"Topsy-turvy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... graceful Gothic church of St. Eloi, of which one aisle had been shattered; then, turning another corner, we came on a poor bourgeois house that had had its whole front torn away. The squalid revelation of caved-in floors, smashed wardrobes, dangling bedsteads, heaped-up blankets, topsy-turvy chairs and stoves and wash-stands was far more painful than the sight of the wounded church. St. Eloi was draped in the dignity of martyrdom, but the poor little house reminded one of some shy humdrum person suddenly exposed in the ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... who, after much blustering in the insolent barbaric way, and many menaces to Andromachus if he did not forthwith send the Corinthians off, stretched out his hand with the inside upward, and then turning it down again, threatened he would handle their city even so, and turn it topsy-turvy in as little time, and with as much ease. Andromachus, laughing at the man's confidence, made no other reply, but, imitating his gesture, bid him hasten his own departure, unless he had a mind to see that kind of dexterity practiced first upon the ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... companion ladder, and if I had how they would have laughed. The captain said the ship was on an angle of twenty degrees, what that means I cannot precisely say, but leave you to find out. I can only tell you I thought we were topsy-turvy very often, and I hope we shall not experience any more angles of that kind again. Sybil was awfully frightened, and as white as a sheet. Serena was too ill to care whether the ship was in angles or out. Felix is such a jolly boy, and ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... great measure from the other events which were preparing, and finally carried her off altogether on the eve of many and great changes, such as turned topsy-turvy the life of the Warrenders. She was naturally very much taken up by her husband and her new surroundings, and the delightful trouble of settling down in her new parish and home. And she was at a considerable distance from them, ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... no opening; had no pretext, and he waited for some fortunate circumstance, with his heart ravaged, and his mind topsy-turvy. The night passed, and the pretty girl still slept, while Morin was meditating his own fall. The day broke and soon the first ray of sunlight appeared in the sky, a long, clear ray which shone on the face of the sleeping girl, and woke her, so ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... the row here—hey? I was gone just half an hour, and everything has gone topsy-turvy. Lipa, why did you let the chickens get into the raspberry bushes? Go and drive 'em away, damn you! I am talking to you—yes, to you! Go, or I'll go you, I'll go ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... doctoress?" said Alfieri carelessly. "Oh, she's one of your prodigies of female learning, such as our topsy-turvy land produces: an incipient Laura Bassi or Gaetana Agnesi, to name the most distinguished of their tribe; though I believe that hitherto her father's good sense or her own has kept her from aspiring to academic honours. The beautiful Fulvia is a good daughter, ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... been terrific, blinding, tropical in their almost ceaseless roar and fury. Surely only madmen or fiends would fight in such an elemental maelstrom. We may be both, and perhaps we are, now that the whole world is topsy-turvy; for we are going savagely on at this dread business, half blind and wholly desperate. If the furious sky were to rain red-hot pitchforks the contending armies would still be undismayed and would crawl, if not ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... for sometime there would be danger of amputation—another urchin would upset a kettle of scalding water on himself, and then he would be laid up for sometime, while mamma turned the green-ribbon room topsy-turvy in her searches after old linen—and once the daughter fell down stairs, and was taken up for dead. They seemed to be an unfortunate family—always meeting with hair-breadth escapes. Aunty Patton's reticule was always well filled with good things on every occasion of ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... Roxalanne is accounted an heiress. In addition to that, my own power in the province is known, whilst my defection from the Cardinalist party is feared. What better link wherewith to attach me again to the fortunes of the Crown—for Crown and Mitre have grown to be synonymous in this topsy-turvy France—than to wed my daughter to ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... Boulogne; tho I confess it sometimes gave me a momentary uneasiness to see my rustic throne beneath the oak usurped by a noisy group of girls, the silence and decorum of my imaginary realm broken by music and laughter, and, in a word, my whole kingdom turned topsy-turvy with romping, fiddling, and dancing. But I am naturally, and from principle, too, a lover of all those innocent amusements which cheer the laborer's toil, and, as it were, put their shoulders to ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... him to return home with the rich prize he had brought from the Indian seas and the coast of Africa, and meantime he lay there in the Delaware Bay waiting for a reply. Before he left he turned the whole of Tom Chist's life topsy-turvy with something that he ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... the hill to where the great white dome glistened under the stars, and once inside, Jim Carter of The New York Press was privileged to see two of those strange objects that had turned the world topsy-turvy. ...
— Spawn of the Comet • Harold Thompson Rich
... musty gods were my father, but Plutus, Riches; that only he, that is, in spite of Hesiod, Homer, nay and Jupiter himself, divum pater atque hominum rex, the father of gods and men, at whose single beck, as heretofore, so at present, all things sacred and profane are turned topsy-turvy. According to whose pleasure war, peace, empire, counsels, judgments, assemblies, wedlocks, bargains, leagues, laws, arts, all things light or serious—I want breath—in short, all the public and private business of mankind is governed; without whose help all that herd of gods of the poets' ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... to think we grow more wise When Radcliffe's page we cease to prize, And turn to Malthus, and to Hervey, For tombs, or cradles topsy-turvy; 'Tis sweet to flatter one's dear self, And altered feelings vaunt, when pelf Is passion, poetry, romance; — And all our faith's in three per ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... spoke, but the word he said was "Silence"; The aspen sang, but silence was her theme. The wind was silence, restless; and the voices Of the bright forest-creatures were as silence Made vocal in the topsy-turvy of dream. ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... places. "The General is a bigger man than the doctor," I thought, half angrily, "and yet the General will be a gay old bird as long as the gout permits him to hobble." And it seemed to me suddenly that the moral order, on which the doctor loved to dilate, had gone topsy-turvy while I stood on the General's porch. As if reading my thoughts the great man looked up at me, with his ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... remedying anything about which no outcry has been made, we are met with, 'I cannot think what you mean by all this disturbance; nobody else among the clergy sees these things, and I have no wish to be the first to begin turning everything topsy-turvy.' And then people call him a sensible man. I have no patience with them. However, we know what we want, and, as I wrote to Dawson the other day, have a scheme on foot which will, I think, fairly meet the requirements of the case. But we want more money, and my ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... things are going Topsy-turvy and askew To discover someone showing Good old-fashioned faith ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest
... exercises of the day just where they had first stopped. This was at McLean's rooms, dismantled and topsy-turvy with the business of packing. The pipes were going and the talk kept pace. Old men smoke slowly and in great whiffs with long intervals of silence between their observations. Young men draw fast and say many and bright things, for young men are ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... their etiquette is absolute and plenary; in every circumstance it tells them what to do and how to do it. The Gilbertines are seemingly more free, and pay for their freedom (like ourselves) in frequent perplexity. This was often the case with the topsy-turvy couple. We had once supplied them during a visit with a pipe and tobacco; and when they had smoked and were about to leave, they found themselves confronted with a problem: should they take or leave what remained ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of "The Tribune Primer" over the first fifty, which were supplied to the favored few at "Special Rates." This was just such a freak as would have occurred to Field, and in Denver there was no restraint upon the act following upon any wild thought that flitted through his topsy-turvy brain. ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... path, bosom-high. From it a web swung in the wind. At the centre, where the threads met, a black and yellow spider, marked like a man of war, waited its prey. The lad brushed through it with a pang. The spider's work fell about him in ruins: he rushed for the gorse, and hung there topsy-turvy, as though heart-broken. Hard lines certainly! He had upset the spider's apple-cart, as the Almighty had upset his. But he had had to— and so ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... hens always step,—she has simply a motherly sort of cluck, that is but a general expression of affection and oversight. But the moment she finds a worm or a crumb or a splash of dough, the note changes into a quick, eager "Here! here! here!" and away rushes the brood pell-mell and topsy-turvy. If a stray cat approaches, or danger in any form, her defiant, menacing "C-r-r-r-r!" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... the sentiment that he introduced the rollicking bacchanal chorus in the third part. He expressed his feelings to a friend in the remark: "My head was so full of the nonsensical stuff that it all went topsy-turvy, and I therefore called the closing fugue the 'drunken fugue.'" Notwithstanding his many objections, when once he started, he worked hard,—so hard, indeed, that this continuous labor induced brain-fever and intense suffering, and he never entirely rallied from its effects. ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... got bit by the tarantula! Don't you see those strangers who have just come in?' I stopt short; and looking all round, I noticed at last a young man dressed in gray, whom I did not know. 'Go, then, embrace the Priuce-Royal; there he is before you!' said Grumkow. All the blood in my body went topsy-turvy for joy. 'O Heaven, my Brother?' cried I: 'But I don't see him; where is he? In God's name, let me see him!' Grumkow led me to the young man in gray. Coming near, I recognized him, though with difficulty: he had grown amazingly stouter (PRODIGIEUSEMENT ENGRAISSE), shortened about ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... life of drudgery breaks the spirit of these work-dogs and makes them cowardly and cringing. At my approach this one howls, and swerves suddenly around with a rush that upsets both man and cart, topsy-turvy, into the ditch, and the last glimpse of the rumpus obtained, as I sweep past and down the hill beyond, is the man pawing the air with his naked feet and the dog struggling to free himself from ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... began to pour, the noise of the battering-ram and the trampling of the foe and the shouts of "Surrender!" and "De Talbot for ever!" all suddenly stopped and went out like the snuff of a candle; the little dark room seemed to whirl round and turn topsy-turvy, and when the children came to themselves there they were, safe and sound, in the big front bedroom of their own house—the house with the ornamental ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... Mr. Sparrow, holding on to the rim of the spout, turned himself topsy-turvy and surveyed the street. From where I was standing behind the laurel bushes I could see nothing ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... in the mildly deprecating tone in which the elder sometimes do answer the younger in these topsy-turvy days:— ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... cafe to the motor. The whole thing, incredible at any other hour, seemed to the woman like events happening in a dream or in some topsy-turvy country which she ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... wholly when they change? When I look into my heart, I find everything that was there, still there—only they are topsy-turvy. Things that were well-ordered have become jumbled up. The gems that were strung into a necklace are now rolling in the dust. And so my heart ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... my topsy-turvy Close, and, I reckon, rather true. Some are fine fellows: some, right scurvy: Most, a dash between the two. But it's a woman, old girl, that makes me Think more kindly of the race: And it's a woman, old girl, that shakes me When the Great Juggler I ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that has just taken place, and it is an event of too great moment in this quiet little world not to turn it completely topsy-turvy. Labour is at a stand. The house has been a scene of confusion the whole evening. It has been beleaguered by gipsy women, with their children on their backs, wailing and lamenting; while the old virago of a mother has cruised ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... out of tune and harsh." Although order is heaven's first law, it occasionally happens that it is better to break the law than to be broken by it. And so, when the young housekeeper's nicely arranged plans for each day in the week are suddenly turned topsy-turvy, let her take heart of grace, remembering that there are whole days that "ain't ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... thirty-first of August, everything in the Rostovs' house seemed topsy-turvy. All the doors were open, all the furniture was being carried out or moved about, and the mirrors and pictures had been taken down. There were trunks in the rooms, and hay, wrapping paper, and ropes were scattered about. The peasants and house serfs carrying out the things were treading heavily ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... had pleasant weather for about three days," said the Colonel, gravely. "In that time you have let out that crazy bear of yours to turn everything topsy-turvy. Only yesterday I got my hands in the paint you have put on your canoe. If you had asked my advice I would have told you that painting your canoe should not have been done for a month yet. Silas told me you fell down the creek hill; ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... only say the whole question demands much more anxious thought than you seem to have given it. You say that he is a gentleman. He knows how to behave, I admit; but if his morals are as topsy-turvy as his tastes and—er—politics, as I've no doubt they are, then—er—In short, I do not approve of Brian Strange as a husband ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne
... make things look different, mother," she would say, "I can't think why they all seem topsy-turvy to me." ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Mr. Vanstone, entering the room while Miss Garth was making her quotation, with the dogs at his heels. "Well; live and learn. If you're all rakes, Miss Garth, the sexes are turned topsy-turvy with a vengeance; and the men will have nothing left for it but to stop at home and darn ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... in going to sleep. It seemed to her as she lay there, staring wide awake, that everything in the world was unsettled and topsy-turvy. Nothing could ever be right again. What with the fiasco of the night just gone, the appearance of the mysterious brother, the counterbalancing of resolve and remorse within her troubled self, the report of Barry's lapse from rectitude, her mother's astounding sophistry, her tired brain was in ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... know that in my absence you could have behaved badly! Another in your place would have turned the house topsy-turvy, but you have only broken a pane of glass! God bless you for your considerateness. Go on in the same way and you will earn my ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... of the book before us, we must yet take leave to indulge in a few reflections on the effect of this mental explosion in the noddles of John and James and Richard, upon reviewers, publishers, and the world in general. This change of lodging in the author will turn many things topsy-turvy, and conjure the spirit out of much long-established facetiousness. Pictures of poets in garrets will soon not be understood; bathos will be at a premium! the bard will be known, not by the brownness of his beaver, but by the gold band that encircles it. The historian shall go about ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... had been through an earthquake in South America, when things about him were topsy-turvy, when the circus tent came tumbling down about him, and ring curbs went up into the ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... at one time thought of writing an Epic Poem upon Friedrich the Great, 'upon some action of Friedrich's,' Schiller says. Happily Schiller did not do it. By oversetting fact, disregarding reality, and tumbling time and space topsy-turvy, Schiller with his fine gifts might no doubt have written a temporary 'epic poem,' of the kind read an admired by many simple persons. But that would have helped little, and could not have lasted long. It is not the untrue imaginary Picture of a man and his life that I ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... a martinet I can be you may repent, like many another who has obtained his wish. Here we shall reverse matters. Everything is topsy-turvy now, you know, so take this coffee at ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... attempt to keep up the Miss Moore and Mr. Sanderson business. I used to scoff at love at first sight and say it was all the idle fancy of the poets. Then I met you and remained to pray. You've turned my world topsy-turvy. I can't think without you, and yet it would be folly to tell this to my Governor, and ask his consent to our marriage. He wants me to finish college, take the usual trip around the world and then go into the firm. Besides, he wants me to eventually ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... the wind is the wrong way; if you have been jilted or hen-pecked—no matter which—or if you find yourself growing poorer every hour, and all your wisest plans, and best-considered projects for getting rich in a hurry turned topsy-turvy by a change in the market-value of bubbles warranted never to burst; or if you have a note to pay for a man you never saw but once in your life, and hope never to see again—to the window with you! and lean back in your chair with a disposition to be pleased, and watch the different systems ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... lady who had so seldom honored them with her presence, and who always tried so hard to impress them with a sense of her superiority and the mighty favor she conferred upon them by occasionally condescending to bring her aristocratic presence into their quiet, plain household, and turn it topsy-turvy. Still, she was Anna's aunt, and then, too, it was a distinction which Aunt Ruth rather enjoyed, that of having a fashionable city woman for her guest, and so she submitted with a good grace to the breaking in upon all her customs, and uttered ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... are people who think drama ought to be educational, and preach moral lessons, and so on. Well, the popular drama is pretty moral, except, perhaps, musical comedy, which does seem a little topsy-turvy in its lessons; and the Censor prevents politics being introduced or religion being attacked. Every attempt to teach what you would call moral lessons must fall because we know that after all the play is not real. I confess that the romantic and the sentimental rather ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... everything remains moveless and placid. The bedroom is like a show. It might be the bedroom of some famous man exposed to worshipping tourists at sixpence a head. A few chairs have fallen out of the house, and they lie topsy-turvy in the street amid the debris; no one has thought to touch them. In all directions thoroughfares branch ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... asked me to send. Yesterday evening at nine o'clock, the 'Giant' was compelled to descend near the Barcy Marsh, two leagues from Meaux, after three violent shocks, the last of which completely turned everything in the car topsy-turvy, and it descended on its side. The rupture of our valve-pipe rope while travelling by night, forced us to throw out our anchors. One of the prongs of the first anchor having broken, the principal anchor fortunately took hold of the ground. We were able to let out the gas, notwithstanding ...
— Up in the Clouds - Balloon Voyages • R.M. Ballantyne
... were the case, there might be some excuse for his folly. No; all this dirt and confusion, which once a week drives me nearly beside myself, is what K—— calls clearing up the ship; when he and his man Friday, as he calls Kelly, turn everything topsy-turvy, and, to make the muddle more complete, they always choose my washing-day for their frolic. Pantries and cellars are rummaged over, and everything is dragged out of its place, for the mere pleasure of making a litter, and dragging ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... I, which naturally represents them. To mark the fifth, they chose a V, which is made out by bending inwards the three middle fingers, and stretching out only the thumb and the little finger; and for the tenth they used an X, which is a double V, one placed topsy-turvy under the other. From this the progression of these numbers is always from one to five, and from five to ten. The hundred was signified by the capital letter of that word in Latin, C—centum. The other letters, D for 500, and M for ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... and Dublin idea: turning cart-wheels, somersaults, and walking all about us on their hands, with feet in the air, to attract attention and elicit pennies. One little fellow gyrated about in a most marvelous style, keeping so persistently topsy-turvy as to grow black in the face, and we finally paid him to keep right side uppermost. Begging is reduced to a science in India, and our little party were beset, as by an army ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... had suffered a murderous assault in his little cottage upon the outskirts of town, and was even now lying at the point of death in The Samaritan Hospital. That robbery had been the motive was amply indicated by the topsy-turvy condition of the contents of the three rooms which Baggs called home. As the victim still was unconscious no details of the crime were obtainable. Yet even this atrocious deed had been capped by one yet ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Such topsy-turvy habitations as the stores and dwellings of Canvas Town never were seen. The main street, if the thoroughfare where all the business of the mushroom township was transacted could be dignified with such a name, was a snare to the pedestrian and an impossibility ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... fond of drinking, and when he drinks he likes to let you know he is drinking. None of your quiet half-pint inside the bar for him. He likes to come out in the street and sing about it and do tricks with it, such as turning it topsy-turvy over ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... good pimple, an honest soaker, he has a cellar at your Antipodes. If I travel, Aunt, I touch at your Antipodes—your Antipodes are a good rascally sort of topsy-turvy fellows. If I had a bumper I'd stand on my head, and drink a ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... I know it, my darling; and if you had as much to do with Aunt Vi Truefitt as I have, you would realize how often my spirits turn topsy-turvy. I often hope that I'll be Englishized quickly, so that I may get back to my dear parents. But ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... outrages, thefts, treasons, murders, innovations, in debt, shifters, cozeners, outlaws, Profligatae famae ac vitae. It was an old [499]politician's aphorism, "They that are poor and bad envy rich, hate good men, abhor the present government, wish for a new, and would have all turned topsy-turvy." When Catiline rebelled in Rome, he got a company of such debauched rogues together, they were his familiars and coadjutors, and such have been your rebels most part in all ages, Jack Cade, Tom ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... take our departure!—for we shall find our delicate modern ears unable to endure the vast uproar which is about to commence in celebration of the king's escape! Listen! it has already commenced. See!—the whole town is topsy-turvy. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... of the square was occupied by swings, where some eight or ten boat-loads of persons were flying topsy-turvy into the air, making one giddy to look at them, and constant fearful shrieks arose from the lady swingers, at finding themselves in a horizontal or inverted position, high above the ground. One of the machines was like a great wheel, with four cars attached, which mounted ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... gained a great deal in flavour! And now, when I am about to marry again, I have purposely picked out a young girl whom I can educate to suit myself. For the woman, you know, is the man's child, and if she is not, he becomes hers, and then the world turns topsy-turvy. ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... overturned, and a quantity of type battered and thrown into the adjacent bay. The contents of some of the cases were "pied" and scattered around the floor. Frames, chases, galleys, composing-sticks and office furniture were thrown together in one confused heap. In a word, the entire office was turned topsy-turvy. Mr. Mackenzie's mother, who was then in her seventy-eighth year, stood and watched the proceedings in a state of great fear and agitation from a ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... period Socratic every dining-room was Attic (Which suggests an architecture of a topsy-turvy kind), There they'd satisfy their twist on a RECHERCHE cold [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], Which is what they called their lunch - and so may you, if you're inclined. As they gradually got on, they'd [Greek text which cannot be reproduced] (Which is ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... whose pink walls we see blinking at us in the sun just beyond Legation Street, all is also topsy-turvy, the Chinese reports say. The Empress Dowager, shrewdly listening to this person and that, must feel in her own bones that it is a bad business, and that it will not end well, for she understands dynastic disasters uncommonly well. She has sent again ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... so strange and unnatural—so unlike the good old Douglas that she loved, in moleskin trousers and pea-jacket or adicky—that she felt he was somehow different, and that the world was going all topsy-turvy. ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... damage the children did as far as possible," he said with a laugh. "But we can't get the letter back until the wind is ready to turn the dunes topsy-turvy again. That may be in years and it may be never. Let me have your address and if ever it is found it shall be sent directly back to you, and the children can inherit the money if I'm not here to ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the fire, quietly, and took no notice of the request. "People's heads," continued the medical gentleman, "seem turned topsy-turvy. Dear me, how different it was in my time! What men are about, I can't think. The very last newspaper I read had an advertisement that I should as soon have expected to see there when my father was alive, as a ship sailing along this coast keel upwards. You saw it, Fairman. It was just under the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... your uncle had a deal more money than he owned to, and he managed to send his sister Elodie—and that was a stage name he gave her—to send her to be a workwoman at our place, without my daughter's knowing who she was; and, gracious goodness! but that girl turned the whole place topsy-turvy; she got all those poor girls into mischief—impossible to whitewash ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... But, monsieur, monsieur le comte your predecessor, for the credit of the thing, used to punch holes with his penknife in the arms of his chair to make believe he was working. And he makes such a mess of his room. I find everything topsy-turvy. He has a very small mind. ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... own topsy-turvy world," continued the baker. "I can't compare myself with them. A crippled tailor—well, even he has got his full ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... successively tumbling from the air and were cast together into the basket. The last fragment of all that we saw tumble down was the head, and no sooner had that touched the ground than he who had snatched up all the limbs and put them in the basket turned them all out again topsy-turvy. Then straightway we saw with these eyes all those limbs creep together again, and in short, form a whole man, who at once could stand and go just as before, without showing the least damage! Never in my life was I so astonished as when I beheld this wonderful performance, and I doubted now no ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... for a month, at the end of which time his reverence came to me, leaving the porter just outside the door in older to come to his help should I be violent, and then he read me a very purty lecture on my conduct, saying I had turned the religious house topsy-turvy, and corrupted the scholars, and that I was the cheat of the world, for that on inspecting the pack he had discovered the dirty marks which I had made upon the trump cards for to know them by. He said a great deal ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... continues his novel Virginie. In the present chapter he incidentally gives a description of the service of Mass in the good Abbe Leroux's parish church, which is a triumph of imagination and subtle humour. No wonder "the Abbe Leroux was scandalised," when the service had been turned topsy-turvy, the credo put before the gloria, and a young person among his congregation, topping all other voices, was singing a solo! Where was the Beadle? or a Churchwarden? or an Aggrieved Parishioner? Three ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various
... reluctant to leave the April house; but J. M. glanced at one of the many topsy-turvy clocks that hung from the ceiling (of all places!), and reminded them that it was high time to ...
— Zodiac Town - The Rhymes of Amos and Ann • Nancy Byrd Turner
... at him with a comical twinkle in his one eye, and, knocking out the ashes from his pipe, observed, "So you be the young gent as is turning all things topsy-turvy in this here village—you and the colonel between you. I've heard all about it; and a precious mess you'll make of it, ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... and stolid Sheila, and ingenious bits of mechanism that did unbelievable things when wound up, for the clever, imaginative Hans. I was not to have the joy of seeing their wide-eyed delight, but I knew that there would follow certain laboriously scrawled letters, filled with topsy-turvy capitals and crazily leaning words of thanks to the doting old auntie who had been such good fun the ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... they said, "everything gone clean topsy-turvy! And the deep meaning of it is to rob our fishing, under pretence of the Nationals. It may bring a good bit of money to the place, for the lining of one or two pockets, such as John Prater's and Cheeseman's; but I never did hold so much with money, when shattery ways comes along of it. No ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... The moment the tipsy-topsy-turvy feeling stopped, the cook opened her eyes, gave one sounding screech and shut them again, and Anthea took the opportunity to get the desperately howling ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... what robes, and what jewels the Empress should wear on such and such an occasion. One day he daubed her dress with ink because he did not like it, and wanted her to put on another. Whenever he looked into her wardrobe he was sure to throw everything topsy-turvy." ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... his Highness Eberhard Ludwig of Wirtemberg; in having kept back from his knowledge many facts in the administration of the country, and destroying documents addressed to him. Also in having been untrue to him in word and deed. Almost comic this last—a sort of topsy-turvy ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... housewife belike, that was dressed like a May lady, and, as most of our gentlewomen are, "was [5037]more solicitous of her head-tire than of her health, that spent her time between a comb and a glass, and had rather be fair than honest" (as Cato said), "and have the commonwealth turned topsy-turvy than her tires marred;" and she did nought but brag of her fine robes and jewels, and provoked the Roman matron to show hers: Cornelia kept her in talk till her children came from school, and these, said she, are my jewels, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... his colours all topsy-turvy and his work spoiled, was both grieved and angry. He was persuaded some painter of Arezzo, who was jealous of his superior skill, had played him this dirty trick, and went straight to the Bishop to complain. The latter urged him to set to work again and repair with all speed what ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... "everything seems topsy-turvy up here. Why, to-day I saw a man come in with a box of apples which the crowd begged him to open. He was selling those apples at a dollar apiece, and the folks were just fighting to ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... measure did she weigh her love? She took off her ducal coronet, and flung it on the platform of a clown! She took from her brow the Olympian aureola, and placed it on the bristly head of a gnome! The world had turned topsy-turvy. The insects swarmed on high, the stars were scattered below, whilst the wonder-stricken Gwynplaine, overwhelmed by a falling ruin of light, and lying in the dust, was enshrined in a glory. One all-powerful, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... treated like a visitor. Miss Cecilia was so distressed at your missing your breakfast that she spoke to the housekeeper, and I was sent up to you. Please to excuse it if the tea's cold. This is Grand Day, and we are all topsy-turvy in consequence." ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... drunken air, and dribble, a very Idiot of a kettle, on the hearth. It was quarrelsome, and hissed and spluttered morosely at the fire. To sum up all, the lid, resisting Mrs. Peerybingle's fingers, first of all turned topsy-turvy, and then, with an ingenious pertinacity deserving of a better cause, dived sideways in—down to the very bottom of the kettle. And the hull of the Royal George has never made half the monstrous resistance to coming out of the water, which the lid of that kettle employed against Mrs. Peerybingle, ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... poor Wamba, "and for hanging up by the feet, my brain has been topsy-turvy ever since the [v]biggin was bound first around my head; so turning me upside down may ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... gardens and fountains and grey palaces, with theatres, boulevards and the odour and roar of motor-buses just beyond the palisades. And Miss Ingate in the exciting sunshine gazed around with her subdued Essex grin, as if saying: "It's the most topsy-turvy planet that I was ever on, and why am I, of all people, trying to make this canvas look like a piece of sculpture ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... boy was able to see that what he thought was a shadow was really a fish going from the water below to the mill pond above. The child could hardly believe his eyes, and for a little while it seemed that the whole world was turned topsy-turvy, especially as the shadows continued to flit from the water below to ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... of view of a rationalist, the whole world is rendered almost irrational by the single phenomenon of Christian Socialism. It turns the scientific universe topsy-turvy, and makes it essentially possible that the key of all social evolution may be found in the dusty casket of some discredited creed. It cannot be amiss to consider this phenomenon as ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... perpetually moving from place to place, and leaving wherever they went abundant proofs of their diligence and capacity for hard work. From Thasos in the East, where Herodotus saw "a large mountain turned topsy-turvy by the Phoenicians in their search for gold,"[315] to the Scilly Islands in the West, where workings attributable to them are still to be seen, all the metalliferous islands and coast tracts bear traces of Phoenician industry in tunnels, ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... Everything was topsy-turvy in the excitement of getting the injured father, and weary, distracted mother started on their brief journey; but finally they were off, and a row of sober-faced children stood on the bluff overlooking the flats below, watching the ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... canine species; it may have been at the instigation of the footmen, who all cordially detested the beast—the sad fact remains that she was pounced upon in a moment as if she were a deer, snatched, turned topsy-turvy, rolled, kicked about, and bitten by the forty four-legged brigands, who each seemed determined to carry away as a trophy some portion of her cafe-au-lait ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... that mysterious excitement, during which in half an hour a blaspheming costermonger "gets religion" and becomes a saint of God—nothing is more certain than that the human mind can like this, at a flash, turn topsy-turvy; the good coming to the top, the bad going to the bottom. Mechanical pressure on the cortex of the brain can bring this state of things about, even as it can convert a saint of God ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... feed her. The pratenses fob her off. Then the poor innocent appeals to the enemies of her species, the sanguineae, and, after the manner of ants, she licks the mouth of two among them. The two sanguineae are so touched by this gesture, which turns their instinct topsy-turvy, that they disgorge their honeyed store and feed the young enemy. Thenceforward all is well. An offensive and defensive alliance is formed between the little pratensis and the sanguineae against the ants of the young one's own species. ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... taste of every table, pledge every toast, silently join in every roar of merriment. I become a sort of universal guest. With what propriety is this jovial season, placed amid dismal December rains and snows! How one pities the unhappy Australians, with whom everything is turned topsy-turvy, and who holds Christmas at midsummer! The face of Christmas glows all the brighter for the cold. The heart warms as the frost increases. Estrangements which have embittered the whole year, melt in to-night's hospitable smile. There are warmer handshakings on this night than during ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... "M. Sauvager, without consulting the public prosecutor, has issued a warrant for the apprehension of one Comte d'Esgrignon, in order to serve a grudge borne against him by one du Croisier, an enemy of the King's government. It is a regular topsy-turvy affair. The President, for his part, goes away, and thereby puts a stop to the preliminary examination! And we know nothing of the matter. Do they, by any chance, mean ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... are calculated to make people discontented with things as they are. You rob them of the content which has made them comfortable heretofore, and yet you offer them nothing better in return for it. You would have society turned topsy-turvy, and all for what? Why, simply to make a wrong thing right for yourself! If your example were followed by all the unhappy people in the world, how would it end, do you think? There must be moral laws, and it is inevitable that they should press hardly ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... morning pennies. (By the time the children leave school, they will have saved thus, penny by penny, enough to provide them with a new rig-out for service—or Sunday wear.) There was a frizzling in the topsy-turvy little kitchen. ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... the rich Aldermen's daughters were actually out in the fields herding sheep, and their sons sweeping chimneys or carrying newspapers; while the poor charwomen's and coal-heavers' children spent their time like princesses and fairies. Such a topsy-turvy state of society was shocking. Why, the Mayor's little daughter was tending geese out in the meadow like any common goose-girl! Her pretty elder sister, Violetta, felt very sad about it, and used often to cast about in her mind for ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... scenery Alcides always managed to send the canoe on to some rock, which quickly brought me back, not to earth but to water. His principle in life was always to do the worst thing and then you knew that nothing worse could happen—a topsy-turvy philosophy for which we all had to suffer. Emerging from the basin, we had two channels before us, one to the N.N.E., the other N.N.W. Gigantic palm trees such as we had seen along the River Arinos were now ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... will say, is an emblem of a tree standing on its head; and pray what is man, but a topsy-turvy creature, his animal faculties perpetually mounted on his rational, his head where his heels should be, grovelling on the earth! And yet, with all his faults, he sets up to be an universal reformer and corrector of abuses, a remover of grievances, rakes into every sluts' corner ...
— English Satires • Various
... to be thrust out of all the good things in this life. He is not fit for anything but a garret! Put a genius into office! make a genius a bishop! or a lord chancellor!—the world would be turned topsy-turvy! You see that you are quite astonished that a genius can be even a county magistrate, and know the difference between a spade and a poker! In fact, a genius is supposed to be the most ignorant, impracticable, good-for-nothing, ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book IV • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... out, for we can't have her here," said Briar. "It is absolutely impossible. She'll try to turn us into fine ladies, and she'll talk about the dresses we should have, and she'll want father to get some awful woman to come and live with us. She'll want the whole house to be turned topsy-turvy." ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... an Englishman would not hesitate to do, a topsy-turvy morality, let us realize that sayings such as these really give us the true values of things as nothing else could. For there are more sins "in heaven and earth than are dreamt of" in a nation's classified immoralities. Stealing a shilling is a recognized ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... they might be leaders, but they have no social weight in this topsy-turvy land, and though they have been employed in clerical work for generations they have no practical knowledge of affairs. A ship's clerk is a useful person, but he is scarcely the captain; and an orderly-room writer, however smart he may be, is not the colonel. You ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... without disturbing its calm, as though the low, brightly colored houses with the old-fashioned ornate facades had tacitly come to the sensible agreement to ignore with aristocratic reserve this arrogant, blustering fellow, War, who turned everything topsy-turvy. ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... called me one side this afternoon and asked me, in a whisper, to buy for them a skillet and a pair of green belluses, with a sprig of flowers painted on them, and a brass nose. Who'd thought of a wedding setting her topsy-turvy! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... queer one!" Freddie Firefly exclaimed. "But it's no wonder. People say that you've hung upside down so much that the inside of your head is all topsy-turvy." ...
— The Tale of Freddie Firefly • Arthur Scott Bailey
... concession to which weakness, it was agreed that I should call in about an hour at the office of the lawyer, whom (as he left the library) Uncle Adam should waylay and inform of the arrangement. I suppose there was never a more topsy-turvy situation; you would have thought it was I who had suffered some rebuff, and that iron-sided Adam was a generous conqueror who scorned ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... saw the money; saw it in the hand of the person who hid it there. Let me look for it, constable. I will not give up the search till I have turned the place topsy-turvy." ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... ask, 'did you not come on that occasion and have my place searched?' I did so, hah! hah! I went when you were ill in bed—but, let me tell you, not officially, not in my magisterial capacity; but go I did. We had your rooms turned topsy-turvy at our very first suspicions, but umsonst! Then I said to myself: 'That man will make me a call, he will come of his own accord, and that before very long! If he is guilty, he will be bound to come. Other kinds of men would not do ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... face, disguised, false and fickle, Full fraughted with all sleights, she playeth on the pack; On whom she smileth most, she turneth most to wrack. The time hath been, when Virtue had[383] the sovereignty Of greatest price, and plac'd in chiefest dignity; But topsy-turvy now the world is turn'd about: Proud Fortune is preferr'd, poor Virtue clean thrust out. Man's sense so dulled is, so all things come to pass, Above the massy ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... quiet village of Cyrus, with its whimsical villagers, is abruptly turned topsy-turvy by the arrival in its midst of an actress, distractingly feminine, Lila Laughter; and, at the same time, an epidemic ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... and myself have "committed the very serious error of inverting the mutual relation of dialectic variety and uniformity of speech, thus turning topsy-turvy the whole history of linguistic development..... It may seem hardly worth while to spend any effort in refuting an opinion of which the falsity will have been made apparent by the exposition ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... was one of the humors of the camp—a practical manifestation of the facetious spirit that had found literary expression in the topsy-turvy obituary notice from the pen of Hurdy-Gurdy's great humorist. Perhaps it had some occult personal signification impenetrable to understandings uninstructed in local traditions. A more charitable hypothesis is that it was owing to a misadventure on the part of Mr. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... old days when the war was young, when armies were taking up positions, when the management of newspaper reporters was not developed to a fine art, when Europe was topsy-turvy, when it was quite the thing for war correspondents to outwit the authorities ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... forbidden. They fabricate systems, they recast society, they demolish the monarchy, they fling all laws to the earth, they put the attic in the cellar's place and my porter in the place of the King, they turn Europe topsy-turvy, they reconstruct the world, and all their love affairs consist in staring slily at the ankles of the laundresses as these women climb into their carts. Ah! Marius! Ah! you blackguard! to go and vociferate ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... rapidly as a legal revolt. That evening Madame Marion and her friends organized for the morrow a meeting of "independent electors" in the interests of Simon Giguet, the colonel's son. The morrow had now come and had turned the house topsy-turvy to receive the friends on whose independence the leaders of the movement counted. Simon Giguet, the native-born candidate of a little town jealously desirous to elect a son of its own, had, as we have seen, put to profit this desire; and yet, the whole prosperity and ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... did not each have a maid. Mr. Starkweather could not afford that luxury. But Hortense at once requisitioned one of the housemaids to wait upon her and of course Mrs. Olstrom's very carefully-thought-out system was immediately turned topsy-turvy. ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... amusement of the idle. It is true that through some miscalculation they have chosen the wrong branch of the river. As for the Prince, that sublime person, having now served his turn, may go, along with the ARABIAN AUTHOR, topsy-turvy into space. But if the reader insists on more specific information, I am happy to say that a recent revolution hurled him from the throne of Bohemia, in consequence of his continued absence and edifying neglect ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... home swiftly through the early night, his brain seething with tumultuous thoughts. The revelations of the day were staggering; the whole universe seemed to have turned topsy-turvy since that devastating hour at Burton's Inn. Somehow he was not able to confine his thoughts to Hetty Castleton alone. She seemed to sink into the background, despite the absolution he had been so ready, so ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... of living nature, man is the only animal that seeks to poison or destroy his own instincts, to turn topsy-turvy the laws of his being, and to make himself as unlike, as possible, that which he was obviously designed ...
— An Essay on the Influence of Tobacco upon Life and Health • R. D. Mussey
... that, When everything's been said— May I offer this mat If you will stand on your head? I suppose I look to be upside down From your present point of view. It's a giddy old world, from king to clown, And a topsy-turvy, too. But, worthy and now uninverted old man, You're built, at least, on a normal plan If ever a truth I spoke. Smoke? Your air and conversation Are a liberal education, And your clothes, including the metal hat And ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... Here's Topsy-Turvy, upside down, The ceiling seems the base: Reverse the ground and 'twill be found The things are out ...
— The Royal Picture Alphabet • Luke Limner
... The human race cannot forever exist half-exploiter and half-exploited. Until we become buyers and sellers alike, producers and consumers alike, keeping the balance not for profit but for service, we are going to have topsy-turvy conditions. ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... whenever a chief saw a girl he liked he simply informed the relatives of the fact and enrolled her among the number of his wives. Charlevoix adds that he knew of no nation in America where the women were more unchaste. The privileges conferred on the princesses thus appear like a coarse, topsy-turvy joke, while affording one more instance of the lowest degradation ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... was still topsy-turvy. The valet de chambre had not dared to put the things in order, as if there reigned, amid the scattered packages and the yawning drawers, the ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... (if there is such a thing as being destined—at any rate, it fell to her lot) to turn the lives of those two bigwigs topsy-turvy, and to get her picture into more papers than both of them put together. A large part of latter-day existence has consisted of the fear or the favor of getting pictures ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... Duespeptos was king only in name,—roi faineant. Gaster was the power behind the throne,—the Mayor of the Palace,—the great Grand-Vizier. Nought went merrily, for he ruled with a rod of iron. Every day his strange freaks set the empire topsy-turvy. Every day there was growling and ill-feeling at his whimsical tyranny,—but nothing more. Secession was as impossible as in the day ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... except Jack himself and a little girl, and when the gauger showed his warrant and began his search, Stokoe made no remark whatever, merely sat where he was, smoking. The gauger's search was very thorough; everything was topsy-turvy before many minutes had passed, but nothing could he find. There remained the loft, to which access was given by a ladder somewhat frail and dilapidated. Up went the gauger, and began tossing down into the room below the hay with which ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... as he entered Miss Craven's drawing-room was that she was in the midst of a removal. The place was turned topsy-turvy. Curtains had been taken down, ornaments removed from their shelves, pictures from their hangings; and the grand piano stood where it had never yet been allowed to stand, in a draught between the window and the door. Tripping over a Persian rug, he saw that the floor ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... published his "Persian Letters" in which two distinguished Persian travellers turn the whole existing society of France topsy-turvy and poke fun at everything from the king down to the lowest of his six hundred pastry cooks, the book immediately went through four editions and assured the writer thousands of readers for his famous discussion of the "Spirit of the Laws" in ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... LAETITIA,—I promised to write to you when I should have returned home. Returned home I am, but you may conceive that many, many matters solicit attention and demand arrangement in a house which has lately been turned topsy-turvy in the operation of unroofing. Drawers and cupboards must wait a moment, however, while I fulfil my promise, though it is imperatively necessary that this fulfilment should ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... old," he remarked. "No, I'm more, to be exact. I shall be eighty-two come February. When you've lived as long as that, young Mr. Pratt, you'll know that this life is a game of topsy-turvy—to some folks, at any ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... immense body of superingenious writings it is that we all are responsible to in person and property. It is unquestionable authority for setting aside any statute that any legislative body ever passed or can pass. In it are dictates of recognized validity for turning topsy-turvy every principle of justice and reversing every decree of reason. There is no fallacy so monstrous, no deduction so hideously unrelated to common sense, as not to receive, somewhere in the myriad pages of this awful compilation, a support ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... strange temper are the Senses in! How come their wits thus topsy-turvy turn'd? Hercules Tactus, Visus Polypheme! Two goodly surnames have they purchased. By the rare ambrosia[306] of an oyster-pie, They have got such proud imaginations, That I could wish I were mad for company: But since my fortunes cannot ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various |
