"Crook" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of gold[212], twenty-two carats and one grain fine. Also 36 buts of grains, or Guinea pepper, and about 250 elephants teeth of different sizes. Some of these I saw and measured, which were nine spans in length measured along the crook, and some were as thick as a mans thigh above the knee, weighing 90 pounds each, though some are said to have been seen weighing 125 pounds. There were some called the teeth of calves, of one, two, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... the blessed mutter of the mass, And see God made and eaten all day long, And feel the steady candle-flame, and taste Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke! For as I lie here, hours of the dead night, 85 Dying in state and by such slow degrees, I fold my arms as if they clasped a crook, And stretch my feet forth straight as stone can point, And let the bedclothes, for a mortcloth, drop Into great laps and folds of sculptor's-work: 90 And as yon tapers dwindle, and strange thoughts ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... the right frame of mind, I began again from the beginning with Greek antiquity, and was now filled with such overwhelming enthusiasm for this subject that, whenever I entered into conversation, and by hook or by crook had managed to get it round to this theme, I could only speak in terms of the strongest emotion. I occasionally met some one who seemed to listen to what I had to say; on the whole, however, people preferred to talk to me only about the theatre because, since my production of Gluck's ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... priest tore open his telegram, Fandor lit a cigarette.... By hook or by crook, he must see the contents of this telegram which his travelling companion was reading with frowning brows. But Fandor might squint in the glass for the reflection of the message, pass behind the abbe to peep over ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... scare worth a cent, Hull. Get out. Pronto. And don't come back unless you want me to turn you over to the police for a blackmailing crook." ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... before the conclusion had been reached that if the organization was really to become preeminently an enlisted man's outfit, it would be absolutely necessary to overcome these difficulties and by hook or crook to obtain the attendance of as many privates and noncommissioned officers as possible who were leaders. So, scarcely had seventeen of the twenty officers returned to their commands before they received an ...
— The Story of The American Legion • George Seay Wheat
... turned was the grim, kindly face of old Doctor Jordan facing him. He carried in the crook of his arm a brown shawl with something round and small muffled up in it. There was one slit in front, and through this came a fist about the size of a marble, the thumb doubled under the tiny fingers, and the whole limb giving circular waves, ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... my soul... emptied of the known you... utterly... Is yet vibrant with the cadence of the song You might have been.... 'Twas a great night... With never a waste look over a shoulder Curved to the crook of the wind... And a great word we threw For memory to play knuckles with... A word the waters of the world have washed, Leaving it stark and without smell... A world that rattles well ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... all the creeks and ditches to overflowing. I hesitated then no longer, but heading for the ditch through the marshes on a high tide, before a brave west wind took the chances of getting through by hook or by crook or by shovel ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... the hemorrhage, he was still patiently awaiting a better opportunity to employ his knife. It would not do to bungle the affair. And he thought he knew how it could be properly done—if he could get her head in the crook of his ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... school was in the main due to the artificial character of the age. Nature seemed to have lost her charms; pastorals were little more than private theatricals, enacted with straw hats and shepherd's crook in drawing-rooms or on close-clipped lawns. Culture was confined to court and town, and poets found little inducement to consult the heart or to woo nature, but wrote what would please the town or court. This taste ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... problem, Constance (as we finally called her), passed under the care of a nursemaid, and for two years I had very little to do with her. I seldom sang this child to sleep as I had done countless times with Mary Isabel. She did not ride on the crook of my elbow, or climb on my back, or look at picture books with me, until she was nearly three years old. We regained her, but we could not regain the hours of companionship we had sacrificed. This experience enables me to understand the unhappiness which comes to so many ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... poverty and dreary desolation. The earthen floor was broken and rough; the sunlight came sifting through the chinks in the broken walls. A smoky fire of wet driftwood smoldered, under a pot on the crook. There was neither table nor chairs. A straw pallet with a wretched coverlet lay in one corner; a few broken stools were scattered around; a few articles of clothing hung on ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... all now," he continued. "I was about to make restitution when a man connected with the company—I am sure now that he was an adventurer, a crook, in the pay of Balcom, although Balcom probably tried to hide it—came to me. His name, as I remember it, was Flint. I was about to write a letter that showed that it was my intention to right a wrong, when—something interrupted me ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... under weigh took time. Not that there was much of the baby, speaking of it as a thing of weight and measure, but there was a vast deal to do about it, and all had to be done by easy stages. When the baby was got, by hook and by crook, to a certain point of dressing, and you might have supposed that another touch or two would finish him off, he was unexpectedly extinguished, and hustled off to bed; where he simmered (so to speak) between two blankets for the best part of an hour, while Mrs. Peerybingle took advantage of the ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... quarrelsome, had been a veritable demon when drunk, and drunk she had been whenever she could, by hook or crook, raise the price of whiskey. Never, to Billy's recollection, had she spoken a word of endearment to him; and so terribly had she abused him that even while he was yet a little boy, scarce out of babyhood, he had learned to view her ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of the Government buildings; and squatting upon mats on the ground were the musicians, three or four in number, beating away vigorously at their very unmusical drums—just the size and shape of a flat cheese, their drumsticks being shaped like a crook. Soon the war-dancers appeared upon the scene, each with a whoop and a flourish of his knife or tomahawk. Conspicuous among them was Blackstone—no longer in European dress, but with legs bare on either side to his hips—a white shirt ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... for those who are protected, but those who are not must accompany me," answered the lieutenant. "We want hands to man our men-of-war who protect you merchantmen, and hands we must get by hook or by crook." Having called over the names, he selected twenty of the best men who had no protection. I was in hopes I should escape, when the ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... a speech for you," replied Rose, "sugar your voice, Katy, and, whatever you do, stand up straight. Don't crook over, as if you thought you were tall. It's a bad trick you have, child, and I'm always sorry to see it," concluded Rose, with the air of a wise ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... against the cold white sky Shone many a face of those Who o'er the upper reaches swept, On swans and cygnets keeping an eye. Dyers and Vintners, portly, mellow Chasing the birds of the jetty bill Through the reed clusters green and still; And through the osier mazes crept Many a cap-feathered crook-armed fellow. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... unmistakable umbrella as a good omen. But it is only a short-lived rapture, for the spruce young party in the next sketch is balancing lightly between thumb and forefinger what we take to be nothing more or less than a shepherd's crook. This is hardly an edifying prospect. Yet if we do not altogether mistake the two wing-shaped objects projecting from his person, it is not the only feature of gentlemen's fashions twenty years hence which ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... much more of the true metal in him than he himself was aware of. Without saying a word about it, he resolved not to wait for the result of this slow process of growth, but to jump, vault, or fly out of the boastful period of life, by hook or by crook, and that without delay. And he succeeded! Not all at once, of course. He had many a slip; but he persevered, and finally got out of it much sooner than would have been the case if he had not taken any trouble to think about ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... the best, you mean to sell for as much as by hook or crook he can get for his commodity; then I say it is not lawful. And if I should say the contrary, I should justify Mr. Badman and all the rest of that gang; but that I never shall do, for the Word of God condemns them. But that it is not lawful for a man at all times to sell his commodity ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Toby, as long as it will hold together, for the sake of the poor lieutenant—And this,—said my uncle Toby, taking up the sword in his hand, and drawing it out of the scabbard as he spoke—and this, Le Fever, I'll save for thee,—'tis all the fortune, continued my uncle Toby, hanging it up upon a crook, and pointing to it,—'tis all the fortune, my dear Le Fever, which God has left thee; but if he has given thee a heart to fight thy way with it in the world,—and thou doest it like a man of honour,—'tis enough ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... at this rebuke that he remained perfectly quiet during the rest of the walk. He snuggled up into the crook of her arm, and peeped out once only when they reached a big house and ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... ... Were these the pangs of unrequited love that tore her breast? In her desire to land the great catch, by hook or by crook, when had she paused to consult her heart about the glittering prospect? What else did it all mean but that she, calculating, had offered herself to him at the price of his hand, name, and enduring complement of happiness, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... this instinctive sense; we have set one portion of ourselves aside to watch the rest; we must keep up appearances and our consistency; we must respect—that is, look back upon—ourselves, and be respected, if possible; we must, by hook or by crook, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... as dollars," she remarked. "That was my father's motto, and he was never afraid to take steep chances by backing an honest man. Although he had debts on his books for three or four years, it was seldom a customer let him down. But he cut out a crook as soon as he suspected what the fellow was. However, you want to know how Wilkinson stands? Well, it's a sure thing ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... can jist set ye down thar cool and comfortable. Ef," he continued, in the same assuring tone, without waiting for a reply, "ye'll jist take a good grip of my arm thar," curving his wrist and hand behind him like a shepherd's crook, "I'll go first, and break away the ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... hate, but not in love. My second is in robin, but not in dove. My third is in throw, but not in shove. My fourth is in stare, but not in look. My fifth is in line, but not in hook. My sixth is in straight, but not in crook. My seventh is in village, but not in town. My whole is a fairy ...
— Harper's Young People, April 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... reason with me, scoundrel," shouted Dubois, raising himself with one hand on the arm of his chair, and the other on his archbishop's crook, ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... Master's power. Paraguay belongs to him, body and soul. Bolivia is absolutely his. Every man of the official class from the President down knows that he has two weeks or less of sanity if The Master's deputy shuts down on him—and he knows that at the crook of the deputy's finger he'll be assassinated before then. If they run away, they go murder mad. If they stay, they have to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... he, uncrossing his arms, and I saw he had levelled a pistol at me in the crook of his arm, "I'm no fine gentleman for ye to bruise, so haul your wind and listen! You fall in love with my lady, as how could you help, and she with you, which is a matter of some wonder. So here are ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... know Fancy as well as most. I always looked upon him as a crook, and a very dangerous man with ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... obtained the property at Fort Worth from a Miss Minnie Williams, and transferred it to Pitezel. Pitezel was a drunken "crook," of mean intelligence, a mesmeric subject entirely under the influence of Holmes, who claimed to have considerable hypnotic powers. Pitezel had a wife living at St. Louis and five children, three girls—Dessie, Alice, ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... the big girls kiss him; when he is big, the little girls kiss him. If he is poor, he is a bad manager; if he is rich, he's a crook. If he is prosperous, everybody wants to do him a favor; if he needs credit, they hand ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... crook—" Pell began, rose, and snatched the money from Uncle Henry before anyone knew what he was doing. All his old fire was back. He seemed the most alive man in ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... the ungracious response, accompanied by immediate action of a similar nature. Rupe held Penrod's head in the crook of an elbow and massaged his ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... prays till the very howlets learn his preambles, that's the man Auld Simmie fixes on to mak a dishclout o'. He canna get rest in Hell, if he sees a man, or a set of men o' this stamp, an, when he sets fairly to work, it is seldom that he disna bring them round till his ain measures by hook or by crook. Then, Oh! it is a grand prize for him, an' a proud Deil he is, when he gangs hame to his ain ha', wi' a batch o' the souls o' sic strenuous professors on his back. Aye, I trow, auld Ingleby, the Liverpool packman, never came up Glasco street ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... made her a princess. She was only a shop girl, and the vain old man wanted her out of his way—intended to put her out of his way, by hook or by crook; but all the same in look and manner she was his ideal of a girl queen, and he could understand Petro being ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... two present candidates but was strongly prejudiced to believe that the Democratic candidate, on general principles, was the worst one. However quite apart from this, wasn't Rafferty to-day a better citizen than I? Even admitting for the sake of argument that Sweeney was a crook, wasn't Rafferty who was trying his humble best to get him elected a better American than I who was willing to sit down passively and allow him to be elected? Rafferty at any rate was getting into the fight. His motive ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... arose from the blanket and accepted my overtures with an expression which may have been intended for a smile, or a threat of the most appalling character. I have seen such legs as his on old-fashioned silver teapots; and the crook in his tail would have made it useful as ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... automatically from one position to the other. They were all snow-white, with long thick hair and a heavy mane that added enormously to their imposing appearance; and they carried their bushy tails almost straight out as they trotted along, with a slight crook near the body,—the true wolf sign that still reappears in many collies to tell a degenerate race of a ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... him and he was about to be Shown Up for Dallying with Corporations, but he put on a fresh White Tie and made a Speech about our Heroic Dead on a Hundred Battle-Fields, and Most People said it was simply Impossible for such a Thunderous Patriot to be a Crook. So he played the Glittering ...
— Fables in Slang • George Ade
... his place well, and the visitor to Paisley who sees his shield of three covered cups with the pastoral crook behind them upon the wall of one of the outhouses, which has been ruthlessly transformed by modern iconoclasts, or reads the defaced inscription which tells of the 'nobil fundacioun' he reared, will do well to remember that they are the ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... how utterly they are deprived of what are called the institutions of education; but we know very well that book learning is a miserably poor thing, and that the best education in the world is what we clutch in the streets; and of that education, by hook or by crook, woman has so far gained enough, that, Europe and America through, where is the man presumptuous enough to doubt that the hand of woman is not felt as much on the helm of public opinion as that of man? To be sure, she does not have an outside ambitious ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... I'm too much alone; he's been worrying over it. I can tell that. I try not to be moody, but sometimes I simply can't help it. Yesterday afternoon he drove up to Casa Grande, proud as Punch, with a little black and white kitten in the crook of his arm. He'd covered twenty-eight miles of trail for that kitten! It's to be my companion. But the kitten's as lonesome as I am, and has been crying, and nearly ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... with wondering eyes at the splendid pictures in the large books, that Grandmama was showing her. Suddenly she screamed aloud, for there on the picture she saw a peaceful flock grazing on a green pasture. In the middle a shepherd was standing, leaning on his crook. The setting sun was shedding a golden light over everything. With glowing eyes Heidi devoured the scene; but suddenly she began to ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... and the "something" would doubtless bear fruit; for this elderly spinster aunt, with a mania for psychical research, had brains as well as will power, and by hook or by crook she usually managed to accomplish her ends. The revelation was made soon after tea, when she sidled close up to him as they paced slowly along ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... the dawning light A little rustic maiden; Her flock so white, her crook so slight, ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... great Sioux war was inaugurated. Colonel Mills had written me several letters saying that General Crook was anxious for me to accompany his command, and I promised to do so, intending to overtake him in the Powder River country. But when I arrived at Chicago, on my way West, I learned that my old regiment, the gallant Fifth Cavalry, was on its way back from Arizona to join General Crook, and ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... wean," says he, and loosened his cloak. Belle held the wee bundle to him, and he put it in the crook of his arm. ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... except a celebrated dancer who was taking a rest cure at the Hotel de Paris; and there was the princess' half-sister who had married a poor artist and lived in his house in the mountains, doing her own cooking. Also there were all Rose's queer black sheep who yielded meekly to her ribbon-wreathed crook, though they "butted" against George's methods. Some of these were seriously shorn sheep, yet Rose would not for worlds have hurt their feelings by ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... with the lively eyes, the firm cheeks, the fresh complexion, the erect and active carriage, of a well-preserved woman of sixty; and in her plentiful light-brown hair there was scarcely a thread of grey. She stepped trippingly across the grass, swinging a malacca walking-stick, with a silver crook-handle. ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... the soft soil beneath the eastern window I found a perfect impression of a closed hand. Here is the cast of that hand. Look well at it. Notice the wart upon the upper joint of the thumb, and the crook in the third finger where it has evidently been broken. M. Godin says he never entered the yard of the Darrow estate, except on the night of the murder in company with Messrs. Osborne and Allen, and that then he merely passed ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... impulsive cuss, an' if he has any dealin's of a money nature with this sweet-scented porch- climber that's on his trail, you take a tip from Harley P. Hennage, Miss Donnie, an' act as lookout on Bob's game. Miss Donnie, I can tell a crook in the dark. Let a crook try to buck my game an' I have him spotted in a ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... his head what need there was for all this fuss and feathers about giving the game a chance; he had the old primal instinct of the red Indian, whose one desire was to secure his quarry, no matter whether by hook or by crook; since Bluff never pretended to be anything of a shot, or an expert angler, perhaps he was right in believing that, so far as he was concerned, the game had all the chance necessary at ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... be rich, somehow or other," continued the ferryman, still pursuing the exciting line of thought he had before taken up. "I'm going to be rich, by hook or by crook." ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... that poor Ruby knew nothing and cared nothing about better things; his heart was wholly in the world, and in making money as fast as he could, by hook or by crook,—and in this he was succeeding. For though the poor man and his wife were utterly godless, and even profane, yet Ruby was no drunkard; he loved his glass, it is true, but he loved money more, and so he always contrived ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... did be so close that I had no room to the Diskos; but beat in the head of the man with the haft-part. And I leaped unto the side then, and swung the Diskos, and did be utter mad, yet chill, with fury; so that the Maid did be no more than a babe in the crook of mine arm. And I came in sudden to meet the two beast-men as they ran at me; and I cut quick and light with the great Weapon, and did have that anger upon me which doth make the heart a place of cold and deadly intent; so that I had a wondrous and brutal judgement ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... there was nothing for dinner that day; but, as Jemima agreed with me, we'd rather have gone without a dinner for a month, than have parted with Poll. Since we've looked up a little in the world, I saved up five guineas, by hook or by crook, and tried to get Poll back again, but the lady said she wouldn't take fifty ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... injured beyond repair, so was replaced by the alabaster effigy now in the next bay. This effigy is remarkable for the anachronisms it shows. The bishop wears the rochet, the episcopal dress of the Reformed church instead of his proper robes, and the plain crook beside him bears no resemblance to the rich crosiers of the thirteenth century. The ruff round his neck and his broad-toed shoes are also plainly out-of-date. The mantle of estate refers of course to his rank as Chancellor, as did also the bag ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... professions, and others, perhaps, despite their broadcloth, never to be a patch on their parents. In that literary club there were men of a reading so wide and catholic that it might put some graduates of the universities to shame, and of an intellect so keen that had it not had a crook in it their fame would have crossed the county. Most of them had but a threadbare existence, for you weave slowly with a Wordsworth open before you, and some were strange Bohemians (which does not do in Thrums), yet others wandered into the world and compelled it to recognize them. There is a London ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... To crook one's elbow, and wish it may never come straight, if the fact then affirmed is not true—according to the casuists of Bow-street and St. Giles's, adds great weight and efficacy to ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... wish that the forces under General Wright and those under you should join and drive at the enemy under General Wright. Wright had the larger part of the force, but you had the rank. It was thought that you would prefer Crook's commanding your part to your serving in person under Wright. That is all of it. General Grant wishes you to remain in command of the department, and I do not wish ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... thine alone, O rash iconoclast, thou wilt not brook What gods the heathen carves in wood and stone, As if the Shepherd who from the outer cold Leads all his shivering lambs to one sure fold Were careful for the fashion of his crook. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... that summer must come. Nothing despairs but man. Set the sharp curve of the white new moon in the sky: she is white in true frost, and yellow a little if it is devising change. Set the new moon as something that symbols an increase. Set the shepherd's crook in a corner as a token that the flocks are already enlarged in number. The shepherd is the symbolic man of the hardest winter time. His work is never more important than then. Those that only roam the ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... campaign, since it was going to be a big affair, and Speug directed that a war chest should at once be established. No one outside the secret junta knew what was going to be done with the money, but orders were issued that by hook or crook every boy in school except the merest kids should pay sixpence a week to Jock Howieson, who was not an accomplished classical scholar nor specially versed in geometry but who could keep the most intricate accounts in his head with unerring accuracy, and knew every boy in the Seminary by head mark. ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... June 1, 1886, wrote that the Apaches then were riding in many small bands, but were kept on the move constantly by the vigorous measures of General Miles, and he assumes that the Apache question would have been settled had his predecessor, General Crook, been less dilatory. The writer expressed his conclusion that in military skill, strategy and ability the Indians far excelled their opponents, and details that fifty or sixty Apaches the year before had killed more ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... whatever else you like to call it, but it's too late too back down now—I must push ahead and win. You see the case is this: I love the girl and had her brought here to keep her from another man. By hook or crook I'm going to make her my wife. She won't take kindly to that at first, perhaps, but I'll make her happy in the end. In one way this delay has been a good thing. It must have worn her out and broken her ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... from Galway and Louth and Meath Who went to their death with a joke in their teeth, And worshipped with fluency, fervour, and zeal The mud on the boot-heels of "Crook" O'Neil. ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... in no time each participator in the hunt was seen to be in possession of several thousand roubles of capital. Upon that a large number of the former band of tchinovniks also became converted to paths of rectitude, and were allowed to re-enter the Service; but not by hook or by crook could Chichikov worm his way back, even though, incited thereto by sundry items of paper currency, the General's first secretary and principal bear leader did all he could on our hero's behalf. It seemed that the ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... has restored the underworld to respectability—as a domain for fictional purposes at least! It is not that his crooks are real crooks—though they are—but that he is able to put life into them, to make them seem human. No man is a hero to his valet and no crook can be merely a crook in a story of the underworld that is intended to convey any sense of actuality. Beside the distortions and conventionalisations of most underworld stories, Packard's novels stand out with distinctiveness ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... lame compliments," she said, concealing her vexation under badinage. "I do not live by hook and crook yet, whatever I may come to, and I remember that you only appreciate artificial flowers made by pretty shop girls, and these are not in the country. But come in. Mother and my sisters will ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... "He is the slickest, cleverest crook that ever drew the breath of life. And he's got away with the jewels, for which you can whistle in vain, ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... Why, anyone would have done it. You would for me. There, I don't mean you're mad—only that you've got that crook in your mind about Tom Dinass. Well, it's a blessing the poor fellow had neither wife nor child to break their ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... everybody knows that, now I've retired, I haven't got a secretary; and if I engaged a new one and he was caught trying to steal my scarab from the earl's collection, it would look suspicious. But a valet is different. Anyone can get fooled by a crook valet with bogus references." ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... usually in pairs, and when several were arranged on a mantelpiece they presented a bright array. The one illustrated in Fig. 54 is of the type much favoured in country districts. It represents a shepherd with his crook, the companion brass being a shepherdess. On the sea-coast fishermen were much fancied, and in mining districts the miner with his pick and other industrial models were extensively sold. These were varied with birds and animals and miniature ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... content to work early and late, for good wages, but he had of late years led such a shiftless and vagabond life, that honest industry had no more attraction for him, and he preferred to get his living by hook or crook, in fact in any way he could, rather than take the most direct path to a good living by working ...
— Rufus and Rose - The Fortunes of Rough and Ready • Horatio Alger, Jr
... she forgets the arm was wont to go Around her waist. She wears a buckle, whose pin Galleth the crook of the young man's elbow. I forget not, for I that youth have been. Smith was aforetime the Lothario gay. Yet once, I mind me, Smith was forced to stay Close in his room. Not calm, as I, was he; But his noise brought ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... for himself, Ted did not do much running. What was the use, when he had followers able and willing to obey the crook of his little finger? Besides, Ted knew what it meant to bang up against a tree in the dark, and knock the skin off one's nose. As long as the sound of pursuit could be plainly heard he continued to bellow ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... fashionable dress of the day. They received their friends in the convent, and could leave it themselves to reenter the secular life, and to marry if they pleased. Such a chapter was that of Remiremont in Lorraine, whose abbess was a princess of the Holy Roman Empire, by virtue of her office. Her crook was of gold. Six horses were harnessed to her carriage. Her dominion extended over two hundred villages, whose inhabitants paid her both feudal dues and ecclesiastical tithes. Nor were her duties onerous. ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... heavens! Isn't there disgrace enough already? Isn't it enough to know father was a crook as well as an idiot? I've always thought he was insane ever since that crazy will of his came to light; but to steal! and then to leave a paper proving it, so that we've got to lose everything! ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Judgment of Paris, in which the shepherd sits upon a bank in an attitude of ineffable and flattered importance, with one leg carelessly crossing the other, and both hands resting lightly on his shepherd's crook, while the goddesses before him await his sentence. Naturally the painter has done his best for the victress in this rivalry, ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... two ladies came out, they found together the Pendennises, uncle and nephew, and Harry Foker, Esquire, sucking the crook of his stick, standing there in the sunshine. To see and to ask to eat were simultaneous with the good-natured Begum, and she invited the three ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of my good dog Bran: His head was cover’d with shaggy hair, His breast was broad and its colour tan, His houghs were crook’d, his quarters square. ...
— King Hacon's Death and Bran and the Black Dog - two ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... the rabbi, may he rest in peace; yet he was compelled to cheat for once. And when an honest man is compelled to cheat he may outdo the cleverest crook. Do you want to know what the rabbi did? He disguised himself as a peasant, went out, and walked the streets with the rolling gait of a drunkard. The night guards stopped him, and asked him what his business was. "I am a thief," said the rabbi. Then the guards arrested ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg
... "succeeded by Mahomedans, by a new line of Pandyas, by the Nayak Kings, by the Nabobs of Arcot, and finally by the English. He became for a time a Jaina, but was reconverted to the worship of Siva, when his name was changed from Kun or Kubja, 'Crook-backed,' to Sundara, 'Beautiful,' in accordance with a change which then took place, the Saivas say, in his personal appearance. Probably his name, from the beginning, was Sundara.... In the inscriptions belonging ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... of Thomas V. Hodgson, biologist, was to collect by hook or crook all the strange beasts [Page 26] that inhabit the Polar seas, and no greater enthusiast for his work ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... current jargon essentially and typically "smart." Her figure was, in the same order of ideas, conspicuously and irreproachably "good." For a woman of her age her waist was surprisingly small; her elbow moreover had the orthodox crook. She held her head at the conventional angle, but why did she come to ME? She ought to have tried on jackets at a big shop. I feared my visitors were not only destitute but "artistic"—which would be a great complication. When she sat down again I thanked her, ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... gone farther south by the way of Prince Edward's Court House, along with the 5th corps (Griffin's), Ord falling in between Griffin and the Appomattox. Crook's division of cavalry and Wright's corps pushed on west of Farmville. When the cavalry reached Farmville they found that some of the Confederates were in ahead of them, and had already got their trains ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... say in your Raggedy Ann book, "Fairyland must be filled with rag dolls, soft loppy rag dolls who go through all the beautiful adventures found there, nestling in the crook of a dimpled arm." I truly believe there is such a fairyland and that rag dolls were first made there, or how else could they bring so much sunshine into ...
— Raggedy Andy Stories • Johnny Gruelle
... industry, a legalized industry with which the authorities might interfere at their peril. Indeed, there is one instance in which a "wire-tapper" successfully prosecuted his victim (after he had trimmed him) upon a charge of grand larceny arising out of the same transaction. One crook bred another every time he made a victim, and the disease of crime, the most infectious of all distempers, ate its way unchecked into the body politic. Broadway was thronged by a prosperous gentry, ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... Shakespeare! Songs of David, the Shepherd Poet! What do you think of us? Well, we got behind it, and a more delicious "it" I never tasted. Such coffee! And out of such a pot! I promised Bo-Peep that I would send him a crook with pink ribbons on it, but I suspect he thinks I am a ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... passest through millions of years in thy existence. The eldest son of the womb of Nut, engendered by Seb the Ancestor [of the gods], lord of the crowns of the South and of the North, lord of the lofty white crown; as prince of gods and men he hath received the crook and the whip, and the dignity of his divine fathers. Let thy heart, which dwelleth in the mountain of Ament, be content, for thy son Horus is stablished upon thy throne. Thou art crowned lord of Tattu (Busiris) and ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... her arm, and clasped his two legs in the crook of her elbow. That expressed their attitude, what they were to each other, as absolutely as any physical demonstration allowed. Had there not been the difference of sex which severed them she could never have got the sense of support that this physical ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... compass mixed. Don't you forget, that it is part of the unspoken marriage contract, that the wife must not only keep her own soul white, but bleach her husband's also; and no matter what a reprobate a man may be, he always expects his better-half, by hook or by crook, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... twice he had arrested a notorious American crook who was carrying on operations in this country, and whom I will call Smith. In one of his occasional spells of liberty, Smith, who was a reputed murderer in his own country, met Froest. "Say, chief," he drawled after a little conversation, "I'd just hate to hurt a man like you. I always carry ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... swains, Their rural sports and jocund strains, (Heaven guard us all from Cupid's bow!) He lost his crook, he left his flocks; And wandering through the lonely rocks, He nourished ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... Crook, Geo., captain 4th U. S. Infantry, colonel 36th Ohio, at Cross Lanes; Summersville; personal description of; captured at Cumberland; first vote; at Lewisburg, West Virginia; defeats Heth; attached to Kanawha division; reports to Pope ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... keep you," Charley said, and dismissed him with a bow. "The sheep will stray, and the shepherd must use his crook." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... close shirt of hair-cloth which the Prelate constantly wore under all his pompous attire. His mitre was placed beside him on an oaken table of the same workmanship with his throne, against which also rested his pastoral staff, representing a shepherd's crook of the simplest form, yet which had proved more powerful and fearful than lance or scimetar, when wielded by the hand of Thomas a Becket. A chaplain in a white surplice kneeled at a little distance before a desk, and read forth from ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... I wald commend to our men the imitation of the greek and latin, quho, to mend this crook, devysed diphthongs. Let the simplest of these four soundes, or that quhilk is now in use, stand with the voual, and supplie the rest with diphthonges; as, for exemple, I wald wryte the king's hal with the voual a; a shour of hael, with ae; hail marie, with ai; and a heal head, as we cal ...
— Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue - A Treates, noe shorter than necessarie, for the Schooles • Alexander Hume
... allow myself any more to play the shepherdess in my waking dreams. I have often soothed my thoughts with the quiet and innocence of pastoral employments, till I have in my chamber heard the winds whistle and the sheep bleat; sometimes freed the lamb entangled in the thicket, and sometimes with my crook encountered the wolf. I have a dress like that of the village maids, which I put on to help my imagination, and a pipe on which I play softly, and suppose ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... answer; "the real yogin are no doubt sincere; but a real yogi wouldn't waste his time on a soft-brained old man, and fire sky-rockets off at midnight to impress him. My own opinion is that this fellow is a fakir—a juggler, a sleight-of-hand man—and, of course, a crook." ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... you have observed in me do you condemn and abuse me, and bid me go home and look after my house and wife and children, without knowing whether I have any? Is nothing more needed than to get a footing, by hook or by crook, in other people's houses to rule over the masters (and that, perhaps, after having been brought up in all the straitness of some seminary, and without having ever seen more of the world than may lie within twenty or thirty ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... which I wish now to impart to you. My friends recommend me, if I desire to secure permanent success, to delay commencing the school for six months longer, and by all means to contrive, by hook or by crook, to spend the intervening time in some school on the continent. They say schools in England are so numerous, competition so great, that without some such step towards attaining superiority we shall probably have a very hard struggle, and may fail in the end. They say, ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... Heavens his eye can see Face of thing that is to be; And, if Men report him right, 140 He can whisper words of might. —Now another day is come, Fitter hope, and nobler doom: He hath thrown aside his Crook, And hath buried deep his Book; Armour rusting in his Halls On the blood ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... never wavered. His thin lips were pinched close, so tight the scrubby beard on his chin stood straight out in front; his chest was heaving, and the angry blood stood darkly red under his tanned cheeks. Altogether, he looked as if his trigger finger might crook without warning. It was one of those long moments that makes a fellow draw his breath sharp when he thinks about it afterward. If any one had made an unexpected move just then, there would have been ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... himself with a deliberate statement of fact: "Miss Calendar has disappeared." It gave him an instant's time ... "There's something damned fishy!" he told himself. "These two are playing at cross-purposes. Calendar's no fool; he's evidently a crook, to boot. As for the woman, she's had her eyes open for a number of years. The main thing's Dorothy. She didn't vanish of her own initiative. And Mrs. Hallam knows, or suspects, more than she's going to tell. I don't think she wants Dorothy found. Calendar does. ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... distinguished of the minor soldiers of the Civil War, minor in the sense of being surpassed only by men of the stature of Grant, Sherman, Sheridan and Thomas, was George Crook. His exploits in the valley of the Shenandoah were brilliant, and his whole career was replete with instances of ability and courage which stamped him as a soldier of the first grade. A major-general of volunteers and a brevet major-general in the regular ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... shapeless, conflicting elements, which, under his influence, began to assume distinct forms. This ancient Eros is represented as a full-grown and very beautiful youth, crowned with flowers, and leaning on a shepherd's crook. ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... was far the best of Giles' bad boys. Dick was loitering about in a field behind the parson's garden, in search of a hen's nest, his mother having ordered him to bring home a few eggs that night, by hook or by crook, as Giles was resolved to have some pancakes for supper, though he knew that eggs were a penny apiece. Mr. Wilson had long been desirous of snatching some of this vagrant family from ruin; and his chief hopes were bent on Dick, as the least hackneyed in knavery. He ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... he was no pilgrim) had worn the stuff of his breeches; he wore no shoes, and his stockings had entirely lost that part of them which should have covered his feet and ankles; in his face, however, was the plump appearance of good humour; he walked a good round pace, and a crook-legged dog ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... in her departure aroused latent alarms. She began to excuse her action in leaving her charge thus solitary, to protest her devotion; becoming, it may be added, red and agitated in the process. Her thick, short little fingers worked nervously on the crook handle of her white cotton umbrella. Her round light-coloured eyes grew humid to the point of fogging the lenses of her ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... led quickly to another. Paul, the valet, no doubt knew about his master's private life—possibly was in his confidence. And if Rayne had committed the robbery he must be a professional crook. In which case, should the whereabouts of the stolen property be discovered, I should be arrested as an accessory to the crime! Clearly I had no time to lose if I wanted to safeguard myself. Even now the police, with their wonderful ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... scabby. Don't you go to thinkin' she ain't a good girl on that account"; and something like an attitude of chivalrous protection straightened the apologetic crook in ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... A disreputable "crook" who Shirks her duties for a lazy life of ease. I abhor her mournful call, Which is not a song at all But a cross between a ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... them, "Why," says the poor man, "the downs, you see, are full of stones, and we are fain to shoe ourselves thus; and these," says he, "will make the stones fly till they sing before me." I did give the poor man something, for which he was mighty thankful, and I tried to cast stones with his horn crook. He values his dog mightily, that would turn a sheep any way which he would have him, when he goes to fold them: told me there was about eighteen score sheep in his flock, and that he hath four shillings {45} a week the year round for keeping them: so we posted thence with mighty ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... a good deal about what the Romans did to get through the Mont Terrible, and how they negotiated this crook in the Doubs (for they certainly passed into Gaul through the gates of Porrentruy, and by that obvious valley below it). I decided that they probably came round eastward by Delemont. But for my part, I was on a straight ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... compounds easily confused with -ham, e.g. Durham was once Dun-holmr, hill island. The very common Holmes is probably in most cases a tree-name (Chapter XII). In Chisholm the first element may mean pebble; cf. Chesil Beach. The names Bent, whence Broadbent, and Crook probably also belong sometimes to the river, but may have arisen from a turn in a road or valley. But Bent was also applied to a tract covered with bents, or rushes, and Crook is generally a nickname (Chapter XXII). Lastly, the crossing of the unbridged ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... sugar upon the edge of the tea tray. After a time, so far as I can remember, we drew round the fire and began as usual to praise men—how strong, how noble, how brilliant, how courageous, how beautiful they were—how we envied those who by hook or by crook managed to get attached to one for life—when Poll, who had said nothing, burst into tears. Poll, I must tell you, has always been queer. For one thing her father was a strange man. He left her a fortune in his will, but on ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... ice, and the sled'll go like a streak when it gits started. But the course ye've p'inted out be a good un, fur there be only one bad turn in it, and good steerin' orter put a sled round that. I say," continued the old man, turning toward his companion, and pointing out the crook in the course at the bottom of the second dip, "can ye swing around that big stump there without upsettin', ...
— Holiday Tales - Christmas in the Adirondacks • W. H. H. Murray
... follows.—He will give me time, and this negotiable paper in exchange for stock.—Also notes for forty-seven thousand francs, to be collected from a man named Michonnin, a gentleman broker, not considered very solvent, who may be a crook but has a very rich aunt at Bordeaux; M. de la Brive is from that district and I can learn from him if there is anything to be ...
— Mercadet - A Comedy In Three Acts • Honore De Balzac
... human kindness, good nature and generosity all dead? Would he have taken a ten-dollar bill—or even a hundred-dollar one—from Simpkins when he was going to be a witness in one of Hogan's cases? Not on your life! He wasn't no crook, he wasn't! He didn't have to be. He was just a cog in an immense wheel of crookedness. When the wheel came down on his cog he automatically ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... reward, for once the crook at the end of the pole had been inserted into the handle of the coffee pot, and the ...
— In Camp on the Big Sunflower • Lawrence J. Leslie
... them to know, however, that if they use their lives and possessions after their own pleasure, if they do not help the poor, if they cheat their fellow-men in business and snatch and scrape by hook and by crook everything they can lay their hands on, we want to tell them that they are not free, no matter how much they think they are, but they are the dirty slaves of the devil, and are seven times worse than they ever were as ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... Brant knew something of the terrible condition of the Northwest. He had thus learned of the consolidation of the hostile savages, incited by Sitting Bull, into the fastness of the Big Horn Range; he was aware that General Crook was already advancing northward from the Nebraska line; and he knew it was part of the plan of operation for Custer and the Seventh Cavalry to strike directly westward across the Dakota hills. Now he realized ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... supposed by all who know me, that I was taken hereupon with such a giddiness in my head and noisiness in my ears, that I was forced to hold by the crook driven in below the thatch for holding of the hay-rakes. There was scarcely any sense left in me, only that the thing was come by power of Mother Melldrum, because I despised her warning, and had again sought Lorna. But the officer ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... before the boat drew within range, they commenced a vigorous fusilade of coal lumps. Kettle had all a cleanly man's dislike for these dirty missiles, and he halted the boat just beyond the limit of their fire, and stood up himself, and sighted the revolver over the crook of his left elbow. ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... prisoners were not often struck. The soldiers tolerated the fusillade with the best grace they could command for some time, but even their endurance had its limits, and at last they turned. But the crowd was by no means daunted. By hook or by crook they intended to prevent us reaching the prison, and, they having closed behind us, we were completely ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... solemn purpose befitting their task. Nothing could have been more dreary and wretched than the entire proceedings. Mr. Boycott himself had discarded his martial array of yesterday, and appeared in a herdsman's overcoat of venerable age, and, as he grasped a crook instead of a double-barrelled gun, looked every inch a patriarch. He exhibits no profuse gratitude towards the officious persons who have come to help him, thinking probably that he would have been nearly as well ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... they came to the top of a hill, from which they could look directly down upon a large town lying comfortably in the crook of a river's elbow. The rain had stopped, and the belated sun, struggling through the clouds, made up for lost time by reflecting itself in every curve of the winding stream, in every puddle along the road, and in every pane of glass that ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice |
