"Deviltry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an immoral and grotesque act is related in which the innocent husband is left out and takes no step to have just punishment meted, and the saint with his cloak commits a deviltry only fit for urchins of ...
— The Legacy of Ignorantism • T.H. Pardo de Tavera
... honestly not sure whether this were further deviltry, or an appeal for help. In any case, I thought it time for the scene to end. "I told you," I said to Monny in English, "that he was a man of importance, not at all the sort of person you could expect to engage for a guide. You must see now that he's a gentleman. And a—a—an Egyptian ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... now and then, and what he heard tore him up worse than the other had, for the girl's husband couldn't wear the harness long, and, having taken away what good there was in her, he made up in deviltry for the time he had lost. She stood it pretty well, and never whimpered, even when her eyes were open and she saw what a prize-package she had drawn. The fact that she was game enough to stand for him and yet keep herself clean without complaint made ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... escaped. They thought nae mair o' us, and when the royal army arrived the next day we were safe; but ye might as weel ha' let the matter gang on—better, indeed, for then I should be deed instead o' suffering. This wark," and he pointed toward the remains of the house, "is redskin deviltry. A fortnight sin' a band o' Indians fell upon us. I was awa'. They killed my wife and burned my house and ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... was stolen, my fences broken down, and everything that vile men could imagine or work up by studying deviltry was done to make life a burden to me. I had raised over seven thousand bushels of corn, and everyone had a good crop. I had a large lot filled up in the husk, and I let my cattle run to it so as to keep them fat during the winter, ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... persuade myself that there ain't no such Person, but I can't manage it. The remembrance of my poor old mother's teaching sticks to me in spite of all I can do. I've tried," he continued with growing passion, "to drive it all out of my head by sheer deviltry and wickedness; I've done worse things than e'er another man on this here island, hain't I, mates?"—to ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... hard-boiled kid," said one of the men as Pete unsaddled and led Rowdy to the corral. "Did you catch his eye? Black—and shinin'; plumb full of deviltry—down in deep. That kid's had to hit some hard spots afore he ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... still meditated some deviltry which would call for my full presence of mind to combat successfully, I did not in the least doubt. Yet the agitation under which I crossed the floor was more the result of an immediate anticipation of seeing—and in this place of all others ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... gallery of youthful memories. What was it? It flashed upon her with the suddenness of a forgotten word. She remembered it plainly now—that treasured, highly colored lithograph of a brigand holding up a coach in a mountain pass! There was in this face the same mocking deviltry; his figure had the same lithe grace; he needed only the big hoop ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... fellers—he wouldn't to they was Greasers—breakin' through the shrubbery to the back of the house. That was while Stewart was ridin' out to the mesa. Then this lad seen your servants all runnin' down the hill toward the village. Now, heah's the way Gene figgers. There sure was some deviltry down along the railroad, an' Pat Hawe trailed bandits up to the ranch. He hunts hard an' then all to onct he quits. Stewart says Pat Hawe wasn't scared, but he discovered signs or somethin', or got wind in some strange way that there was in the gang of bandits some fellers he didn't want to ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... such deviltry is necessary to the comfort of Mr. Purvis," I remarked. "If there is nobody else to take the responsibility for it he assumes it himself. His imagination has an intense craving for blood and violence. It's that type of American who, egged on by the slave power, is hurrying us ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... feller. I hain't never seen no other country. I don't know whether all places is like these hyar mountings er not, but I knows thet the Lord didn't 'low fer men ter live blind, not seein' no beauty in nothin'; ner not feelin' nothin' but hate an' meanness—ner studyin' 'bout nothin' but deviltry. There hain't no better folks nowhar then my folks, an' thar hain't no meaner folks nowhar then them damned Hollmans, but thar's times when hit 'pears ter me thet the Lord Almighty hain't plumb tickled ter death with ther way things goes hyar along ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... to know what especial kind of deviltry you young fry are up to this time," said Uncle Roger one evening, as he passed through the orchard with his gun on his shoulder, bound ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... praiser of Rabelais, scathingly abused it and the sender. In this episode, as in many others, Mark Twain, the "bad boy" of American literature, revealed his huge delight in blasting the shams of contemporary hypocrisy. Too, there was always the spirit of Tom Sawyer deviltry in Mark's make-up that prompted him, as he himself boasted, to see how much holy indignation he could stir up ...
— 1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors • Mark Twain
... a minute; I got a notion to walk this morning." There was a cool deviltry in the slanting gaze with which she surveyed ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... truth are to enjoy all the good things of this world, and must use their means to bring it about. Every thing that has the smell of woman will be destroyed. Woman is the capsheaf of the abomination of desolation-full of all deviltry. In a short time, the world will take fire and dissolve; it is combustible already. All women, not obedient, had better become so as soon as possible, and let the wicked spirit depart, and become temples of truth. Praying is all mocking. When you see any one wring the neck of a fowl, instead ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth
... a moment of dead silence. That big youth—the terror of Linley School—was now red and dumb with amazement. His deviltry had begun, but how had the teacher seen it ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... sort o' Squire, a justice of the peace, now—an' demands his son. He'd let the feller grow up without good trainin' or lookin' after of any kind, though 'twas needed bad enough. All Nate did know, or the little he knowed, was badness an' deviltry. Why, he used to go with your own pa, Johnny, consid'able, an' 'peared to like him almost as well as he did Verplanck, an' many's the time I've had the three on my hands a-fishin'. But Johnny didn't tackle much to ary one them other boys. He was ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... therefore, be wary not to overslumber. The prizes of life always come to those who press resolutely on, undaunted by fatigue and discouragement. Another of your father's failings was probably due to the fact that he was never a small boy and thus had no chance to work the deviltry out of his system. You yourselves have been abundantly blessed in this regard. I think I may say that here, in our Normal Academy, you have had an almost ideal playground to work off those boyish high spirits, to perpetrate those mischievous pranks that the world ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... comes to deviltry, Don Felipe has yet to meet his match. But as I was about to say: Six months after the marriage, Don Felipe deserted Pepita, then the child was born, and knowing that he would unhesitatingly make way with it should he learn of its existence, Joaquin and I took it to Onava, where we ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... hours enabled me to establish the proportion of fourteen saloons out of a total of twenty frame buildings. I descanted craftily on the character of the woodsman out of the woods and in the right frame of mind for deviltry. I related how Jack Boyd, irritated beyond endurance at the annoyances of a stranger, finally with the flat of his hand boxed the man's head so mightily that he whirled ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... inclined to think of this act as only a slip, a slight aberration, on the part of the falcon, so universal is the sense of relationship among the kinds that have the rapacious habit; or, at the worst, it was merely an isolated act of deviltry and daring of the sharp-winged pirate of the sky, a sudden assertion of over-mastering energy and power, and a very slight offence compared with that of the crow when he carries off and devours his callow little cousins ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... owners," said Captain Jackson good-naturedly. "Passengers and shippers we do clip a little when we can, but that old fool must have tried to get something out of the owners of the ship. He's too old to run away now, or cut up any more deviltry. Go and ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... damnable, it was monstrous, this thing that he had read; it plumbed the dregs of human deviltry—but for once the Tocsin was at fault. Of the plot that had been hatched, of those details that she described, there could be no doubt, there was no question there, and there the Tocsin, he knew, had made no mistake; but the Tocsin, yes, and those ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... went closer to investigate, and a rough-looking individual broke from cover and ran away through the underbrush as fast as he could go. It was too dark to follow and Locke hastened his steps to the house, fearing some new deviltry on the part of the Automaton or ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... been made, both by the police and the naval detectives, for the author of the mischief, but he had not been found. It was believed that his purpose in reporting the result of his own deviltry to the chief of police was to secure the arrest of the boys on the Sea Lion and ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson
... the part of the jealous husband at the end. The career of the Weasels seems to set forth the adventures of a couple of Indian Becky Sharps, very much in the spirit of an Indian Thackeray. The immorality of these damsels, the sponging of Marten, the deviltry of Lox, the servile follies and ferocious vindictiveness of the Loon, all seem to impress the composer of the tale as so many bubbles rising and falling on the sea of life, only remarkable for the ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... but Pepe the rash, Pepe the personification of Figaro: a character impossible for northern people to place outside of a madhouse, yet daily to be found in southern Europe. Rash, headstrong, full of deviltry, splendid appetite, and not ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... mighty close to our own snug house. They don't know yet that the hole in the wall is thar, but ef they stay long they're boun' to run acrost it. That's why I've come out lookin' fur you, an' mighty glad I am that I've found you. I'd a notion you'd take this circuit, after doin' all the deviltry you've done." ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... such as was that of India, the practice of demonology, witchcraft, etc., must have been an early factor. But, while this is true, it is clearly impossible to postulate therefrom that the hymns recording all this array of cursing, deviltry, and witchcraft are themselves early. The further forward one advances into the labyrinth of Hindu religions the more superstitions, the more devils, demons, magic, witchcraft, and uncanny things generally, does he find. Hence, while any one superstitious practice ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... not and could not know that an "outlaw" is a horse so utterly abandoned to ways of broncho crime and equine deviltry that no man is able to break him—that having conquered man after man, perhaps even with fatal results to his riders, he has become absolutely depraved and impossible of submission. She only knew that her heart was beating ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... horse, standing by a crooked corral post and flicking his ears at the flies. "Do you know that roan?" he asked Andy, in the tone which brings truthful answer. Andy had one good point: he never lied except in an irresponsible mood of pure deviltry. For instance, he never had lied seriously, ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... stones," explained the captain. "I ain't sure just what it means, but Thirkle ain't the man to leave such work to Buckrow. You can bet Thirkle will know how to find the gold again without asking Buckrow for the bearings. There is some deviltry afoot, and my best guess is that the pirates ain't getting along none too well among themselves with ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... country. Well, he let it all out of him before he'd finished with the Black. Ha, ha, ha, ha! I can hear him still, with the sweat running off his face like oats spilling from a feed bag. I says to Paddy, 'Rub his nose a bit,' for I could see it was more nervousness with the horse than sheer deviltry. 'With what?' says Paddy, 'the hammer? Be gor! You're right, though,' says he, and with that he tries to put a twister on Diablo's nose. Holy mother! Diablo reached for him, and lifted the shirt clean off his back. Say, there was a scared Irishman, ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... same twice, and cannot be reached by any reliable route. The situation is impossible. I must locate it somewhere. If you are interested in the college when you have read these few stories, suppose you hunt for it wherever college boys are full of applied deviltry and college girls are distractingly fair; where it is necessary to win football games in order to be half-way contented with the universe; where the spring weather is too wonderful to be wasted on College Algebra or History of Art; ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... to witness the drama. Voltaire being a playwright and without prejudice in the matter, had even suggested a municipal theater for Geneva. This brought forth from Jean Jacques a scorching pamphlet on the seductive deviltry of the drama, wherein it was pointed out that the downfall of every nation that had gone by the boards had begun its slide to Avernus in its love of the play. In this essay Rousseau expressed the view of orthodox Geneva, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... so runs a local saying, much as we speak of the "good old times." His amiable laughter-loving ghost pervades the capital to this hour. His pleasantries still resound among those crumbling theatres and galleries. That gleeful deviltry of his, compounded of blood and sunshine, is the epitome of Nepenthe. He is the scarlet thread running through its annals. An incarnation of all that was best in the age he identified, for wellnigh half a century, his interests with those ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... elder man a ferment of bitterness was working toward the ends of deranged deviltry—and its influence was all secret so that its tincture of insanity left no mark ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... enough to know that she's up to some deviltry—her and that Maxey Melcher. They've got a photographer and witnesses. Your brother ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... father's," continued Peter. "The bookcases have still some of the volumes he loved; he liked the low ceiling and the big fireplace, and always wrote here—it was his library, really. There opens the old drawing-room and next to it is Felicia's den, where she concocts most of her deviltry, and the dining-room beyond—and that's all there is on this floor, except the kitchen, which you'll hear ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... in good, sound dollars, the reverse of the practice of Messieurs Achille and Jules of the Chasseurs a Pied who generally reimbursed "ces pauvres betes des Chinois" for what they unceremoniously appropriated, with true Parisian deviltry, "in kind" of the most ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... was some deviltry," he muttered. "Oh, Lord! oh, Lord! would that I had made the oxen trample them into thousand pieces! They ought never to have left my ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... Whatever deviltry was inaugurated on this top floor during the day as well as the night, and it was pretty constant, could be traced without much difficulty to this irrepressible young Irishman. If Tomlins found his dress-suit put to bed, with a pillow for a body and his ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... harm sex has involved. Most all the deviltry of history that was not done for money was done for sex. And even the deviltry that was done and is done for money had, and has sex back of it. Take sex out of man and you have something worth while. God must have been short ...
— Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living • H.W. Long
... of the prison—one Captain Bowes—was the best of his class it was my fortune to meet. Compared with the senseless brutality of Wirz, the reckless deviltry of Davis, or the stupid malignance of Barrett, at Florence, his administration was mildness ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... the leading citizens met in the Cotton Exchange Building the same evening, and threats of lynching were freely indulged, not by the lawless element upon which the deviltry of the South is usually saddled—but by the leading business men, in their leading business centre. Mr. Fleming, the business manager and owning a half interest the Free Speech, had to leave town to escape ...
— Southern Horrors - Lynch Law in All Its Phases • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... and Eli declared that it would be only the part of wisdom to keep watch. There could be no telling what deviltry Cale Martin, assisted by his two congenial spirits, Si Kedge and Ed Harkness, might attempt to do. Perhaps, thinking that it would reflect on the guides if they annoyed the party whom Eli and Jim were convoying into the Maine woods, they might even try to set fire to the ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... he's done since we come into the mountains looks as if he was a friend to us all. I can't help saying that, but it mustn't be furgot that the whole bus'ness may be meant to close our eyes, and that he's got some deviltry in mind back of it all, that neither of you younkers ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... already under way. This was the signal. From all the stock-market sub-cellars and rat-holes of State, Broad, and Wall streets crept those wriggling, slimy snakes of bastard rumors which, seemingly fatherless and motherless, have in reality multi-parents who beget them with a deviltry of intention: "George Westinghouse had mismanaged his companies"; "George Westinghouse, because of gross extravagance, had spread himself and his companies until they were involved beyond extrication unless by consolidation with General Electric"; ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... Samson, as they were driving away on the Lake Road next morning. "The lake and river boatmen are the roughest fellers in the West, and they're not half as bad as they look an' talk. Their deviltry is all on the outside. They tell me that there isn't one o' those boys who wouldn't give his life to help a woman, an' I ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... humour, Watson, against which I must learn to guard myself. But in calling Moriarty a criminal you are uttering libel in the eyes of the law—and there lie the glory and the wonder of it! The greatest schemer of all time, the organizer of every deviltry, the controlling brain of the underworld, a brain which might have made or marred the destiny of nations—that's the man! But so aloof is he from general suspicion, so immune from criticism, so admirable in his management and self-effacement, that for those very words that you ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... enlightened old Lizzie, for the girls' talk was mostly reminiscent of the camp experiences or of their recollections of Kent's little boyhood, of Charlie's prowess at school, or of Gustus' "sportiness" and his fascinating deviltry. Lydia was enjoying the inalienable right of every girl of fifteen to giggle, and talk about the boys, the two seemingly having no causative relation, yet always ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... they simply look upon it as the good-natured and well-intentioned efforts of the doctor to deceive them and to cover up the shortcomings of some frail mortal. Many a poor fellow has to leave this world under a cloud of mistrust and a bad odor of past deviltry to which he is not entitled, and suffer all this in addition to all his physical ills, owing to his having been ornamented through life with an annoying prepuce,—the luckless heritage of having been born a Christian. Columbus in chains moralizing on the ingratitude of this world is nothing to ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... cursing, the men came tumbling down the stairs, ripe for deviltry; but for the moment here was wine to be had for the taking, ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... false mustaches, confetti, balloons and all the noise-swelling devices ever bred of deviltry, hawked their wares along the curbs, and the furs of women glittered ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... about over; but as a matter of fact it had scarcely begun. To chronicle on paper that a certain person on a certain day rode a certain bronco for the first time sounds commonplace; but to one who has seen the deviltry lurking in those wild prairie ponies' eyes, who knows their dogged fighting disposition, ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... What deviltry are yu up to now?" he asked. Buck leaped from his mount, followed by the others, and shoved his sombrero back on his head as he started to ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... right, Tom; Deveaux is a brute," said John. "His deviltry came near being the end of us. When we get home, we must see to it that he is punished as he deserves. But we must keep it out of the papers now, as it will look, in case we get beat, as if we wanted ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... smiling, and tearing the paper in small pieces; "it is true, she is a diavolezza, but one of the most amiable and charming sort, and perhaps ere long I shall, notwithstanding her deviltry, consider her an angel, and believe her charming comedy to be entirely true and sincere. But this is no time for thinking of such things. The grave affairs of life require our exclusive attention. Kockeritz, then, has been convinced, and even Kalkreuth has been shaken in his stupid belief in the ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... Californian style, there were certain brick and stone divisions in its interior, like small rooms or closets, evidently added by the Chinamen tenants. My companion stopped before a long, very narrow entrance, a mere longitudinal slit in the brick wall, and with a wink of infantine deviltry motioned me to look inside. I did so, and saw a room, really a cell, of fair height but scarcely six feet square, and barely able to contain a rude, slanting couch of stone covered with matting, on which lay, at a painful angle, a richly ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... requested and then departed. Something else! That was the very feeling which had assailed him vaguely at times, that some deviltry which he couldn't understand was going on beneath the surface. As he made for the corral, a sudden possibility flashed into his mind. With her title so precarious, might not Mary Thorne be at the bottom ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... Bill, "and it's that strange reluctance to having the subject mentioned that makes me suspect YOUR hand in the matter. Patty refused to discuss it with me, but the look of blank astonishment in her face, when I referred to that note, convinced me there's a bit of deviltry SOMEWHERE. And I ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... to myself that I shall not ride back with Harry. No, life is still dear to me. I will take the trolley. And yet—what thrilling, Jove-like, superhuman deviltry it was! I light a cigar and sit down. Harry and ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... over a hen; and both man and beast are becoming here, as elsewhere, reconciled to the automobile. Now and then a carter would set his team slantwise in our course and stay us out of good-humored deviltry, and when he let us pass would fling some chaff to the fresh-faced English youngster who was ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... Dyck Calhoun, after whom were sent the daring words about the sessions and the assizes, was a year or two older than his friend, and, as Michael Clones, his servant and friend, said, "the worst and best scamp of them all"—just up to any harmless deviltry. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... "You cursed villain, I'll make you pay for your deviltry. You brought all this trouble upon ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... woman is created, the winds have wooed star-dust, rose-dew, peach-down, and a few flint-shavings into a whirlwind of deviltry, and the world at large looks on in wonder and sore amazement, as well as breathless interest. I know, because I am one, and have just been waked up by the gyrations of the cyclone; and I'm deeply confounded. I don't like it, and ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... me cold, and got away with it! Boys, take a long, lastin' look, for the pack o' you're goin' out o' that door inside of ten counts! God bless 'um! Just look at that there Jap get-up! Sure as God made big fish to eat the little fellows, Peter Moore's up to some newfangled deviltry, or I'm a lobster!" ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... fresh sheet he started slowly, pausing, rapt, after each few works. As line followed line the room became quiet save for the click of the machine, the planters eyeing each other, waiting impatiently for disclosure of the new deviltry his whole attitude betokened. Pausing after each few lines to seek inspiration at the roots of his thick tumbled hair, he wrote for about ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... Deviltry cannot be overcome by diplomacy. Not embassies, but regiments, overcome intrenched oppression. Men of integrity and refinement can have but one attitude toward corruption, drunkenness, parasitism, gilded iniquity—the attitude ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... hideous, being still of parent stock. But these creatures were tawny and magnificent, with the most superb figures, the most remarkable swing, that ever a man had looked upon; and glorious eyes, sparkling with deviltry. On their heads the white linen was wound to a high point and surmounted by an immense hat, caught up at one side with a flower. They wore for clothing a double skirt of coloured linen, and a white fichu, open in a ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... bit in your teeth and I reckon you'll go till there is a smash. But you better understand this. When you choose Soapy Stone's, crowd to run with that cuts out me and other decent folks. If they have sent you here to get me mixed up in their deviltry you go back and ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... now, so we may as well warm ourselves by the failure of her deviltry," he observed presently, as he flung the crumpled paper into the fire. "I'm downright sorry she'll never know ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... a man named Havens. He had a reputation as a bad man, and I reckon he deserved it—if brand blotting, mail rustling, and shooting citizens are the credentials to win that title. Hard pressed on account of some deviltry, he drifted into this country, and was made welcome by those living here. The best we had was his. He was fed, outfitted, and kept safe from the law that was looking ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... life. Yet the advocate of Lynch Law pictures this humble fellow, this man who is afraid to attempt to defend his own home, as a reckless dare-devil, keeping the whites in constant terror. How incompatible these two traits of character. No; it is not the reckless dare deviltry of the Negro that terrorizes the South, but the conscience of the white man whose wrong treatment of a defenseless people fills him with fear and intensifies his hatred. He is determined to fill to overflow ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... things from the boys and that somehow or other all those gold trinkets and contraptions got found under his closet floor, and I wanter tell you, Doctor, that this Teeny-bits didn't do it and that them two bad birds, Campbell and Bassett, was at the bottom of all this deviltry, and there ain't been two sich underhanded, reckless, good-for-nothin' fellers in this school sence I took ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... The husband and father was being driven off by a man he could trust in a car they had let him have for his own use. Later Ellabelle confides to me that she mistrusts old Angus is contemplating some bit of his national deviltry. 'He had a strange look on his face,' says she, 'and you know—once a Scotchman, always a Scotchman! Oh, it would be pitiful if he did anything peculiarly Scotch just at our most critical period here!' ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... lover of beauty makes the sex emotion particularly inflammable. Other emotions also may be unwisely stimulated by art. In times of international friction, war-songs, "patriotic" speeches, or martial processions may arouse an unreasoning jingo spirit. The love of deviltry is fostered in boys by many of the penny novels, by sensational "movies" and newspaper "stories"; a famous detective has said that seventy per cent of the crimes committed by boys under twenty are traceable to "suggestions" received from these sources. Should art be censored in ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... All females who lecture their husbands their sentence is: 'Depart, ye wicked, I know you not.' Everything that has the smell of woman will be destroyed. Woman is the cap-sheaf of the abomination of desolation, full of all deviltry." There, ladies! Is anything further necessary to convince you what a peculiarly wicked and horrible humbug ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... that's it, is it? I guessed you was up to some deviltry!"—this to Johnnie. "And let me tell you somethin': none of them crazy idears 'round here! D' y' understand?" (This was how much he appreciated ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... deviltry he waited until Mr. Jenkins had labored for a second time through the opening periods. Again he allowed him to get as far as "I charge and require you both-," ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... said, "how can you be such a combination of bigness and petty deviltry? You are a monster of self-indulgence. It's a God's mercy there aren't more men with your selfishness ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... moonlight upon the gently rolling waters. He was half hidden by a davit, so that two men who approached along the deck did not see him, and as they passed Tarzan caught enough of their conversation to cause him to fall in behind them, to follow and learn what deviltry they were up to. He had recognized the voice as that of Rokoff, and had seen that his companion ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... had a code by which the signals could be read with practically the same accuracy as if they had been printed words. The movements of the lights looked curious and strange, something elf-like, with a suspicion of witchcraft, or deviltry of some kind, about them. They would make all sorts of gyrations, up, down, a circle, a half circle to the right, then one to the left, and so on. Sometimes they would be unusually active. Haines' Bluff would talk to Snyder's; Snyder's to Sherman's headquarters; Sherman's to Grant's, ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... headquarters of the Neosho Agency; but no more perturbed place could be imagined than was that same Neosho Agency at the opening of the Civil War. Bad white men, always in evidence at moments of crisis, were known to be interfering with the Osages, exciting them by their own marauding to deviltry and mischief of the worst ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... "If we do I'm going to get the girls ashore and keep them there," he muttered. "I don't care what you think of the proposition. This trip is going to be a tough one, and I'm certain there is some deviltry afoot." ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... enough acquainted with these rough youths to know that some deviltry was preparing, and, already furious with his bride and distrustful of the future, his self-command at last gave way. Drawing Fan away from the ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... the wan, frost-nipt girl, as heretofore described. Nevertheless, among those fragrant blossoms, and conspicuously, too, had been stuck a weed of evil odor and ugly aspect, which, as soon as I detected it, destroyed the effect of all the rest. There was a gleam of latent mischief—not to call it deviltry—in Zenobia's eye, which seemed to indicate a slightly malicious purpose ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Texas, "what's the use of wastin' time this way? Everybody knows that Bowney's been at the bottom of all the deviltry that's been done in the county this three year. Highway robbery's a hangin' offense in Texas an' every other well-regilated State; so's hoss-stealin', an' so's shootin' a man in the back, an' yit Bowney's done ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... as lively as Bill Greenleef he wood have cougt us. well he went round the house and then old Missis Hobbs she came to the door and said what is it William, and he said it is some more of that Purington boys deviltry, and she said i wood speek to his father and old Hobbs he said he wood and then they went in. jest as we was going to ring the bell agen a man come walking quick down the street and went up to the door and rung the ...
— 'Sequil' - Or Things Whitch Aint Finished in the First • Henry A. Shute
... the walls were wrapped in flames! But he held his ground and went on reading, never once looking behind him. Just before daybreak the Princess rushed to her coffin—then the fire seemed to go out immediately, and all the deviltry vanished! ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... night after his Saturday in town, Jack concocted a piece of deviltry which was as dangerous as it was foolish. The result was that an explosion took place, and the author of the gun-powder plot had all the skin on both hands blistered. Burnett, in escaping, fell and broke ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... say," observed Pike, grinning, "but then again there are others of us who travel on nerve and gall and never get any further! Just put this in your pipe, Bub, and don't forget it: Conrad is organised for whatever deviltry he is up to! There is no 'happen so' in his schemes. He is a cog in some political wheel, and it's a fifty-fifty gamble as to whether the wheel is German or Mexican, but it is no little thing, and is not ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... green-horns! Money, you think, is the sole motive to pains and hazard, deception and deviltry, in this world. How much money did the devil make by ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... laid eyes onto them, I made up my mind they were up to some deviltry, and I watched them—watched them as a cat does a mouse. I heard that old rascal say something about his looking for the purtiest lady in the valley, and I knew at once he meant Mrs. Perkins, and that roused my dander, as you may guess, and I swore I would go for him. I was so mad that ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... accomplished very quickly for both, though the strength of the jaws taxed his muscles to their utmost. Finally, he strewed leaves, and bent grass, until no least gleam of metal betrayed the masked peril of the trail. Plutina, sick with the treacherous deviltry of the device, heard the grunt of satisfaction with which Hodges contemplated his finished work. Forthwith, he picked up his rifle, thrust the ax-helve within his belt, and set off up ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... one's mouth. It was indeed to have been born to social dignity, fortune, courage, and more than the usual allowance of good looks. And though the fortune was lavishly spent, the courage sometimes betrayed into a rather theatrical dare-deviltry, and the good looks prone to deteriorate in style, there was always the social position left, and this was a matter of the deepest importance in Delisleville. The sentiments of Delisleville were purely patrician. It ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... was the most efficient and dreaded chief of all who have ever been at the head of the Kiowa nation. Ever restlessly active in ordering or conducting merciless forays against an exposed frontier, he was the very incarnation of deviltry in his determined hatred of the whites, and his constant ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... propaganda, uncovered the tracks of the Prussian beast in our midst, found out, we thought, the meaning of explosions and fires and other terrible accidents in our munition plants, and turned every community into vigilant searchers for evidences of German propaganda or deviltry of a destructive kind and we persecuted many an ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... the camp, a spirit of deviltry had entered once more into Long Jim and his mates. A tactless remark on the part of one of the deputies had set alight once more the smouldering fire of resentment which the cowboys had all the time felt against them. At a word from Long Jim they were taken ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... women!' That's them! But it hasn't caught on. Sounds sort of flat around here to those who know the women. So this bunch of Bols has been laying low the last few days. They've hired a boat and go fishing in the lake. They don't fool me, though—not much they don't. They're up to some deviltry, you can bet your sweet life, and we'll be ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... no less myself. There was deviltry afoot, yet hardly a plan for capturing the girl as other punts were available. But the next moment we breathed easier, for the men broke into a boisterous ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... say, and that I do all the deviltry and Henri gets sent to depot for it." He had called for something to eat, and looked up from ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... other tiger skin, until he had consumed additional time. As they passed into the lounging room Shirley led his guest past another small mahogany clock. Again the sharp, anxious glance at the progress of the minutes. He was convinced by now that some deviltry was being perfected on schedule time. He began to worry over his little assistant on the floor high above: perhaps he would not be able to cope with the plotters, after all. Yet, Chen was wiry, cunning, and needed no diagrams as to the purpose for which ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball |
