their trade unions. And for personalities there were innumerable clergymen and Sir Thomas Gilzean, Edinburgh's romantic draper, who talked French with a facility that his fellow townsmen suspected of being a gift acquired on the brink of the pit, and who had a long wriggling waist which suggested that he was about to pick up the tails of his elegant frock-coat and dance. He was light indeed, but not enough to express the lightness of which life was capable; while the darker side of destiny was as inadequately represented ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... he heard a sound in the entrance. Cain was coming toward him, with many genuflexions, and much stomach wriggling. He stopped, straightened himself. There was a look of singular intelligence ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... inches in length, there is all along the same crawling, somewhat worm-like body, destitute of any outward trace of wings. When however the last larval cuticle has split open lengthwise along the back, and has been worked off by vigorous wriggling motions of the insect, the pupa thus revealed shows the wing-rudiments conspicuous at the sides of the body, and lying neatly alongside these are to be seen the forms of feelers, legs, and maxillae of the imago prefigured in the cuticle of the pupa ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter
... have it, I was underneath; but, in spite of the shock of the fall, I still managed to keep hold of his wrists, though I had some trouble to prevent him from biting my hands and face. So our position was substantially unchanged, and we were still wriggling chaotically when a hasty step was heard descending the stairs. The burglar paused for an instant to listen and then, with a sudden effort, wrenched away his right hand, which flew to his hip-pocket and came out grasping a small revolver. Instantly ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... Cupid-worshiper. And Thomas's physical troubles were not few. Therefore, his soul was less vexed with thoughts of his lost lady's maid than it was by the fancied presence of certain non-existent things that his racked nerves almost convinced him were flying, dancing, crawling, and wriggling on the asphalt and in the air above and around the dismal campus of the Bed Line army. Nearly four weeks of straight whisky and a diet limited to crackers, bologna, and pickles often guarantees a psycho-zoological sequel. Thus desperate, freezing, angry, beset by phantoms as he was, he ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... he followed close beside her, and when outside held close to her throughout the hitching, and to the point even when Felipe clambered to the top of the high load and caught up the reins and the whip. Then he stepped back, wriggling his fuzzy little tail and blinking his big ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... and swing out I might hope to pull myself up to the ledge on which it grew. I confess it needed all my courage, for I did not know but that the tree might be loose, and that it and I might go rattling down four hundred feet. It was my only hope, however, so I set my teeth, and wriggling up a few inches, made a grab at it. Thank God it held, and with a great effort I pulled my shoulder over the ledge, ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... breast. He is too eager, mouthing, and gulping, and spluttering. Or sometimes his mental sufferings seem too much for his appetite, and though wide awake and crying loudly, he refuses to grasp the nipple, turning his head away and wriggling blindly hither and thither. This effect of mental unrest on the newborn infant is often disastrous, because it is one of the common causes of the failure of women to nurse their children. This is not the place to sketch in ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... and open fireplace at either end. It has always seemed to me a piece of gratuitous posthumous cruelty in Judge Phillips and Mr. Abbott to try to cheat those Andover boys of their noon-time rest and relaxation, and to expect them, wriggling and twisting with repressed vitality, to listen to a long extra sermon, read perhaps by some unskilled reader, or explained by some incapable expounder. The Sabbath-school did not then exist, and was ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... in the hall-way, when he was a little boy somewhere, and the light that frightened him from it.... 'One of the Chinese knifed me, but he died.'... That big 'X' of the Truxton flung stern up, as she sank; ... and about the old Captain wriggling his shoulder bashfully for his young friend's arm at the last.... It is altogether enticing, in the light of what you have brought to-day. Really you must take him away. Red-haired spinsters mustn't be bothered, nor imprisoned in magic spring weather. ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... echoing banks, And Tullus of Arpinum, Chief of the Volscian aids, And Metius with the long fair curls, 675 The love of Anxur's maids, And the white head of Vulgo, The great Arician seer, And Nepos of Laurentum, The hunter of the deer; 680 And in the back false Sextus Felt the good Roman steel; And wriggling in the dust he died, Like a worm beneath the wheel: And fliers and pursuers 685 Were mingled in a mass; And far away the battle Went roaring through ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... trying profession of book agent, I purchased, about this time, Dr. Lord's "Beacon Lights of History," and read the last volume devoted to women, Pagan and Christian, saints and sinners. It is very amusing to see the author's intellectual wriggling and twisting to show that no one can be good or happy without believing in the Christian religion. In describing great women who are not Christians, he attributes all their follies and miseries to that fact. In describing Pagan women, possessed of great virtues, he attributes all their virtues ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... rolling and twisting around on the floor in a most remarkable manner, for Papa No-Tail inside was wriggling and twisting, and trying his best to get out. But the paper was wound around him too tightly, and he ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... later), the news came of Boyce's "mention," and Somers was set down as a liar. The poor devil was had up before the Colonel and being an imaginative and nervous man denied the truth of the rumour and by dexterous wriggling managed to exculpate himself from the charge ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... not to, he had no claim upon such little delicacies of discretion and silence on her part; and his problem stuck up its head again out of the deep water in which it lived, and glared at him, and shot out all sorts of questions like the wriggling tentacles of an octopus, inviting him to wrestle with them, if only to see how useless all wrestling must be. He rose again impatiently, took a cigar from a big mahogany box on the table, lit it and smoked savagely, walking up ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... the hill to the old fort and look at the little wriggling gold snakes, and watch the ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... love him only, and ignore giving him a rival (referring to Koranic denunciations of "Shirk," or attributing a partner to Allah, the religion of plurality, syntheism not polytheism): see, he walks tottering under the weight of his back parts wriggling them whilst they are ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... goodly cod of about ten pounds weight was wriggling on the iron hook which Ruby handed up to Dumsby, who mounted with his prize in triumph ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... about. He caught up the wriggling puppy with such a quick motion that he was successful and wrenched the other boy's hand ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... said, slipping his hands over her arms and holding her while she squealed and writhed. "It's quite beyond reach. You can't in decency return it now. It's no good wriggling. You won't get it up again unless you ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... the brave little polliwog, wriggling with feeling, and groaning some. "If any of you survive me, tell it to your children that I laid myself in ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... the thumb was dipped again, and crossed on the forehead, then touched on the nose and eyes and chin. Between the dippings, the aged man read from his book, and the assistant responded. To Hinchcliffe, standing at a little distance, the group made a strange picture—"Pervyse" wriggling and sometimes weeping; Hilda "Shsh, Shysh, Shshing"; Rene nudging the Flemish girl, and giggling; the soldiers peeping from the straw; the children, attracted by the outcries of "Pervyse," drawing closer; aged worshippers ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... the threshold, wriggling forward at top speed. We followed, peering fearfully around ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... counter-jumping pigmy may come of a Sunday for his glass of pop and a careless squint at the toiling Titan. Puny Philistines eating peanuts and watching Samson at his Gaza stunt! I like it not. Rather would I see the Muse Clio pealing potatoes or Persephone busy with a banana cart! Encleadus wriggling under a mountain is well enough; but Enceladus composedly turning a crank for little men—he seemed too heavy for ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... and the instinct which tells them of a certain amount of safety in the vicinity of an unfriendly trench urges them pell mell into the V-shaped recess that narrows towards our lines. Here the attackers (p. 252) are heaped up, a target of wriggling humanity; ready prey for the concentrated fire of the rifles from the British trench. The narrow part of the V becomes a welter of concentrated horror, the attackers tear at the wires with their ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... spirit. He remained watching me for fully ten minutes, his legs and body as immobile as those of a statue, but he occasionally turned his head to one side in order to obtain a better view of me; and I could then see, outlined against the sky, the wriggling forms of several caterpillars hanging from his bill. I hoped that he would pluck up courage to feed his youngsters before my eyes; but his heart failed him, for presently he flew to another tree a little ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar |
