"Crumple" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... embarrassment, Harris struggled for a word. But his distress was not observed by the detective. His eyes, suspicious and accusing, still were fixed upon Hemingway, and under their scrutiny Harris saw his friend slowly retreat, slowly crumple up into a chair, slowly raise his hands to cover his face. As though in a nightmare, ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... into the eyes of the man she had loved so well, but the seething blood rushed through her veins and mounted to her brain. Their eyes met with the same fiery glow as had encouraged Lousteau on the Quay by the Loire to crumple Dinah's muslin gown. The Bohemian put his arm round her waist, she yielded, and ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... color,—you suppress a cry as you break the seal; you breathe hard as you read; and the letter seems short—but it takes time in the reading, for you go over it again and again. Then you fold it up, crumple it, thrust it into your breast-pocket, and look round like a man waking from a dream. Is it a dream of pain, or of pleasure? Verily, I cannot guess, for nothing is on that eagle face either of pain or pleasure, but ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... like the enemy. Their training, it is no more than a form of amusement, a recreation, the following of custom. He taught it, and my people drill, knowing not for what they train. See! Their beautiful ranks crumple and go down before the formless rush of ...
— The God in the Box • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... voice thickened up then quite frantically into a little scream that knotted in her throat, and she was suddenly so small and stricken that, with a gasp for fear she might crumple up where she stood, Mrs. Samstag leaned forward, catching her ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... Admiral, and rejoicing in the near prospect of a turning of the tables—(for could they once get the Englishman betwixt them and the Duke of Parma's fleet, which was waiting on the Dutch coast, they would crumple him up like chaff between two mill-stones)—already, I say, they were counting on seeing the enemy run past them, down the wind; when, lo, with a derisive shot or two into the air, the Englishmen put about quietly, and after hovering a little, and running a little in the teeth of ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... shouts, that made poor Larry crumple up as if he wanted to hide in a thimble. He looked around at the dark and angry faces to the right and to the left; and again wished he had thought twice before embarking on this ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... collision-bulkhead. "I want to crumple up, but I'm stiffened in every direction. Ease off; you dirty ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... gloves, crumpled flowers, and the like. It goes against the principles of any right-minded female to give away tawdry fineries, and yet—and yet—Could I bear to destroy them? To see those little white gloves shrivel up in the flames, the high heeled little slippers crumple and split? It would seem like making a bonfire ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... houses, streets as streets ... and not as something else. Minds that see things as they are and have kept things as they were.... Destroy those minds and the entire foundation of matter, robbed of its regenerative power, will crumple and slip away ...
— The Street That Wasn't There • Clifford Donald Simak
... krucifikso. Crucifixion krucumo. Crucify krucumi. Crude kruda. Cruel kruela. Cruelty kruelo—eco. Cruet oleujo. Cruise krozi. Cruiser krozsxipo. Crumb (bread) panmolajxo. Crumble elfali. Crumple cxifi. Crupper postajxo. Crush premegi. Crust krusto. Crustaceous kankrogenta. Crutch lambastono. Cry (call out) krii. Cry (weep) plori. Cry out ekkrii. Cry (of animals, etc.) bleki. Crypt subterajxo. Crystal ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... Coleridge, 'what I must have been at fourteen. I was in a continual low fever. My whole being was, with eyes closed to every object of present sense, to crumple myself up in a sunny corner and read, read, read; fancy myself on Robinson Crusoe's Island, finding a mountain of plum-cake, and eating a room for myself, and then eating it into the shapes of tables and ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... as he was sitting there quietly reading, I heard him utter a sort of yell. And when I looked at him, I saw his face was as white as chalk. And then he began to crush and crumple the paper, and to tear it into a thousand shreds. But he ...
— The Lady From The Sea • Henrik Ibsen
... around the Marine Corps Schools at Quantico, Virginia, are one example—form a valuable public asset for potential future use. And throughout Tidewater here and there, old estates in private hands guard their woods and fields and shores against increasing development, though more and more each year crumple before pressure and the temptation of ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... Sir Henry was going to crumple up in his chair. He seemed to get loose and baggy in some extraordinary fashion, and his gaping jaw worked. 'But the footprints,' he said, 'the naked footprints?' His voice was a sort of stutter-the sort of shaken stutter of a man who has come a' ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... and "Shoo along!" But his missiles fell short of their mark, and if his voice reached her, she treated it with the placid disregard of which her kind are mistress on such occasions, and never raised her crumple-horned head. ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... tell her wee birdie that this was the last breakfast she would bring him, when he introduced the subject himself by saying he wished he had not to get back into that nest. Indeed he did not think he could do it, for his wings were so stretched with using them that he was sure they would never crumple up into so small a space ...
— The Story of a Robin • Agnes S. Underwood
... rose from the watching Germans, who knew that an explosion close to an aeroplane is often sufficient, through the force of air concussion alone, to crumple the flimsy wings and bring it down, even though none of the flying shrapnel from the bursting bomb actually touch the operator ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... furious mob of armed ruffians had sought to break its way into Prince's, and had with difficulty been driven off by the gallant protectors of the law. A man would read some passage which struck him as especially false; he would tell what he had seen or done, and he would crumple the paper in his hand and cry. "The liars! The dirty liars!"—adding ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... time I taught school in the hills of Tennessee, where the broad dark vale of the Mississippi begins to roll and crumple to greet the Alleghanies. I was a Fisk student then, and all Fisk men think that Tennessee—beyond the Veil—is theirs alone, and in vacation time they sally forth in lusty bands to meet the county school commissioners. Young and happy, ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... on the slope stood brown and sere now, and thirty feet high, and cast long shadows that stretched out of sight, and the little seeds that clustered in its upper branches were brown and ripe. Its work was done, and it was brittle and ready to fall and crumple under the freezing air, so soon as the nightfall came. And the huge cacti, that had swollen as we watched them, had long since burst and scattered their spores to the four quarters of the moon. Amazing little corner in the ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... to think, should e'er mishap Betide my crumple-visaged Ti, In shape of prowling thief, or trap, Or coarse bull-terrier—I should die. But ah! disasters have their use; And life might e'en be too sunshiny: Nor would I make myself a goose, If some ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... very peevishly, and was about to crumple it, apparently to throw it in the fire, when a casual glance at the design seemed suddenly to rivet his attention. In an instant his face grew violently red—in another as excessively pale. For some minutes he ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... and thus stripped it was easy to see how small was his responsibility in the matter of life. He had crushed and injured this other human being, his wife, to whom he had come nearest, just as a dirty hand might soil and crumple a fine fabric. But she no longer reproached him, if she ever had; she understood the sad complexity of a fate that had brought into the hand the fabric to be tarnished. And what she could accept, others must, the world must, to whom the Prestons are ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... himself that day in the sand dunes before Fort Fisher. Red, reeking carnage rioted all about him. Hail, fumes, lightning and thunder of battle rolled over him and sickened him. He saw his own Massachusetts troop hurl itself up against the Confederate breastworks, crumple up on itself, and fade away back into the smoke. He lost it, and lost himself in the smoke. He wandered blindly over the field, now stumbling over a dead man, now speaking to a living stricken one: Here straightening a torn body and giving water; there hearing the ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... contend with, and the corruption there has been frightful. I should not be surprised at a big movement there in time. Still, we are doing very well; our forces are becoming well organized, and in another year or so I think the Boches'll begin to crumple up.' ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... think we are," Angus murmured half to himself. "Finished creatures! And look at us! How many of us in a million have beauty and health and full power? And believing that the law is that we must crumple and go to pieces hour by hour! Who'd waste the time making a clock that went wrong as often? Nay, nay! We shall learn better than this as time goes on. And we'd better be beginning and setting our minds to work on it. 'Tis for us to do—the minds of us. And what's the ...
— The White People • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to the breaking of the Russian lines and the consequent Russian retreat toward the Narew River, particularly as the German advance between the Pissa and Vistula rivers threatens to crumple the right flank positions ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... strong. "I will own that I had ever thought of them as strange, unbeauteous red things a man almost held in fear, and whose ugliness a woman but loved because she was near angel; but this one—" and he drew nearer still with a grave countenance—"surely it looks not like the rest. 'Tis not so red and crumple-visaged—its tiny face hath a sort of comeliness. It hath a broad brow, and its eyes will sure be large ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... sap or plant-material which is now ready to be carried from the leaves to all parts of the plant or tree, to nourish it and continue its growth. Such is the important and wonderful work of the leaf, the tender, delicate leaf, which we crumple so easily in our fingers. It builds up, atom by atom, the tree and the great forests which beautify the world and provide for us a thousand comforts and conveniences. Our houses and the furniture in them, our boats and ships, ...
— Arbor Day Leaves • N.H. Egleston
... shot of Bucky's revolver went through the heart of the outlaw; but so relentless was the man that, even after that, his twitching fingers emptied the revolver. O'Connor fired only once. He watched his opponent crumple up, fling wild shots into the upholstery and through the roof, and sink into the silence from which there is no awakening on this side of the grave. Then he went forward ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... with such force that we nearly fell over together. She clasped me tight and held me. She was trembling and almost crazy with joy. She took my head in her hands, and, as if I had been quite a little child, she kissed me all over my face. Her stiff linen cap made a noise like paper when you crumple it up, and her broad sleeves fell back to her shoulders. Melanie was right, the Mother Superior saw me. She came out of the chapel and came towards us. Sister Marie-Aimee saw her. She stopped kissing me, and put her hand on my shoulder. I ...
— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux
... of Mary Louise was to crumple up the check and throw it in the man's face, to show her resentment of his base insinuations. But as she glanced at the check she saw it was for ten thousand dollars, and that meant sinews of war—help ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... may press the Doll, But do not crumple and mess the Doll! This is the way we dress the Doll. First, you observe her little chemise, As white as milk, with ruches of silk; And the little drawers that cover her knees. As she sits or stands, with golden bands, And lace ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... to stroke its head and ears. And suddenly his heart gave a twitter, the creature had licked his hand. He took out his last biscuit, broke it up, and fed the dog slowly with the bits, talking all the time; when the last crumb was gone he continued to murmur and crumple its ears softly. He had become aware of something happening within the dog—something in the nature of conversion, as if it were saying: "O my master, my new master—I worship, I love you!" The creature came gradually closer, quite close; then put up its sharp black nose ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... had been for the last hour dispersed; Mrs. Merton was in her own room, making to herself gratuitous and unnecessary occupation in seeing her woman pack up. It was just the kind of task that delighted her. To sit in a large chair and see somebody else at work—to say languidly, "Don't crumple that scarf, Jane; and where shall we put Miss Caroline's blue bonnet?"—gave her a very comfortable notion of her own importance and habits of business,—a sort of title to be the superintendent of a family and the wife ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... out of the harbour, and stood on towards Saint Helen's. She certainly looked as unlike our notions of a man-of-war as anything could be, though, as Paul Truck observed, "she would crumple up the Minotaur in a few minutes with her four thirty-five ton guns, powerful as the five-masted ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... boy stared at the girl blankly for a moment, then seemed to crumple as if from a new blow. "I suppose it was common gossip that Nita and Sprague were lovers, and I was the only one she fooled!... My God! To think all of you would stand by and let me marry her—a cheap little gold-digger from Broadway, living with a cheap four-flusher she couldn't get ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... that! The girl wasn't a fool, and she must know a fellow would be plumb tickled to have her around every day. Well, anyway, he wasn't going to begin by letting her lead him around by the nose, and he wasn't going to crumple down on his knees and tell her to please walk ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... his two abettors in indecision, William Gazy and Jonathan Crumple. If ever the petition were to be forwarded, now was the time,—so said Mr Finney; and great was the anxiety on the part of those whose one hundred pounds a year, as they believed, mainly depended ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... falling victims to the flames. Even as he gazed, with the cool air of evening rushing in behind them through the porch, and wafting the clouds of smoke upward to pass rapidly along the corridor as if it were some large horizontal chimney, he saw the canvases of the old family paintings heave and crumple up, while the faces of Sir Godfrey's ancestors seemed to Fred to be gazing fiercely through the lurid light, and reproaching him for helping ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... doll concealed in a pillowcase (he could not bear to crumple and tear for his purpose that precious marriage newspaper), he made his way to the door of the little girl's home. "This is yours," he told her, stripping off the case and holding out the gift. She heard him, but looked only at Edwarda. "Gratzia!" she gasped, seizing the doll in both hands. He ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... coughed, choked, clutched his assassin by each shoulder; thus he stood with a bewildered face, shuddering visibly, every muscle twitching. Suddenly he shrieked, with an odd, gurgling noise, and his grip relaxed, and Francis Vanringham seemed to crumple among his garments, so that he shrank rather than fell to the floor. His hands stretched forward, his fingers spreading and for a moment writhing in agony, and then ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... a time that will be no one can say. It was formerly believed that whenever a nation reached the limit which Germany has reached it would crumple up. But Germany fails to crumple. Instead of breaking up, she fights harder and more desperately. Why can she do this? The answer is simple: Because the German people believe in their Government and the Government knows that as long as it can convince the people ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... room with a single candle, and pass the hand in which you hold the paper several times slowly over the candle until the paper takes fire; then immediately blow the candle out, and presently pass your hand over the snuff and relight it with the paper. You may then crumple the paper, at the same time extinguishing the flame, by squeezing it suddenly, without burning yourself. If this trick be performed dextrously, it is a very good one. It is not necessary for the performance of this trick that all the other lights in the room should be extinguished; ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... was a time when there were no newspapers, nothing for father to read at breakfast-time, and no old newspapers to crumple up and light fires with. The first real printed English newspaper was called the Weekly News. It was published in 1622, while King Charles I was still ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... changed. Day by day, and all day, he was confronted by her automatic obedience, by her dumb despair. She rose up and lay down—she spoke or was silent at his bidding; neither a loosened hair, nor a crumple in the dress, giving token of resistance; he might have strangled her without her making a sign. She eloped from him, yet he could not surprise her in the commission of a sin: and he returned from his pursuit of her, ridiculous when he should have been triumphant. He took his revenge at last. ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... the balloon bag, and Pauline, clinging to his shoulder saw the monster that had held her a slave to its elemental power, that, like some winged gorgon had held her captive in the labyrinth of air, crumple and wither and fall at the prick of a bullet; saw it collapse into a mass of tangled leather and rope and slide in final ruin down ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... vitality. One could not believe that his words held a prophecy. Yet the pains recurred with increasing frequency and severity; his malady, angina pectoris, was making progress. And how bravely he bore it all! He never complained, never bewailed. I have seen the fierce attack crumple him when we were at billiards, but he would insist on playing in his turn, bowed, his face white, his ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Federal advance across the river of Bull Run had been sharply repulsed, therefore their generals determined, instead of making a direct attack on the 31st against the Confederate position, to take a wide sweep round, cross the river higher up, and falling upon the Confederate left flank, to crumple it up. ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... accord, so long as foreign affairs are quiet and unbroken," wrote Mirabeau after Frederick's death. "But at the first gunshot or at the first stormy situation the whole of this little scaffolding of mediocrity will topple to the ground. How all these underling Ministers would crumple up! How everyone, from the distracted chief to the convict-gang, would shout for a pilot! Who would ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... meat and drink, that they may thereby bury their shameful secret. But I declare their design aloud, so that every man may know it. This girl is Hetfalusy's grand-daughter. This girl is in our power, and if these fine gentlemen so much as crumple a single hair of any of your heads, I will plunge this knife into the ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... and if folks could be scared to death, I should be stretched out this minute on the west piazzar. I had my doubts about ghosts and sperrits, and I lost my religion when I cotch our preacher brandin' one of my dappled crumple-horned hefers with his i'on; but Bedney Darrington is a changed pusson. Come en, let's see which of you will dar to ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... perhaps death has leaped into our quiet meadows. Or perhaps some presumptuous sin has suddenly revealed its foul face in the life of one of our children. And we are "all at sea!" Our little, neat hypotheses crumple like withered leaves. Our accustomed roads are all broken up, our conventional ways of thinking and feeling, and the sure sequences on which we have depended vanish in a night. It is experiences like these which make the soul cry out ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... suddenly and unexpectedly some forcible blow, to snatch at some position into which guns and men may be thrust to outflank and turn the advantage of the ground against some portion of the enemy's line. The game will be largely to crowd and crumple that line, to stretch it over an arc to the breaking point, to secure a position from which to shell and destroy its supports and provisions, and to capture or destroy its guns and apparatus, and so tear it away from some town or arsenal it has covered. And a factor ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... though they were born to wear blue ribbons. It has come, probably, from study, but it seems to be natural. Sir Timothy did not impose on those who looked at him as do these men. You could see a little of the paint, you could hear the crumple of the starch and the padding; you could trace something of uneasiness in the would-be composed grandeur of the brow. "Turveydrop!" the spectator would say to himself. But after all it may be a question whether a man be open to reproach for not doing that well which ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... would be led would be openly fallacious and give proof positive that the foundation, the psychology upon which as a basis the Freudian system of interpretation and analysis has been erected, was defective to such an extent that it would crumple into disintegrated portions under the heavy load of the unsupported superstructure. This method has by no manner of ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... August fell heavily. So heavily that occasionally a cloak-model, her lot to show next December's conceit in theater wraps, fainted on the show-dais; or a cloth-of-gold evening gown, donned for the twentieth time that sweltering day, would suddenly, with its model, crumple, a glittering huddle, ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... opening fire from a long distance. Rockwell kept straight after him. Then, closing to within thirty yards, he pressed on the release of his machine gun, and saw the enemy gunner fall backward and the pilot crumple up sideways in his seat. The plane flopped downward and crashed to earth just behind the German trenches. Swooping close to the ground Rockwell saw its debris burning away brightly. He had turned the trick with but four shots and only one German bullet had struck his Nieuport. An observation ...
— Flying for France • James R. McConnell
... his forehead. He was playing a lost game, and he was not the sort of man who plays lost games well. The Waring type is dangerous when it is winning, but it is apt to crumple up against strong defence. ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... I saw Eagle hastily scrawling his appeal for a written order to fire the guns. I saw Major Vandyke wearing this coat, read the message, crumple up the paper, and then—then—the vision faded. But the question rang in my ears: what would he be likely to do with the paper? What should I have done had I been a man in his place? Would I have torn the message into bits and trusted to the wind ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... magnificence; help yourself as you please to my treasures; make gold flow, heap up gems; order, make, unmake, raise, destroy; be my mistress, my wife, my queen. I give you Egypt with its priests, its armies, its toilers, its numberless population, its palaces, its temples and cities. Crumple it up as you would crumple up gauze,—I will win other kingdoms for you, larger, fairer, and richer. If the world is not sufficient, I will conquer planets for you, I will dethrone the gods. You are she whom ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... the seams of his small-clothes, and darken his elbows with a blacking brush, ere he sallied forth to follow borrowed plumes; and when he returned from his public performance (oft rehearsed) Master Sighmon did innocently crumple his crapes, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various
... born to a gentle family in the Calendar of Monteith, and was celebrated even in boyhood for his feats of strength and daring. While still at school he could hold a hundredweight at arm's-length, and crumple up a horseshoe like a wisp of hay. The fleetest runner, the most desperate fighter in the country, he was already famous before his name was besmirched with crime, and he might have been immortalised as the Hercules of the seventeenth century, had not ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... one hundred and eighty miles. The 1010's tank is good for one hundred with a train, or a possible hundred and sixty, light. There is about one chance in a thousand that Callahan's crown-sheet won't get red-hot and crumple up on him in the last twenty miles. Let's take a car and go down to yard limits. We can sit in the office and hear what goes over the wires, even if we can't get a finger in to help Patsy out ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... into the pocket of his uniform for paper and a pencil to leave a note in case Izzy came back. His fingers found the half notebook cover instead. He drew it out, scowling at it, and started to crumple it. Then he stopped, staring at the piece of imitation leather and paper that ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... his stern and looked again. He drove up heedless of his direction as he watched. He saw the wind-vanes give, saw the huge fabric strike the earth, saw its downward vanes crumple with the weight of its descent, and then the whole mass turned over and smashed, upside down, upon the sloping wheels. Then from the heaving wreckage a thin tongue of white fire licked up towards the zenith. He was aware of a huge mass flying through the air towards him, ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... of the American people had changed. Barclay was beginning to feel upon him, night and day, the crushing weight of popular scorn. He called the idea envy, but it was not envy. It was the idea working in the world, and the weight of the scorn was beginning to crumple his soul; for this idea that the people were thinking was finding its way into newspapers, magazines, and books. They were beginning to question the divine right of wealth to rule, because it was wealth—an idea that Barclay could not comprehend even vaguely. The term ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... turbulent smile which washes this way and that, and is not easy to keep up with—a pious smile, a holy smile, a saintly smile, a deprecating smile, a beseeching and supplicating smile; and when it is at work the large mouth opens, and the flexible lips crumple, and unfold, and crumple again, and move around in a genial and persuasive and angelic way, and expose large glimpses of the teeth; and that interrupts the sacredness of the smile and gives it momentarily a mixed worldly ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... cold water on the stove, and the moment the water boils take them up, and they will be just done. An easy way to take them up all at once is to put them in a wire basket, and sink this under the water. A good way to serve boiled eggs is to crumple up a fresh napkin in a deep dish, which has been made very hot, and lay the eggs in the folds of the napkin; this prevents their breaking, ...
— A Little Cook Book for a Little Girl • Caroline French Benton
... Balderstones of those houses in which plenty does not flow are almost justified in hoping that goblets of Gladstone may pass current. Phineas Finn was not a martyr to eating or drinking. He played with his fish without thinking much about it. He worked manfully at the steak. He gave another crumple to the tart, and left it without a pang. But when the old man urged him, for the third time, to take that pernicious draught with his cheese, he angrily demanded a glass of beer. The old man toddled out of the room, and on his return he proffered to him a diminutive glass of white ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... dive a hand into his hip pocket and draw out a roll of money. He heard the crumple of paper as he counted out a number of bills. Then, in a moment, his whole attention was diverted to the entrance door of the room. The swing door was thrust open and two ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... Green Hill,' and was extended to guard against a turning movement on to the lofty wooded ridges of Monte Cristo and Cingolo and the neck joining these two features. Sir Redvers Buller's determination was to turn this widely extended position on its extreme left, and to endeavour to crumple it from left to right. As it were, a gigantic right arm was to reach out to the eastward, its shoulder at Gun Hill, its elbow on Hussar Hill, its hand on Cingolo, its fingers, the Irregular Cavalry Brigade, ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... just like our own dear Meg, only so very sweet and lovely that I should hug you if it wouldn't crumple your dress," cried Amy, surveying her with delight ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... and fired. Tarzan gave a little start. His pistol still dangled at his side. De Coude hesitated, as though waiting to see his antagonist crumple to the ground. The Frenchman was too experienced a marksman not to know that he had scored a hit. Still Tarzan made no move to raise his pistol. De Coude fired once more, but the attitude of the ape-man—the utter indifference that ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... fertile brain was finished, flung, and closing in upon her before she knew of its existence. An awe of his cleverness, his trickery, gripped her in a clutch of ice. The whole fabric of her own desires and plans and purposes seemed to crumple like the white ash in a dead fire, leaving her nothing. She had been out-witted instead of outfought. One more evidence of the man's baseness, his ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... "you shall not do any lessons, and while I am busy with Nanna and Margaretta you may amuse yourselves quietly. After dinner you shall all go out for a walk. If you crumple up your pinafore in that way, Sophia Jane," she added, "you will ...
— Susan - A Story for Children • Amy Walton
... away—never, never. Woodhouse was there to eternity. And the Natcha-Kee-Tawara Troupe was blowing like a rag of old paper into Limbo. Nothingness! Poor Madame! Poor gallant histrionic Madame! The frowsy Miss Pinnegar could crumple her up and throw her down the utilitarian drain, and have done with her. Whilst Miss Pinnegar lived on ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... gun Mistuh Cohen fo' dollars fer three years ago; an' w'en I looked in my closet dis mawnin', suh, befo' I got ready ter sta't fer Belleview, dere wuz my clo's layin' on de flo', all muddy an' crumple' up, des lack somebody had wo' 'em in a fight! Somebody e'se had wo' my clo's,—er e'se dere'd be'n some witchcraf, er some sort er devilment gwine on dat I can't make out, suh, ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... with failing force but still deadly effect, on the loathsome face of the nearest Rogan, grunting with satisfaction as he saw it crumple into a shapeless mass. He thrust it, spear-like, into another ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... leaned with his back against the wall, bracing his legs which threatened to crumple up under him. With a sort of craven bravado, he inhaled deeply. The end of the cigarette created a passing but none the less comforting glow which died away almost instantly. A jolly brave thing, a cigarette,—No wonder the soldiers smoked them! ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... once, but soon his face twisted in all directions in the broadest smile; it seemed as though sparks were flashing from his face and eyes. He squirmed, he doubled together, crumpled up. . . . His portmanteaus, bundles and cardboard boxes seemed to shrink and crumple up too. . . . His wife's long chin grew longer still; Nafanail drew himself up to attention and fastened all the buttons of ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... came and to cut herself free of the fiendish power that was searing her mind and slowly crushing her. She remembered that in her faint, when she lay limp and inert, a thing of dread, she had felt herself crumple up at the touch of Jim—Jim reaching out to her. Now she would cut herself free of him at the very source of his power over her. She would go ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... and over, her sturdy fuselage refusing to crumple. Stan's one thought was of fire. He pawed aside what was left of his hatch cover and heaved himself upward and out. Staggering free of the wreckage, he found himself enveloped in a choking pall of smoke. Off to ...
— A Yankee Flier Over Berlin • Al Avery
... ideas were suddenly shaken and scattered by a man's name, as a bolting horse will crumple into confusion a crowd of people. So this was the way his John Brown had come home to roost. He lifted the empty whiskey-glass to his lips and drained air. He was terribly thirsty; he needed something to pull himself together. Five years of dissipation ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... tired. The vision that had seemed so close, so tangible, so ready to be made actual, had suddenly retreated beyond her reach, and she was left as empty of heart and hand as she had been before. For a moment her whole figure seemed to crumple; and then she shook herself together into a resisting, fighting ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer |
