"Upside down" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... me on my face," said Diogenes; and when he was asked why, he replied, "Because in a little while everything will be turned upside down." ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... of year when he became of supreme importance and when everybody in the house united to turn the world upside down for his delight. Christmas was a general holiday. But May twentieth was his own particular anniversary. Always there was some really worthwhile present about which endless whispering and the greatest secrecy ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... to comply with his friendly suggestion, and opening Peggotty's purse, turned it upside down into ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... screen,—that I have been a monk myself, or should have been one, if my pious lady mother here had had her will of me, as she may if she likes of that doll there at her knee. Do you forget why I left Peterborough Abbey, when Winter and I turned all your priest's books upside down in the choir, and they would have flogged us,—me, the Earl's son,—me, the Viking's son,—me, the champion, as I will be yet, and make all lands ring with the fame of my deeds, as they rung with the fame of my forefathers, before they became the slaves of ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... of us!" Mrs. Rooth repeated plaintively and with a resentment as vain as a failure to sneeze. "I don't know what you're talking about and I decline to be turned upside down, I've my ideas as well as you, and I repudiate the charge of false humility. I've been through too many troubles to be proud, and a pleasant, polite manner was the rule of my life even in the days when, God knows, I had ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... long, lank, upright, hard, with his martial moustache and the bony structure of his face, from which the glance of the sunken eyes seemed to transfix the priest, who stood still, an empty wooden snuff-box held upside down in his hand, and glared back, speechless, at the governor ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... nightmare!" he muttered to himself. "The world has been turned upside down over night." He looked up at her: "We can't stay here," he repeated. "Where do ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... boring tool, bow, wooden arrow, some copper ornaments, &c. Rolled-up pieces of bark also lay in the coffin, which were doubtless intended to be used in lighting fires in another world. Beside the grave lay a sleigh turned upside down, evidently placed there in order that the dead man should not, away there, want a means of transport, and it is probable that reindeer for drawing it were slaughtered ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... and Foreign Reviews, though for a long time I saw nothing in these (as my father saw nothing in them to the last) but insane rhapsody. From these sources, and from the acquaintance I kept up with the French literature of the time, I derived, among other ideas which the general turning upside down of the opinions of European thinkers had brought uppermost, these in particular: That the human mind has a certain order of possible progress, in which some things must precede others, an order ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... one hand firmly upon the ti-tree bark covering the top, while with the other she unfastened the strip of rag that kept it in position. In another moment, grasping the broken spout in her left hand, she held it over the open tin, and, with a rapid motion, turned it upside down, and whipped away her right hand from the piece ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... over to your country an' kill your husband's father an' his grandfather an' all the kings an' princes until there's nobody only your husband to be king. Then you'll be a queen you see, an' live in a palace. So now hush up." And one future majesty was rocked upside down by another until the royal face of the younger queen was purple and her voice ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... keepest upside down, sad soul, planted like a stake," I began to say, "speak, if thou canst." I was standing like the friar who confesses the perfidious assassin,[1] who, after he is fixed, recalls him, in order ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... fairway, hat in hand, my bag of clubs left where she had deposited them upside down in the tee-box for greater freedom in responding with gestures of defiance to the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 5th, 1914 • Various
... have been turned through an angle of 135 degrees; and here there is a kind of anticlinal axis, with the strata on both sides dipping to opposite points at an angle of 45 degrees, but those on the left hand upside down. ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... my friend," he said to the fellow with the bandaged head, "and if ever any person had a close shave, it was you; your head must be as hard as iron.—Well, George, how goes it? You're a pretty colour, certainly; why, your liver, man, is upside down. Did you take that medicine?—did he take ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... live in my own country, for I am afraid I should very hardly escape the Pharisee's condemnation for thinking myself better than my neighbors; and yet, God knows, not only that I am, but that I do, not. But how come people's nations so inside out and so upside down? ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... stove piping to form a chimney. Somehow somebody made cement, and built the bricks together, and one of the magnetic huts gave up its asbestos sheeting to insulate the chimney from the woodwork of the roofs. An old door made a cook's table, old cases turned upside down made seats. The provisions left by the Discovery were biscuits contained in some forty large packing cases. These we piled up across the middle of our house as a bulkhead and the old Discovery winter awning was dug out of the snow outside and fixed against the wall thus made to keep ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... like an author, Mr. BUMSTEAD, in having no overcoat, wearing your paper collar upside down, and carrying a pen behind your ear," Father DEAN is saying, "that I can almost fancy you are about to write a book about us. Well, Bumsteadville is just the place to furnish a nice, dry, inoffensive domestic novel in the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... pride yourself on your Latin and your Greek. I never got so far in my schooling. But turn this book upside down and read it. ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... galloping up to the door with one of his hands wrapped up in a handkerchief, streaming with blood. We enquired what was the matter, to which he replied that he was a birdkeeper, and that wishing to draw a charge of shot he had held the gun upside down, with the intent to shake the shot into his hand; but by some accident the gun had gone off, and the charge had passed through the middle of his hand. At this moment up came another man on horseback, to ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... pasted on a doorpost in a native house. In the Western Carolines and the Pelew Group, when whale ships were plentiful and prosperous, the native girls preserved these "characters" by gumming the paper (often upside down) on a piece of pandanus leaf bordered with devices in bead-work. When a fresh ship arrived, the damsels would bind these around their pretty little foreheads after the manner of phylacteries—and they were always read ...
— Concerning "Bully" Hayes - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... clashing, repugnance. inversion &c 218; the opposite, the reverse, the inverse, the converse, the antipodes, the antithesis, the other extreme. V. be contrary &c adj.; contrast with, oppose; diller toto coelo [Lat.]. invert, reverse, turn the tables; turn topsy-turvy, turn end for end, turn upside down, turn inside out. contradict, contravene; antagonize &c 708. Adj. contrary, contrarious^, contrariant^; opposite, counter, dead against; converse, reverse; opposed, antithetical, contrasted, antipodean, antagonistic, opposing; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... that drives the man to the depths of drink and crime Will do the deeds in the heroes' van that live till the end of time. The living death in the lonely bush, the greed of the selfish town, And even the creed of the outlawed push is chivalry — upside down. 'Twill be while ever our blood is hot, while ever the world goes wrong, The nations rise in a war, to rot in a peace that lasts too long. And southern nation and southern state, aroused from their dream of ease, Must sign in the Book of Eternal ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... like Jube—no, that first letter's a 'K' I guess," and Mr. Wilson turned it upside down, thinking that would help. ...
— Tom Swift in the City of Gold, or, Marvelous Adventures Underground • Victor Appleton
... awake, but it's the queerest thing. So long as I keep my eyes closed I'm quite comfortable, but when I open them I feel as if I were in a high swing just ready to tumble out; and when Texas gets to pitching around in his cage, and hanging fairly upside down, and whirling around like a crazy thing, it makes me a ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... before the lords of the creation rise from their downy beds. I have never seen this process myself, but I am informed, by the friend of my heart, who looked on it once for five minutes, and then fled, horror struck, that the first act consists in turning all the furniture upside down, and beating it with brooms. Further than this, I have no information. If any male eye has penetrated these awful secrets beyond that, let the owner of that eye preserve a decent silence. There are some things that it is better not ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... always unswallowing its meals with no effort whatever! It's horrible! And the mother, with no strength of character—feeble-minded, I reckon—coddles 'em! She never did cuss 'em out proper or act human toward 'em. Kids like them, what they need—upside down and three ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... like a round white dish Upside down on each pig-tailed head, Jugglers offer you snakes and fish, Dreams and dragons and gingerbread; Beautiful books with marvellous pictures, Painted pirates and streaming gore, And everyone reads, without any strictures, Tales he ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... circumstance which struck us as very strange. The others were all old veterans, middle-aged and oldish men with grizzled beards, all in scarlet jacket and scarlet chiripa and a scarlet cap of the quaint form then worn, shaped like a boat turned upside down, with a horn-like peak in front, and beneath the peak a brass plate on which was ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... just going to shut his eyes, however, the bed began to move of its own accord, and went over the whole of the castle. "That's right," said he, "but go faster." Then the bed rolled on as if six horses were harnessed to it, up and down, over thresholds and steps, but suddenly hop, hop, it turned over upside down, and lay on him like a mountain. But he threw quilts and pillows up in the air, got out and said, "Now any one who likes, may drive," and lay down by his fire, and slept till it was day. In the morning the King came, and when he ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... Shorty together invaded Wentworth's cabin, throwing him out in the snow while they turned the interior upside down. Laura Sibley hobbled in and frantically joined them ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... reminded at once of the similarity to the expression of a primitive emotion like anger or fear. So, by turning a relation upside down, it was argued that if artificial adrenalin could produce all these effects of an emotion like fear, the emotion itself should produce an increase of the natural adrenalin in the blood. This was found to be the case. Cannon ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... batter had not curdled. Before turning out a cake allow it to remain in the tin for a few minutes. It is best to lay it on a wire cake stand, or lay it on a sieve; but if you do not possess these, a loosely made basket turned upside down will do. If the cake will not turn out of the tin easily, rest it on its side, turning it round in a couple of minutes and it may loosen, if not, pass a knife round the edge, turn the cake over on a clean cloth, and let ...
— The Story of Crisco • Marion Harris Neil
... room was turned upside down, And all the carpets hung out to blow; For when the Bishop is coming to town The house must be ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... one obstinate bee (His name was Peter), and thus spake he - "Though every bee has shown white feather, To bow to tyranny I'm not prone - Why should a hive swarm all together? Surely a bee can swarm alone?" Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. Upside down and inside out, Backwards, forwards, round about, Twirling here and twisting there, Topsy turvily everywhere - Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. Pitiful sight it was to see Respectable elderly high-class bee, Who kicked the beam at sixteen stone, Trying his best to swarm alone! ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... sat staring straight ahead—until a quick step on the sidewalk outside stirred her into instant action. Assuming a look of absorbed interest she twitched the book open and held it before her face.... But the step passed by the door: and Billy saw then that her book was upside down. ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... before I ever heard of a drinking fountain. John made me something that we read about. He used to take a powder keg and bore a little hole in the side, about an inch from the top, then fill it with water, and cover with a pan a little larger round than the keg. Then he turned the keg upside down, without taking away the pan. The water ran into the pan only as far as the hole in the keg, and it would have to be used before more would flow in. Now let us go and see my beautiful, bronze turkeys. They don't need any houses, for they roost in ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... that long piqued me he solved. If you chance upon sandwich-board men marching to head-quarters, like old Kaspar at his garden gate their day's work done, you will notice they always carry their boards upside down. The passer-by, consumed by desire to know what truth these proclaim, must needs assume inverted attitude in order to profit by announcement. Why do they so ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various
... also, "all things look upside down to her. I don't suppose she's wholly to blame for it. Folks differ constitutionally. Some are always looking on the bright side of things, and others can never see but one side, ...
— Timothy Crump's Ward - A Story of American Life • Horatio Alger
... 12 in. long by 2 in. thick, have 32 holes 1 in. deep bored in each of them. These holes will just take a small 2 oz. phial. The mill manager puts the required quantity of quicksilver in each bottle and the batteryman empties one bottle in each mortar every hour; and puts it back in the hole upside down. Each block of wood lasts eight hours, the duration of one man's shift." This of course is for a 20-head mill with four mortars ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... for all, maids," said Gillman, and doled out the loaves from his basket, "and you must suffer even as I. Yet another day may see us grow fat." And he turned his basket upside down on his ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... "Tommy, Tommy, be a good boy, and don't go out of the street, or else Mr. Miacca will take you." But still when he was a bad boy he would go out of the street; and one day, sure enough, he had scarcely got round the corner, when Mr. Miacca did catch him and popped him into a bag upside down, and took him off ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... seemed to shake him to pieces, and which he said "was wearing him out," at which we all laughed irresistibly, and then felt ashamed of ourselves, as well we might; but he himself seemed to enjoy his cough. It was all part of that odd, topsy-turvy mind in which everything appeared most natural upside down! ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... meadow which has been described. Beavers' houses, however, are seen in all directions, sometimes on the banks of these artificial ponds, at others by the sides of large lakes or rivers. Though varying in size, they all greatly resemble a huge bird's-nest turned upside down. Some are eight feet in diameter, and three feet in height; while others are very much larger, being no less than sixteen to twenty feet in diameter, and nearly eight feet in height on the outside, and perfectly ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... cheek and eager eyes until the last letter was written; then he sprang up with an energy that set the arm-chair upside down, and uttered a vehement: ...
— Three People • Pansy
... perceived, to our great joy that the door was unfastened; and effecting a hasty entrance, we expected to be almost as well rewarded for our trouble as was Blue-beard's wife on entering the forbidden chamber. But nothing could we see except a few old boxes turned upside down, and along one side a neat row of shelves. We perceived indeed that the small window now contained four panes of glass, and we also discovered two or three little shelves there. But here our discoveries ended; there was nothing to account for all the ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... was firm. She gave me the poker. I pressed it hard on the floor, said good-bye to them all, and dived. I got half-way round, and was supporting myself upside down by one toe and the slippery end of the poker, when it suddenly occurred to me that the earth was revolving at an incredible speed on its own axis, and that, in addition, we were hurtling at thousands of miles a minute round the sun. It seemed impossible in these circumstances that I should ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... V., with a council and a lieutenant, who was to be the Duke of Maine. "When one has once acquired, no matter how, the rank of prince of the blood and the capability of succeeding to the throne," said the duchess, "one must turn the state upside down, and set fire to the four corners of the kingdom, rather than let them be wrested from one." The schemes for attaining this great result were various and confused. Philip V. had never admitted that his renunciation of the crown of France was seriously ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... far as I can make it out, a Crepuscule's either a Harmony inside out, or a Symphony upside down—it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 16, 1892 • Various
... spoke entreatingly, but Nina answered pettishly, "I ain't going to please, for everything has got upside down. It's all going wrong, and it won't make a speck of difference, as I see, whether I ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... the faucet in the kitchen sink doesn't turn upside down, and squirt the water on the ceiling and into the cat's eye, I'll tell you next ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... roots of the plants," said Puff. "We heard Tomty say that what the plants needed now was sun, and so we thought the roots ought to have some sun too. So we have been turning them upside down to save ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... with delight, seems to lose its head and goes meandering about, poking its nose up backwaters, creeping across meadows, flooding limpid shallows, mirroring oaks and willows upside down, surging up as if to sweep away a velvet-shorn lawn, only to pour itself—its united self—into an open-mouthed lock, and so on to a saner life in a level stretch beyond. If you want a map giving these vagaries, spill a cup of tea and follow its big and little puddles with their ...
— The Parthenon By Way Of Papendrecht - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... water for any length of time, when not in use, is to run the risk of damage and loss. A sudden storm will batter it against shore, send it adrift, or fill and sink it. A canoe should always be lifted, not dragged, ashore, and it should be turned upside down on the bank with a support in the middle so that it will not be strained by resting ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... said she, raising herself on her elbow, "I won't have anybody come into this house, if I lie here till doomsday, I won't. Now, you mind me. I ain't agoing to have Mimy Lawson, nor nobody else, poking all round into every hole and corner, and turning every cheese upside down to see what's under it. There ain't one of 'em too good for it, and they sha'n't have a chance. They'll be streaking here, a dozen of 'em, to help take care of the house; but I don't care what becomes ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... the Mourzuk people very friendly—everybody friendly; the world seemed turned upside down after our treatment from the Tuaricks. I began to make little presents, for I am determined our friends shall have a portion of her Majesty's goods as well as our enemies; which latter, indeed, took them away from us by force. I must not forget to remark, that when I entered Zinder there was not ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... Surely the world is turned upside down! You will drive me to despair about our future if you see things so awry. Exert yourself to do something, so as to make of this accident a stepping-stone to higher things. The gentleman will give us the slip if we don't pursue the ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... Mother Eve. I can not follow her through it all. It was pointed, and witty, and solemn; eliciting at almost every sentence deafening applause; and she ended by asserting: "If de fust woman God ever made was strong enough to turn de world upside down all alone, dese women togedder (and she glanced her eye over the platform) ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now dey is asking to do it, de men better let 'em." Long-continued ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... colours that were left him, although they were but few, and, getting down from the scaffolding, went off. Monday morning having come, Buonamico returned to his work, where, seeing the figures spoilt, the flasks all mixed up, and everything upside down, he stood all in marvel and confusion. Then, having pondered much in his own mind, he concluded finally that some Aretine had done this, through envy or through some other reason; wherefore, having gone to the Bishop, he told him how the matter stood and what ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... "Pelican with young," while on the other "The Children's Hour, or six o'clock at Mud View Villa," would be depicted. This, needless to say, economised greatly in space and matter; and in case any special exhibit failed to arrive in time, or was thrown away by mistake, an old one turned upside down at once remedied ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... me rather say it myself: These poets are turning everything upside down; nobody dares to grumble. An author might owe in unsecured debts his twenty thousand—what of it? He is unable to pay, that is all. What if a business man should act in this manner? What if he were to obtain wine or clothes on false promises of payment? He would simply be arrested for ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... on to show how the New World turned things upside down, transforming an immigrant shoemaker into a man of substance, while a former man of leisure was forced to work in a factory here. In like manner, his wife had changed for the worse, for, lo and behold! instead of supporting him while he ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... Sir Walter Raleigh's volume, we can see him, as he appeared to his own 'inward eye,' staggering between the abyss and the star of Heaven, his limbs cast abroad, his head thrown back in an ecstasy of intoxication, so that, to the frenzy of his rolling vision, the whole universe is upside down. We look, and, as we gaze at the strange image and listen to the marvellous melody, we are almost tempted to go ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... by no means cordially welcomed. Indeed, we seemed objects of some distrust and suspicion until Henry Chatillon explained that we were not traders, and we, in confirmation, handed to the bourgeois a letter of introduction from his principals. He took it, turned it upside down, and tried hard to read it; but his literary attainments not being adequate to the task, he applied for relief to the clerk, a sleek, smiling Frenchman, named Montalon. The letter read, Bordeaux (the bourgeois) seemed gradually to awaken to a sense of what ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... slowly and comfortably feeling his way into the lives of his children, patiently, conscientiously. But now without a word of warning in popped this young whipper-snapper, turning the whole house upside down! Another young person to be known, another life to be dug into, and with pick and shovel too! The job was far from pleasant. Would Deborah help him? Not at all. She believed in letting people alone—a devilish ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... religion of Greece is that of the Greek church, a religion of many ceremonies. The priests, long-haired, heavy-bearded men, wear long flowing black robes and black hats resembling our silk dress hats turned upside down with the brim at the top. They, the guide informed us, are men of influence; their hands are kissed by their people; their advice is sought, and their opinions received with deference by the members of ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... Socialist, Moses P. Handy the "Major," of Roswell P. Flower, of Judge Henry Hilton, of General Felix Agnus—and of Hermann, the original, the great, the magic wonder-maker of the times. They were the leading spirits of an army of bright men who pushed the world upside down, or rolled it over and over, or made it stand still, according to how they felt. Mingling with these arbiters of our fate were all sorts and conditions of men. At one of these dinners I remember seeing Inspector Byrnes, the Sherlock Holmes of American ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... old can be nothing more than the gradual gain or loss of certain substances, perhaps both together. Time is assumed to have just as much reality for a living being as for an hour-glass, in which the top part empties while the lower fills, and all goes where it was before when you turn the glass upside down. ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... returned with his net, and stopped up the channel leading to the river. The Second Fish wished he had followed the example of the Wise Fish; but he soon thought of a plan to escape. He floated upside down on the surface of the water, and the fisherman, thinking he was dead, did not trouble about him ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... elderly gentleman was eccentric could scarcely be doubted, because he not only looked over his spectacles instead of through them, but also, apparently, read his newspaper upside down. A closer inspection, however, would have shown that he was not reading the paper at all, but looking over the top of it at an object which accounted for much of the benignity, and some of the ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... had dined, I went up to my room to put the small things of need away, meaning to be no more than five minutes at the work; but, to my amazement, the whole of the place had been turned utterly inside out by one who had been there before me. My trunk lay upside down; my writing-case was unlocked and stripped, my diary was torn and rent, my clothes were scattered; I thought at first that a common cheat of a hotel thief had been busy snapping up trifles; but I got a shock greater than any ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... had very little hope of escaping, as I thought that the vessel might at any moment founder. Even to get on deck was no easy matter, for everything in the cabin was upside down—boxes and bales, and casks and articles of all sorts, thrown out of the lockers, mixed with the furniture which had broken adrift, were knocking about, while all the time we were in complete darkness. The dead-lights had fortunately been closed at the ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... willin' to move anywheres you want—San Francisco, or Los Angeles, or San Diego, or anywheres. And I could burn up that letter, and there needn't nobody know that the wife of Bill Talpers was mixed up in the murder that is turnin' this here State upside down. Furthermore, jest to show you that Bill Talpers is a square sort, I won't ever ask you myself jest how deep and how wide you're in this murder, nor why you wrote that letter, nor what it was all ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... the afterbirth. When the afterbirth is expelled it is wrapped in a piece of deer hide or cloth and buried. It is always placed right side up if a woman desires to continue bearing children. If she wishes not to have children it is buried upside down. If at a later time she wishes to become pregnant, she will turn the earth where the upside-down afterbirth was buried. Informants say that not many people do this any more, mainly because younger women go to the hospital to have their babies, ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... forbearance, he could easily have killed her by a single lateral thrust with his immense horns. The giraffe uses his short, hair-covered horns, which are rather longer in the male than in the female, in a curious manner; for, with his long neck, he swings his head to either side, almost upside down, with such force that I have seen a hard plank deeply indented by ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... eyes flashed, for, by the light of the campfire the lads saw the tramps seize frightened Reuben Hinman on either side and literally turn him upside down, the old man's head hitting ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock
... their hands, as it were reluctantly nibbling them, blinking, screwing up their eyes, and with a hissing sound sucking in the yellowish boiling liquid through their teeth. At last they had emptied the whole samovar, turned upside down the round cups—one with the inscription, 'Take your fill'; the other with the words, 'Cupid's dart hath pierced my heart'—then they cleared their throats, wiped their perspiring brows, ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... were made from branches pulled from the ragged trees which grew around, and stuck in the sand with their tops brought together. This framework was covered with bits of old bag or blanket. The whole thing was the shape of a pudding-basin turned upside down, and was not more than three feet high in the middle or four ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... had been tumbled out—turned upside down and the contents scattered. I looked them carefully over. Nothing, positively nothing, but what you would be likely to find in any young girl's traveling-bag. There's but ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... spandrels formed by the interlacing of the semicircles are three green leaves growing out from a brown flower; in short the design is exactly like a Gothic corbel table such as was used on Dom Joao's church at Batalha turned upside down, and so probably dates from his time. On the second row of tiles there are alternately a tall blue fleur-de-lys with a yellow centre, and a lower bunch of leaves, three blue at the top and one yellow on each side; the ground throughout ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... thought it. Indeed the selfishness of Cornelius made him almost look upon his father as his enemy, because of his intentions with regard to the division of his property. And selfishness rarely fails of good arguments. Nor can anything destroy it but such a turning of things upside down as only he that made them ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... you imagine hard enough and keep it up long enough you may begin, in the course of eight or ten years, to have a faint, a very faint and shadowy conception of this spot where the shamed scheme of creation is turned upside down and the very womb of the world is laid bare before our impious eyes. Then go to Arizona and see it all for yourself, and you will realize what an entirely inadequate and deficient ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... a brass lamp, whose light was what he had discerned at the extremity of the passage. He could distinctly observe the furniture and inmates of the room. Of the former, the only articles were a table—on which were placed the remains of a homely meal—an iron bedstead, and a barrel, turned upside down, which served as a substitute for a chair. The bedstead had no curtains, but in lieu of them, there were hangings around it, which struck Delme as resembling mourning habiliments. Whilst the light operated thus favourably, in enabling Sir Henry to note the interior of the apartment, it ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... to side with the King when Chancellor, and then to be made Archbishop and go against the King who made him, and turn the world upside down. ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... not demean myself by answering any of their lies, if I was you. But I got through the review, for all their Latin and French; I did, and if you doubt me, you just look at the end of the great ledger, turn it upside down, and you'll find I've copied out all the fine words they said of you: "careful observer," "strong nervous English," "rising philosopher." Oh! I can nearly say it all off by heart, for many a time when I am frabbed by bad debts, or Osborne's bills, or moidered with accounts, I turn the ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the strangest sight I ever saw," remarked Ned, as he and his chum flew nearer and nearer to the smoking and blazing tree. "Is the world turning upside down, Tom, when fires start in ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... upside down, he saw that from one of the horse's delicately finished shoes, a nail was missing, and its hole left empty. It was a ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... they grow tired of one another, expend their longings in empty space; and, having time for reflection, come to their own conclusions about each other. Many a passion that has taken the field in gorgeous array, with colors flying and an ardor fit to turn the world upside down, has turned home again without a victory, inglorious and crestfallen, cutting but a foolish figure after these vain alarums and excursions. Such mishaps are sometimes due to the diffidence of youth, sometimes ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... fury. He had asked no better than to live in spotless domesticity, and now he must go into the witness box, after all these futile, barren years, and proclaim his failure to keep his wife—incur the pity, the amusement, the contempt of his kind. It was all upside down. She and that fellow ought to be the sufferers, and they—were in Italy! In these weeks the Law he had served so faithfully, looked on so reverently as the guardian of all property, seemed to him quite pitiful. What could be more insane ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... mining thing," she declared heatedly. "Jimmie says that if he persists in trying to turn things upside down it will mean a loss of thousands. And we haven't any money to lose—I'm sure Jimmie has worked hard for what he's got. I'm simply sick over it. It's bad enough to have one's husband brought home looking as if he'd been slugged by footpads, and to have the papers go on about it so. But to ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... glen westward of the Whitelee stream. Local tradition adds to the details narrated in the ballad that Parcy's wife had been warned by a dream of her husband's danger, and that on the following morning his loaf of bread happened to be turned upside down—a very bad omen. ...
— Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Third Series • Various
... Isabel the Queen is herself under ward in the Castle of Berkhamsted, and all matters turned upside down. Man saith that the great men with the King be now Sir William de Montacute and Sir Edward de Bohun, and divers more of like sort. And my Lord of Lancaster, man saith, flung up his cap, and thanked God that he had lived ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... sun into shadow. There, too, no little fear was felt for several days, since the people did not know and could not conjecture what had happened. They like the rest thought that everything was being turned upside down, that the sun was disappearing in the earth and the earth was bounding up to the sky. This ashes for the time being did them no great harm: later it bred ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... war! But there had; and this was only one of the many preposterous situations which had resulted from it. Terry was right in at least one thing that she had said—the world was upside down and ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... then, as aforesaid, sitting alone in the Inclosure, and with an undaunted Courage waiting for a Battle with the Devils, he heard all of a sudden so great a Noise as if all the Earth had been turn'd upside down: And indeed, if all the Men, and all the living creatures on Earth, in the Sea, and Air, had bellowed out together, it seemed to him, they cou'd not make a greater Noise: so that, had he not been protected by Divine Virtue, and happily instructed by the aforesaid Holy man, he wou'd ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... the boat was run up easily on to the ice. Captain Savage seized his dry clothes and vanished into the back of the cave, to return presently warmer in body, and more contented in mind. The long-boat had been turned upside down for a seat, the gratings and thwarts taken out and covered with wraps to make a couch for the lady, and the head knocked out of the keg ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... now—he's making the gun revolve upside down with the bayonet on the palm of his hand! Could you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 9, 1892 • Various
... that chunky woman on the top of the great iron wash-bowl, that some giant seems to have turned upside down on the roof of the Capitol, has more to do than any other female I'm acquainted with, if she can keep the flock of men they call Congress in any kind of order. No wonder she has the look of the kitchen about her, and seem to be carrying a bundle of soiled clothes on ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... where she would stay motionless for hours at a time, weeping without knowing why. Her digestion was poor; for weeks her stomach refused all nourishment. At night she would toss about in bed, unable to sleep and at daybreak she was up flitting about the house with a feverish activity, turning things upside down, finding fault with the servant, with her husband, with herself, until suddenly she would collapse from the height of her ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the major exhibited a book of drawings made by Captain Lyon, to Boo-Khaloum. The portraits he understood, but he could not comprehend the landscapes, and would look at one upside down. On seeing a beautiful print of sand-wind in the desert, though it was twice reversed, he exclaimed: "Why, it is all the same!" Probably a European, even, who had never before cast his eye on the representation of a landscape, would be long before he could appreciate the ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... steering lay back to look up. And higher and higher went Ned, till the tree began to bend with his weight, and he laughingly gave it an impetus to make it swing him when he was about six feet from where the kite hung upside down by its tangled tail, but happily untorn. "Look out, Tiz!" ...
— Brave and True - Short stories for children by G. M. Fenn and Others • George Manville Fenn
... silly of me getting those numbers mixed in my head, of course; but then a figure nine is only a six turned upside down, you see. I was so worked up over missing my clock that I just couldn't think straight at all. Well, it isn't under that jersey, anyhow; nor yet covered by those trunks. I remember now I pushed it away back, so I couldn't drag it out. There's an old sweater I use when I'm ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson
... against one word uttered by the humblest of the prophets named in the Old or New Testament, or the holy Koran. The prophets, sir, keep to the prophets, and throw aside your telescopes—there is no truth in them; some of them turn people upside down, and make them walk upon their heads; and yet you put their evidence against that of ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... outward, nor can be Nowhere disparted—since all height and depth Have always inward to the centre pressed (If thou art ready to believe that aught Itself can rest upon itself ); or that The ponderous bodies which be under earth Do all press upwards and do come to rest Upon the earth, in some way upside down, Like to those images of things we see At present through the waters. They contend, With like procedure, that all breathing things Head downward roam about, and yet cannot Tumble from earth to realms of sky below, No more than these our bodies wing away Spontaneously ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... is not wholly dissolved by the employment of the wife, but turned upside down. The wife supports the family, the husband sits at home, tends the children, sweeps the room and cooks. This case happens very frequently; in Manchester alone, many hundred such men could be cited, condemned to domestic occupations. It is easy to imagine the wrath ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... blizzard still moaned and howled; every now and then, between lulls, screeching gusts of sleet beat upon the windows. The parrot, clinging upside down to the roof of its cage, winked rapidly with Sphinx-like eyes and inclined its head sideways in ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... and to speak what they believed, on suffrage, as were Samuel Gompers, who lately offended the Labor organization by inviting two anarchists to address it, and Henry George, whose single-tax theories have lately turned law and order upside down in Delaware. ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... that goes with free, unfettered youth. In a parlor some of it would have been offensive, but under the stars of the open desert it was as natural as the life itself. They spoke of the spring rains, of the Crawford-Steelman feud, of how they meant to turn Malapi upside down in their frolic when they reached town. They "rode" each other with jokes that were familiar old friends. Their horse play was ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... way of looking at it. I confess I have scant patience with these interfering women, who want to turn everything upside down, instead of quietly minding ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... entreating hands on the outside layer, she even jumped up and down and yelled "Boys," at the top of her healthy voice. But she was only an atom in a world gone upside down. Presently, however, and from no reason she could determine, the mob disentangled itself into distinct entities, the roar subsided into a few threatening growls and murmurs, and Captain Swanson hitched up his trousers and yelled "Play ball" triumphantly. Then the game went ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... we leave the teahouses, on our return from our fashionable stroll. It so happened that we were a large party, having with us several mousme guests, and from the moment that the rain began to fall from the skies, as if out of a watering-pot turned upside down, the band became disorganized. The mousmes run off, with bird-like cries, and take refuge under doorways, in the shops, under the hoods ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... her pretty little cottage, which presented a scene of bustle and confusion baffling description. Everything was out of place and turned upside down. Corded trunks and packages filled up the passages and doorways; and formed stumbling blocks for kind friends and curious neighbours, who crowded the house. Strange dogs forced their way in after their masters, and fought and yelped in undisturbed pugnacity. The ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... conditions upside down. It is not Austria-Hungary which has called forth the conflict with Servia, but it is Servia which, through unscrupulous favor toward pan-Serb aspirations, even in parts of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, threatens the ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... took it, and began to examine it; he smoothed it between his fingers, and held it up to the light; he turned it over, and upside down, and edgeways. It was new and rather stiff, and that made him dubious. Jurgis was watching him like a ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... very aged Blue-Bottle-Fly answered, "We found the bottles here all ready to live in; that is to say, our great-great-great- great-great-grandfathers did: so we occupied them at once. And, when the winter comes on, we turn the bottles upside down, and consequently rarely feel the cold at all; and you know very well that this could not be the case with bottles of any ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... upside down in token of renunciation and led the way into the front room. He followed her with enchanted feet. He was now moving as in an Arabian ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... the whole earth,—consumed with the spirit of His mouth, and destroyed by the brightness of His glory. Christ takes His people to the city of God, and the earth is emptied of its inhabitants. "Behold, the Lord maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof." "The land shall be utterly emptied, and utterly spoiled: for the Lord hath spoken this word." "Because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... immersed in the water, and the edges brought gradually below the surface. This allows the fish to swim out of the cans of their own accord, and the few which will not go out may be forced to do so by gently turning the can upside down. ...
— Amateur Fish Culture • Charles Edward Walker
... place, there has been a tendency both in England and in America to look at this history upside down. The epoch of the Revolution and the Constitution has been regarded as a heroic age—wherein lived the elder Brutus, Mucius Scaevola, Claelia and the rest—to be followed by almost continuous disappointment, disillusionment ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... Garrison childishly printed Eliot's name upside down, and between black lines, Liberator, ...
— Webster's Seventh of March Speech, and the Secession Movement • Herbert Darling Foster
... ready, and not before, you get them. He may raise the lid cautiously now and then and look in, but don't you look in. Don't say you think they are done, because it's useless. Ah! his face relaxes; he raises the lid, turns it upside down to throw off the coals, and says, All right, boys! And now, with the air of a wealthy philanthropist, he distributes the solid and weighty product of his skill to, as it were, the humble ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... charming little toadstool, a delicately colored mushroom, a stately agaric, be carefully removed from the bed of loam, the decaying stump, or the old tree-trunk, then turned over and over again, and upside down, every part scrutinized, the structure in every detail attentively regarded—not with repugnant feeling, rather with a sympathetic interest that should naturally find all organisms inhabiting our globe—then in due time coming to the ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... was a boot-jack and a vase of flowers side by side on the mantel; a pair of boots on the centre-table, with two or three annuals on them, as though to keep them from being blown away; a nice hat stood on the hearth filled with coal-ashes, while an inkstand upside down on a pile of linen bosoms had left an impression not easily effaced; the paintings that were in the room were turned face towards the wall,—some freak of James', as though ashamed to have ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... the roadside, and the wagon upside down A-leanin' on the gate-post, with the wheels a-whirlin' roun'! And I tried to raise and meet her, but I couldn't, with a vague Sort o' notion comin' to me that I had a ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... many galleons, it is probable that he was personally as much at home in certain Mediterranean ports as in the capital of the pastoral Berry. If, when he looked at the ceilings of his mansion, he saw his boats upside down, this was only a suggestion of the shortest way of emptying them of their treasures. He is presented in person above one of the great stone chimney-pieces, in company with his wife, Macee de Leodepart—I like to write ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... wreck, when suddenly a knocking was heard within the hull. Tools were brought, a plate was removed, and there emerged, safe and sound from the hold in which they had been thus terribly imprisoned, the second engineer and a stoker. When the rapidity with which the steamer turned upside down, with the engines working, the fires burning, and the boilers full—the darkness, with all the floors become ceilings—the violent inrush of water—the wild career down the stream—are remembered, it will be conceded that the experience of these ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... young friend," he exclaimed. "Those are returning tourists from Switzerland; the thin, sharp-featured girl there, with a plaid skirt and a satchel, is an American. Heavens! how she talks! She has lost a trunk. The whole system will be turned upside down until she has found it or been compensated. The two young men with her are silent. They are wise. Alone she will prevail. You see the man of commerce; he is off already. He has been to France, perhaps to Belgium also, to buy silks and laces. And the stout ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... field-glasses? I've been rummaging all through your clothes, and swords, and sashes, and things. I've turned everything in your room upside down. ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard
... could listen to his own lungs and pulse, loud in the spacesuit; he could even notice its interior smell, blend of plastic and oxygen cycle chemicals, flesh and sweat. He was used to the sensation of hanging upside down on the surface, grip-soled boots holding him against that fractional gee by which the asteroid's rotation overcame its feeble gravity. But it came to him that this was an eerie bat-fashion way for an Oregon ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson
... the buttercups ate the cows; And the cat had the dire disaster To be worried, sir, by a mouse; And mamma, sir, sold her baby, To a gypsy for half a crown, And a gentleman were a lady, This world would be upside down. But, if any or all these wonders Should ever come about, I should not think them blunders, For I ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... on Snake river. I had a tidy cabin papered with newspapers and one week when 'twere stormin' I got interested in a serial story what was runnin'. It started back of the stove and they was an installment pasted in the cupboard, they was a piece upside down clost to the floor so I had to stand on my head, as you might say, to read it, and the end was on the ceilin'. One evenin' I was standin' on a box with my mouth open and my neck half broke tryin' to see how it come out when I tipped the lamp over. ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... into a broad, low room with a bar and beer engine, behind which were many bright and helpful looking bottles against mirrors, and great and little pewter measures, and bottles fastened in brass wire upside down with their corks replaced by taps, and a white china cask labelled "Shrub," and cigar boxes and boxes of cigarettes, and a couple of Toby jugs and a beautifully coloured hunting scene framed and glazed, showing the most elegant and beautiful people taking Piper's Cherry Brandy, ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... uniforms and military equipments. Washington rides his favorite charger, Nelson. The stars and stripes of America, and the white flag and lilies of France, wave in triumph. While the band plays a quaint old English melody, "The World Turned Upside Down," the British troops, over seven thousand in number, slowly march between the columns of the combined armies and lay down ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... in the bills of the day as Mr. E. W. B. Childers, so justly celebrated for his daring vaulting act as the Wild Huntsman of the North American Prairies; in which popular performance, a diminutive boy with an old face, who now accompanied him, assisted as his infant son: being carried upside down over his father's shoulder, by one foot, and held by the crown of his head, heels upwards, in the palm of his father's hand, according to the violent paternal manner in which wild huntsmen may be observed to fondle their offspring. Made up with curls, wreaths, wings, white bismuth, ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... outside shows a pressure of only eleven, while we have eighteen inside," he said. "I will bring in the discharging cylinder full of the outer air, and by keeping it upside down the lighter air will remain in it. Then, if a candle flame will burn steadily in it, the oxygen we ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass |
