"Crooked" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... father—a blacksmith by trade - Why the deuce does he tell us it half broke his heart? His heart!—where's the leg of the poor little maid! Well, that's not enough; they must push her downstairs, To make her go crooked: but why count the list? If it's right to suppose that our human affairs Are all order'd by ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... about him seems to thin a little, and one makes attempts—hypnotism, suggestion, and so forth. But so far, quite in vain. He has, however, one peculiarity which I may mention. His hands are long and rather powerful. But the little fingers are both crooked—markedly so. I wonder if you ever noticed Sarratt's hands? However, I won't write more now. You will understand, I am sure, that I shouldn't urge you to come, unless I thought it seriously worth your while. On the other hand, I cannot bear to excite hopes which may—which ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... trace of Old Mr. Toad. You see, it had rained the day before, and that is just the kind of weather that a Toad likes best for traveling. Peter ought to have thought of that, but he didn't. He hunted for awhile and finally gave it up and started up the Crooked Little Path with the idea of running over for a call on Johnny Chuck in the ...
— The Adventures of Old Mr. Toad • Thornton W. Burgess
... from the rafters, were bunches of herbs, crooked-neck squashes, and poles on which were strung circular slices of pumpkin which were drying, to be made ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... fond of good cheer, as fat, and as good-humoured as himself. Behind the cook stood the cellarman, known by the appellation of Jack of the Bottles, and at his feet were two playful little turnspits, with long backs, and short forelegs, as crooked ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... have been a crocodile strayed from the Nile into the waters of the Euphrates! A half- pounder! To have been terrified by a trout seems a bad beginning; and, thereafter, the mist gather's over the past, only to lift again when I see myself, with a crowd of other little children, sent to fish, with crooked pins, for minnows, or "baggies" as we called them, in the Ettrick. If our parents hoped that we would bring home minnows for bait, they were disappointed. The party was under the command of a nursery governess, and probably she was no descendant of the mother of us ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... advanced with banners, dragons, with fans made with phoenix feathers, and palace flabella of pheasant plumes; and those besides who carried gold-washed censers burning imperial incense. Next in order was brought past a state umbrella of golden yellow, with crooked handle and embroidered with seven phoenixes; after which quickly followed the crown, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... country are described as of a diminutive size, ill fed, ill shaped, and yielding but a scanty return in milk. They were mostly of a black color, with large stripes of white along the chine and ridge of their backs, about the flanks, and on their faces. Their horns were high and crooked, having deep ringlets at the root—the surest proof that they were but scantily fed; the chine of their backs stood up high and narrow; their sides were lank, short, and thin; their hides thick and adhering to the bones; their pile was coarse and open; and few of them gave more than ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... time to become aware of this observation of his person when the gate itself was opened, and there appeared before him, in the moonlight, the bent and crooked figure of an aged negress. She was clad in a calamanco raiment, and was further adorned with a variety of gaudily colored trimmings, vastly suggestive of the tropical world of which she was an inhabitant. Her woolly head was enveloped, after the fashion of her ...
— The Ruby of Kishmoor • Howard Pyle
... papers, I'm inclined to deal leniently with you," said Mr. Ormond. "I hope this may be a lesson to you to keep out of crooked ways for the future. You have a brother in the north of England, I believe? Go to him, and see if he can help you to get work away from your old surroundings. I'll lend you money ...
— Under Padlock and Seal • Charles Harold Avery
... which standeth on a goodly plaine replenished with corne and cotton wooll. On these mountaines which we passed grow great quantity of gall trees, which are somewhat like our okes, but lesser and more crooked: on the best tree a man shall not finde aboue a pound of galles. This towne of Hammah is fallen and falleth more and more to decay, and at this day there is scarse one halfe of the wall standing, which hath bene very strong and faire: but because ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... Of this uncouth creature he chose to make a favourite, in despite of all taste and opinion; and I remember one instance which he alleged, of what he called Brown's petulance, was, that he had criticised severely the crooked legs and drooping ears of Bingo. On my word, Matilda, I believe he nurses his high opinion of this most awkward of all pedants upon a similar principle. He seats the creature at table, where he pronounces a grace that sounds like the scream of the man in the square ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Sects,—then what could the Army do but spurn the Concordat? Like their own previous dealings with the King himself in the hope of winning him over, had not this Concordat been, after all, but a piece of carnal and crooked policy? To hold certain beliefs in the heart, and yet to consent to be the dumb instrument of those whose views were wholly different, or only half the same, could not be right in a reasoning body of free men, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... was crooked and cross, was talking with a young officer. The officer said he thought that in a certain sentence ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... coming on the top of the waves The crooked, clamouring, shivering brave ... Her face was blue black of the lustre of coal, And her bone-tufted tooth ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... old Mis' Price's harnt," cried Rufe, pointing at Andy Byers, with a jocosely crooked finger. "HE air so peart an' forehanded a-viewin' harnts, he don't hev to wait till folkses be dead. HE hev seen Mis' Price's harnt—an' it plumb skeered the ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... beadles, or by bell-ringing, or by force of figures, or by correct principles of taste, or by high church, or by low church, or by no church; whether he shall be set to splitting trusses of polemical straws with the crooked knife of his mind or whether he shall be put to stone-breaking instead. In the midst of which dust and noise there is but one thing perfectly clear, to wit, that Tom only may and can, or shall and will, be reclaimed according to somebody's ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... You came here, you and your sick mother, with the scandal of your father's crookedness hanging over you and her sickness making her super-sensitive, and you two kept the secret and brooded over it so long that you have come to think you are criminals, too. You're not. You haven't done anything crooked. What's the matter with you, man? ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... least three minutes with that wall of scowling brutes ten feet away. They were undecided what to do and were only waiting for a leader to close in. One huge beast over six feet tall was just in front of me, and as I stood with my fingers crooked about the trigger of the automatic in my pocket, I thought, "If you start, I'm going to ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... gullible fool at home, alternately raging with jealous suspicion, and fawning with fatuous trustfulness upon the man who is wronging him. Mosbie is a cold-blooded, underhand villain whose pious resolutions and protestations of love could only deceive those blinded by fate, and whose preference for crooked, left-handed methods is in tune with his vile intention of murdering the woman who loves him. Alice, the representative of womankind among these beast-men, the wife, the passionately loving mistress, is an arch-deceiver, an absolutely ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... you the Lord only knows! They say that it is a bottomless abyss, with no outlet but one crooked one, miles long, that reaches to the Demon's Punch Bowl. But if there is a bottom to that abyss, that bottom is strewn ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... on his misplaced faith in the integrity of others, I shall quote from a letter of January 4, 1867, to E.S. Sanford, Esq., which also shows his abhorrence of anything like crooked ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... was at once cut out, framed, glassed, and hung alongside his fellows in this room. And George moved from one to another till he came to the last. It was himself. He was represented in very perfectly cut clothes, with slightly crooked elbows, and race-glasses slung across him. His head, disproportionately large, was surmounted by a black billycock hat with a very flat brim. The artist had thought long and carefully over the face. The lips and cheeks and chin were moulded so as ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... us immediately into a new country, the river bank high and firm, a bank of rather vivid yellow clay, with trees thickly covering the rising ground beyond. The passage of a few hundred yards revealed the mouth of Rassuer Creek, a narrow but sluggish stream, so crooked and encroached upon by the woods as to be practically invisible from the center of the river. The water was not deep, yet fortunately proved sufficiently so for our purpose, although we were obliged ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... as vast to the rural denizens of the towns through which it passed as did the Pacific Railroad enterprise to capitalists twenty years ago. To the surprise of the honest farmers, who considered the crooked county roads good enough for them, it made almost a straight line from one terminus to the other, and was laid out four rods in width—a reckless waste of land—as a preventive against snow blockades in winter Instead of following the windings of valley and stream as other roads ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... how Gus Megget and his gang got scared. It was just the sight of Shorty that scared him. He's got a record of sending more cattle thieves and crooked gamblers to jail than any three other sheriffs in the country. There never was anything he's afraid of, and he's just as tender-hearted as a kitten. Why, I know one time, after he'd sent a train robber to prison, he took ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster
... is another Hindee verse to the same effect. "Man dreads a crooked thing—the demon Rahoo dares not seize the moon till he sees her full." They consider the eclipse to be caused by the demon Rahoo seizing the moon ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... words!—If your ship steer as wild as your ideas, Captain, you will make a crooked passage to the south. Do you not think it an easier matter, for an old man like me, to tell a few lies than to climb yonder long and heavy hill? In strict justice, more than half my duty was done when I ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... wreck jutted out the object on which all eyes were now fastened. At first sight it looked a crooked log of wood sticking out from among the bricks. Thousands, indeed, had passed the bridge, and noticed nothing particular about it; but one, more observant or less hurried, had peered, and then pointed, and ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... by which the boat had been tied to a tree on the island lay in the bottom of the boat. The umbrella had a crooked handle, and the tying of one end of the rope around this, helped Bunny to hold ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Camp Rest-A-While • Laura Lee Hope
... room they need for breathing. While you are young, your bones are easily bent. One shoulder or one hip gets higher than the other, if you stand unevenly. This is more serious, because you are growing, and you may grow crooked before ...
— Child's Health Primer For Primary Classes • Jane Andrews
... it, there was no wheeled vehicle in it, there was not a level yard in it. From the sea-beach to the cliff-top two irregular rows of white houses, placed opposite to one another, and twisting here and there, and there and here, rose, like the sides of a long succession of stages of crooked ladders, and you climbed up the village or climbed down the village by the staves between, some six feet wide or so, and made of sharp irregular stones. The old pack-saddle, long laid aside in most parts of England as one of the appendages of its infancy, flourished ...
— A Message from the Sea • Charles Dickens
... voice, "our friend, the janitor, will immediately proceed to release Mr. T. Morgan Carey and bring him into court. Permit me to introduce myself. I am Mr. Robert McGraw, and I have you by the short hair, you crooked little sneak. You should have looked up and down the corridor and noticed all the witnesses I had posted to observe you letting me into your office before it was officially opened. Oh, I'm not worried about what you can do now. It's only nine-thirty and I can easily prove ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... complexion (maintained by a Spartan regimen), the fresh, bright color in her face, which spoke of an engaging modesty, became overspread with blotches and pimples; her figure, which had seemed so straight, grew crooked, the angel became a suspicious and shrewish creature who drove Castanier frantic. Then the fortune took to itself wings. At length the dragoon, no longer recognizing the woman whom he had wedded, left her to live on a little ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... before. Well, then comes his back with a hollow—so, for people to sit in when they go cruisin' about on shore; then here's his legs— somethin' like that, the fore ones straight an' the aft ones crooked." ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... years, looked much older. With one arm he leaned on the shoulder of a tall and graceful youth, while his other rested on a crutch. His hair was white, close-cropped, and bristly, his beard grey and shaggy, his eye dark blue, his forehead spacious, and his nose aquiline, but crooked; while his under lip was heavy and hanging, the lower jaw projecting so far beyond the upper, that he could with difficulty bring his shattered teeth together, so as to speak with clearness. Behind him came his son Philip, and Queen Mary of Hungary, the Archduke ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... forests of the northern cordilleras of Luzon, produce figures of stars, snakes, birds, etc., on children 7 to 9 years old. Hans Meyer describes the pattern of the Igorots. There appears to exist a great variety of symbols; for example, on the arms, straight and crooked lines crossing one another; on the breast, feather-like patterns. Least frequently he saw the so-called Burik designs, which extended in parallel bands across the breast, the back, and calves, and give to the body the appearance of a sailor's striped jacket. It is very ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... fists and muttered, "I'll figure it all up and take my pay, Missy. She's worth it. I will have to do some crooked things to get her; but by ——, I'd kill a dozen men and hang another, just to stand by and see ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... is," said Maka. "I's all w'ite inside. But somebody got speak boss 'fore he go 'way. If nobody speak, den you go 'way—no boss. All crooked. Nobody b'long to anybody. Den maybe men come down from mountain, or maybe men come in boat, and dey say, 'Who's all you people? Who you b'long to?' Den dey say dey don' b'long nobody but demselves. Den, mos' like, de w'ite ones gets killed for dey clothes and dey money. And Cheditafa and ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... act of Ptolemy was to put to death Cleomenes, who had been made sub-governor of Egypt by the same council of generals which had made Ptolemy governor. This act may have been called for by the dishonesty and crooked dealing which Cleomenes had been guilty of in collecting taxes; but, though the whole tenor of Ptolemy's life would seem to disprove the charge, we cannot but fear that he was in part led to this deed because he looked upon Cleomenes as the friend of Perdiccas, or because ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... has, for the most part, a stalk unusually crooked or elbowed, by which it is particularly distinguished. It flowers in June, as do most ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. I - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... year in which this bulky volume of obscene doggerel was published, Wycherley formed an acquaintance of a very singular kind. A little, pale, crooked, sickly, bright-eyed urchin, just turned of sixteen, had written some copies of verses in which discerning judges could detect the promise of future eminence. There was, indeed, as yet nothing very striking or original in the conceptions of the young poet. But he was already skilled in the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a crooked sixpence under the hearth-rug; and upon Christmas Eve he and Hunca Munca stuffed it into one of the stockings ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter
... blood in me, I suppose," she remarked. "The crooked ways attract, you know, when one has been brought up ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... up to Ipswich on the top of the tide—that is, if I don't stick fast in this crooked channel. My cargo is all either for Ipswich or Aldborough. Now let us turn in," as the boatmen made their way up the river. "We must be under way before daylight, or else we shall not save the tide down to-morrow evening. I am glad ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... towels, and flicking infinitesimal grains of dust from the chairs and tables. The sight of disorder was a positive pain to Esther's orderly eyes. It was reported of her that in the midst of a Latin examination she had begged to have a blind put straight, since its crooked condition distracted her mind; and therefore it may be surmised that on the present occasion Robert Darcy met with no very cordial reception, when he was discovered stamping about the newly swept rooms in a pair of dusty shoes, ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... is fair to remember the extremity of David's danger and the morality of his age, in estimating, not the nature of his action, but the extent of his guilt in doing it. The same relaxation of the vigour of his faith which left him a prey to fear, led him to walk in crooked paths, and the impartial narrative tells of them without a word of comment. We have to form our own estimate of the fitness of a lie to form the armour of a saint. The proposal informs us of two facts,—the custom of having a feast for ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... did their part. It was fine to see them starting out in the wrong direction, and twisting and doubling through the crooked lanes till they worked round to the Mission Hall, and then in with a rush and a scuttle, that as few as possible might see. The doings of the Fenton crowd, as they were known locally, were the talk of the town in those first days after Roger departed. Would they meet? Would they ...
— The Comrade In White • W. H. Leathem
... suppose I do this from affection? or do you infer it, because they have proved artists, or because they look so blooming and healthy, or because they write such fine letters, or because they have not grown crooked over embroidery, or because they are so innocent, unaffected, ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... behold thy servant what hes thou to say to him. Then God wil say, Wheir are the souls thou hest won by your ministery heir thir 17 years? He no wal what to answer to this, for, Sirs, I cannot promise God one of your souls: yet Ile say, behold my own Soul and my crooked Bessies (this was his daughter), and wil not this be a sad matter. Yet this was not so ill as Mr. John Elies note of a Minister was, who prayed for the success of the Kings navy both ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... the former home of Corporal Sutton; he was ready and eager to pilot us up the river; the moon would be just right that evening, setting at 3h. 19m. A.M.; and our boat was precisely the one to undertake the expedition. Its double-headed shape was just what was needed in that swift and crooked stream; the exposed pilot-houses had been tolerably barricaded with the thick planks from St. Simon's; and we further obtained some sand-bags from Fort Clinch, through the aid of Captain Sears, the officer in charge, who had originally suggested the expedition after ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... I can tell you is that this country is being flooded with precious stones upon which no duty is being paid, and I want you to find the party who is doing the crooked work." ...
— The Bradys and the Girl Smuggler - or, Working for the Custom House • Francis W. Doughty
... narrow, crooked street on the site of a real lane, which followed the windings of the Tyburn and overhung its left bank. At the south end stood the ancient parish church already referred to. The fact of the churchyard ...
— Hampstead and Marylebone - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... see," replied Morton, sobering down a little, "I counted on your doing the crooked thing and I ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... eldest son of a family, has no part in the life of the present generation. And yet I remember wearing, for months, a charm which old Betsey had prepared for me, with what result I cannot tell, save that I never had the disease from which the charm was to save me. As for curing warts, crooked legs, weak backs, and other ailments by the means used in the good old days—well, they are utterly forgotten. In short, Cornwall, which even in my boyish days was the very Mecca of Folklore and superstition, ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... the sand was spun out, and straggled off into a crooked little jerk that ended at the ...
— Hunted Down • Charles Dickens
... of Jack Sheppard. What amazing difficulties has he overcome! what astonishing things has he performed! and all for the sake of a stinking, miserable carcass; hardly worth the hanging! How dexterously did he pick the chain of his padlock with a crooked nail! how manfully he burst his fetters asunder! — climb up the chimney! — wrench out an iron bar! — break his way through a stone wall! — make the strong door of a dark entry fly before him, till he got upon the leads of the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... the corner, then we talked. I had given the first woman her five shillings directly after I had done her, and before she found the reptile in her petticoats; I forgot to pay the other. "Well young man, you've made a pair of us go crooked," said one. "Aye that he have,—we've played high jinks." "Give us a kiss," said one. I kissed them both, and off they walked. "Hulloh!" said I, "I forgot the five shillings." "Lord so had I," said my creditor,—and I ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... Lothrop—if I can. A Puritan is a person so much better than the ordinary run of mortals, that she is not afraid to let Nature and Solitude speak to her—dares to look roses in the face, in fact;—has no charity for the crooked ways of the world or for the people entangled in them; a person who can bear truth and has no need of falsehood, and who is thereby lifted above the multitudes of this world's population, and stands ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... when there he would find a pole across the river, which, if he has been honest, upright, and good, will be straight, upon which he could readily cross to the other side; but if his life had been one of wickedness and sin, the pole would be very crooked, and in the attempt to cross upon it he would be precipitated into the turbulent stream and lost forever. The brave also told him if he crossed the river in safety the Great Father would receive him, take out his old brains, give him new ones, and then ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... the truth about the sponge farms, eh?" the prospective buyer remarked sternly. "So you were trying to put up a crooked deal. I'll attend to you when we get ashore. Now you row after that 'vampa,' as you call it, and as quick as you ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... walked back and forth on the deck, I was struck by their various degrees of in-expressiveness. Opaque brown eyes, almond-shaped and only half open; wolfish green eyes, close-set and always doing something, with a crooked gleam boring in this direction or in that; watery grey eyes, like the thick edges of broken skylight glass: I would have given a great deal to know what was going on behind each pair ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... young swain to supply their places with love and affection." "Ay, true," answered two or three more, "we must look out a clever young fellow for Urad; whom shall she have?" "Oh, if that be all," said a crooked old maid, who was famous for match-making, "I will send Darandu to comfort her, before night; and, if I mistake not, he very well knows his business." "Well, pretty Urad," cried they all, "Darandu ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... and branded with law an' order, herded together like cattle, ticketed, done for. That's the way the range is now. The marshals have us by the throat. In the old days a sheriff that outlived his term was probably crooked and runnin' hand in hand with ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... all wondered, had he done? Had he murdered as well as destroyed so many happy homes? Was he crooked at cards? Our minds became acutely active, but we could discover no more because the old Colonel, the source of knowledge, had fallen ill and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... went to bed, and Tess, locking them all in, started on her way up the dark and crooked lane or street not made for hasty progress; a street laid out before inches of land had value, and when one-handed clocks ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... of parting with my children, and especially at that terrible thing, their being taken into the parish keeping; and then a hundred terrible things came into my thoughts, viz., of parish children being starved at nurse; of their being ruined, let grow crooked, lamed, and the like, for want of being taken care of; and this sunk my very heart ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... prophet of the actual, picking out with optimistic eye its singular abundance of blessedness. I do not think that she reminded me that Elsa might have had but one eye, one leg, or a crooked back, but her felicitations ran on this strain. Their obvious artificiality gave them the effect of sympathy, and Victoria would always sanction this interpretation by a kiss on departure. But she had her theory; it was that Elsa only needed ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... sort, you may be perfectly certain that there is exactly the same table, vase, and flamingo on every one of the thirty-two landings of that towering habitation. This is where it differs most perhaps from the crooked landings and unexpected levels of the old English inns, even when they call themselves hotels. To me there was something weird, like a magic multiplication, in the exquisite sameness of these suites. It seemed to suggest the still atmosphere of some eerie psychological story. I once myself ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... strong that the tradition obtains that the Titans after the defeat administered to them by the gods took refuge there. Here the people had brought together all their flocks and their other principal valuables. Crassus after finding all its entrances, which are crooked and hard to search out, walled them up, and in this way subjugated the men by famine. Upon this success he did not keep his hands from the rest of the Getae, though they had nothing to do with Dapyx. He marched upon Genoucla, ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... dragged his eyes from the face under the black-and-yellow hat, and fastened them on a crooked pine tree that hung out ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... a nobler duty than to part. But of thy virtues didst thou make a vice, Trafficking with them in a purpose cold, For present anger and for future gold, And buying others' grief at any price. And thus, once entered into crooked ways, The early truth, which was thy proper praise, Did not still walk beside thee, but at times, And with a breast unknowing its own crimes, Deceit, averments incompatible, Equivocations, and the thoughts which dwell In Janus-spirits; the significant eye Which learns to lie with silence; ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... London Bridge, New Fish Street, Gracechurch Street as far as Fenchurch Street, Thames Street from Fish Street to the Old Swan, part of St. Martin's Lane, part of St. Michael's Lane, and part of Crooked Lane. ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... whatever game you like. It is immaterial to me whether straight or crooked. I don't know anything about what you have been talking, and you have only wasted your breath and got out of temper ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... thought, He was so wasted and forpined quite, That all his substance was consumed to nought, And nothing left but like an airy sprite; That on the rocks he fell so flit and light, That he thereby received no hurt at all; But chanced on a craggy cliff to light; Whence he with crooked claws so long did crawl, That at the last he found ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... and enjoyment of all the people, not the pleasure of a class. Moreover, no matter how wide or well-guarded the road may be above the bridge, it can never be wide enough to prevent a reckless chauffeur from causing a terrible fatality. It is necessarily a very crooked road, hung upon the high ledges of precipitous cliffs. While the road is safe for coaches drawn by well-broken horses and driven by trustworthy drivers, it would be criminal folly to open it to the crowd of automobiles that ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams
... The poor, crooked fingers were very much improved, and were soon almost as good as ever. And the whole village loved Tom for his brave, self-sacrificing spirit, and the noble atonement he had made ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various
... at this note! no name to it, no conclusion, the characters indistinct, the writing crooked, the words so few, and ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... had lasted a quarter of an hour, I am convinced that I should have died of excitement. At the same moment, there appears from beneath the bridge a human form, clothed in a dirty, ragged shirt, with a bloated senseless face, a shaven, wagging, totally uncovered head, crooked, nerveless legs, and a shining red stump in place of a hand, which he thrusts ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... at him hopelessly. He could not see; he could not understand. And how could she tell him? Her father's words rang in her brain. He was "crooked." He was "here on some game." He was being watched. But she loved him, she loved him! Oh, how could ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... Then took they out of the ship the table of silver, and he took it to Percivale and to Bors, to go to-fore, and Galahad came behind. And right so they went to the city, and at the gate of the city they saw an old man crooked. Then Galahad called him and bade him help to bear this heavy thing. Truly, said the old man, it is ten year ago that I might not go but with crutches. Care thou not, said Galahad, and arise up and shew thy good will. And so he assayed, and found himself as whole as ever he was. Than ran he ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... at Sydney, and were also employed in erecting a house for the master boat-builder. The timber carriages drawn by oxen were employed in bringing in the beams and joists for the new granary; and a gang was sent up the harbour to cut crooked timber for the boat-builder. The maize granary at Parramatta was also in a state ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... wife,—the pillar of salt, mentioned and portrayed by the American expedition in 1848, and of which it is said they took a fragment for a museum at home,—after a good deal of search, we only discovered a crooked thin spire of rock-salt in one place of the mountain; but it would not have been very remarkable if many such had been found ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... and may, perhaps, also frighten small birds; and the habit of turning up the tail possessed by the harmless rove-beetles (Staphylinidae), giving the idea that they can sting, has, probably, a similar use. Even an unusual angular form, like a crooked twig or inorganic substance, may be protective; as Mr. Poulton thinks is the case with the curious caterpillar of Notodonta ziczac, which, by means of a few slight protuberances on its body, is able to assume an angular and very unorganic-looking ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... adjustable for different lengths of shaft, and are made to revolve by power applied through suitable gearing and a splined rod inside the bed; the bar of iron being placed on the periphery of the rolls receives a rotary motion by friction, and shows the crooked places in the same way and with the same ease as though rotating on centers in the usual manner; vertically adjustable blocks are arranged in the base of the press to support the iron; power is applied by means of gearing to a splined rod at the back of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... plans, Joyce," I said, "such as they are. I mean to go through with this business of McMurtrie's, though I'm sure there's something crooked at the bottom of it. As for the rest—" I shrugged my shoulders and sat down on the sofa beside her; "well, I've got the sort of hand one has ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... had a late dinner, and were alone in an inn room there, overhanging the Rhine: at that place rapid and deep, swollen and loud. Vendale lounged upon a couch, and Obenreizer walked to and fro: now, stopping at the window, looking at the crooked reflection of the town lights in the dark water (and peradventure thinking, "If I could fling him into it!"); now, resuming his walk with his ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... named Ziito, resident at the court of Wenceslaus of Bohemia (A. D. 1368 to 1419,) appears to great advantage in the annals of these humbugs. He was a homely, crooked creature, with an immense mouth. He had a collision once in public on a question of skill with a brother conjuror, and becoming a little excited, opened his big mouth and swallowed the other magician, all to his shoes, which as he observed were dirty. Then he stepped into a closet, got ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... separated from the rest of the body. But, then, whatever hand or eye I imagine, it must have some particular shape and colour. Likewise the idea of a man that I frame to myself must be either of a white, or a black, or a tawny, a straight, or a crooked, a tall, or a low, or a middle-sized man. I cannot by any effort of thought conceive the abstract idea above described. And it is equally impossible for me to form the abstract idea of motion distinct ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... mothers ate their fill of 'long pig' here and danced away the night," said Hot Tears, the hunchback, as he lighted a cigarette and sat upon the stone pulpit that once had been a wizard's. His heavy face, crushed down upon his crooked chest, showed not the slightest trace of fear; a pale imp danced in each of his narrowed eyes as he looked ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... the axe; fling by the spade; Leave in its track the toiling plow; The rifle and the bayonet-blade For arms like yours were fitter now; And let the hands that ply the pen Quit the light task, and learn to wield The horseman's crooked brand, and rein The charger on the ...
— Reminiscences of a Rebel • Wayland Fuller Dunaway
... thing. Say, we haven't had a crooked word since we quit the old Fort. He's a diff'rent guy when he gets away from his—store. No, sir, Murray's wise. He guesses I need to see and do things. And he's helped me all he knows. And he showed me around some dandy places before ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... honour, and no third. First, the toilworn Craftsman, that, with earth-made Implement, laboriously conquers the Earth, and makes her man's. Venerable to me is the hard Hand; crooked, coarse; wherein, notwithstanding, lies a cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the Sceptre of this Planet. Venerable, too, is the rugged face, all weather-tanned, besoiled, with its rude intelligence; for ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... is. That's more than I'd say about a good many artistic chaps," remarked Mrs. Van. "Most of 'em I hate—they're so crooked. The Lord starts 'em weak and the women finish 'em. He sure can play, though. Regular pictures—some of the things he composes. I can see the cows grazing on the hills in ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... and general, grated in the throats and twisted the mouths of the miners. At the same moment, with clenched fists or fingers crooked to grip, they pressed in ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... from his seat and walked slowly to the window. He stood gazing out upon the smoke-begrimed roofs and crooked chimneys. Between his lips he held his pen, and his hands were thrust deeply into his trouser pockets. It was on that spot and in that attitude that he usually thought out his carefully written weekly article ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... grown, From Pardon'd Rebels, Kinsmen to the Throne, Were raised in Pow'r and publick Office high: Strong Bands, if Bands ungrateful men coud tie. Of these the false Achitophel was first: A Name to all succeeding Ages curst. For close Designs, and crooked Counsels fit; Sagacious, Bold, and Turbulent of wit: Restless, unfixt in Principles and Place; In Pow'r unpleas'd, impatient of Disgrace. A fiery Soul, which working out its way, Fretted the Pigmy-Body to decay: And o'r inform'd the Tenement of Clay, A ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... the "Hotel de Belle Vue," was on hand bright and early yesterday morning, to welcome us out of Quarantine. The gates were thrown wide, and forth we issued between two files of soldiers, rejoicing in our purification. We walked through mulberry orchards to the town, and through its steep and crooked streets to the hotel, which stands beyond, near the extremity of the Cape, or Ras Beyrout. The town is small, but has an active population, and a larger commerce than any other port in Syria. The anchorage, however, is an open road, and in stormy weather it ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... "I'm 'fraid it's pretty crooked—p'raps I could change the spelling if you'd tell me. I didn't like to ask anybody 'cause they'd ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... drained, cleared, sub-soiled, and manured, that the occupier is able to support on one acre as many cattle as on three acres when grazed; while affording profitable employment to the women and children. Great labour has been bestowed in taking down crooked and broad fences. Every foot of ground is cultivated with the greatest care, and in the mountain districts, patches of land among rocks, inaccessible to horses, are tilled by the hand. In many cases in the less exposed districts, two crops in the year are ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... to my surprise, the boat was sent back, with Mr Bang's card, on which was written in pencil, "Don't affront us, Captain Cringle." Thereupon I got the schooner under weigh, and no event worth narrating turned up until we anchored close to the post office at Crooked Island, two ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... moved smoothly in its appointed course, his nature was bland and genial; but, whenever there was a little hitch, and some of his orbs got out of their orbits, he was blander and more genial still, for nothing pleased him so much as to make the crooked straight and crush ...
— The Lady, or the Tiger? • Frank R. Stockton
... most part, they are such as the national temper must be much bettered before it would bear. A nation in its youth may be helped by laws, as a weak child by backboards, but when it is old it cannot that way strengthen its crooked spine. ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... depth of the woods. There was too much sun for the hardy old warrior, and he followed his great chief, the brown eagle, to the regions of the north. Meantime the waters, no longer bound up with a chain by the Manitou of Cold, scooped out bays and heaped up headlands, till they made the shores of Nope crooked as the path of a bewildered white man, or the thread of a story ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... you will find described with rather a malicious minuteness some of the personal habits and infirmities of the great little Pope. His body was crooked, he was so short that it was necessary to raise his chair in order to place him on a level with other people at table.(140) He was sewed up in a buckram suit every morning and required a nurse like a child. His contemporaries reviled ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the gale above, which for all this while had driven them onward at such fearful speed. Venturing from their cedar house, they saw that they had entered the mouth of a great river upon the banks of which grew enormous trees that sent out long crooked roots into the water, and that among these roots crouched crocodiles and other noisome reptiles. Also the white-robed oarsmen had appeared again, and, as there was no wind, rowed the ship up the river, till at length they came to a spit of sand which ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... and leaden seas. Above float clouds—white, gray, and inken, while the clear, impalpable air springs and sparkles like new wine. Last night we floated on the calm bosom of the sea in the southernmost haven of Mount Desert. The water flamed and sparkled. The sun had gone, but above the crooked back of cumulus clouds, dark and pink with radiance, and on the other sky aloft to the eastward piled the gorgeous-curtained mists of evening. The radiance faded and a shadowy velvet veiled the mountains, a humid depth ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... have been all the better, as it seemed to Alice, if she had got some one else to dress her, she was so dreadfully untidy. 'Every single thing's crooked,' Alice thought to herself, 'and she's all over pins!—may I put your shawl straight for ...
— Through the Looking-Glass • Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll
... park, and wended a crooked trail through the deepening forest, and climbed, bench after bench, to higher ground, while the sun sloped to the westward, lower and redder. Sunset had gone, and twilight was momentarily brightening to the afterglow ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... see the herd of men feeding heartily on coarse and succulent pleasures, as cattle on the husks and stalks of vegetables. Though there are many crooked and crabbled specimens of humanity among them, run all to thorn and rind, and crowded out of shape by adverse circumstances, like the third chestnut in the burr, so that you wonder to see some heads wear a whole hat, yet fear not that the race will fail or ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... and clear logic, which is—to borrow a simile, though with a change in the application, from the witty-wise, but not always wisely-witty, Fuller—like knocking a nail into a board, without wimbling a hole for it, and which then either does not enter, or turns crooked, or ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge |
