"Wriggle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for, and so many folk come from a distance—some from Boston they said—all for her sake, as it were. Why, didst thou see, it was godly Mr. Henwick that held her head when he wriggled so, and old Madam Holbrook had herself helped upon a chair to see the better. I wonder how long I might wriggle, before great and godly folk would take so much notice of me? But, I suppose, that comes of being a pastor's daughter. She'll be so set up there'll be no speaking to her now. Faith! thinkest thou that Hota really had bewitched her? She gave me corn-cakes, the ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... astounded. He represses a wriggle of healthful satisfaction on the part of his pupils by a significant lift of his ferule, then moves ponderously up the stairs for a personal visit to the chamber of the culprit. The maid had given ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... mysteriously. "The well is full of 'em. Sometimes you can see 'em, sometimes you can't, but they're always there. They never grow big down the well; it's too dark 'n' cold. But you drink that water and the snakes will grow and wriggle and work all through ye, and eat your insides out, and you'll die. Your mother"—in a whisper—"she drunk that water, and she died. Your sister Ruth, and Dirck, and Jimmy, they drunk it, and they died. Now if Emmy wants to die"—Large eyes of horror fastened on the ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... providential thing that this young man should press his right thumb against the wall in taking his hat from the peg! Such a very natural action, too, if you come to think of it." Holmes was outwardly calm, but his whole body gave a wriggle of suppressed excitement ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... said Gefroi, and groaned again. "The favour of a lord is a slippery thing—much like an eel—quick to wriggle away. An hour agone my lord Duke held me in much esteem, while now? And he struck me! On the face, here!" Slowly Gefroi got him upon his feet, and having donned cap and pourpoint, shook his ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... written in the usual style, suggesting a conscientious rehash of the encyclopedia. But suppose it were done differently, and with a caption like this, 'Why Does an Angle-Worm Wriggle?' Set that in irregular type that weaved and squirmed across the column, and Jones-in-the-street-car would at ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... ax. I grabs it up, now ready fur a cleaver, an' no mistake. Big Injun ain't, though; he ain't ready fur any sich a thing. Up he comes wid a whirl, an' down I goes wid a fling, my ax a-flyin' way out yander. But in de wriggle uf a buck's tail comes up nigger ag'in; goes down Injun ag'in. Yes, an' a leetle mo' dan dat: nigger an' Injun clean ober de turn uf de hill, an' now a-slidin', slidin' down whar it ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... down at a red smashed thing on the ground that, in spite of partial obliteration, could still wriggle unavailing legs. Then, when the gaunt man pointed to another mass that bore down upon them, he drew his sword hastily. Up the valley now it was like a fog bank torn to rags. He tried to ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... "descent with modification," under such circumstances that no one who had not been brought up in the school of Mr. Gladstone could doubt that the two expressions referred to the same thing. He seems to have felt that he must be a poor wriggler if he could not wriggle out of this; give him any loophole, however small, and Mr. Darwin could trust himself to get out through it; but he did not like saying what left no loophole at all, and "my theory of descent with modification" ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... But this move again was promptly checkmated by the clear and repeated declaration of the Colonial representatives that they did not expect us to tax raw materials. And so nothing was left to Ministers, determined as they were to wriggle out of any agreement with the Colonies at all costs, except to fall back on the old, weary parrot-cry—"Will you tax corn?" "Will you tax butter?" and so on through the whole list of articles of common consumption, the taxation of ...
— Constructive Imperialism • Viscount Milner
... Durfey, Mrs. Trimmer's little Primer, Buckram binding, touch and try— Nothing bid—who'll buy, who'll buy? Here's Colley Cibber, Bruce the fibber, Plays of Cherry, ditto Merry, Tickle, Mickle, When I bow and when I wriggle, With a simper and a giggle, Ears regaling, bidders nailing, Ladies utter in a flutter— "Mister Smatter, how you chatter, Dear, how clever! well, I never ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... up went the helm, round came the schooner into the trough of the sea,—high over her quarter toppled an enormous sea, built up of I know not how many tons of water, and hung over the deck,—by some unaccountable wriggle, an instant ere it thundered down she had twisted her stern on one side, and the waves passed underneath. In another minute her head was to the sea, the mainsail was eased over, and all danger ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... heels into the soft ground with a little wriggle of content; here she would be free from anything that could mar her perfect enjoyment of life as it appeared to her. Here there was nothing to spoil her pleasure. Her head had drooped during her thoughts, and for the last few minutes her eyes had been fixed on the dusty ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... blankly. Wally gave an expressive wriggle in his chair, and Jim sat up suddenly, with a ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... trepans, bores through rock on the feeble Fly's behalf. Urged by a presentiment that to us remains an unfathomable mystery, the Cerambyx-grub leaves the inside of the oak, its peaceful retreat, its unassailable stronghold, to wriggle towards the outside, where lives the foe, the Woodpecker, who may gobble up the succulent little sausage. At the risk of its life, it stubbornly digs and gnaws to the very bark, of which it leaves no more intact than the thinnest ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... more to the north, the mist fell upon the waters or blew away over the meadows, and it was cold. Mr. Gabriel wrapped the cloak about Faith and fastened it, and tied her bonnet. Just now Dan was so busy handling the boat—and it's rather risky, you have to wriggle up the creek so—that he took little notice of us. Then Mr. Gabriel stood up, as if to change his position; and taking off his hat, he held it aloft, while he passed the other hand across his forehead. And leaning against the mast, he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... in the later pages. Moreover, he frankly did not care for the story, and bluffly says, in the preface, that he respited Colonel Altamont almost at the foot of the gallows. Dickens took himself more in earnest, and, having so many pages to fill, conscientiously made Uriah Heap wind and wriggle through ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... faix, it looked as if I was wrong, for he tried it again. Another shock he got, burst himself a'most wid a most fearful yell, an' bolted. His brothers didn't seem to understand it quite. They looked after him in surprise. Then the biggest wan gave a wriggle of his curly tail, an' wint to the post as if to inquire what was the matter. When he got it on the nose the effect was surprisin'. The curl of his tail came straight out, an' it quivered for a minute all over, wid its mouth wide open. The screech had stuck in his throat, but it came ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... the great force behind; and to eyes gazing long on the ground the affairs of tiny creatures become conspicuous and important. The mere-cats sit listening, and wonder what the new sound in the grass means, not like wind or rain. Little lizards basking on the sand suddenly wake up and wriggle away to avoid the thing against which the shelter of a leaf will not avail them. And always in front hares and buck by the hundred stream away like the shadows of clouds over grass. Then someone looks at his watch and shouts "Halt!" and the welcome word is shouted ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... to shoot out a thousand serpentine heads or knots of water, which wriggle down deliberately through the air and expend themselves in mist before half the descent is over. Then a new set burst from the body and sides of the fall, with the same fortune on the remaining distance; and thus the most charming fretwork of watery nodules, ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... down the old man," and reducing his mother to tears—such a person as adds to the gaiety of public rooms and hotel piazzas, where the ingenuous young of the wealthy play with or revile the bell-boys. But this well set-up fisher-youth did not wriggle, looked at him with eyes steady, clear, and unflinching, and spoke in a tone distinctly, even startlingly, respectful. There was that in his voice, too, which seemed to promise that the change might be permanent, and that the new Harvey ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... just a lump of ice!" Irene Paul often said, putting her own plump arms about Adelle's thin little body; and while Adelle tried to wriggle out of the embrace she teased her by ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... boudoir, the singer found that Madame Hulot had fainted; but in spite of having lost consciousness, her nervous trembling kept her still perpetually shaking, as the pieces of a snake that has been cut up still wriggle and move. Strong salts, cold water, and all the ordinary remedies were applied to recall the Baroness to her senses, or rather, to the ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... These "gray flies," as they are sometimes called, lay a mass of three or four hundred eggs on the surface of wounds. The larvae which in a few hours hatch from these make their way directly into the wound where they feed on the surrounding tissue until full grown when they wriggle out and drop to the ground where they transform to the pupa and later to the adult fly. Of course their presence in the wounds is very distressing to the infected animal, and great suffering results. Slight scratches that might otherwise quickly heal often become serious ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane
... which the Frenchman hairdresser is lacing for one of his customers. Another of the party, who has completed the upper part of his toilet, is so hampered with the voluminous folds and stiffening of his cravat that he cannot wriggle into his unmentionables. The caricaturists take us into the garrets of these fellows, abodes of squalor and wretchedness, and show us that beneath their exterior magnificence there is nothing, or next ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... Jay Cafe received her. At a table she sat, and punched the button with the air of milady ringing for her carriage. The waiter came with his large-chinned, low-voiced manner of respectful familiarity. Liz smoothed her silken skirt with a satisfied wriggle. She made the most of it. Here she could order and be waited upon. It was all that her world offered her of the ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... Ceremony in a Beleaguered City," murmured the enthusiastic journalist. Her gold fountain-pen, hanging at her chatelaine, seemed to wriggle like a thing of life, as she imagined herself aiding, planning, assisting at, and finally sitting down to describe the ceremony and the wedding-veil on the little Greek head. She babbled as her quick, bird-like ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... you: 'He's the one, in this country, whom they consider the most perfect, isn't he?' Is it success to be the occasion of a young Englishman's having to stammer as you would have to stammer at such a moment for old England? No, no; success is to have made people wriggle to another ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... aeroplanes are seen overhead, the alarm is raised in the shop. The men are panic-stricken. If there are a dozen alarms they do the same thing. They rush out like frightened rabbits, throw themselves flat on the sand, and wriggle through that hole into a cave that they have dug underneath. It is hysterically funny; they all try to get ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... no one in sight, Tom, but you had better wriggle yourself along until you get to the corner of ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... by the fish, which appear to thrive on them better than on dead meat. Having great tenacity of life, if not snapped up immediately by the fish they remain alive for a day or two, and, as they wriggle about on the bottom, are almost certain to be finally eaten; whereas the particles of dead flesh that fall to the bottom are largely neglected by the fish and begin to putrefy in a few hours. In the fish troughs there are, therefore, certain gains in both cleanliness and economy from the use ...
— New England Salmon Hatcheries and Salmon Fisheries in the Late 19th Century • Various
... causes us to wriggle, and strain, and stammer, and we do not recognize the root of the trouble and shun it, and learn to yield and quietly relax our nerves and muscles, of course the strain becomes worse. Then, rather than suffer from it any longer, we keep away from people, just ...
— The Freedom of Life • Annie Payson Call
... we are so guardedly referring, both in a wig and out of it; he passed behind a screen without it, and immediately (as quickly as we write) popped out in it, giving it a finishing touch rather like the butler's wriggle to his coat as he goes to the door. There are the two kinds of learned brothers, those who use the screen, and those who (so far as the jury knows) sleep in their wigs. The latter are the swells, and include the judges; ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... curious and smiling, he watched her with wholly different eyes. My father was a short, powerful man, and though he was nearly fifty years old his hair was black and thick and coarse. At night he would rub his unshaven cheek on Sue's small cheek and tickle her. She would chuckle and wriggle as though it were fun. I used to watch this hungrily, and once I awkwardly drew close and offered my cheek to be tickled. My father at once grew as awkward as I, and he gave me a rub so rough it stung. And this ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... added to the force of the word with another little wriggle against Forrester. It solved his problems. There was now only one thing to do, and ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... shift!" The shepherd's daughter answered him, "Prince Lindworm, slough a skin!"—"No one has ever dared tell me to do that before!" said he.—"But I command you to do it now!" said she. Then he began to moan and wriggle: and in a few minutes a long snake-skin lay upon the floor beside him. The girl drew off her first shift, and spread it on top ...
— East of the Sun and West of the Moon - Old Tales from the North • Peter Christen Asbjornsen
... gone back to the Giant Suttung with the tale of how he had seen the mysterious serving-man change into a snake and wriggle through a hole in the mountain; and Suttung at once guessed that they had to deal with Odin himself. So he hurried to the hole and sat there to watch for ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... ruler gave a tremendous wriggle with the whole body, which proved as ineffectual as it ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... residence for this species. The habit of a Dapper, when he is at home, is a light broad-cloth, with calamanco or red waistcoat and breeches; and it is remarkable that their wigs seldom hide the collar of their coats. They have always a peculiar spring in their arms, a wriggle in their bodies, and a trip in their gait. All which motions they express at once in their drinking, bowing or saluting ladies; for a distant imitation of a forward fop, and a resolution to overtop him in his way, are the distinguishing marks of a Dapper. These under-characters ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... the game!"—there was bitter anger in his voice now. "You see the game! He wanted to get me in deep enough so that I couldn't wriggle out, deeper than ten thousand that I could get at any time on my insurance, he wanted me where I couldn't get away—and he got me. The first ten thousand wasn't enough. I went to him for a second, a third, ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... to hook themselves on to the wealthier and younger members of the male community. They poison the air round them with sickly perfumes; they assume titles, and speak of one another as "cette chere comtesse;" their walk is something between a prance and a wriggle; they prowl about the terrace whilst the music is playing, seeking whom they may devour, or rather whom they may inveigle into paying for their devouring: and, bon Dieu! how they do gorge themselves with food and drink when some silly lad or aged roue ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... blazing wildly ... then a bang Crumpled and spun him sideways, knocked him out To grunt and wriggle: none heeded him; he choked And fought the flapping veils of smothering gloom, Lost in a blurred confusion of yells and groans ... Down, and down, and down, he sank and drowned, Bleeding to ...
— Counter-Attack and Other Poems • Siegfried Sassoon
... blind, and the darkness will never go away.' He made as if to leap from the bed, but Torpenhow's arms were round him, and Torpenhow's chin was on his shoulder, and his breath was squeezed out of him. He could only gasp, 'Blind!' and wriggle feebly. ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... in Jake Brewer, grasping a large pickerel and thrusting his blade into its quivering body after removing the scales, "that it hurts her insides to see the critters wriggle under the knife. She air ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... perversion of love, and which can only be set right by the truth of love. So long as the powers build a league on the foundation of their desire for safety, secure enjoyment of gains, consolidation of past injustice, and putting off the reparation of wrongs, while their fingers still wriggle for greed and reek of blood, rifts will appear in their union; and in future their conflicts will take greater force and magnitude. It is political and commercial egoism which is the evil harbinger of war. By different combinations it changes its shape and dimensions, ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... plainly saw that Ola was trying to wriggle out of his difficulty, but were anxious not to lose an exciting scene, screamed with laughter again; but this time at the bully's expense. The blood mounted to his head, and his anger got the better of his natural ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... cried Esau; "and there I hung for ever so long, giving myself a bit of a wriggle now and then, but afraid to do much, it hurt so, dragging at my arms, while they were twisted up. I s'pose I must have been 'bout an hour like that, but it seemed a week, and I was beginning to get sick again, when all at once, after a good struggle, I ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... stay here. I'll wriggle my way to that tree," pointing, "and you creep behind that one," pointing again, this time to a tree perhaps a hundred ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... always turned to Peter with some nonsensical appeal when her heart was full and her voice a trifle unsteady. You could bury your head in Peter's little white sailor jacket just under his chin, at which he would dimple and gurgle and chuckle and wriggle, and when you withdrew your flushed face and presented it to the public gaze all the tears would have been ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... outside. Pierrot had not come, and she darted swiftly into the balsams back of the cabin, with Baree hung in the crook of her arm, like a sack filled at both ends and tied in the middle. He felt like that, too. But he still had no inclination to wriggle himself free. Nepeese ran with him until her arm ached. Then she stopped and put him down on his feet, holding to the end of the caribou-skin thong that was tied about his neck. She was prepared for any lunge he might make to escape. She expected that he would make an attempt, and for ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... raft, it was found that he had contrived to wind several fathoms of the line round his body. From the line having been kept tight, it was not so cleverly twisted as is often the case, and a blow on the tail quieted him before he had managed further to wriggle it round himself after he was out of the water. When the line was unwound, and the shark stretched out, he was a handsome-looking fish of a blue lead colour, about four feet long. Harry and David did not feel disposed to eat any of the shark, but when assured ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston
... productions the signs of a progressive movement—the possibility, at least, of a true advance. For the contortions of the 'Precious' writers were less the result of their inability to write well than of their desperate efforts to do so. They were trying, as hard as they could, to wriggle themselves into a beautiful pose; and, naturally enough, they were unsuccessful. They were, in short, too self-conscious; but it was in this very self-consciousness that the real hope for the future lay. The teaching of Malherbe, ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... going to get ourselves free?" Tom demanded: "I've been trying to wriggle my hands out, but I'll admit that I can't ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... had was Dick's broad back, for the sapling to which he was tied was small. I drew my hunting-knife. One more wriggle brought me close to Dick, with my face near his hands, which were bound behind him. I slipped the blade under the lasso, ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... would be more interesting were we not lying trussed in this cellar," I said. "I am trying to wriggle some ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... the camp she felt a trifle remorseful about her behavior. Some day she would marry him—she had got far enough to admit that—and perhaps it was unkind of her not to let the matter be settled. And at that she gave a petulant wriggle of her shoulders under her cotton blouse. Wasn't that his business? Wasn't he the one to end it, not wait on her pleasure? Were all men ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... subsidence of Esmeralda the lioness renewed her efforts to wriggle her huge bulk through ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... clear the soot out of 'is lungs an' breathin' toobs. But if Pint-o'-Bass does smoke more'n is good for 'im or any other respectable factory chimney, I'll admit the smoke 'asn't sooted up 'is intelleck none, an' 'e can wriggle 'is way out of a hole where a double-jointed snake 'ud stick. An' durin' the Retreat, when, as you knows, cigarettes in the Expeditionary Force was scarcer'n snowballs in 'ell, ole Pint-o'-Bass managed to carry ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... a trail of ruts, which staggered hither and thither in an effort to escape the quagmires—which it did not escape. Twice, already, Stuart's horse had been mired and he had to get out of the saddle and half-crawl, half-wriggle on his belly, in the smothering and sucking mud. So far, Manuel had escaped, by the simple device of not passing over any spot which the boy ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... snake-skin to show you when I return. Edward, Richard's big brother, found it in the woods, and made it a present to me. A snake! What a present! and to think of a snake wanting to wriggle out of his skin! You wouldn't do such ...
— The Little Nightcap Letters. • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... the submarine boy. "Well, that's it should be. I wonder if there are any more of this strange crew—men or women spies that don't happen to have suspected so far? If there are, I don't believe they'll wriggle through the meshes of old Uncle Sam's ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... meat in the same. Hold not thy knife upright but sloping, and lay it down at the right hand of plate with blade on plate. Look not earnestly at any other that is eating. When moderately satisfied leave the table. Sing not, hum not, wriggle not.... Smell not of thy Meat; make not a noise with thy Tongue, Mouth, Lips, or Breath in Thy Eating and Drinking.... When any speak to thee, stand up. Say not I have heard it before. Never endeavour to ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... was open a little at the top, same as I've had it before once or twice these spring days, and Sol never took notice. The worst of it is, my husband told me I hadn't orter keep it open, even a speck, while the bird was out of his cage. 'Sol can wriggle through the smallest kind of a crack,' says he; and it appears he was right. My, but he'll be angry! 'Marthy, it'll ...
— Peggy in Her Blue Frock • Eliza Orne White
... trees again, darting full forty feet at a stretch. As it approached, Medea tossed the contents of the gold box right down the monster's wide-open throat. Immediately, with an outrageous hiss and a tremendous wriggle—flinging his tail up to the tip-top of the tallest tree and shattering all its branches as it crashed heavily down again—the dragon fell at full length upon the ground and lay ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... Griselda gave a little wriggle. "Cuckoo, you're laughing at me," she said. "I mean, have you come back to stay and cuckoo as usual and make my ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... papers. I am a fish out of water.... It makes me feel growly all the time.... I can not get away from my ball and chain.... I think we'll make things snap and crackle a little.... This is the biggest swamp I ever tried to wriggle through.... We'll both put on our thinking caps and I guess get quite a lot of funnies in the reminiscences.... Now here is the publisher's screech for money.... O, to get out of this History prison!... I am ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... wild flowers bloom and die; the heavens go round With the song of wheeling planetary rings: You wriggle in the sun; each moment brings Its freight for you; in all things ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley
... "cover" got lower and lower, and to the north I heard the mate. He would presently succeed in setting off my game. It was imperative to get on quickly, but there was no longer cover enough for me to advance on hands and knees. My only chance was to wriggle forward like a snake on my stomach. But in this soft clay—in the bed of the stream? Yes—meat is too precious on board, and the beast of prey is too strong in a man. My clothes must be sacrificed; ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... air is thick with danger. When the blackness of night comes, then will come, also, those who make war from behind the trees of the forest. In the darkness, how is the young white and his friends to tell enemies from friends? The jackals will wriggle through and over the wall of trees like snakes through tall grass. After what they have seen, can my white friends expect mercy at ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... snowshoes and went closer to the tree, so that she might try to lift him out of the fork by sheer strength of arm. But the snow was so soft that she sank in over her ankles, going deeper and deeper with every attempt which she made to wriggle herself free. ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... subtle insult to her smallest remark. The children were manifestly delighted. Cecilia was more or less in the position of a beetle on a pin, and theirs was the precious opportunity of seeing her wriggle. Wherefore they adopted their mother's tone, openly defied her, and turned school-hours into ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... pour in, flow into, flow in, creep into, creep in, slip into, slip in, pop into, pop in, break into, break in, burst into, burst in; set foot on; ingress; burst in upon, break in upon; invade, intrude; insinuate itself; interpenetrate, penetrate; infiltrate; find one's way into, wriggle into, worm oneself into. give entrance to &c (receive) 296; insert &c 300. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... either; for Rollo who was usually pretty alert and ready in emergencies of difficulty or danger, when he found himself rolling down the slope, though he could not stop, still contrived to wriggle and twist himself off to one side, so as to get clear of the horse and roll off himself in a different direction. They both, however, the animal and the boy, soon came to a stop. Rollo was up in an instant. The horse, too, contrived, after some ...
— Rollo in Switzerland • Jacob Abbott
... in with the long-handled shovel, swung it about the room, and smashed pieces off the cradle, and tore the bed-curtains down, and made a great noise altogether. Finally, he killed the snake and put it on the fire; and Joe and the cat watched it wriggle on ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... at a time they hunted elusive grasshoppers, rushing helter-skelter over the dry moss, leaping up to strike at the flying game with their paws like a kitten, or snapping wildly to catch it in their mouths and coming down with a back-breaking wriggle to keep themselves from tumbling over on their heads. Then on again, with a droll expression and noses sharpened like exclamation ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... discovered in the hedge. Holes underneath the prickly thorn, not more than a foot high, but sufficient to allow a crawling body to wriggle through on its stomach. These holes persisted for a day or two or three, and then were suddenly staked up, with strong stakes and barbed wire. After which, a few days later, perhaps, other holes ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte
... were eating, the otter began to laugh at the strange movements of the Manitou, who, hearing a noise, turned quickly and threw himself on the otter. He was going to smother him, as this was his way of killing animals. But the otter managed to wriggle from under him, and escaped ...
— Thirty Indian Legends • Margaret Bemister
... roar, by means of the torments which they inflicted upon them. I paid particular observation to the corner which was nearest me. There I beheld the devils with pitch-forks, tossing the damned up into the air, that they might fall headlong on poisoned hatchels or barbed pikes, there to wriggle their bowels out. After a time the wretches would crawl in multitudes, one upon another, to the top of one of the burning crags, there to be broiled like mutton; from there they would be snatched afar, to the top of one of the mountains of eternal frost and snow, where they ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... the new doctor; wasn't his dressing station somewhere down here? Hurt, he said. Claude tried to move his legs a little. Perhaps, if he could get out from under the dirt, he might hold together long enough to reach the doctor. He began to wriggle and pull. The wet earth sucked at him; it was painful business. He braced himself with his elbows, but kept ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... wild disgust and terror. She had never experienced anything so disagreeable in her life as the sense of being held helplessly off her feet. She screamed involuntarily—she had never in her life screamed before—and then she began to wriggle and fight like a frightened animal against the ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... the hand he repeatedly and somewhat distressfully passed over them closer to the question of which of the alien objects presented to his choice it would cost him least to profess to handle. What he had already paid, a spectator would easily have gathered from the long, the suppressed wriggle that had ended in his falling back, was some sacrifice of his habit of not privately depreciating those to whom he was publicly civil. It was plain, however, that when he presently spoke his thought had taken a stretch. "I'm sure I've fully intended ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... pardon me more for digressing from the subject, I will here relate a little incident that occurred on the day of Albert's arrival in the city. It only goes to show how the average young man will wriggle and tax his brain in order to get ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... home for him. It is harder than you think. I can make him sound lovable, but I cannot make him sound good. Of course I might leave out his doubtful qualities, and describe him merely as beautiful and affectionate; I might ... but I couldn't. I think Chum's habitual smile would get larger, he would wriggle the end of himself more ecstatically than ever if he heard himself summed up as beautiful and affectionate. Anyway, I couldn't do it, for I get carried away when I speak of him and I ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... (With a shudder.) Thank you. B-but even Red Indians allow people to wriggle when they're being tortured, I believe. (Slips fan from girdle and fans slowly: rim ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... to ask his client to keep the deadly secret, or to apply the famous wriggle of Hippolytus: "My tongue hath sworn, but my heart ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various
... the sun should set,' he answered, and began to wriggle along so fast that the girl could ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... wise to rule the state. Pulteney deep, accomplish'd St. Johns, Scourge the villains with a vengeance; Let me, though the smell be noisome, Strip their bums; let Caleb[3] hoise 'em; Then apply Alecto's[4] whip Till they wriggle, howl, and skip. Deuce is in you, Mr. Dean: What can all this passion mean? Mention courts! you'll ne'er be quiet On corruptions running riot. End as it befits your station; Come to use and application; Nor with senates keep a fuss. I submit; ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... old man. Though he would really have liked to take the little boy up to his breast and hold him there, he knew not how; and he would even be careful not to restrain the little hand in his own—to hold it, yet to leave it free to withdraw at its first uneasy wriggle. ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... he said, his intimate eyes watching her wriggle, with a sense of being ridiculous, on ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... describing the thing to a friend, "like the skin of a horse determined to get rid of a gad-fly." The same moment the tiles on the roof began to clatter like so many castanets in the hands of giants, and the ground to wriggle and heave. But they were too much absorbed in what was before their eyes to heed much what went on under their feet. The oscillatory displacement of the front of the church did not at most seem to cover more than a hand-breadth, but it was enough. Down came the plaster ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... to say to me? For the last hour I have been asking you to marry me, and you have said nothing; only just 'wriggle, wriggle,' talking off on to ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... loss of its sword. Mr. Buckland said that fish have no power of "backing," and expressed his belief that he could hold a swordfish by the beak; but then he admitted that the fish had considerable lateral power, and might so "wriggle its sword out of the hold." And so the insurance company will have to pay nearly L600 because an ill-tempered fish objected to be hooked and took its revenge by running full tilt against ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... I looked and saw Lovelace Peyton, I began to shudder too. He was hanging half in and half out of a little window high up in the shed like a skylight, and the big bottle was slowly slipping as he tried to wriggle either in or out. There was no ladder in sight, and neither of us was near tall enough to reach him. He was beginning to whimper and be scared himself, and I could see the heavy bottle start to slip faster from his arm. We had less than a second ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... cursing and defying him, and fell into a sullen silence. The man was a study for me, and I observed every change in his fleeting moods. Generally his condition was that of miserable despair, which he attempted bravely to conceal. Even the boon of suicide had been denied him, for when he would wriggle into an erect position the rail of his pen was a foot above his head, so that he could not clamber over and break his skull on the stone floor beneath; and when he had tried to starve himself the attendants forced food down his throat; so that he abandoned such attempts. At times his eyes would blaze ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... garden, a tidy white gate, And a narrow brown pathway that will not run straight; For it turns and it twists and it wanders about To the left and the right, as in humorous doubt. 'Tis a humorous path, and a joke from its birth Till it ends at the door with a wriggle of mirth. And here in the mount lives the queer tinker man With his little red dog and ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... triumphantly, "you can issue complaint against both Baker and Mr. Welton on a charge of bribery, and Baker can't possibly wriggle out by turning state's evidence, because your evidence ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... very funny, no doubt, but Paul hardly felt like laughing, just then. He tried to wriggle around so as to get at the loop, in the hope that he might loosen the same; but ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... Kilvullen's existence. That he was of foreign extraction would appear to be proven, some way or other, through a boulder lying on the beach, on which, it is stated, the blessed Kilvullen travelled here direct from Rome, with a commission from the Pope to convert the Irish. To wriggle under a cavity in this stone and come out on the other side, is an ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... making pilgrimage through the dormitories before the prefects came by, "now what have you got to say for yourselves? Foster, Carton, Finch, Longbridge, Marlin, Brett! I heard you chaps catchin' it from King—he made hay of you—an' all you could do was to wriggle an' grin an' say, 'Yes, sir,' an' 'No, sir,'' an' 'O, sir,' an' 'Please, sir'! You an' your ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... think so if you knew as much about it as I do," answered Ben, with a sudden frown and wriggle, as if he still felt the smart of the blows he had received. "We don't call it splendid; do we, Sancho?" he added, making a queer noise, which caused the poodle to growl and bang the floor irefully with his tail, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... said; "French infantrymen's trousers. One cannot make out their coats, but their red trousers show as they wriggle ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... unceremoniously transformed into a muff beneath their entangled extremes, he turns over quietly, saying, "There's something very strange about the floor of this establishment,—it don't seem solid; 'pears how there's ups and downs in it." They wriggle and twist in a curious pile; endeavour to bring their knees out of "a fix"—to free themselves from the angles which they are most unmathematically working on the floor. Working and twisting,—now staggering, and again giving utterance to ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... wide, was so completely fenced in with a network of barbed wire that it was evidently not considered necessary to place sentinels there. By throwing over their parcels first and working away the ground for more than an hour under the barbed wire, the men were able to crawl and wriggle their way ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... creeping, creeping. No noise. One raised. Waggons drawn up in laager. Oxen out-spanned in the middle. Trekking all day. Tired out; dog tired. Crawl, crawl, crawl! Hands and knees. Might be snakes. A wriggle. Men sitting about the camp fire. Smoking. Gleam of their eyes! Under the waggons. Nearer, nearer, nearer! Then, the throwing ones in your midst. Shower of 'em. Right and left. 'Halloa! stand by, boys!' Look ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... the best explanation I could think of. But it was not good enough for Diana. She attempted to push me farther back, and I resisted, trying to wriggle myself free and elude her; but she was on the alert, and too quick as well as too strong ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... watch them wriggle! I wanted to take them, one by one, and strip off their shams! Take that fellow Rutherford, the steel man! Or Plimpton, the coal baron, casting his eyes up to heaven, and singing psalms through his nose! The instant ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair
... yourselves," she warned them. "Don't walk in the dust. Don't stop in the porch to talk to the other children. Don't squirm or wriggle in your places. Don't forget the Golden Text. Don't lose your collection or forget to put it in. Don't whisper at prayer time, and don't forget to ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... you call that? Look at your damned wake. Like an eel's wriggle. Keep her full, and less ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... and the ground under the thick tangle of trees and underbrush being unusually marshy, the girls had to pick their way carefully. Mollie walked ahead while they were talking. Barbara jumping from the twisted root of one tree to another half a yard away, felt something writhe and wriggle under her foot. Without stopping to look down, she shrieked—"A snake! a snake!"—and ran blindly forward. Before Mollie had time to look around, Barbara caught her foot under a root and tumbled headlong into ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane
... thinking of anything but making an attack. So playful a creature, enjoying itself thoroughly in the sunshine, could never have approached a walrus herd before. Now it was rolling legs upward, and giving itself a peculiar wriggle, as if to scratch its back; then it was sitting up like a cat, and reaching round to have a lick at the part of its person which had just been rubbed in the ice. A minute later it was on its flank, with ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... themselves, seeing that they were utterly worn out. This unforeseen catastrophe evidently astonished their driver. Slipping from the box, he stood resting his hands against the side of the britchka, while Chichikov tumbled and floundered about in the mud, in a vain endeavour to wriggle clear of ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... young man, hard and fast," Mr. Bartholomew said. "If I was inclined to want to wriggle out, I see no chance of it. But I don't. You have set forth here exactly my meaning and intent. I want your best efforts in this matter, Mr. Swift, and if you give them to me I'll foot the ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... pronounces the captain, safely landing him on deck, where he was unhooked, and left to wriggle and jump out ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... marching as escort, smart and gay in their brown forest-dress, the green thrums rippling and flying from sleeve and leggin' and open double-cape, and the raccoon-tails all a-bobbing behind their caps like the tails that April lambkins wriggle. ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... scramble. Her father and mother, who are no more than her chief ministers, walk before her out of the saloon, and then she—swims after them. But swimming is not the proper word. Fishes, in making their way through the water, assist, or rather impede, their motion with no dorsal wriggle. No animal taught to move directly by its Creator adopts a gait so useless, and at the same time so graceless. Many women, having received their lessons in walking from a less eligible instructor, do move in this way, and such women this unfortunate little lady has been ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... tears, and began to wriggle herself free from his arms. "Let me go," she demanded; "let me go. ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... sympathy running along that slender thread of silk. But still he followed the dreadful roar of the Minotaur, which now grew louder and louder, and finally so very loud that Theseus fully expected to come close upon him, at every new zizgag and wriggle of the path. And at last, in an open space, at the very center of the labyrinth, he ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... teachers, awaited the party from the vicarage. The thick and darkened sunshine of Bludston flooded the asphalt of the yard, which sent up a reek of heat, causing curates to fan themselves with their black straw hats, and little boys in clean collars to wriggle in sticky discomfort, while in the still air above the ignoble town hung the heavy pall of smoke. Presently there was the sound of wheels and the sight of the head of the vicar's coachman above the coping of the schoolyard wall. Then the gates opened and the vicar and his wife and Miss ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... to him had a wide net spread around him—wide of mesh too, perhaps; and it was through a mesh he meant to wriggle, but the net was intact ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... jingle set the immediate crowd in a roar. I became an object for ribald laughter and cheers; I was pushed and hustled, albeit good-naturedly enough, but none the less to my great annoyance, so that I made all haste to wriggle away and, espying a narrow lane between these canvas booths and tents, I slipped into it, took to my heels and turning a sharp corner in full career, came thus upon an ancient man who sat upon a box, puffing serenely at a long pipe and who, despite my so sudden appearance, ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... her flat-pattern live timekeepers to slide into it;) black, glossy crickets, with their long filaments sticking out like the whips of four-horse stage-coaches; motionless, slug-like creatures, larvae, perhaps, more horrible in their pulpy stillness than even in the infernal wriggle of maturity! But no sooner is the stone turned and the wholesome light of day let upon this compressed and blinded community of creeping things, than all of them that enjoy the luxury of legs—and some of them have a good many—rush round wildly, butting each other and everything in their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... not long to wait, for presently Woofer crawled out of his blankets on the far side, and began to wriggle away on ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... the insect larvas that may have lurked in it when first removed. Lay the turves out in a frame, grass side downwards, and give them a soaking with water in which a very small quantity of salt has been dissolved. This will cause the remaining bots and slugs to wriggle out, and by means of a little patient labour they can be gathered and destroyed. In January or February sow the seed rather thickly in lines along the centre of each strip of turf, and cover with fine earth. By keeping the frame closed a more regular sprouting ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... was this way. I got up and looked out on the world. I says: 'J. R., it's clear you haven't enough cash for your ambitions. But you've got a opportunity. Throw it in. Be bold. If your conscience squirms, let it squirm. If it wriggles, let it wriggle. Take the risk. Expand to large ideas.' I took it. Say, I made parties unwilling investors in me. Now, then, there they are, as delegated in you. Here's me, Julius R., monarch by purchase and election of the sovereign ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... found the cake standing erect and solid. Gripping her harpoon, she threw herself flat on her stomach and pushing the cake before her, began to wriggle her way ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... me now, Molly," he suggested at last. Then he turned to Chris, who was watching him with almost no expression. "You can wriggle your chair to the phone in half an hour, I guess. Knock the phone off and yell for help. It's better than you deserve, unless you really ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... he had no money. He hinted to Archie that a reward should be offered, but that young man, backed by Lucy, declined to throw away good money after bad. Braddock took this refusal so ill, that Hope felt perfectly convinced he would try and wriggle out of his promise to permit the marriage and persuade Lucy to engage herself to Sir Frank Random, should the baronet be willing to offer a reward. And Hope was also certain that Braddock, a singularly obstinate man, would never rest until he once ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... those solemn Presbyterian whiskers. It makes me faint to remember how many times I've tried and failed to get my hooks into him. I know you could land the deacon. I'd joyfully give you a million just to see him wriggle in my hands." ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon |
