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Crook   Listen
verb
Crook  v. i.  To bend; to curve; to wind; to have a curvature. " The port... crooketh like a bow." "Their shoes and pattens are snouted, and piked more than a finger long, crooking upwards."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Crook" Quotes from Famous Books



... you. At first I was for runnin' right out in the street and hollerin' to all hands to come and hear the good news about Sam Hunniwell's pet. And then thinks I: 'Hold on! don't be in any hurry. There's time enough. Just wait and see what happens. A crook that steals once is liable to try it again. Let's wait and see.' And I waited, and— He, he, he!—he has tried ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln

... Hall. Keane would assuredly foreclose. Then the place would be Keane's or Gerty's, it was much the same. Keane really meant it to be Sir Digby's and Gerty's, while he, Keane, should live and be honoured and respected there—his son-in-law a lord. Richards thought he must try by hook or by crook to prevent his partner from foreclosing, if only for the following reason: if Grantley Hall once passed into Keane's hands, much though Gerty and Jack loved each other, the latter, being a Mackenzie and a Scot, would be far too proud to ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables

... Dunstan," said that worthy ecclesiastic, "which hath brought more sheep within the sheepfold than the crook of e'er another saint in Paradise, I swear that I cannot expound unto you this jargon, which, whether it be French or Arabic, is beyond ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... peasant hears upon his field the trumpet of the knight, He quits his team for spear and shield, and garniture of might, The shepherd hears it 'mid the mist—he flingeth down his crook, And rushes from the mountain ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various

... greatly reminds one of the trunk of the elephant; for although it is not so long, it is very flexible, and the animal makes excellent use of it as a crook to draw down twigs to the mouth, or grasp fruit or bunches of herbage: it has nostrils at the extremity, but ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... Nameh, when Zal (a celebrated hero of Persia, remarkable for his white hair,) comes to the terrace of his mistress Rodahver at night, she lets down her long tresses to assist him in his ascent;—he, however, manages it in a less romantic way by fixing his crook in a projecting beam.—See ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... place of study was that seat in the cherry-tree, where she got the green stains on her frock, that have already been mentioned as likely to wear Betty's life out. In spite of this 'hidden worm i' th' bud,' Betty was to all appearance strong, alert, and flourishing. She was the one crook in Miss Eyre's lot, who was otherwise so happy in having met with a suitable well-paid employment just when she needed it most. But Betty, though agreeing in theory with her master when he told her of the necessity of having a governess for his little daughter, was vehemently opposed to any division ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... your 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 be glad to ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... author and title of book); and it is a question of very curious interest how far these sweet "spells" in Quackleben, and the like religious exercises of a nature compatible with worldly business (compare Luckie Macleary, "with eyes employed on Boston's 'Crook in the Lot,' while her ideas were engaged in summing up the reckoning"—Waverley, i. 112)—do indeed modify in Scotland the national character for the better or the worse; or, not materially altering, do at least ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... path. MacRae piled driftwood on the fire. Then he sat down with his back against the log, and Betty snuggled beside him, in the crook of his arm. Beyond the Point the booming of the surf rose like far thunder. The tide was on the ebb. Poor Man's Rock bared its kelp-thatched head. The racing swells covered it with spray ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... to what this strain would lead; but was determined not to assist him. Indeed, I mischievously pretended to turn the conversation, and talked of his usual topics, dogs, horses, and hunting; but he was very brief in his replies, and invariably got back, by hook or by crook, into the sentimental vein. ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... demanded the crook, suddenly. His sharp, pinched face, with its week's growth of beard, wore a new expression—that of admiration. "I ain't such a rube that I don't like a good t'ing even w'en it ain't comin' my way. You'se a dandy, dat's right, an' I t'ink we'd do well in de business ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon

... 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 mamma giving ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge

... lowest iron rung . . . supported by the hideous, crook-backed Chinaman, who stood upon the ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... at first she had to keep close by Jenny's side. Jenny was tired and went slowly; but by taking high prancing and dancing steps she could pretend that they were rushing along; and once they had turned the crook of Ley Street she ran on a little way in front of Jenny. Then, walking very fast and never looking back, she pretended that she ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair

... "Slippery, whose boy have you toting along with you?" And as Slippery did not promptly answer him he added with contempt in his voice, "I always understood that only a low-lived plinger dragged a road kid about with him and never a proper crook." Then to Joe's terror, he heard the man whom he had until this moment taken to be as honorable as his own late father answer: "Boston Frank, this lad is the wisest and shrewdest young crook that ever walked the streets of Chicago." ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)

... Wandering Jew has power over all such as go upon two wheels. 'Onward,' he says, 'onward! Faster, thou man! This green and breezy earth is no abiding place for you!' And hard-breathing, crook-shaped, whirling, bell-banging lunatics try and race you. They whiz by, thinking indignities of your dignified progress, and sometimes saying them. Not one cyclist in a dozen, George, and seemingly not a solitary bicyclist, ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells

... there is simple and genuine thought, deep and sincere feeling, wherever the eye is single, the inflections of the voice are straight; a crook in the mind however is indicated by a crook ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty

... house of Commons, by hook, or by crook, Resolved to root out both the pope and the duke; Let them vote, let them move, let them do what they will; The bishops, the bishops, have ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... 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

... was 'Maister Doctor Guinne;' according to Florio, 'in this perilous, crook't passage a monster-quelling Theseus or Herkules;' aye, in his eyes the best orator, poet, philosopher, and medical man (non so se meglior oratore e poeta, o philosopho e medico), and well versed in Greek, Latin, Italian, and French poetry. It was he who succeeded in tracing the many passages ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis

... short and very perfect. Usually a variety of pleasing patterns is displayed on the boards, depending on the position of the saw cut and on the regularity of growth of the log (see Fig. 1). Where the cut passes through a prominence (bump or crook) of the log, irregular, concentric circlets and ovals are produced, and on almost all tangent boards arrow ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner

... an instant I ceased to be guilty of the brutality of not knowing where. There was only one place in the world where people smile like that, only one place where the art of salutation has that perfect grace. This excellent creature used to crook his arm, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... 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 ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot

... my wife and my two sons Are dutifully kissed, I don't go crook if I'm called back When Sufi has ...
— The Bay and Padie Book - Kiddie Songs • Furnley Maurice

... between the two services is really remarkable. On almost every war vessel white and black sailors sleep and live together in crowded quarters without protest or friction. But the negro naval officer is kept out of the service by hook or by crook for the avowed reason that the cramped quarters of the wardroom would make association with him intolerable. In the army, on the other hand, the experiment of mixed regiments has never been tried. A good colored soldier can nevertheless obtain a commission ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... chanted offstage by a choir of a million voices! I've lived in coal-camps in Colorado, wintered with Maine lumbermen, hopped the ties with hobos, and enjoyed the friendship of thieves. I don't mean to brag, but I suppose there isn't a really first-rate crook in the country that I don't know. And down in the underworld they look on me—if I may modestly say it—as an old reliable friend. I've found these contacts immensely instructive, as you may imagine. Don't get nervous! I never ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson

... 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 ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice

... now the man's strong enough to bear moving. You, Mr. Sleep, must lend me a suit of clothes, with that old wideawake of yours. There's not the fellow to it in this parish. After that, all you can do at present is to keep watch here while I get Dan'l down to the sea. You, Mr. Tummels, by hook or crook, must beg, borrow, or steal a boat in St. Ives, and one that will keep the sea for three or four days at ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... stands to look Across the hills where the clouds swoon, He singing, leans upon his crook, He sings, he sings no more. The wind is muffled in the tangled hairs Of sheep that drift along the noon. One mild sheep stares With amber eyes about the pearl-flecked June. Two skylarks soar With singing flame Into the sun whence first they came. All else is only grasshoppers Or a brown ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various

... dirty crook!" Skinny snapped as he slapped the soppy, egg-splattered shirt in Leon's face. "I'll pay you with that! The next time," he added as he and the Ramblin' Kid started down the street—"anybody asks for a size fifteen shirt don't give them a ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman

... is thin, And it rests upon his chin Like a staff; And a crook is in his back, And the melancholy ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... chair close to the bed. He was too exhausted to speak and did not look at her at all. After a while she put her hand on his forehead and stroked it. He did not draw away from her. Slowly his head turned towards her. He lay there in the crook of her arm, ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... angel, grandly set With open soul to render man more free. The fishers are still thinking of the net, And, if not thinking of the hook too, we Are counted somewhat deeply in their debt; But that's a rare case—so, by hook and crook They take the advantage, agonizing Christ By rustier nails than those of Cedron's brook, I' the people's body very cheaply priced,— And quote high priesthood out of Holy book, While buying ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... town with that preposterous wop and settle this business one way or another, once for all," he whispered. "A crook named Skidder owns the property; but we can't do anything with him. The office is heartily sick of both Skidder and Puma; and Sharrow desires ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers

... place, who was a member of the Church of England. Soon after his troubles commenced, and before many weeks were over he saw plainly enough that he must either resign altogether, and go out into the great world of dissent in search of some pastorless flock that might vote him their crook, to be guided by him whither they wanted to go, and whither most of them believed they knew the way as well as he, or accept the pittance offered him. This would be to retire from the forefront of the battle, and take an undistinguished ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald

... holding his beads in his fleshless fingers. I shall have my programme posted on the bark of oaks. I shall say 'Peace to presbyteries! Let the day come when bishops, holding in their hands the wooden crook, shall make themselves similar to the poorest servant of the poorest parish! It was the bishops who crucified Jesus Christ. Their names were Anne and Caiph. And they still retain these names before the Son of God. While they were nailing Him to the cross, I ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France

... to let him marry your daughter if by the hookiest hook and crookedest crook you can prevent it. I observed your Star Chamber sessions with Mrs. Van Meter last year; I saw you wave her and her son hopefully away; I observed, smiling with intense internal glee, that you welcomed them back ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... 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 ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge

... home the lot, and don't come a scratching o' me,' and with that we had a ripput; and she took one of her pangs; and then I behoved to knock under; and that is allus the way if ye quarrel with woman-folk; they are sworn to get the better of ye by hook or by crook. Now dooe give me a bit of that ere, to quiet this here, as eats me up by the roots and sets my missus and me ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... 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 or purse that used to hang on the wall above. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer

... translation into mutton-broth for sick or wounded soldiers. The very slaves who once, perchance, were sold at auction with yon aged patriarch of the flock, had now asserted their humanity, and would devour him as hospital rations. Meanwhile our shepherd bore a sharp bayonet without a crook, and I felt myself a peer of Ulysses and Rob Roy,—those sheep-stealers of less elevated aims,—when I met in my daily rides these wandering ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... happiness. In some cases every earthly good seems to be the allotted portion, and we are ready to imagine that sorrow has found no means of access, no door of admission: but a very slight knowledge of the world is sufficient to ascertain that there is a "crook in every lot," and that this world is not the destined abode of unmingled enjoyment. This remark is exemplified in the history of Isaac and Rebekah. Twenty years elapsed, and they had no children: this must ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... heard, he found that she was a man-of-war tender, her business being to collect men, by hook or by crook, for the ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston

... crook-beaked shrike His back may spike And pierce him with a thorn; The humble bee A tramp is he And ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, May 20, 1914 • Various

... agreed with all that Heye said, and marveled with Heye that he had ever tried an amateur. Carl found the dressing-room a hay-dusty hell. But he enjoyed acting in "The Widow's Penny," "Alabama Nell," "The Moonshiner's Daughter," and "The Crook's Revenge" far more than he had enjoyed picking phrases out of Shakespeare at a vaguely remembered Plato. Since, in Joralemon and Plato, he had been brought up on melodrama, he believed as much as did the audience in the plays. It was a real mountain cabin from which he fired wonderfully loud ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... cut too closely; for after all I think I am the petted ewe, etc." A short time afterwards a page brought me a splendid box of with a pair of ruby ear-rings surrounded with diamonds, and this short billet: — "Yes, assuredly you are my pet ewe, and always shall be. The shepherd has a strong crook with which he will drive away those who would injure you. Rely on your shepherd for the care of your tranquillity, and the peace of your future life." In the evening the king visited me. He was embarrassed, but I set him at ease by showing him a laughing countenance, talking only of ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon

... had had many lines out in the hope of enmeshing the perpetrator. That night, as I found out the next day, he had at last heard of a clue. One of the company's detectives had brought in a red-headed, lame, partly paralyzed crook who enjoyed the expressive monniker of "Limpy Red." "Limpy Red" was a gunman of some renown, evil faced and having nothing much to lose, desperate. Whoever the master criminal of the Clutching Hand might have been ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve

... the robber barons regards our reign as tributary to his own. He fancies that our loyal respect is thinly spread. We make too little obeisance. Too rarely we 'crook the pregnant hinges of the knee.' Therefore ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... luxuries, free of charge, while those who have borne the brunt of the fight, those who have suffered from the heat of the day, those who have contributed most to the honour of the victory, are turned loose, unfed, to do as they can for themselves by hook or by crook somehow? These are the questions some of us players are now beginning to ask ourselves; and we don't find them efficiently answered by the bald statement that we "want to play the game without the rules," and that we ought to be precious glad the legislators of the club haven't made ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen

... 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

... detective who had been in search of the brunette was at once summoned, through Dave and myself, and the only information brought out by the inquest was that which, between us, we gave. He was a 'crook,' and would have been arrested by myself, had he lived, upon a charge of masquerading in woman's dress while carrying out illegal schemes. Corey, the only name I shall dare give the clever Chicago detective, declared the body to be that of a person, name unknown, for whom he held a warrant ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch

... crook, and maybe not," he returned with fine impartiality. "But you're all there, son, with the tongue action. You got me still goin' round in circles. Damn 'f I ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance

... it to grow to an abnormal length. This was not guesswork on my part, for in 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 up and down the front walk ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy

... the crook of his elbow, Ford snatched the bank-notes from the envelope, and, sticking them in his pocket, placed the empty envelope on the floor. Still keeping out of range, and using his iron bar as a croupier uses his rake, he pushed the envelope across the carpet and under the door. When half of ...
— The Lost House • Richard Harding Davis

... where lost romance And ghostly shine of helm and lance Still dwell by castled scarp and lea, And the last homes of chivalry, And the good fairy folk, my dear, Who speak for cunning souls to hear, In crook of glen and bower of hill Sing of ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... like that of thousands in like case. His evil habits grew upon him, and held him tighter and tighter in their thrall. Still, he dressed well, went much into fashionable society, and saw much of life. He was one of the boys, and he held his place among them by hook or by crook. He was never brought to face a court on criminal charges. He may never have been guilty of such acts. If not, is it ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith

... the figures in Gaudenzio Ferrari's original Journey to Calvary chapel, and in other works by him that were cancelled when the Palazzo di Pilato chapel was built? It is not likely they were destroyed if by any hook or crook they could be made to do duty in some other shape; more probably they are most of them still existing up and down D'Enrico's various chapels, but so doctored, if the expression may be pardoned, that Gaudenzio himself ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler

... considered, Crazy Horse got the best of it. He and his people drew away farther north to join other roving bands. The troops fell back to Fetterman to get a fresh start; and when spring fairly opened, old "Gray Fox," as the Indians called General Crook, marched a strong command up to the Big Horn Mountains, determined to have it out with Crazy Horse and settle the question of supremacy before the end of the season. Then all the unoccupied Indians in the North decided to take a hand. All or most of them were bound by treaty obligations to keep ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... Mormons not only made friends with the Indians as did Penn, but they also "made the desert to blossom as the rose," and Washington's battles at Princeton, White Plains, and Yorktown were but little more momentus in their results than Sandy Forsythe's on the Republican, Custer's on the Washita, or Crook's in ...
— The Story of the First Trans-Continental Railroad - Its Projectors, Construction and History • W. F. Bailey

... another; and as they came, he interrupted his playing, now and then, to call them by name. When they were nearly all assembled, he went down swiftly toward the lower valley, and they followed him, panting. At the last crook of the path on the steep hillside a straggler came after him along the cliff. He looked up and saw it outlined against the sky. Then he saw it leap, and slip, and fall beyond the ...
— The Sad Shepherd • Henry Van Dyke

... of Sol Glenhart, the police judge, was good. A striking likeness, and unmistakable, with phrases tripping along like this: 'This crook-nosed, gross-bodied harpy'; 'this civic sinner, this judicial highwayman'; 'possessing the morals of the Tenderloin and an honor which thieves' honor puts to shame'; 'who compounds criminality with shyster-sharks, and in atonement railroads the unfortunate and impecunious to rotting cells,'—and ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London

... rolling would distract their aim, and so cause their shot either to fall short of or to fly over us. But I had no time to meditate at length upon these chances; the two boats were drawing dangerously near, and I must stop them by hook or by crook before they actually got alongside. I therefore quickly recharged my piece and carefully pointed it at the inner end of the passage through the reef. I had barely got this done to my satisfaction, when the leading boat thrust her nose through. Bang! The four-inch ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood

... a maister, bent on the improvement of his prentice, to commence learning Mungo some few of the mysteries of our trade; so having showed him the way to crook his hough (example is better than precept, as James Batter observes), I taught him the plan of holding the needle; and having fitted his middle-finger with a bottomless thimble of our own sort, I set him to sewing the cotton-lining into one leg, knowing that it was a part not very ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... day, right after he had eaten a breakfast of watercress oatmeal, with sweet-flag-root-sugar and milk on it, Grandpa Croaker, the nice old gentleman frog, started out for a hop around the woods near the pond. And he took with him his cane with the crook on the handle, hanging it over ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis

... the party, and there were eight, for Olga was not a member of the Ten, wore over the lower part of his face a false black beard of huge dimensions. Not that they were averse to recognition among themselves, but in the fear that by some hook or crook Dangloss or his agents might be able to look in upon them—through stone walls, as it were. They were not men to belittle the ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... while I was delirious. For now that I am again in my right mind, and the danger is all over, I may as well admit that, while the delirium held me, the paramount idea in my mind was to get away from you, by hook or by crook, slip away to the flowers, and throw myself upon another leaf, so that I might enjoy a repetition of those glorious dreams and sensations that I told you of. In which case, of course, I should have died. ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood

... before. Isaphine and Belinda went first; then the little ones, very cross after their nap; and, lastly, Mell, holding Tommy's arm, and driving the poor little shorn sheep before her with the handle of the parasol, which she used as a shepherdess uses her crook. They were all tired and hungry. The babies cried. The sun was very hot. The road seemed miles long. Every now and then Mell had to let them sit down to rest. It was nearly four o'clock when they reached home; and, long before that, Mell was so weary and discouraged that it seemed as ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... himation. She presses to her bosom the infant Iacchus, crowned with the eternal ivy, and bearing in his hand the thyrsus. Then follow Bacchic or Panic figures, some conversing, some drinking together, some moving apparently in the mazes of the dance. Paris, with the Phrygian cap and crook, seems to preside over this voluptuous scene, and to listen to a little ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... nothing but failure for the ill-natured, unsociable, disgusting tramp who is known to be ignorant, lazy, shiftless, a spendthrift, a liar, and an all-around crook. Such a worthless man will make a complete failure of life because he ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins

... and thence it was that they who are now thralls of the Dusky Men sent to them their message and token of yielding. And as for that white stone, it is the altar of their god; for they have but one, and he is that same crook-bladed sword. And now that I look, I see a great stack of wood amidmost the market- place, and well I know ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris

... bucks!" said Glen. "He hasn't got thirty thousand cents! The man who drove me up last night knows the bank cashier, Mr. Rickart, like a brother—and Rickart told him Searle is a four-flusher—hasn't a bean—and looks like a mighty good imitation of a crook. Searle! You put up thirty—stung, Beth, stung, good ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... at those members complacently. They were encased in brown velveteens much the worse for wear, and in shape resembled a couple of sticks with a crook at the knees. ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... long over the strangely-worded entry of Susan Meynell's death, I reflected that, with the aid of those mysterious powers Hook and Crook, I must contrive to possess myself of an exact copy of this leaf from a family history, if not of the original document. Again my duty to my Sheldon impelled me to be false to all my new-born instincts, and boldly ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... across Berrier Cove, flinging a broad ribbon of light athwart the water and over the wet, shining sands left bare by the outgoing tide. Its furthermost point reached almost to Ann's feet, where she sat in a crook of the rocks, resting after a five-mile tramp along the shore before she tackled the steep climb ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler

... our people just the same as if they had the best right in the world to 'em. After all, we may be serving our masters; and all we say and think at home about independence is just a flash in the pan! Notwithstanding, some on us contrive, by hook or by crook, to take our revenge when occasion offers; and if I don't sarve master John Bull an ill turn, whenever luck throws a chance in my way, may I never see a bit of the old ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... condition every rifleman knows well by experience; he calls it being "frozen on the bull's eye," when, the alignment perfect, his rifle steady as a rock, he nevertheless cannot transmit just the little nerve power necessary to crook the forefinger. Three times Sansome sent the message to his trigger finger; three times the impulse died before it had compassed the distance between his brain and his hand. This was partly because his correlations had been weakened by the drink; partly because his fuddled mind was ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White

... 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 path to Rome, and as that line lay just along the top ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... married to the most contemptible and ugly of all my slaves. Having spoken these words, he angrily bid the vizier begone, who went home to his house full of confusion, and very sad. The same day the sultan sent for one of his grooms, who is hump-backed, big-bellied, crook-legged, and as ugly as a hobgoblin; and, after having commanded Schemseddin to consent to marry his daughter to this ghastly slave, he caused the contract to be made out and signed by witnesses in his own presence. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous

... first page and save everybody much trouble and expense. Mr. RICHARD AUMERLE MAHER, however, knows his job better than that. True, he marries his heroine early, but to the wrong man, the Labour leader and crook, Will Lewis, who vanishes just before the entrance of the strong but unsilent hero, only to reappear (under an alias) in time to get shot in a strike riot. Mr. MAHER'S book comes, as you may already have guessed, from that great country where they have replaced alcohol by sugar, and where ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 29th, 1920 • Various

... not straight; on one side, crump^, deformed; harelipped; misshapen, misbegotten; misproportioned^, ill proportioned; ill-made; grotesque, monstrous, crooked as a ram's horn; camel backed, hump backed, hunch backed, bunch backed, crook backed; bandy; bandy legged, bow legged; bow kneed, knock kneed; splay footed, club footed; round shouldered; snub nosed; curtailed of one's fair proportions; stumpy &c (short) 201; gaunt &c (thin) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... ever be weary of wandering, The flaming sun? Ever weary of waning in lovelight, The white still moon? Will ever a shepherd come With a crook of simple gold, And lead all the little stars Like lambs to ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare

... that after Polynesia had left, Chee-Chee had grown more homesick than ever for the Doctor and the little house in Puddleby. At last he had made up his mind that by hook or crook he would follow her. And one day, going down to the seashore, he saw a lot of people, black and white, getting on to a ship that was coming to England. He tried to get on too. But they turned him back and drove him away. And presently he noticed a whole big family of funny people ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting

... hardened countenance and gleaming eyes. A herder saw him standing there, in open silhouette against the sky line, and with many wild gesticulations pointed him out to his companions. With a quick motion, Wade half raised his rifle from the crook of his arm toward his shoulder, and then snorted grimly as the herders scrambled for shelter. "Coyotes!" he muttered, reflecting that constant association with the beasts that such men tended, seemed to ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony

... watched her again, and she watched him. He heard her breath rising and falling evenly, not at all like his own thick gasps. After a while he stepped close to her, put his arm around her, tilted her head into the crook of his elbow, bent, ...
— The Happy Unfortunate • Robert Silverberg

... longing for him had increased tenfold, as if he were a toy with sharp edges or dangerous paint such as they had tried to take from her as a child. If she could not have her way, and get Jon for good and all, she felt like dying of privation. By hook or crook she must and would get him! A round dim mirror of very old glass hung over the pink brick hearth. She stood looking at herself reflected in it, pale, and rather dark under the eyes; little shudders kept passing through her nerves. Then she heard the bell ring, and, stealing to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... see, the only crook in the old Gineral's lot was he didn't hev no children. Mis' Sullivan, she was a beautiful woman, as handsome as a pictur'; but she never had but one child; and he was a son who died when he was a baby, and ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... lunch time she found herself face to face with him. Taking the bill, she told him to return toward three o'clock, whereupon, with many foul expressions, he departed, vowing that he would have things properly settled and get his money by hook or by crook. ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola

... displacement of this tribe from lands owned by them in fee simple attracted attention, and a commission was appointed by President Hayes in 1880 to inquire into the matter; the commission, consisting of Generals Crook and Miles and Messrs William Stickney and Walter Allen, visited the Ponka settlements in Indian Territory and on the Niobrara and effected a satisfactory arrangement of the affairs of the tribe, through which the greater portion (some 600) remained ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee

... of the Grand Allies from that time downwards. He had laid down or superintended the railways at Burradon, Mount Moor, Springwell, Bedlington, Hetton, and Darlington, besides improving those at Killingworth, South Moor, and Derwent Crook. He had constructed fifty-five steam-engines, of which sixteen were locomotives. Some of these had been sent to France. The engines constructed by him for the working of the Killingworth Railroad, eleven years before, ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... world was blue-clad and he was dressed in grey. It was in a wild hurry; the main stream striving somehow to gain Middletown, which must be passed, hook or crook, aid of devil or aid of saint, while a second current surged with increasing strength back toward Strasburg. All was confusion. They would never stop to listen to explanations as to a turned coat! Steve was sure that they would simply shoot him or cut him down before ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... all the rafters were festooned with strings of crook-necked squashes, onions, and seed corn braided in long ropes by the husks, the Goodman appeared in the doorway with another load of seed corn and looked in vain for a ...
— The Puritan Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... a storehouse, or inflict other little annoyances. Accordingly I arranged for a simultaneous movement all along the line. Sherman was to move from Chattanooga, Johnston's army and Atlanta being his objective points. (*23) Crook, commanding in West Virginia, was to move from the mouth of the Gauley River with a cavalry force and some artillery, the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad to be his objective. Either the enemy would have to keep a large force to protect their communications, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... was a net- work of fine lines, out of which his big, dark eyes shone with unaged intelligence. He was magnificently dressed, perhaps in order to do me honour. Except for the fact that he carried a modern military rifle on his elbow, in place of a shepherd's crook or a spear, he looked like one of those historic worthies who stalk through the pages of the Pentateuch. The dignity and charm with which he bowed to me were inimitable—unconveyable. But he turned on my Christian host like a prophet of old ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy

... you take him just as I show you," she goes on patient. "Now, sit down in that chair. Crook your left arm like this. Now hold your knees together, and we'll just put the little precious right in your—— There! Why, you're doing ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford

... eat and enjoy flesh-food at a pinch. But just now fruit was abundant; and fruit, with eggs and honey, formed the diet he preferred. As he stood pondering the lifeless mass before him, a shrill call came to his ears, and, turning sharply, he saw his mate, with her baby in the crook of her hairy arm, standing at the foot of a tree, and signaling him to come to her. As soon as she saw that he understood, and was coming, she swung herself lightly up into the branches. He ran to the tree, climbed after her, and followed ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts

... the hundredth time at least, and he ordered a young carter out of my way with the greatest indignation. Then, he blessed me and stood waving his hand to me until I had passed the crook in the road; and then I turned into a field and had a long nap under a hedge before I pursued my ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... so long that at last she began to be afraid to move at all, and she got afraid even to crook up her little finger for fear it would pop off loud,—she had kept still so long that all her round little fingers and her round little legs ...
— Somebody's Little Girl • Martha Young

... a small cottage nestled at the foot of one of the hills, and each morning the mother took her crook and started out with her sheep, that they might feed upon the tender, juicy grasses with which the hills abounded. The little girl usually accompanied her mother and sat by her side upon the grassy mounds and watched ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum

... another to have her own way, it was the little Mummy. She had only vaguely considered the possibility of asking Mr. Trevor to partake of their humble meal when she first spoke of it; now that Kitty opposed it she made up her mind that by hook or crook she would convey him to their house. What a victory it would be! Susan Aylmer, her rich sister-in-law, waiting and wondering why her handsome and fascinating young protege did not appear: Bertha Keys finding her meal very ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade

... a comparatively free-and-easy life ashore in a sparsely settled colony, and a very strenuous life afloat in ships which depended, like all ships, on disciplined effort for both success {94} and safety. When national discipline is not very strong ashore it has to be enforced by hook or by crook afloat. The general public never bothered its head much about seamen's rights or wrongs in a rather 'hard' new country managing its own maritime affairs. So there certainly were occasional 'hell ships' among the Bluenoses, though very rarely except when there were Bluenose ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood

... good boy—and go straight to sleep, good boy. Then to-morrow he should be helped into the softest motor car procurable for money, and into the private car that his mother and Magsie meant to engage, by hook or crook, to-night. In six days they would be watching the blue Pacific, and in three weeks Richie should be sleeping out of doors and coming downstairs to meals. He had only to obey his mother; he had only to obey his wife. Magsie kissed him good-bye tenderly ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... Sullivan's house. Which he may be a fool, but he sure ain't a plumb fool. But, speakin' personal, this trail looks more and more interestin' to me. Here he's left Buck's hoss, so he ain't exactly a hoss thief—yet. And he's promised to pay for the pinto, so that don't make him a crook. But when the pinto gives out, Andy'll be in country where he mostly ain't known. He can't take things on trust, and he'll mostly take 'em, anyway. Boys, looks to me like we was after the real article. ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand

... twelve tables and some other records were recovered, but the mass of the historical annals of Rome had been destroyed. Some relics were said to have been miraculously preserved, among them the shepherd's crook of Romulus. ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... wolf, whose gettings from the flocks Began to be but few, Bethought himself to play the fox In character quite new. A shepherd's hat and coat he took, A cudgel for a crook, Nor e'en the pipe forgot: And more to seem what he was not, Himself upon his hat he wrote, "I'm Willie, shepherd of these sheep." His person thus complete, His crook in upraised feet, The impostor Willie stole upon the keep. The real Willie, on the grass asleep, Slept ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine

... means to be employed, he scrupled little. He wanted the largest possible Republican majority in Congress, and to this end he would have expelled any number of Democrats from their seats, by hook or crook. When my old friend and quondam law partner, General Halbert E. Paine, who was chairman of the Committee on Elections in the House, told him that, in a certain contested election case to be voted upon, both contestants were rascals, Stevens simply asked: "Well, which is our ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... me till you hear," said the other. "He is no common crook. This is how it was: You wanted the suspect's photograph and a specimen of his writing. I knew no better place to look for them than in his own room in Mr. Fairbrother's house. I accordingly got the necessary warrant and late last evening undertook the job. I went alone I was always an egotistical ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green

... on his face upon the ground. Then Minerva from her seat on the rafter held up her deadly aegis, and the hearts of the suitors quailed. They fled to the other end of the court like a herd of cattle maddened by the gadfly in early summer when the days are at their longest. As eagle-beaked, crook-taloned vultures from the mountains swoop down on the smaller birds that cower in flocks upon the ground, and kill them, for they cannot either fight or fly, and lookers on enjoy the sport—even so did Ulysses and his men fall ...
— The Odyssey • Homer

... horse wrangler out of this boy," said Sargent to the father, in the presence of Dell and Joel. "Before the summer ends, he'll know every crook and turn in the remuda. There's nothing like knowing your horses. Learn to trail down the lost; know their spirit, know them in health, lame and wounded. If a horse neighs at night, know why; if one's missing in the morning, name ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams

... girdle and wide, baggy blue trousers whose voluminous folds almost hid the vermillion and gold tips of her curling slippers. A simitar was thrust fiercely through the flaming girdle, and a gaudy hookah cuddled in the crook of her arm, while the bristling whiskers and encarmined cheeks and nose of the weather-beaten seafarer proclaimed a strong masculine personality in striking contrast to the pretty young men Turks and Persians that tittered in feminine fashion all ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther

... shouted O'Dowd. "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 ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon

... 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 pleasure ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock

... quickly then returned, And stood amazed as soon as he discerned His father's near escape from tree-crushed fate; He quite unconscious of his danger great. There rested, just a foot above his head, A huge crook'd branch, that might have struck him dead, Had it not been for God's most watchful care, So plainly manifested to him there. This wondrous mercy called forth gratitude, And Love's warm glow fresh in their ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd

... the rear. At Newtown I was obliged to make a circuit to the left, to get round the village. I could not pass through it, the streets were so crowded, but meeting on this detour Major McKinley, of Crook's staff, he spread the news of my return through ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... says. "It's neither ploughshare, whittle, hook, nor crook, nor aught I've yet seen men handle." By this time he was scratting in the dirt to ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling

... when it was evident that she was not going to continue, "has the reputation, among collectors, of being the biggest crook in the old-gun racket, a reputation he seems determined to live up—or down—to. But here; if your stepdaughters are co-owners, what's my status? What authority, if any, have I to ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper

... quickness of a tiger, and the strength of two ordinary men. One cause of his success is found in the character of his chargers. He has only the fleetest and most enduring horses; and when one fails he soon finds another by hook or by crook. His business in his recent raid into Kentucky (July 28th), seemed to have been mainly to gather up the best blooded horses, ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson

... He did not believe a new-born infant was morally answerable for other people's acts. He thought a man with a crooked spine would never be called to account for not walking erect. He thought if the crook was in his brain, instead of his back, he could not fairly be blamed for any consequence of this natural defect, whatever lawyers or divines might call it. He argued, that, if a person inherited a perfect mind, body, and disposition, and had ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... in the Paths of Death I tread, With gloomy Horrors overspread, My steadfast Heart shall fear no Ill, For thou, O Lord, art with me still; Thy friendly Crook shall give me Aid, And guide me through the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... wherever he goes. Friendship is ephemeral. It lasts only through life. It may die, it will die. The grave ends it all. The silent messenger that comes to king and peasant alike, and causes the scepter of the monarch to be laid by the crook of the shepherd, ends our friendship. Love comes from God. God is love. It touches us at every point of our lives. From the cradle to the grave, every moment of our lives we are the objects of love to some one, and we love in turn. But human love must end. After life's ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins

... Joseph's brethren had their pilgrimage chanced to lead them in this direction. The floor was of cement, and great patches of damp displayed themselves on the walls. Over the bed hung a peaceful picture of a chubby boy clasping a crook to his breast, and exchanging glances of maudlin sentimentality with a sheep that skipped at his side. The damp had eaten up one of the legs of mutton, and the sheep went on three legs. But nothing could exceed the more than human tenderness with which it regarded the chubby ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy

... is the tale related duly, And little resembling the fable, truly! Hoarders of farthings, I know, deuce take it. It isn't the story as you would make it! Crook-fingers, big-bellies, what do you say, Who govern the ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... hearing nothing, would come on. Dick, holding his rifle in the crook of his left arm, drew a pistol and fired it over the lad's head. At the same moment he dropped almost flat upon the ground. The bullet cut the leaves above Woodville and he sprang back, startled. A half-dozen Southern skirmishers ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler

... wringing misery out of her body and brain as one wrings water out of a bathing-dress, so when they got into the train she turned away, muttered yawningly that she was very tired, and buried her face in the crook of her arm so that he might think she slept. It puzzled her that she felt so disappointed. What had she expected to happen to-day that hadn't happened? Everything had been lovely. Mr. Yaverland had talked most interestingly, and the hills had been very ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... let him not approach to offer the bread of his God. For whatsoever man he be that hath a blemish, he shall not approach; a blind man, or a lame, or he that hath a flat nose, or any thing superfluous, or a man that is broken-footed, or broken-handed, or crook-backt, or a dwarf, or that hath a blemish in his eye, or be scurvy, or scabbed, or hath his stones broken; no man that hath a blemish of the seed of Aaron the priest shall come nigh to offer the offerings of the Lord made by fire; he that hath ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... for he was a man who could be all things to all men; and the blue eyes sometimes went black, and the smooth, shapely hand that was for ever stroking the long flowing beard, liked too well to feel a trigger in the crook of its forefinger. So I laughingly declined his offer—even when, as an extra inducement, he pointed out to me a very handsome young Marshall Island girl, who would do the station ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke

... the castle, for 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 ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... of her vocation and finding life sweet, the Chalcid curls her antennae into a crook and waves them to and fro: she rubs her tarsi together, a sign of satisfaction; she dusts her belly. I can hardly see her with the naked eye; and yet she is an agent of the universal extermination, a wheel in the implacable machine which crushes ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... down to tease the brook, With her fishes, there below; She comes dancing, thou must know, And the bushes arch above her; But the seeking sunbeams look, Dodging through the wind-blown cover, Find and kiss her into stars. Silvery veins entwine and crook Where a stone her tripping bars; There be smooth, clear sweeps, and swirls Bubbling up crisp drops like pearls. There I lie, along the rocks Thick with greenest slippery moss, And I have in hand a strip Of gray, pliant, dappled bark; And I comb her liquid locks Till her tangling ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone

... preceding their judicial service, a member of the legislature for several terms, like Saylor, where they are first tried out. This judge expects one day to be Governor and is willing to do any thing to further his political ambitions. By some hook or crook or pull he succeeded in obtaining his license to practice law and since has appeared in court occasionally; generally when a jury was ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

... forgotten both the mountain-side and the horse if the Master-maid had not reminded him of them as evening drew near, and said that now it would be better if he went to fetch the horse before the giant came. So he did this, and took the bridle which was hanging on a crook, and strode up the mountain-side, and it was not long before he met with the horse, and fire and red flames streamed forth out of its nostrils. But the youth carefully watched his opportunity, and just as it was rushing at him with open jaws he threw the bit straight into its mouth, ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various

... to if you don't want to," he told her gently, looking down in a puzzled way at her distress. Her face was buried in a crook of her arm; her black hair streamed tempestuously over her heaving shoulders. "Come closer to the ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley

... when she had en on, I took Her han' 'ithin my elbow's crook, An' off we went athirt the weir An' up the meaed toward the feaeir; The while her mother, at the geaete, Call'd out an' bid her not stay leaete, An' she, a-smilen wi' her bow O' blue, look'd roun' and ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes

... had travelled in Europe, said it put them in mind of the "Jardin Mabille;" and those who had not were reminded of some of the wonders of "The Black Crook." There were apartments turned into bowers and grottoes, where the gas-light shimmered behind veils of falling water, and through pendant leaves of all sorts of strange water-plants of tropical regions. There were all those wonderful leaf-plants of every weird device ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... that you can see nothing beyond, nor would suspect anything more to exist than this watery vale among the hills; except that, directly opposite, there is the beautiful glen of Invernglass, which winds away among the feet of Ben Crook, Ben Ein, Ben Vain, and Ben Voirlich, standing mist-inwreathed together. The mists, this morning, had a very soft and beautiful effect, and made the mountains tenderer than I have hitherto felt them to be; and they lingered about their heads like ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... be that! A shepherdess costume, and a crook with ribbons on. But I want you to wear a ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells

... "I will tell you," Craig proceeded inexorably. "Bennett, you embezzled that money for your business. Rather than be found out, you went to Billy McLoughlin and offered to sell out the Reform campaign for money to replace it. With the aid of the crook, Hanford, McLoughlin's tool, you worked out the scheme to extort money from Travis by forged photographs. You knew enough about Travis's house and library to frame up a robbery one night when you were staying there with him. ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve

... grinned. "You don't need to worry about him. That kid will out-guess any free trader, or any other crook that ever was born. He's handled 'em red hot—one at a time, an' in bunches. The more they is of 'em, the better he likes 'em! Didn't he round up Bill Cosgrieve an' his Cameron Creek gang? An' didn't he bring in four of the orneriest cusses that ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx

... lingered with him. He was resting in an old chair tipped back against the house, thinking deeply, when the little girl, tired from her play, climbed into his lap and, making a cozy nest for herself in the crook of his arm, fell asleep. He had finished planning out the work upon which he had been concentrating and had been about to take her into the house when he suddenly became aware of the child's loveliness. In the silvery moonlight all the fairy, flower-like quality of her was enhanced. Martin ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius

... to keep up these anticipations and by hook or crook prevent Rogers and Rockefeller from unloading. I bought and bought to steady the market when no one else apparently would buy; and when I found others whom I could induce to venture, I had them relieve those who were faltering ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... thin, And it rests upon his chin Like a staff, And a crook is in his back, And a melancholy ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various

... filling of a road-bed. And we rip up old clothes in order to have rags, and to make room in our homes for other things. Destructiveness from a sheer love of destructiveness is not work—it is vandalism. The true Man works. When Adam's crook-stick turned over the brown earth to make it fertile, he began the industry of the world. The whole horizon of man's endeavor is spanned by one word, Work. It has built cities, bridged rivers, united continents, and sent the myriad spindles of trade whirring ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown

... the skyline you may find a dynamite cartridge, a drunken tinker, a mad dog, or a shilling which some person has dropped; and any one of these unexpectednesses may be potent to urge the traveler down a side street and put a crook in the straight line which had been his life, and to which he had become miserably reconciled. The element of surprise being, accordingly, one of the commonest things in the world we ought not to be hypercritical in our review of singularities, or say—"These things do not happen,"—because ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens

... his knees (though 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 trotted at ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie

... says I. 'I'll take the job even if I have to garland my brow and hold on to a crook and wear a loose-effect and play on a pipe like the ...
— Options • O. Henry

... would help others. He gave up the kettle to her snatching hands, and sate down behind the door in momentary ill-temper. But the kettle was better filled, and consequently heavier than the old woman expected, and she could not manage to lift it to the crook from which it generally hung suspended. She looked round for Hester, but she was gone into the back-kitchen. In a minute Philip was at her side, and had heaved it to its place for her. She looked in his face for ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell

... quota of forty head, which set "old man" Blundell raving through the district like a mad bull. Then came a raid on the "U—U's." Sandy McIntosh cursed the rustlers in the broadest Scotch, and set out to scour the country with his boys. Another ranch to suffer was the "crook-bar," but they, like the "TT's," couldn't tell the extent of their losses definitely, and estimated them at close on to ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum

... not out of how many crises he has contrived, both as a fisher of men and a good shepherd, to lift the Church of England by hook or by crook. ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie

... white beard in the rills, And lays his shield over highway, and field, And pitches his tents on the hills,— In the wan light I wake, and see on the lake, Like a glove by the night-winds blown, With fingers that crook up creek and brook, His ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... not corrupted nature in yourselves, But ill-conducting, that hath turn'd the world To evil. Rome, that turn'd it unto good, Was wont to boast two suns, whose several beams Cast light on either way, the world's and God's. One since hath quench'd the other; and the sword Is grafted on the crook; and so conjoin'd Each must perforce decline to worse, unaw'd By fear of other. If thou doubt me, mark The blade: each herb is judg'd of by its seed. That land, through which Adice and the Po Their waters roll, was once the residence Of courtesy and ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... with a hammer. The earth rings. One has seen those boots in the morning hanging outside the door of his house while he slept. They have been oiled, and left there to dry. They have kept the shape of his limb and the crook of his knee in an uncanny way. They look as though he had taken off his legs before going into the house and hung them on the wall. But the fisherman is a hero not only in his boots. His sea-coat is no less magnificent. This may be of oil-skin yellow or of maroon ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd

... forget the first time I was arrested. I was with a hardened crook, and we had made a haul of some hundred dollars. But as luck would have it we were caught and sent away for nine months on a "technicality." If we had received our just dues the lowest term would ...
— Dave Ranney • Dave Ranney

... did it?' asked the Ranger, throwing the saddle from his own pony, strapping the cased rifle to his shoulder and carrying the hatchet in the crook of ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... his tail to my fair one and me; And Phoebe was pleased too, and to my dog said, 'Come hither, poor fellow;' and patted his head. But now, when he's fawning, I with a sour look Cry 'Sirrah;' and give him a blow with my crook: And I'll give him another; for why should not Tray Be as dull as his ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... crook fingers on the bargain," said Ben, settling the rail and running over it to the tuft, then bridging another pool and crossing again till ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various

... stumbling, and very earnest, and not very hard to understand. Silence came again, broken only by the treble strains of violins beyond. Once, in that quiet, his eyes strayed to the small and round, and yellow object which she carried in the crook of one arm—a tiny papier-mache pumpkin strapped to two fuzzy mice in patent leather harness—but the pumpkin coach and tiny animals were not necessary to translate her costume ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans

... and me,—and a very good view of London to the fore. We have a luxuriously ample suite of apartments in the Langham Hotel, 3rd floor, our bedroom looking straight up Portland Place and our parlor having a noble array of great windows looking out upon both streets (Portland Place and the crook that joins it ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... investigate very thoroughly, making our local agent tell us all he knows of the man, and sending for a full detailed report by the commercial agency besides. Even then we occasionally get caught with a crook, but not often. The Guardian is very careful; if all other companies were equally so, there would be fewer firebugs ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... Mary Standish was facing the sea, and again her hand was resting confidently in the crook of Alan's arm. "Did you ever feel like killing a man, Mr. Holt?" she asked with an ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood

... Miss Falconer and myself to all appearances cozily established for a tete-a-tete meal, stopped in his tracks and fastened on me the hard, appraising scrutiny that a policeman might turn on a hitherto respectable acquaintance discovered in converse with some notorious crook. For an instant he seemed disposed to buttonhole me and remonstrate. Then he shrugged his stocky shoulders, the gesture indicating that one can't save a fool from his folly, and established himself at a near-by table, from which coign of vantage he ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... still upon her cushions. It would have required an experienced hand to guide the heavy punt through the sweeping current, and under Darsie's unpractised strokes it twisted, and turned, and revolved in aimless and disconcerting circles... No matter! she was determined to win; by hook or by crook she must make the left side of the stream and gain an anchorage. The jetty or the millpond—that was the alternative, and it was one to put power into the arm and give staying power to the laboured breath! The moments were flying now, the ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... covered by a wonderful lace cap, which no one had ever succeeded in imitating, that fell in soft lappets and graceful folds round the severe, dignified face. Molly, Evelyn's little daughter, stood in great awe of Lady Mary, who had such a splendid stick with a silver crook of her very own, and who made remarks in French in Molly's presence which that young lady could not understand, and felt that it was not intended she should. She even regarded with a certain veneration the cap itself, which she had once met ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... know, up to the time of the memorable battle which is the subject of this paper. My having been a cadet at West Point from June, 1848, to June, 1852, when I graduated in the same class with Sheridan, Stanly, Slocum, Crook, Bonaparte and others, whose names have since become so distinguished, and my service in the regular army subsequently till the fall of 1853, threw me in contact with, and was the means of my knowing personally, or by reputation, most, if not all the prominent ...
— Personal recollections and experiences concerning the Battle of Stone River • Milo S. Hascall

... sent scouting up the Hassayampa where the Apaches had been seen some days before, but couldn't be found now—it being the practice of those nimble warriors to get far from the scene of their deviltries without needless delay, and the rule of the powers that were, until General Crook taught them wiser methods, to promptly order cavalry to the spot where the Indians had been, instead of where they had presumably gone. A buckboard en route to Date Creek, with two of the array that had sat ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King

... of the Egyptian court, to the busy turmoil of the streets of the metropolis, to reclining in a carpeted gondola or staying with a noble at his country house. In a moment all is changed. He dwells in a tent, alone on the mountain side, a shepherd with a crook in his hand. He is married to the daughter of a barbarian; his career ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... stood before her in the dim light; she still reclined in the armchair, not looking at him, one arm crook'd over her head and the fingers closed tightly over the rosy palm which was turned outward, ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers



Words linked to "Crook" :   fugitive from justice, briber, recurve, violator, probationer, drug trafficker, accessory, Robert MacGregor, gun moll, thug, contrabandist, goon, incendiary, thief, highbinder, tough, curved shape, criminal, outlaw, highjacker, fugitive, desperado, snatcher, bootlegger, hoodlum, Billie the Kid, treasonist, law offender, racketeer, pusher, scofflaw, arsonist, James, twist, raper, moonshiner, Bonney, lawbreaker, peddler, William H. Bonney, murderer, curve, principal, Jesse James, plotter, gaolbird, abductor, repeater, hijacker, blackmailer, moll, felon, flex, parolee, extortionist, by hook or by crook, bight, jailbird, liquidator, habitual criminal, moon curser, firebug



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