"Upside" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... afterbirth. When the afterbirth is expelled it is wrapped in a piece of deer hide or cloth and buried. It is always placed right side up if a woman desires to continue bearing children. If she wishes not to have children it is buried upside down. If at a later time she wishes to become pregnant, she will turn the earth where the upside-down afterbirth was buried. Informants say that not many people do this any more, mainly because younger women go to the hospital to have their babies, but that many people know how ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... Uncouth, strange, Underne, - A.M., Ungoodly, rudely, Unhappy, unlucky, Unhilled, uncovered, Unr the, scarcely, Unsicker, unstable, Unwimpled, uncovered, Unwrast, untwisted, unbound, Upright, flat on the back, Up-so-down, upside down, Ure, usage, Utas, octave of ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... Chicago's greatest businesses the draft of its organization. No man can pass on the merits of the details of a complicated organization without long and intimate acquaintance with its workings. Seeing the plan of the Chicago plant, pressed for a suggestion, I said: 'Your chart is upside down; the president belongs at the bottom, sustaining and carrying, through his organization, all the operations of the plant. Because he is in supreme authority he has the responsibility of making available for everyone, ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... of the gray-haired old gentleman who sat on the lawn at Fairholme, holding a weekly review upside down, was no index to the alarming and disturbing questions which were agitating him within. At the end of a blameless life it is hard to discover that you must do one of two things and that, whichever ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... the library, and, settling himself in a comfortable chair, lit a cigarette.... It was the world turned upside down. Less than twenty-four hours ago it was money and madness, bankruptcy and divorce courts, the automobile pace—the devil's own. Now, it was quiet and gentility, easy-living and refinement. Had he been in Hampton a little longer, he would have added: gossip and tittle-tattle, ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... is herself under ward in the Castle of Berkhamsted, and all matters turned upside down. Man saith that the great men with the King be now Sir William de Montacute and Sir Edward de Bohun, and divers more of like sort. And my Lord of Lancaster, man saith, flung up his cap, and thanked God that he had ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... that would be," said Rupert, laughing. "Why, all the rogues would stand betrayed, and honest folk would get the credit of their good intentions. The world would be turned upside down in short!" ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... the mind and nerves. A table-spoonful three times a day. And THIS is a sedative, which you can take if you find yourself quite unable to sleep. But I wouldn't have recourse to it unnecessarily; for these sedatives are uncertain in their operation; and, when a man is turned upside down, as you have been, they sometimes excite. Have a faint light in your bedroom. Tie a cord to the bell-rope, and hold it in your hand all night. Fix your mind on that cord, and keep thinking, 'This is to remind me that I am eleven miles from Hillsborough, in ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... The gong bellowed and boomed from the hall, but there was no sound of stirring above. "I say," he reported, "I've just looked into the dining-room, and all the chairs are upside down on the table. That looks rather as if we'd ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... house-cleaning. First she turned out her tenants. They were at breakfast; but they took their food with them, and did not mind. Then she tipped their house upside down, and brushed out every stick and stem and bit of leaf, spread thick brown paper on the floor, and put back Greeny and ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... This was exactly the position of all thinking men in what we call the dark ages, say from the sixth to the tenth century. The cheap progressive view of history can never make head or tail of that epoch; it was an epoch upside down. We think of the old things as barbaric and the new things as enlightened. In that age all the enlightened things were old; all the barbaric and brutally ignorant things were new and up to date. Republicanism ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... she wore a white, broad-brimmed hat of straw with a great blue bow and a few narrow streamers of blue ribbon floating jauntily, white stockings and shoes, cross-gartered round her slender ankles with shining ribbons. Was it she? Was it not? Was Martin Hillyard crazy or the whole world upside down? ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... gate until they turned the bend, then I come on back to the house quick like some kind of hurted animal. But, dearie me, I never got a single tear shed, for there were Mis' Peavey with Buck in her arms, shaking him upside down to get out a brass button he hadn't swallowed. By the time we poured him full of hot mustard water and the button fell outen his little apron pocket, I had done got my ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... a drop of poison into the goblet which was beside Patrick, that he might see what Patrick would do in regard to it. Patrick observed this act, and he blessed the goblet, and the ale adhered to it, and he turned the goblet upside-down afterwards, and the poison which the druid put into it fell out of it. Patrick blessed the goblet again, and the ale changed into its natural state. The names of God and Patrick were magnified thereby. The hosts then went ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... of drying is very simple. The bunches are cut from the vines and placed in shallow trays 2 feet wide, 3 feet long, and 1 inch high on which the grapes are allowed to sun-dry, being turned from time to time by simply placing an empty tray upside down on the full one and then turning both over and taking off the top tray. After the raisins are dried they are stored away until they are packed and prepared for shipment. Some of the larger growers, in order not to run so much risk in ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... little over nine months since you came to live with us and turned our farm upside down, digging after 'Hidden Treasure.' Do you remember the Sunday we let the water out ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... poor dears parading round there on wet days when they couldn't walk in their own garden!" said Verity, turning her head almost upside down in her efforts to scan the passage. "I wonder if ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... after holding the diagrams sideways and upside down, began to see what this difference was, a great amazement came upon him. Because, you see, the difference might probably be due to the presence of just the very substance he had recently been trying to isolate in his researches upon such ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... torn up all the churches in a town by the roots, turned them upside down and stuck their steeples in the ground as ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... turn had been done me by Giorgetto Vassellario of Arezzo, [2] the painter; perchance in recompense for many benefits conferred on him. I had harboured him in Rome and provided for his costs, while he had turned my whole house upside down; for the man was subject to a species of dry scab, which he was always in the habit of scratching with his hands. It happened, then, that sleeping in the same bed as an excellent workman, named Manno, who was in my service, when he meant to scratch himself, he tore the skin from one of ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... to the greater part of one of the agricultural journals, and with much deference made two or three suggestions about the farm, which he saw were excellent. She little dreamed that if she were willing to talk of turning the farm upside down and inside out, he ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... the socks frum me, an' I 'lowed she wus goin' to throw 'em away, but she turned 'em upside down an' helt 'em before my eyes. 'Do you call that a M?' sez she, an' shore 'nough it was as plain a W as I ever laid ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... to say mass for twelve sols, nor to toady the archbishop in the hope of being taken into his service. No, he was not going to be in anyone's service. We concealed our indignation, but for the three weeks he has been here he has turned everything upside down. My wife's maid left us yesterday, to our great annoyance, because of him; and the cook says she will go if he remains, as he is always bothering her in the kitchen. We are therefore resolved that ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... maybe, go up into the clouds, and rest there with all its masts and spars distinct against the rose-mist, as she had read of once in a book of travels,—or, perhaps, even be inverted, and stand there on its head, as it were, always: but everything must be upside down, of course, in China. Already the thought of Swan Day had mingled with the mists of the past. The outline became indefinite, and softened into a golden splendor, that belonged no more to her, but was essentially of another hemisphere. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... down to a siege. And so they grow tired of one another, expend their longings in empty space; and, having time for reflection, come to their own conclusions about each other. Many a passion that has taken the field in gorgeous array, with colors flying and an ardor fit to turn the world upside down, has turned home again without a victory, inglorious and crestfallen, cutting but a foolish figure after these vain alarums and excursions. Such mishaps are sometimes due to the diffidence of youth, sometimes to the demurs of an inexperienced ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... to be "impetuous". This text has several instances of inverted letters, as though the type-setter placed the type upside down. (The impetuous ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... red spot visible overhead; the captain brings out his sextant to take an observation. This proceeding we viewed with no little interest, and, for the humor of the thing, I borrowed the sextant of the captain and took a satirical view of a great luminary in obscurity. As I had the instrument upside down, the sailors were in convulsions of laughter; but why should we not make everybody happy when we have it in ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... and semi-blindness amid a chaos. Then as he began to recover his consciousness, he found himself standing by a pillar some distance from where he had been sitting: he saw a place where tables and chairs were all upside down, legs in the air, amid debris of glass and breakage: he saw the cafe almost empty, nearly everybody gone: he saw the owner, or the manager, advancing aghast to the place of debris: he saw Lilly standing not far off, white ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... The barrels were turned upside down, and instantly a sheet of oil covered the whole surface of the water. The billows fell as if by magic, the whole foaming sea seemed leveled, and the DUNCAN flew over its tranquil bosom into a quiet basin beyond the formidable bar; but almost the same minute the ocean burst forth again with ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... had received a severe mental jolt. She thought in exclamation points. A boy! Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert of all people adopting a boy! From an orphan asylum! Well, the world was certainly turning upside down! She would be surprised at nothing after ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... trying to make him shut up. We put a carpet bag over his head, but he went on inside it; and then we sat on him, but he sang under us; we held him upside down and made him crawl head first under the sofa, but when, even there, he kept it up, we saw that nothing short of violence would induce him to silence, so we let him go. And then he said we had hurt him, ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... glad to comply with her plea to put sensible talk from them just then. There was nothing sensible he could say. He was holding Julius Marston's daughter in his arms, and she was telling him that she loved him. The world was suddenly upside down and he was surrendering ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... pretend to believe that such an arrangement can be, or will be, permanent. In these times the educational tree seems to me to have its roots in the air, its leaves and flowers in the ground; and, I confess, I should very much like to turn it upside down, so that its roots might be solidly embedded among the facts of Nature, and draw thence a sound nutriment for the foliage and fruit of literature and of art. No educational system can have ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... no heed. Edwin and Maggie exchanged a glance. Maggie made the tea direct into a large cup, which she had previously warmed by putting it upside down on the saucepan lid. When it was infused and sweetened, she tasted it, as for a baby, and blew on it, and gave the cup to her father, who, by degrees, emptied it, though not exclusively into ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... screamed the old seller of dreams, his voice rising to a shriek, "Run your lives! This castle lies under a terrible enchantment; in a few minutes it will turn upside-down. Have you not seen that everything is fastened to the floor? Run for ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... breath an' figger out what he meant by 'rush' an' 'rough house' he had knocked over a table an' crowded some Greaser half off the map. One little funny man leaped up like a wild monkey an' began to screech. An' in another second he was in the air upside down. When he lit, he laid there. Then, quicker'n I can tell you, the young man dove at Rojas. Like a mad steer on the rampage he charged Rojas an' his men. The whole outfit went down—smash! I figgered then what 'rush' meant. The young fellow came up out of the pile with ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... sure I don't know. I'm prepared for any thing strange that can possibly happen. Mother and Ester between them have turned the world upside down for me to-night. In case you are the happy man, I hope ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... the moment you left it it would turn itself upside down, and empty itself of all its contents ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... economizing his consciousness. He was not living in a corner of it to spare the furniture of the rest. He was squarely encamped in the centre and he was keeping open house. When he smiled, it was like the movement of a person who in emptying a cup turns it upside down: he gave you the last drop of his jollity. He inspired Newman with something of the same kindness that our hero used to feel in his earlier years for those of his companions who could perform strange and clever tricks—make their joints ...
— The American • Henry James
... put in a word edgeways, Captain Danvers—'scuse me, I mean colonel. You spoke of Andy Jackson. He's not my stripe—I'm a Federalist yist'day, to-day and forever—but Old Hickory is a truth teller. What did Jackson say? I give you his upside dixit, word for word, ex litteratum, as they say. Andrew Jackson says, says he, 'Whatever may have been the project of Burr, James Wilkinson has went hand in hand ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... reverse is the case. The Khasi word for consulting the omens is khan, and a diviner is called a nongkhan. Another method of obtaining omens is by dropping two leaves into a pool of water or on a stone, the position of the leaves as they fall, either right side uppermost or upside down, signifying good or evil as the case may be; this is ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... fellows with their cocked hats tilted rakishly over their ears, and the clubs fastened to their wrists, whom I had already seen in the morning, and who were now running here and there, and turning everything upside down, there was the bailiff, Zimmer, standing before one of the tables, dressed in black, with a grave air and penetrating glance, and near him the secretary Roth, with his red wig, imposing countenance, and large ears, flat as oyster shells. They paid no attention to my entrance, and this circumstance ...
— The Dean's Watch - 1897 • Erckmann-Chatrian
... water was given to him, ate voraciously, and accepted every service rendered to him as a duty to be discharged by one fellow-being to another when cut off in the desert from his kin. He stopped at the camp for some time and recognised the boat, explaining that it was upside down, as of course it was, and pointing to the North-West as the region where they would use it, thus raising Sturt's hopes once more. Whence he came they could not divine, nor could he explain to them. After a fortnight he departed, ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... turned the despatch-box upside down upon the table. At sight of the heap of bank paper and gold that lay in front of us, between the candles, or rolled upon the ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and long for? When my own dear lads are safely settled I'll never try another, for these things are heart-breaking, and I can't manage any more,' thought Mrs Jo, as she put the lining into Teddy's coat-sleeve upside down, so perplexed and grieved was she ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... the kitchen sink doesn't turn upside down, and squirt the water on the ceiling and into the cat's eye, I'll tell you next about Papa No-Tail ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... seen her, and curiosity had its influence as well as affection. Great, therefore, was his delight when at last the chaise came round the corner of the street, and began to draw up in order to halt at their door. The first thing he caught sight of was a curious bonnet, like a black coal-scuttle upside down, inside which, when it turned its front towards him, he saw a close-fitting widow's cap, and inside that a kind old face, and if he could have looked still further, he would have seen a kind young soul inside the kind old face. She smiled ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... all upside down, and this first page written last; for I didn't like something I had written about myself last night when I was tired, and ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... experiments and observations would seem to point. Take an illustration. The early certitude on the sex-differences in the weight of the brain and in the proportion of the cerebral lobes has been completely turned upside down. The long believed opinion of the inferiority of the woman in this direction has been proved to be founded on prejudice, fallacies, and over-hasty generalisations, so that now it is allowed that the sexual differences in the brain are ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... running knot round one ankle, and the other in like fashion round the other. Then he cut the line in halves, and drawing them over two hooks in the ceiling, some distance apart, so that the legs continued widespread like a V upside down, hauled the feet up as high as he could, and fastened the ends of the lines. Hold lines and hooks, it was now impossible ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... dukes, kings, etc., had suddenly been killed? 4. Can you see why in some countries in Europe a man who earns his living is looked down upon by the nobles? 5. What is meant by saying that the feudal system turns society upside down? 6. Why did the farmers continue to feed the fighting men? 7. Explain how the use of gunpowder in warfare helped to break up the feudal system. 8. How did the rise of cities also help to do away with the ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet
... contained one obstinate bee (His name was Peter), and thus spake he - "Though every bee has shown white feather, To bow to tyranny I'm not prone - Why should a hive swarm all together? Surely a bee can swarm alone?" Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. Upside down and inside out, Backwards, forwards, round about, Twirling here and twisting there, Topsy turvily everywhere - Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. Pitiful sight it was to see Respectable elderly high-class bee, Who kicked the beam at sixteen stone, Trying his best to swarm alone! Buzz, ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... is so refined in blind children, that a pupil, a little informed, becomes perfectly acquainted with maps by handling them: he points out with his finger countries and towns; if a map is presented to him upside down, he places it in a proper manner, and if one map is substituted to another, he instantly ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... satin breeches. His hair was thrown backwards and tied with the customary black ribbon, and his linen and laces were of the finest quality. He met Cornelia as he might have met a princess; and he flashed into Arenta's eyes a glance of admiration which turned her senses upside down, and made her feel, for a moment or two, as ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... dog shook himself free from his harness. The lodge poles he was dragging turned upside down, holding the howling puppy ...
— Two Indian Children of Long Ago • Frances Taylor
... was wrecked in the river I had my latest gyroscope. It seemed to be perfect, and, with Jack and Harry, I had made a number of beautiful flights. I even flew alone upside ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... fascinating part of the book which holds one's attention and keeps him reading to the end. It is a bright, breezy, and radical turn-the-world-upside-down book. We do not like its religious tone. We do not like the author's occult theosophy. We do not like her sociology, with its good word for the windmill logic of the speculative Bellamy. We do ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... were rumors that the psych warfare boys had some gimmick cooked up, to turn the U. S. S. R. upside down in a revolution, the next time power changed hands, but he'd been hearing that one for years. Still, with four new dictators over there in the last eleven years, there ...
— Slingshot • Irving W. Lande
... sometime to frown with storms and waves. And shall the insatiable desire of men tie me to constancy, so contrary to my custom? This is my force, this is the sport which I continually use. I turn about my wheel with speed, and take a pleasure to turn things upside down. Ascend, if thou wilt, but with this condition, that thou thinkest it not an injury to descend when the course of my sport so requireth. Didst thou not know my fashion? Wert thou ignorant how Croesus, King of the Lydians, not long before a terror to Cyrus, within a while after ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... square, proceed to do another which does not communicate with it. When you have thus done all the alternate squares, as on a chess-board, turn the pasteboard upside down, begin again with the first, and put another coat over it, and so on over all the others. The use of turning the paper upside down is to neutralise the increase of darkness towards the bottom of the ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... into the city that day, her rush-bottomed chair, which was always left upside down in case rain should fall in the night, was set ready for her, and on its seat was a gay, gilded box, such as rich people give away full ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... needed his trial and condemnation to alter my opinion. In fact, I do not regret the old regime,—though I have had some agreeable times under it. But never tell me the Revolution is going to establish equality, because men will never be equal; it is an impossibility, and, let them turn the country upside down to their heart's content, there will still be great and small, fat and ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... wouldn't be surprised if it was that Alla party, suggested that we lash a man to the rigging and let him look for help. Another was strong for turning the flag upside down as a signal of distress. Louie Zweibaum nearly drowned because he had to use both hands to tell her that ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... these (as my father saw nothing in them to the last) but insane rhapsody. From these sources, and from the acquaintance I kept up with the French literature of the time, I derived, among other ideas which the general turning upside down of the opinions of European thinkers had brought uppermost, these in particular: That the human mind has a certain order of possible progress, in which some things must precede others, an order which governments ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... when a creative spirit cannot forget the adversaries which on all sides oppose him in the world: they come unsummoned to the room and will not be expelled; they peer over the shoulder, and tug at the hand which fain would write; they turn images upside down, and distort the thoughts; and here and there, from ceiling and wall, they grin, and scoff, and oppose: and what was just gushing as an aspiration from the soul, is ...
— Christian Gellert's Last Christmas - From "German Tales" Published by the American Publishers' Corporation • Berthold Auerbach
... up to the light, and looked at from the back of the paper. Another tells us to invert the picture and hold it opposite a looking-glass. Neither method is correct. The simple correction wanted is to hold the picture upside down—the same change which brings the top to the bottom brings the right to the left, i.e., ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor
... upside down,' said Daddy, red in the face with his exertions. It was the merest chance that there was no wisp of straw ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... my boy, to side with the King when Chancellor, and then to be made Archbishop and go against the King who made him, and turn the world upside down. ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... 1 we started at half-past six A.M., after a terrific scramble for loads by 400 Lobore carriers, who rushed in and tugged and wrestled for their packages like wolves over a carcase. Boxes were turned upside down, and carried in that manner with an utter ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... The snowy cloth was draped artistically over a picture on the wall, the lowest edges well above the floor. The plates and trays, napkin-covered, were safely stowed away on the floor in distant corners. The kitchen scrub bucket had been brought in and turned upside down, to afford a fitting resting place for the borrowed punch bowl, full to overflowing ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... I see a plan make The Birds that watch us frown, I come and toss the pancake And turn it upside down! ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... it would. She was up betimes next morning, to begin the sweeping and dusting and general turning upside down of the long-unused upper front room. In the course of her window washing, her shoulders enveloped in an old red shawl, she was ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... had settled in a tree. He was clinging upside down, with his wings folded over his eyes. Up the trunk of the tree, the oddest kind of a cat was ...
— Fil and Filippa - Story of Child Life in the Philippines • John Stuart Thomson
... and soon felt very much at home. He expected to hear something in due time disparaging the domestic arrangements, but he heard it sooner than he expected. This time, if Sister Scrub could be credited, her house was all upside down; it wasn't fit to stay in, and she was sadly mortified to be caught in such a plight. The elder looked all around the room, as if to observe the terrible disorder, but he said not a word. By-and-by the dinner was ready, and the elder sat down with the family to a well spread table. ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... and—by gad, the inside of it didn't look right! There was nothing on the glued-down top flap, but the inside back of the envelope wasn't blank, as it should have been. It wasn't written on in Thompson's neat copperplate or in his neat phrases, either. A pencil scrawl stared at me, upside down, as I gripped the lower flap of the envelope unconsciously, under the ball of my big thumb. "Why, here's some more," I exclaimed like an ass, glaring at the envelope's inside back. "'Take care—something——' What's this? What on earth did ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... letters was brought into use, consisting of a large ellipse with "Registered" above and "Gambia" below, both following the line of curve, and with date in centre and control letter above, either B or C, the latter often being found reversed or upside down. This is ...
— Gambia • Frederick John Melville
... I have made don't seem to fit; one or the other must be wrong. It is easier to change you. You don't like the trees, you are unhappy on the ground, and think everything is upside down, therefore I'll turn you inside out, and put you in the water." And so the Porcupine was turned into a new creature, a fish, called the Shad. That is why he is so full of little ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... this reckless beginning, it floundered from bad to worse. It assembled the most complete assortment of other nations' mistakes, and invented several of its own. Almost every known evil of bureaucracy was developed. The system of rates was turned upside down; the flat rate, which can be profitably permitted in small cities only, was put in force in the large cities, and the message rate, which is applicable only to large cities, was put in force in small places. ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... their own exertions, those who survived having either been dug out of the ruins afterward or cast forth by the counter-motion as the earth rocked to and fro in the second shock. It was as if the city had been lifted up en masse, and then thrown back with the foundations uppermost—upside down, in fact. Don Tomas de la G—— happened to be in the plaza in front of the church when the shock came: in the endeavor to steady himself he grasped a tree close by; the tree was uprooted, throwing him violently forward; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... friend," he exclaimed. "Those are returning tourists from Switzerland; the thin, sharp-featured girl there, with a plaid skirt and a satchel, is an American. Heavens! how she talks! She has lost a trunk. The whole system will be turned upside down until she has found it or been compensated. The two young men with her are silent. They are wise. Alone she will prevail. You see the man of commerce; he is off already. He has been to France, perhaps to Belgium also, to buy silks ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... dead with their heads directly downward, because they hold an opinion, that in eleven thousand moons they are all to rise again; in which period the earth (which they conceive to be flat) will turn upside down, and by this means they shall, at their resurrection, be found ready standing on their feet. The learned among them confess the absurdity of this doctrine; but the practice still continues, in ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... they become sometimes quite white. The stars of the southern hemisphere are lauded by some: I cannot see that they surpass or equal those of the northern. Some, of course, are the same. The southern cross is a very great delusion. It isn't a cross. It is a kite, a kite upside down, an irregular kite upside down, with only three respectable stars and one very poor and very much out of place. Near it, however, is a truly mysterious and interesting object called the coal sack: it is a black patch in the sky distinctly darker than all the rest of the heavens. ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... the children began to see one of the laws of nature turn upside down and stand on its head like an acrobat. Any grown-up persons would tell you that money is hard to get and easy to spend. But the fairy money had been easy to get, and spending it was not only hard, it was almost ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... we sought in vain for a week, until, happening one evening to sit upon a bench in the forest (forest in the plan), a few yards from the house-door, we observed at our feet, in the ignominious circumstances of being upside down and greenly rotten, the Old Guard himself: that is to say, the painted effigy of a member of that distinguished corps, seven feet high, and in the act of carrying arms, who had had the misfortune to be blown down in the previous winter. It will be perceived that M. ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... meant down in the corner of the half-inch advertisements," said Flattner. "It will be a rotten-looking newspaper if it's anything like the sheet the Doraine put out on the trip down. No two letters matched, and some of 'em were always upside down. Why were they upside down, Pete? You're an ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... As she went backwards off the step, on to which she had climbed, she fell upon Bridget, who, with even more excitement and I think also with ready tears, clung to the already moving omnibus, and turned her basket upside down ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Treating—for I'm sure any Lecture you give us will be a treat!" said the Other Professor, who had been standing with his back to us all this time, occupying himself in taking the books out, one by one, and turning them upside-down. An easel, with a black board on it, stood near him: and, every time that he turned a book upside-down, he made a mark on the board with a ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... silence of the sleepless nights that stole her bloom she was taking counsel of her own full heart, and resolving to serve another woman as she would herself be served in a like peril, though etiquette was outraged and the customs of polite society turned upside down. ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... a different way of looking at it. I confess I have scant patience with these interfering women, who want to turn everything upside down, instead of quietly minding their ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... Jester, who in happier days Amused us with your Prefaces and Plays, Acquiring a precarious renown By turning laws and morals upside down, Sticking perpetual pins in Mrs. Grundy, Railing at marriage or the British Sunday, And lavishing your acid ridicule On the foundations of imperial rule;— 'Twas well enough in normal times to sit And watch the workings of your wayward wit, But in ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 25, 1914 • Various
... immediately destructive to all authority and discipline, and so provocative of anger, that it would be followed by immediate and signal punishment? Here then we should have a West Indian master reversing all the laws and rules of civilized nations, and turning upside down all the morality of the Gospel by the novel practice of punishing men for their virtues. This new case affords another argument, why a man cannot be born a proper slave. In fact, the whole system of our planters appears to me to be so directly in opposition to the whole system ...
— Thoughts On The Necessity Of Improving The Condition Of The Slaves • Thomas Clarkson
... lions. Perfumed smoke arose from golden censers. Flowering plants grew in large onyx vases. And at the far end, in the purple shadow, gleamed the gold nails on the shell of a huge Indian tortoise turned upside down, which served as the bed of the actress. It was here that every day, to the murmur of the water, and amid perfumes and flowers, Thais reclined softly, and conversed with her friends, while awaiting the hour of ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... tumbler turned upside down, * with an unfinished bit of nibbled sugar, and asked if ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... last is their especial delight. It is a fine thing to behold the business-like air with which they climb into their seats in the parquet, and the gravity with which they immediately begin to read the play-bill upside down. Then, between the acts, the solemnity with which they extract the juice from an orange, through a hole made with a lead-pencil, ...
— The Little Violinist • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... this he had unwisely removed the rocket from its stick, and, unfortunately, he fastened it in the chimney upside down. Having done so, he fumbled in his pocket, the darkness being intense, for his matches, and applied the light underneath in the usual place. But the rocket being upside down he of course failed to set it off, and then he unluckily tried the other end, which was uppermost, with the disastrous ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... gentlemen, is one who needs no introduction to this gathering. His name" (here the chairman consults a little card) "is one that has become a household word. His achievements in" (here the chairman looks at his card again, studies it, turns it upside down and adds) "in many directions are familiar to all of you." There is a feeble attempt at applause and the chairman then lifts his hand and says in a plain business-like tone—"Will those of the audience ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... I introduce Mr. Manners to you?' and in two seconds more my hand was in his arm, and he was saying in a voice as commonplace as if the world had not turned upside down— ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Obenreizer's stockings. Pulling each stocking up tight over her left arm, and holding that arm aloft from time to time, to catch the light on her work, there were moments—delicate and indescribable moments—when Madame Dor appeared to be sitting upside down, and contemplating one of her own respectable legs, elevated in the air. As the minutes wore on, these elevations followed each other at longer and longer intervals. Now and again, the black gauze head-dress nodded, dropped forward, recovered itself. A little ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... that grove of trees, John. He's waving his arms at us. He's standing by some kind of a hut and there's a tall pole with the stars and stripes turned upside down." ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... soil every year, soon after the time of blossoming. Prepare soil as previously directed. Loosen the earth from the pot by passing a knife around the skies. Turn the plant upside down, and remove the pot. Then remove all the matted fibres at the bottom, and all the earth, except that which adheres to the roots. From woody plants, like roses, shake off all the earth. Take the new pot, and ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... that they would not henceforward be allowed to enlarge the area of slavery, and in a suspicion present to their own minds that even the existing area of that cherished institution would be narrowed, and finally reduced to nought,—expunged "as a man wipeth a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down." The friends among us of constitutional liberty and of legality, the enemies of anarchy, the unseduced execrators of slavery, the upholders of the tie of brotherhood across the Atlantic, may well look back with shame to the time—and it was no matter of days or weeks, but a period of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... directed him, and, riding through forest byeways, Sir Launcelot came presently upon a little ruined chapel, standing in the midst of a churchyard, where the tombs showed broken and neglected under the dark yews. In front of the porch, Sir Launcelot paused and looked, for thereon hung, upside down, dishonoured, the shield of many a good knight whom ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay
... a bit sorry for Jack Odin too. Getting ready to lower himself over a precipice, and not having the slightest idea when he would reach bottom. Or whether there was any bottom at all. The blackness beat at the little light. A startled bat left its upside-down perch and fluttered against his face, clicking its ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... did it. No man, not even the most astute student of the market, could have foretold the trend of the market the way he did. And Wrail isn't the most astute. It isn't natural when a man who has always played the safe side suddenly turns the market upside down. Even less natural when he ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... no. I've no idea of upsetting anything. I'm only hoping I can help straighten a few things that have been tumbled over or turned upside down." ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... the air and the soil, and bracing up our nerves, what have we but the influenza, which lasts us for four months, and the spasmodic cough which fills up the remainder of the year? I am no grumbler, sir, I hate and abhor anything like complaining, but this I will say, that the world has been turned upside down—that everything has gone wrong—that peace has come to us unattended by plenty—that every body is miserable; and that vaccination and steam, which have been lauded as blessings, have proved the greatest of all possible curses, and that there is no chance of a return to our ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... our village lay, and then the man, after looking at me for a moment, turned me upside down and emptied my pockets, but there was nothing in them except a piece of bread. When the church came to itself, for he was so sudden and strong that he made it go head over heels before me,—I was seated on a high tombstone trembling, ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... early, up jumped Jim, pulled on his clothes; wrong-side out and upside down (for he was not used to dressing ...
— The Nursery, May 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 5 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... made a great newspaper photo. Captain Al-Amin, wedged between two steel cabinets, hanging upside-down under a pull of one-fifteenth standard gee, holding up his rescuer by the belt. The rescuer, right-side-up, was squeezing a plastic container of liquid soap and directing the stream against ...
— Hanging by a Thread • Gordon Randall Garrett
... not at this moment capable of reading, without seeming to notice the tremor of her hand, and that she was holding the letter upside down before her eyes, Lady Jane, with kind politeness, passed on to the picture at which her young friend had been at work, and stooping to examine the miniature with her glass, made some observations on the painting, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... into the entrance of their hill. But it was too big. So they drew it out and made the hole larger. Then they tried again, but the wing was still too wide. They turned it and made several efforts to get it in sideways, and upside down, but it was impossible; so they lifted it away, and again enlarged the hole. But the wing would not yet go in. Without losing patience, they once more went to work, and, after having labored for three hours and a half, they at last had ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... effort to alter position. . . . Provided that the lowest orders could be redeemed from the brutal misery in which they are plunged, there could be a little more enjoyment in contemplating and mingling with the higher. But it seems as if everything must be turned upside down rather than for one moment more to tolerate such suffering, such bestiality. There have been one or two individual cases that went before the courts that really make it almost wicked ever to smile again. . . . As Mr. ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... that I have found a publisher, I cannot find the books. There is a treatise on the Curvature of the Square,—a Dissertation on Foreign Literature,—two or three novels,—a book on Human Life, that is going to turn the world upside down,—a book on Theology, dull enough to be sensible, that is going to turn it back again,—and a bandboxful of children's stories. Still, in spite of this formidable prospect, take the consolation that an end is sure to come. There is not a particle of reserved force or dormant power or anything ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... upon which the girls had sat and partaken of the queer little man's hospitality was overturned and the one chair in the room was upside down on top of it. The whole room looked as though a cyclone—or a maniac —had been ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
... seemed heightened and her first task complete, the purpose and all the house of Latinus turned upside down, the dolorous goddess flies on thence, soaring on dusky wing, to the walls of the gallant Rutulian, the city which Danae, they say, borne down on the boisterous south wind, built and planted with Acrision's people. The place was called Ardea once of old; and still ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... practical synthesis has taken their place. The Marxian theory that social evolution has been due mainly to economic causes, that these have produced inevitably the present—or recent—capitalist system, which inevitably must be turned upside down in the interests of manual labour—this is no longer dominant in any Western community, though it is fighting a desperate battle in Eastern Europe. But it is equally true that the capitalist system, presented in an ideal and ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... lumps of sugar over and over in their hands, as it were reluctantly nibbling them, blinking, screwing up their eyes, and with a hissing sound sucking in the yellowish boiling liquid through their teeth. At last they had emptied the whole samovar, turned upside down the round cups—one with the inscription, 'Take your fill'; the other with the words, 'Cupid's dart hath pierced my heart'—then they cleared their throats, wiped their perspiring brows, and ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... resteth, but the earth and trees do move and run themselves. Thus it goeth; we give ourselves up to our own foolish fancies and conceits. This fool (Copernicus) will turn the whole art of astronomy upside down; but the Scripture showeth and teacheth another lesson, when Joshua commandeth the sun to stand still, and not ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various
... Vallancey's Collectanea. He found upon one of the ancient stones on the Hill of Tara an inscription which he read Beli Divose, "to Belus, God of Fire;" but which ultimately proved to be the work of some idler who, lying on the stone, cut upside down his name and the date of the year, E. Conid, 1731; upon turning this engraving, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... like that. Poor boy! And Valentine," said Scrooge, "and his wild brother, Orson; there they go! And what's his name, who was put down in his drawers, asleep, at the Gate of Damascus; don't you see him! And the Sultan's Groom turned upside down by the Genii; there he is upon his head! Serve him right. I'm glad of it. What business had he to ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the envelope carefully upside down, and read—or rather pretended to read—the name and address. Eradicate knew well enough where Mary lived, for this was not the first time he had gone there with messages ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton |
