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More "Topsy-turvy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that stumps and stones are stumps and stones. You'd better take a person—like me, you know," he said, winking comically at Hetty—"who won't mistake a frightened squirrel for the king of the brown elves off on a hunting spree, or for anything else that never was born, except inside of your topsy-turvy head." ...
— Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... been in that boat, dear," she said sweetly, "you would realize the topsy-turvy condition of our brains. Even Mr. Gray himself, the coolest man on board, imagined we might sink any moment. So what can you expect of those excitable Chileans? Besides, the thing was done so quickly that we were swept away by the tide before any one fully ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... Not so fast, however, as we shall in the next three. Science—chemistry—is going speedily to change all the conditions of life because it will turn topsy-turvy all the ways of producing things—food, clothing, shelter. Less than two generations ago men lived much as they had for thousands of years. But it's very different to-day. It will be inconceivably ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... to the Kempt family now and then, if they will let me. I must get away for a time and think. My life has suddenly become all topsy-turvy, and I need to get my bearings, as does a ship that has been through a ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... Hellenic sky and hills of Hymettus, with its paradoxical antitheses: of flowers and flannels; strawberries and sealskin sacks; open fires with open windows; snow-capped mountains and orange blossoms; winter looking down upon summer—a topsy-turvy land, where you dig for your wood and climb for your coal; where water-pipes are laid above ground, with no fear of Jack Frost, and your principal rivers flow bottom side up and invisible most of the ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... Michu, "M. Sauvager, without consulting the public prosecutor, has issued a warrant for the apprehension of one Comte d'Esgrignon, in order to serve a grudge borne against him by one du Croisier, an enemy of the King's government. It is a regular topsy-turvy affair. The President, for his part, goes away, and thereby puts a stop to the preliminary examination! And we know nothing of the matter. Do they, by any chance, mean ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... I know that in my absence you could have behaved badly! Another in your place would have turned the house topsy-turvy, but you have only broken a pane of glass! God bless you for your considerateness. Go on in the same way and you will earn ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... indulge in a few reflections on the effect of this mental explosion in the noddles of John and James and Richard, upon reviewers, publishers, and the world in general. This change of lodging in the author will turn many things topsy-turvy, and conjure the spirit out of much long-established facetiousness. Pictures of poets in garrets will soon not be understood; bathos will be at a premium! the bard will be known, not by the brownness of his beaver, but by the gold band that encircles it. The historian shall ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... Everything was topsy-turvy in the excitement of getting the injured father, and weary, distracted mother started on their brief journey; but finally they were off, and a row of sober-faced children stood on the bluff overlooking the flats below, watching ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... in the heart of this woman? By what measure did she weigh her love? She took off her ducal coronet, and flung it on the platform of a clown! She took from her brow the Olympian aureola, and placed it on the bristly head of a gnome! The world had turned topsy-turvy. The insects swarmed on high, the stars were scattered below, whilst the wonder-stricken Gwynplaine, overwhelmed by a falling ruin of light, and lying in the dust, was enshrined in a glory. One all-powerful, revolting against beauty and ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... classic, according as the humor took it. When we received this intelligence, we could not close our eyes all night. Two years of peaceful conviction had vanished like a dream. All our ideas were turned topsy-turvy; for it the rules of Aristotle were no longer the line of demarcation which separated the literary camps, where was one to find himself, and what was he to depend upon? How was one to know, in reading a book, which school it belonged ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... amusement and a hint of surprise in the bright-blue eyes. He knew only that he had toiled from before sunrise until after sunset; that the waking hours to which he had been long accustomed had been turned topsy-turvy; that instead of spending money he had been making money; that he had earned his board and lodging and one dollar! And even while he ached and throbbed throughout his whole weary body he ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... I did have. Isn't it queer how sometimes, do what you can, work will keep getting in the way until you can't get anything done? That is how it was with me those few days before the wedding; so much so that when Wednesday dawned everything was topsy-turvy and I had a very strong desire to run away. But I always did hate a "piker," so I stood pat. Well, I had most of the dinner cooked, but it kept me hustling to get the house into anything like decent order before the old dog barked, and I knew my moments of liberty were limited. It was ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... vent to a sigh of perplexity. There rose up in his mind a sort of uncomfortable feeling that everything was going topsy-turvy. Somehow or another he seemed to see Robbie's mother sitting by the side of Elsie's bed when she had the fever last winter, and bustling about to get nice things for her, hushing the others with a strange look in her eyes that made them quiet at once, for they could see she was troubled. Or he seemed ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... in Maggie, who had stolen to her father's elbow again, listening with parted lips, while she held her doll topsy-turvy, and crushed its nose against the wood of the chair—"father, is it a long way off where Tom is to go? Shan't we ...
— Tom and Maggie Tulliver • Anonymous
... though more or less occult, head of the present Administration in France. 'M. Ferry,' said a caustic French Radical to me in Paris, 'ought to be the mask of M. Carnot. Nature gave him a Carnival nose for that purpose. Everything is topsy-turvy now in France, and so M. Carnot is the mask of M. Ferry. But the nose will come through ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... was led to a corner of the corral, or stable yard, and tied. Then the foreman made ready to try to stay in the saddle longer than had any of his men, for when a bronco bucks it is like trying to hold on to a swing that is turning topsy-turvy. ...
— The Curlytops at Uncle Frank's Ranch • Howard R. Garis
... August, everything in the Rostovs' house seemed topsy-turvy. All the doors were open, all the furniture was being carried out or moved about, and the mirrors and pictures had been taken down. There were trunks in the rooms, and hay, wrapping paper, and ropes were scattered about. The peasants and house serfs carrying ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... of a copy of some celebrated poseur—I'll tell you those! Speaking as a man of liberal—or lax—morality, you surprise me. You are godly and cleanly men; yet, when you saw in me a gem of purest ray serene, did you appeal to my better nature? Nary! In a wild and topsy-turvy world, did you implore me to devote my splendid and unwasted energies in the service of Good, with a capital G? Nix! You appealed to ambition, egotism, and greed.... Fie! A fie upon each ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... saw, [p 26] And had heard she had lately come out of the straw. But the GOOSE of their tale not a word understood, And still cackled away to her terrified brood; While immers'd in a pond, to complete their ill luck, Topsy-turvy appear'd, at ...
— The Peacock and Parrot, on their Tour to Discover the Author of "The Peacock At Home" • Unknown
... let it go:—it will one day be found With other relics of "a former World," When this World shall be former, underground, Thrown topsy-turvy, twisted, crisped, and curled, Baked, fried, or burnt, turned inside-out, or drowned, Like all the worlds before, which have been hurled First out of, and then back again to chaos— The superstratum which ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... by her sudden return on the following day, in a pouring rain which beat her face without her apparently minding it. Penelope at a full gallop was observed by every one, and Jacquelin's grin, the early hour, the parcels stuffed into the carriole topsy-turvy, and the evident impatience of Mademoiselle Cormon were ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... nice little business. She sold feed for horses and she rejoiced in the thought that she was married to a man of learning. True, she has a tongue. That she always had, but over there it was not so bad. She has become a different woman here. Alas! America is a topsy-turvy country." ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... odd in it. Most people were busy with their hay, he explained. Towards the end of a week we caught our watchmaker, and obtained a key, but he would not let us pay for it. He said it was one of an old collection, and of no use to him. The etiquette of shopping in Germany seems to us rather topsy-turvy at first. In a small shop the proprietor is as likely as not to conduct business with a cigar in his mouth, even if you are a lady, but if you are a man he will think you a boor if you omit to remove your hat as you cross his ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... murmured GRANDOLPH, looking round at the Party, to which, as he said at Liverpool the other day, he is thoroughly attached, "to see how good Conservatives enjoy CHAMBERLAIN'S Speech. They are as jubilant now as they were a few years ago, when I attacked JOSEPH in connection with Aston-Park Riots. A topsy-turvy world; most of us where we never thought to find ourselves, or be found; oddest of all, surely, is to hear CHAMBERLAIN of Birmingham enthusiastically cheered in House of Commons by great Conservative Party. They mean it, too," GRANDOLPH added, still scanning ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 22, 1893 • Various
... I said; "everything seems topsy-turvy up here. Why, to-day I saw a man come in with a box of apples which the crowd begged him to open. He was selling those apples at a dollar apiece, and the folks were just ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... successively tumbling from the air and were cast together into the basket. The last fragment of all that we saw tumble down was the head, and no sooner had that touched the ground than he who had snatched up all the limbs and put them in the basket turned them all out again topsy-turvy. Then straightway we saw with these eyes all those limbs creep together again, and in short, form a whole man, who at once could stand and go just as before, without showing the least damage! Never in my life was I so astonished ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... so strange and unnatural—so unlike the good old Douglas that she loved, in moleskin trousers and pea-jacket or adicky—that she felt he was somehow different, and that the world was going all topsy-turvy. ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... corners of the rooms; she does not rummage the bed, but restricts herself to patting it with the tip of her fingers, stroking the creases out of the sheets, puffing up the pillows and coaxing them out of their hollows. The man turned everything topsy-turvy; she moves nothing." ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... persons; no Certainty, no Enjoyment of our Possessions; no Justice between Man and Man, no Distinction between Good and Bad, between Friends and Foes, between Father and Child, Husband and Wife, Male or Female; but all would have been turned topsy-turvy, by being exposed to the Malice of the Envious and ill-Natured, to the Fraud and Violence of Knaves and Robbers, to the Forgeries of the crafty Cheat, to the Lusts of the Effeminate and Debauched, ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... poor Wamba, "and for hanging up by the feet, my brain has been topsy-turvy ever since the [v]biggin was bound first around my head; so turning me upside down ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... us into a conflagration," said Jack. "I'm ready to believe anything of this topsy-turvy old planet, and I shouldn't be surprised if the other side is all fire as this one is all frost. I can stand these hairy beasts, but I'll be hanged if I want to be introduced ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... Dunkirk. They did not help us much, 'tis true; they could only approach with their smallest vessels, and that not near enough;—besides, their shot fell sometimes among our troops. It did some good, however! It broke the French lines, and raised our courage. Away it went. Helter-skelter! topsy-turvy! all struck dead, or forced into the water; the fellows were drowned the moment they tasted the water, while we Hollanders dashed in after them. Being amphibious, we were as much in our element as frogs, and hacked away at the enemy, and shot them down as if they had been ducks. ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... midst of topsy-turvy Coqueville, Delphin preserved the laughter of a love-sick boy, who scorned the rest, provided Margot was for him. He followed her zigzags as one follows hares. Very wise, despite his simple look, he wanted the cure to marry them, so that ...
— The Fete At Coqueville - 1907 • Emile Zola
... fig-trees, and all sorts of under-clothing on the roofs, at the windows, and the crooked, sloping balconies; orange and lemon-trees with golden fruit grow in the little gardens, which have neither straight paths nor symmetrical beds. Everything there grows together topsy-turvy. The boys, who in rags that no tailor has darned or mended, clamber over the white vineyard walls, the little girls, whose mothers comb their hair before the doors of the houses, are not so pink and white, nor so nicely washed as the Holland children, but I should like to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... topsy-turvy world it was, to be sure! What alternations between despair and hope! What rebound from the gates of Death to the threshold of Eden! How untrue, after all, was the nebulous philosophy of Omar, the Tentmaker. Surely in the happenings ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... I got from the hotel to the hill in a wagon. The sight from our eminence was one that I shall never forget—that I can never fully describe. The whole world appeared to be topsy-turvy and at the mercy of an angry and destroying demon of the elements. People were floating about on housetops and in wagons, and hundreds were clinging to tree-trunks, logs and ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... was found the question of Wade versus Washington Street was settled. A topsy-turvy sign at the intersection announced that Wade Street was ahead. Emma Sanderson's grandson lived a couple of ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... and so am I on account of my health. In the mean time all goes topsy-turvy with me. The Herr[1] wants to have me with him, and Art is not less urgent in her claims. I am partly in Schoenbrunn and partly here; every day assailed by messages from strangers and new acquaintances, and even as regards art I am often driven nearly distracted by my ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... the hotel was equally friendly, racking his brains to find a way of serving Monte by serving madame. It made him feel quite like those lordly personages who used to come here with a title and turn the place topsy-turvy for themselves and for their women-folk. He recalled a certain count of something who arrived with his young wife and who in a day had half of Nice in his service. Monte felt like him, only more so. There was a certain obsequiousness that the count demanded ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... nuns, and bones, and relics, and miracles, and icons, and calvaries, and cells, and celibacy, and horsehair shirts, and blood, and dirt, and tears, was true after all! What if the world of beauty I had been content to live in was a Satanic show, and the real thing was that dead, topsy-turvy world down there in the cold, gray lake under the reeking mists? I sneaked back into the house to see if the streak hadn't dried yet; but no! it loomed in tell-tale ghastliness, a sort of writing on the wall announcing the wrath ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... stepladder. He and Yardsley go out. The pictures are piled up on the floor, the furniture is topsy-turvy, and the portieres lie in ...
— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs
... barbaric way, and many menaces to Andromachus if he did not forthwith send the Corinthians off, stretched out his hand with the inside upward, and then turning it down again, threatened he would handle their city even so, and turn it topsy-turvy in as little time, and with as much ease. Andromachus, laughing at the man's confidence, made no other reply, but, imitating his gesture, bid him hasten his own departure, unless he had a mind to see that kind of dexterity ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... casts his eyes around what was sometimes called the kitchen, sometimes the tap-room, sometimes the "dancing-flure." Forms which had run by the walls, and planks by way of tables which had been propped before them, were turned topsy-turvy, and in some instances broken. Pewter pots and pints, battered and bruised, or squeezed together and flattened, and fragments of twisted glass tumblers, lay beside them. The clay floor was scraped with brogue-nails and indented with the heel of that primitive foot-gear, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... excuse for his folly. No; all this dirt and confusion, which once a week drives me nearly beside myself, is what K—— calls clearing up the ship; when he and his man Friday, as he calls Kelly, turn everything topsy-turvy, and, to make the muddle more complete, they always choose my washing-day for their frolic. Pantries and cellars are rummaged over, and everything is dragged out of its place, for the mere pleasure of making a litter, and dragging it ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... 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; conflicting, inconsistent, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Riches; that only he, that is, in spite of Hesiod, Homer, nay and Jupiter himself, divum pater atque hominum rex, the father of gods and men, at whose single beck, as heretofore, so at present, all things sacred and profane are turned topsy-turvy. According to whose pleasure war, peace, empire, counsels, judgments, assemblies, wedlocks, bargains, leagues, laws, arts, all things light or serious—I want breath—in short, all the public and private business of mankind is governed; without whose help all ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... pass on the Italian side, was, till lately, a quiet and beautiful village, rising from among great green slopes, which in early summer are covered with innumerable flowers. The place, however, is now quite changed. The railway has turned the whole Val Leventina topsy-turvy, and altered it almost beyond recognition. When the line is finished and the workmen have gone elsewhere, things will get right again; but just now there is an explosiveness about the valley which puzzles one who has been familiar with its former quietness. ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... shattered; then, turning another corner, we came on a poor bourgeois house that had had its whole front torn away. The squalid revelation of caved-in floors, smashed wardrobes, dangling bedsteads, heaped-up blankets, topsy-turvy chairs and stoves and wash-stands was far more painful than the sight of the wounded church. St. Eloi was draped in the dignity of martyrdom, but the poor little house reminded one of some shy humdrum person suddenly exposed in the glare of ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... epigrams, and more particularly his fables, are examples of a thoroughgoing naturalist's insolent indifference to any form of restraint. All things, whether holy or bestial, were material for his topsy-turvy wit, his literally unbridled imagination. No humanistic law of decency, that is to say, a proper respect for the opinions of mankind, and no divine law of reverence and humility, acted for him as a restraining force or a selective principle. An immediate and significant example of this ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... the sages preach Who never have learnt what they try to teach. We are the lights of the age, they say! We are the men, and the thinkers we! So we build up guess-work the livelong day, In a topsy-turvy sort of way, Some with and some wanting a plus b. Let the British Association fuss; What are theirs to the feats to be wrought by us? {354} Shall the earth stand still? Will the round come square? Must Isaac's book be the nest of a mare? ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... school bank-cards and Monday morning pennies. (By the time the children leave school, they will have saved thus, penny by penny, enough to provide them with a new rig-out for service—or Sunday wear.) There was a frizzling in the topsy-turvy little kitchen. ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... cluck, that is but a general expression of affection and oversight. But the moment she finds a worm or a crumb or a splash of dough, the note changes into a quick, eager "Here! here! here!" and away rushes the brood pell-mell and topsy-turvy. If a stray cat approaches, or danger in any form, her defiant, menacing "C-r-r-r-r!" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... sat on the edge of the Laughing Brook and he was very busy, very busy indeed. He was washing his breakfast. Really, it was his dinner, for turning night into day just turns everything topsy-turvy. So Bobby Coon eats dinner when most of the little meadow people ...
— Mother West Wind's Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... place to every individual, in a drove of a thousand, nay, even of ten thousand captured souls; and what difficulty can he have with seven, however dangerous they may be. But though these seven should turn the infernal government topsy-turvy, do you drive them thither instantly, for fear I should receive commands to annihilate you before your time. As for his threats, they are only lies; for although thy end, and that of the old man yonder, (looking at Time,) are nigh at hand, being ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... twenty-five than thirty-five. Her hair was still soft and shining. She had been a pretty girl, she was a beautiful woman. But the greatest change was in her attitude toward life. In Paris her golden-rule philosophy had been turned topsy-turvy. ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... look upon,' said she, 'and I like you for it. The world is fair, but it has robbed me of husband, honor and taken away my children's eye-sight. Henceforward, all that is hideous I will love!' I saw that her brain was topsy-turvy, and it rejoiced me. Her children were still pretty, though they were blind; and it almost made me laugh to see them grope their way to their mother's side, and turning their sightless eyes toward her, ask, in childish accents,—'Mamma, what made the naughty man put out our eyes?' Well, ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... Roosevelt spring from his sense of humor—humor which recognizes the topsy-turvy of life and its swift changes, and still laughs—or from the instinct which knows that even in the sweetest of all experiences there must be a drop of bitterness? Whatever their cause, they proved to be a true foreboding. He had not been home twenty ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... the service of Mass in the good Abbe Leroux's parish church, which is a triumph of imagination and subtle humour. No wonder "the Abbe Leroux was scandalised," when the service had been turned topsy-turvy, the credo put before the gloria, and a young person among his congregation, topping all other voices, was singing a solo! Where was the Beadle? or a Churchwarden? or an Aggrieved Parishioner? Three cheers for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various
... his feet, and stood poised in a perilous position at the end of the roof, like some dark statue hung above its gable. Behind him, huge clouds of an almost impossible purple turned slowly topsy-turvy in the silent anarchy of heaven. Their gyration made the dark figure seem ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... discontent will be far more prevalent than ever. Again, if laboring men can only be made to break their wage contracts soon after every victorious strike, the industries of the whole country will soon be "topsy-turvy." ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... Socratic every dining-room was Attic (Which suggests an architecture of a topsy-turvy kind), There they'd satisfy their thirst on a recherche cold {Greek word} Which is what they called their lunch—and so may you if you're inclined. As they gradually got on, they'd {four Greek words) (Which is Attic for a steady and a conscientious drink). But they ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... people! Half an hour hence I'll be going through a mad march of the incidents of the day, turned topsy-turvy according to the way of dreams. But wae's me! wae's me! If it had all been true—if I had been really homeless and friendless and penniless, instead of having three 'goolden' pounds in my purse, and Providence in the ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... does he?" she said to herself, as she realised that she would be forced to speak out now if he was to be saved from such an alliance. "Then he must marry her, that's all! I can't and won't turn all Maerchenland topsy-turvy on his account! I've done all I could for him, and I shall leave him to go his own way. I'll go up to bed before he arrives, and I expect it will be a long time before I'm able to come down, for I feel sure I am going to be ill—and ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... swiftly through the early night, his brain seething with tumultuous thoughts. The revelations of the day were staggering; the whole universe seemed to have turned topsy-turvy since that devastating hour at Burton's Inn. Somehow he was not able to confine his thoughts to Hetty Castleton alone. She seemed to sink into the background, despite the absolution he had been so ready, ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... momentary uneasiness to see my rustic throne beneath the oak usurped by a noisy group of girls, the silence and decorum of my imaginary realm broken by music and laughter, and, in a word, my whole kingdom turned topsy-turvy with romping, fiddling, and dancing. But I am naturally, and from principle, too, a lover of all those innocent amusements which cheer the laborer's toil, and, as it were, put their shoulders to the wheel of life, and help the poor man along with his load of cares. Hence I ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... man who is too topsy-turvy; Nothing is quite as it should be with Jones, Angular just where he ought to be curvy, Padded with flesh where ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... replied; "but there's generally a lot of complaint about him. He takes more pains dressing himself than he does in looking after guests, the result of which is that after my departure things get topsy-turvy, and by the time I get back, with the exception of Narcissus, there isn't a ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... studied men from my topsy-turvy Close, and, I reckon, rather true. Some are fine fellows: some, right scurvy; Most, a dash between the two. But it's a woman, old girl, that makes me Think more kindly of the race, And it's a woman, old girl, that shakes me When the ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... degrees from the practice of that establishment, and yet be at an inconceivable distance from perfection."[98] Mr. Dunstan observed, "You carry kind treatment too far at the Retreat—beyond safety. If you had many of our patients they would turn you topsy-turvy presently." Mr. Tuke replied, "It is certainly possible to carry a good general principle too far, but we have very few accidents or escapes, and we have many patients who come to us in a very violent state." Mr. Dunstan would not allow his visitor to see some of the rooms, and ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... momentous affair that has just taken place, and it is an event of too great moment in this quiet little world not to turn it completely topsy-turvy. Labour is at a stand. The house has been a scene of confusion the whole evening. It has been beleaguered by gipsy women, with their children on their backs, wailing and lamenting; while the old virago of a mother has cruised up and ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... But the tea is cold—and that shows that everything is topsy-turvy. Bah! But I see something in the window, on a plate." He went to the window. "Oh oh, boiled chicken and rice!... But why haven't you begun upon it yet? So we are in such a state ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... only say the whole question demands much more anxious thought than you seem to have given it. You say that he is a gentleman. He knows how to behave, I admit; but if his morals are as topsy-turvy as his tastes and—er—politics, as I've no doubt they are (rising and moving to L.), then-er—In short, I do not approve of Brian Strange as a husband for my niece and ward. (Knocks ...
— Mr. Pim Passes By • Alan Alexander Milne
... perhaps; not at all; she was pignaute—original; and did the oddest things with the air and look of the highest breeding. Fairies cannot be vulgar, no matter what they do; they may take the strangest liberties—pinch the maids—turn the house topsy-turvy; but they are ever the darlings of grace and poetry. Flora Vyvyan was a fairy. Not peculiarly intellectual herself, she had a veneration for intellect; those fast young men were the last persons likely to fascinate that fast young lady. Women are so perverse; they always prefer the very people ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... straight, so that the eye took in a half mile of it, from the beginning to the point where another turn intervened. The two friends were galloping over this exact section and speculating as to how soon they would strike the open prairie, when all their calculations were knocked topsy-turvy. A party of horsemen charged around the bend in front, all riding at a sweeping gallop directly toward the alarmed Mickey and Fred, who instantly halted and surveyed them. A second glance showed them to be Indians, undoubtedly Apaches, ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... mantles; men with every kind of headgear, turbans, handkerchiefs, cowls; men with hair and beard matted and flying; now one helped himself to a louder yell by tossing in air the dirty garment he had torn from his body, hirsute as a goat's; now one leaped up agile as a panther; now one turned topsy-turvy; now groups of them swirled together like whimsical eddies in a pool. Some went slowly, their arms outspread in silent ecstasy; some stalked on with parted lips and staring eyes, trance-like or in dead drunkenness of soul; nevertheless the great majority of ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... have been reading a ghost-book," said Carlyle. "Wilson's folly has turned the house topsy-turvy. Make your haste, Barbara." ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... planned the funniest kind of a joke On the poor, long-suffering mortal folk; And a few mysterious words he said, His fool's cap close to her flower-crowned head. Then he laughed till he made his cap-bells ring, At the thought of the topsy-turvy Spring. "'Tis a fair exchange," he said, with a wink— "It is!" she said, and what do you think? The flowers that should bloom in the month of May Every one of them came on an April day! And they looked for April showers in vain, But all through May ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... making him into a ridiculous prig. She turned the values of life topsy-turvy with that one ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... your uncle had a deal more money than he owned to, and he managed to send his sister Elodie—and that was a stage name he gave her—to send her to be a workwoman at our place, without my daughter's knowing who she was; and, gracious goodness! but that girl turned the whole place topsy-turvy; she got all those poor girls into mischief—impossible to whitewash them, ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... had finished the door on the birthday, and proud enough they were of it. The griffins, cupids, and so on, were, I must own, most beautiful to behold; though so many in number, so entangled in flowers and devices, and so topsy-turvy in their actions and attitudes, that you felt them unpleasantly in your head for hours after you had done with the pleasure of looking at them. If I add that Penelope ended her part of the morning's work by being sick in the back-kitchen, it is in no unfriendly spirit towards the vehicle. No! ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... he has been charged to recover, and the still more startling incident of the heroine living for some years in disguise as a monk. The following epistle, however, from the heroine to the hero, will show better than anything else the topsy-turvy condition which sensibility had already reached. All that need be said in explanation of it is that the father (who is furious with his son, and not unreasonably so) has shut him up in a dungeon, in order to force him to give ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... saw the money; saw it in the hand of the person who hid it there. Let me look for it, constable. I will not give up the search till I have turned the place topsy-turvy." ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... when he could not make everything fit his rule of thumb, he excused the country tolerantly as a "topsy-turvy" land. He wished to move and act quickly; to make others move quickly. He did not understand that men who had sentenced themselves to exile for the official term of three years, or for life, measured ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... Is that you, dearest? Oh! Carroll, I'm all so topsy-turvy I don't know what I'm doing. But I just couldn't go to bed ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... to think it premature. Her furniture was topsy-turvy, and her hair in curl-papers; she obviously did not expect visitors, and resented this curtailment of the honeymoon. She showed it even when Dorothea, after apologies, came straight ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... justice, not being of that opinion, and having a moral mission, and being no scholar to speak of, and hard up for an authority—why, it was a very great temptation for him. But some people, and I am afraid the professor was one of them, interpret that in a more strange, curious, one-sided, left-handed, topsy-turvy, inside-out, behind-before fashion than even Cousin Cramchild; for they make it mean, that you must show your respect for children, by never confessing yourself in the wrong to them, even if you know that you are so, lest they should lose confidence ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... she began, an almost weak love of praise showing itself for a moment in her eyes; "but I have no room prepared. I have been house-cleaning, and everything is topsy-turvy Mrs. ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... most pretensions in this topsy-turvy of a world regard it as a disgrace to have been obscure and ignorant, and pride themselves upon their persistence in their own kind of obscurity and ignorance! No wonder the few strong men do about as they please with such a race of nincompoopery. If they didn't ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... what are the marsupials as a family, viewed in the dry light of modern science? Well, they are simply one of the very oldest mammalian families, and therefore, I need hardly say, in the levelling and topsy-turvy view of evolutionary biology, the least entitled to consideration or respect from rational observers. For of course in the kingdom of science the last shall be first, and the first last; it is the oldest families that are accounted the worst, while the best families mean always the newest. Now, ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... become a sort of universal guest. With what propriety is this jovial season, placed amid dismal December rains and snows! How one pities the unhappy Australians, with whom everything is turned topsy-turvy, and who holds Christmas at midsummer! The face of Christmas glows all the brighter for the cold. The heart warms as the frost increases. Estrangements which have embittered the whole year, melt in to-night's hospitable smile. There are warmer handshakings on this night than during the by-past ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... thoroughbred, even if she had been born of middle-class parentage. He laughed bitterly. Middle class. A homeless, countryless derelict, and he had the impudence to revert to comparisons that no longer existed in this topsy-turvy old world. He was an upstart. The final curtain had dropped between him and his world, and he was still thinking in the ancient make-up. Middle class! He was no better than a troglodyte, set ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... speak to the wind. She thinks it a great favour to run down to Hiltonbury for the Horticultural Show, turn everything topsy-turvy, keep poor dear Sweet Honey in a perpetual ferment, then come away to Castle Blanch, as if she were rid ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... time thought of writing an Epic Poem upon Friedrich the Great, 'upon some action of Friedrich's,' Schiller says. Happily Schiller did not do it. By oversetting fact, disregarding reality, and tumbling time and space topsy-turvy, Schiller with his fine gifts might no doubt have written a temporary 'epic poem,' of the kind read an admired by many simple persons. But that would have helped little, and could not have lasted long. It is not the untrue imaginary Picture of ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... clever indeed. If you would just turn it topsy-turvy, change all those bitter, truthful speeches into noble sentiments; make your Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs (who never has been a popular character) die in the last act instead of the Yorkshireman, ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... things over which Peter Rabbit had sat and thought and wondered until the brains in that funny little head of his were topsy-turvy, none was more puzzling than the fact that Sticky-toes the Tree Toad could climb. Often Peter had watched him climb up the trunk of a tree or jump from one branch to another and then thought of Old Mr. Toad, own cousin to Sticky-toes, ...
— Mother West Wind "How" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... ... No, to be beloved is a misfortune. It is a misfortune to feel guilty because you do not give something you cannot give. O my God!' he added, with a gesture of his arm. 'If it all happened reasonably, and not all topsy-turvy—not in our way but in a way of its own! Why, it's as if I had stolen that love! You think so too, don't deny it. You must think so. But will you believe it, of all the horrid and stupid things I have found time to do in my life—and there are many—this is one I do not ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... gave, in her place. She begged the latter's forgiveness for what she had done; she could not help it, there must be justice for gentlemen as well as for peasants. If there was no justice the world could not exist, everything would be topsy-turvy, and people would kill one another in the public streets just as the wild beasts did in the woods. She, too, would atone for the sin she had committed that day, and that would be perfectly just. She also sent a message to the gardener, thanking him for all the kindness ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... satisfaction by the colonists. The American elk has been introduced in the South Island, and the mountain goats—the ibex and the thar—are to be acclimatized in the mountains, so that unnatural sport may flourish in this ancient land of quiet and of wondrous birds, turned topsy-turvy by ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... naturally represents them. To mark the fifth, they chose a V, which is made out by bending inwards the three middle fingers, and stretching out only the thumb and the little finger; and for the tenth they used an X, which is a double V, one placed topsy-turvy under the other. From this the progression of these numbers is always from one to five, and from five to ten. The hundred was signified by the capital letter of that word in Latin, C—centum. The other letters, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... had so seldom honored them with her presence, and who always tried so hard to impress them with a sense of her superiority and the mighty favor she conferred upon them by occasionally condescending to bring her aristocratic presence into their quiet, plain household, and turn it topsy-turvy. Still, she was Anna's aunt, and then, too, it was a distinction which Aunt Ruth rather enjoyed, that of having a fashionable city woman for her guest, and so she submitted with a good grace to the breaking in upon all her customs, and uttered no word of complaint when the breakfast table waited ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... strawberry bed. What do you think, Mammy! There are ripe red berries and pretty blossoms, now! On the way home, we saw yellow dandelion blossoms. It isn't summer any more; it is frost-time. Everything seems topsy-turvy!" ...
— Grand-Daddy Whiskers, M.D. • Nellie M. Leonard
... his head. He hated clashing and conflict above all things, and was for peace. Why should they thus rush to thrust themselves into trouble? Let matters abide as they were a little longer; surely life was pleasant enough without turning it all topsy-turvy. Then, with a sort of indignation, why should Myles, who had only come among them a month, take such service more to heart than they who had endured it for years? And, finally, with the hopefulness of so many of the ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... victim of an illusion of the senses? Have I recovered life only to lose reason? No; I know myself, I find myself the same; my judgment is firm and accurate, and can make its way in this world so new and topsy-turvy. It is on but one point that my reason wavers—Clementine!—I seem to see you again, and you are not you! Well, what's the difference, after all? If the Destiny which snatched me from the tomb has taken care to ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... sharp-cut, though they were not very high, and were heavily wooded to their summits. The westernmost peak of this range was separated from the rest by a wide river, which had cut its way through in some of those forgotten ages when, if we are to believe the geologists, every thing was topsy-turvy on this now meek ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... held her gaze, the same thought—almost the same simile—had come into her mind; but she had hardly expected to find a love of the beautiful in this bronzed forester. In fact, she found that a number of her preconceived ideas were being turned topsy-turvy. ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... alone involved a daily recurring struggle, in which the softer emotions would have been altogether out of place, we may suppose. In the present instance she considered it a hard case that her house should be turned topsy-turvy at such an untimely hour, and its general propriety endangered thereby; and Madelon's grief, which at another time would have excited her compassion, had for the moment taken the unexpected form of determined opposition, and could only be ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... the rich materials are not at hand! He was a man of talents, who ran a race with the press; could criticise all the genius of the age faster than it could be produced; could make his own malignity look like wit, and turn the wit of others into absurdity, by placing it topsy-turvy. As thus, when he attacked "The Traveller" of Goldsmith, which he called "a flimsy poem," he discussed the subject as a grave political pamphlet, condemning the whole system, as raised on false principles. "The Deserted ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... mighty host of clouds had followed them; and when the wind did come, it came in no moderate measure, but brought this awful storm upon its wings, which now raged as if all the powers of mischief had got loose, and were bent on turning every thing topsy-turvy indoors ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... time his reverence came to me, leaving the porter just outside the door in order to come to his help should I be violent; and then he read me a very purty lecture on my conduct, saying I had turned the religious house topsy-turvy, and corrupted the scholars, and that I was the cheat of the world, for that, on inspecting the pack, he had discovered the dirty marks which I had made upon the trump cards for to know them by. He said a great ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... by force, nor could she hide it anywhere but what he would hunt it out. At last in despair she dropped the silver in the jug on the wash-hand basin, and had the satisfaction of seeing him turn everything topsy-turvy in a vain attempt to find it. As he never washed, it never occurred to him to look in ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... handsome arms and neat elbows, and to wear Lincoln Green toxophilite hats and feathers, but that they may bring down some "desirable" young man with those killing bows and arrows of theirs? What causes respectable parents to take up their carpets, set their houses topsy-turvy, and spend a fifth of their year's income in ball suppers and iced champagne? Is it sheer love of their species, and an unadulterated wish to see young people happy and dancing? Psha! they want to ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... recognised by routine, or of remedying anything about which no outcry has been made, we are met with, 'I cannot think what you mean by all this disturbance; nobody else among the clergy sees these things, and I have no wish to be the first to begin turning everything topsy-turvy.' And then people call him a sensible man. I have no patience with them. However, we know what we want, and, as I wrote to Dawson the other day, have a scheme on foot which will, I think, fairly meet the requirements of the case. But we want more money, and my first ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... side. Houses were knocked down; streets broken through and stopped; deep pits and trenches dug in the ground; enormous heaps of earth and clay thrown up; buildings that were undermined and shaking, propped by great beams of wood. Here, a chaos of carts, overthrown and jumbled together, lay topsy-turvy at the bottom of a steep unnatural hill; there, confused treasures of iron soaked and rusted in something that had accidentally become a pond. Everywhere were bridges that led nowhere; thoroughfares that were wholly impassable; Babel towers of chimneys, wanting half their ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... place on the first of May, and was long cited in tradition as the grand moving. The anniversary of it was piously observed among the "sons of the pilgrims of Communipaw," by turning their houses topsy-turvy, and carrying all the furniture through the streets, in emblem of the swarming of the parent hive; and this is the real origin of the universal agitation and "moving" by which this most restless of cities is literally turned out of ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... possible to climb to the nearest timber. Nothing definite could be seen. The clouds on the snowy surface and the light electrified air gave the eye only optical illusions. The outline of every object was topsy-turvy and dim. The large stones that I thought to step on were not there; and, when apparently passing others, I bumped into them. Several times I fell headlong by stepping out for a ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... trodden under foot, the same as, conversely, all manly attributes are stripped from the men in hundreds of other occupations. Such are the sequels of social exploitation and of social war. Our corrupt social conditions turn things topsy-turvy. ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... service which he praised highly; it is true there would be trouble with the sergeants; but then the officers were gentlemen, and his own, in particular, one among ten thousand. It sounded so far exactly like an episode in the rakish, topsy-turvy life of such an one as I had imagined. But then there came incidents more doubtful, which showed an almost impudent greed after gratuities, and a truly impudent disregard for truth. And then there was the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as she opened it. "She is the best of them all to write, and her letters sound just like her funny, topsy-turvy self." ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... and we resent his operations as an individual hurt, a personal affront. What business has he to be trampling among our borders and crushing our flowers with his stupid hobnails? Why cannot he carry his zeal for topsy-turvy horticulture elsewhere? He comes and lays a brutal hand on our pet growths, snips off their graces, shapes them anew according to his own ridiculous ideal, paints and varnishes them with a villainous compound of his ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... cadets lost no time in making a thorough examination of the Lodge. In the bedrooms they found everything topsy-turvy, the bed clothes having been hauled near the windows where the incoming snow might fall upon them. In the kitchen they found many of their cooking utensils in the sink, and over them had been poured a mixture of flour, catsup, maple syrup, and condensed ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... uncannily that Jolyon would rather like to pay them—the chap was so loose. Besides, to claim damages was not the thing to do. The claim, indeed, had been made almost mechanically; and as the hour drew near Soames saw in it just another dodge of this insensitive and topsy-turvy Law to make him ridiculous; so that people might sneer and say: "Oh, yes, he got quite a good price for her!" And he gave instructions that his Counsel should state that the money would be given to a Home for Fallen Women. He was a long time hitting off exactly the right charity; but, having pitched ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... sometimes seem to turn the wrong way, so that everything becomes miserably topsy-turvy? I have often had to struggle to keep awake when writing you these long letters, which you say you are so glad to get. But now I am writing because I am so dreadfully awake that I don't feel as if I ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... returned Mr. Swann. "I don't suppose they'll trouble me much, but they'll turn your place topsy-turvy, I expect. Still, that can't be helped. You know what fools the police are; they'll think you've murdered the captain and hidden his body under the boards. They'll have all the floors up. ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... title would go to Evermond Le Mesurier, the unmarried and dissolute uncle, if he survived his nephew, and then would die out altogether. There would be no more Baron Bracondales of Bracondale, unless Hector chose to marry and have sons. Oh, life was a topsy-turvy affair at the best of times, she ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... know what else I should stay for; you are not yourselves, girls; you've all turned topsy-turvy. I've visited here these twenty years, and I never saw things in the state ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... it, my darling; and if you had as much to do with Aunt Vi Truefitt as I have, you would realize how often my spirits turn topsy-turvy. I often hope that I'll be Englishized quickly, so that I may get back to my dear parents. But there, Molly is ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... the thirty-first of August, everything in the Rostovs' house seemed topsy-turvy. All the doors were open, all the furniture was being carried out or moved about, and the mirrors and pictures had been taken down. There were trunks in the rooms, and hay, wrapping paper, and ropes were ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... other? Am I the victim of an illusion of the senses? Have I recovered life only to lose reason? No; I know myself, I find myself the same; my judgment is firm and accurate, and can make its way in this world so new and topsy-turvy. It is on but one point that my reason wavers—Clementine!—I seem to see you again, and you are not you! Well, what's the difference, after all? If the Destiny which snatched me from the tomb has taken care to present to my awaking sense the image of her I loved, ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... out after them in another open boat. The whole impending tragedy had moved on down the muddy Yukon, passing Forty Mile and Circle and losing itself in the wilderness beyond. But there it was, love, disorganizing men's and women's lives, driving toward destruction and death, turning topsy-turvy everything that was sensible and considerate, making bawds or suicides out of virtuous women, and scoundrels and murderers out of men who had always been clean ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... details of the female toilet and of what dresses, what robes, and what jewels the Empress should wear on such and such an occasion. One day he daubed her dress with ink because he did not like it, and wanted her to put on another. Whenever he looked into her wardrobe he was sure to throw everything topsy-turvy." ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... rather, of his absence make this use: It lends a lustre and more great opinion, A larger dare to our great enterprise, Than if the earl were here; for men must think, If we, without his help, can make a head To push against the kingdom, with his help We shall o'erturn it topsy-turvy down. Yet all goes well, yet all our joints ...
— King Henry IV, The First Part • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... run riot, and never done a thing to exercise any check over himself? His temperament is such that he some time back created, all on account of that fellow Ch'in Chung, a rumpus that turned heaven and earth topsy-turvy; and, as a matter of course, he's now far worse than he ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... a sole and solitary line of verse might be romantic or classic, according as the humor took it. When we received this intelligence, we could not close our eyes all night. Two years of peaceful conviction had vanished like a dream. All our ideas were turned topsy-turvy; for it the rules of Aristotle were no longer the line of demarcation which separated the literary camps, where was one to find himself, and what was he to depend upon? How was one to know, in reading a book, which school it belonged to? . . . Luckily in the same year there appeared ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... said, "everything gone clean topsy-turvy! And the deep meaning of it is to rob our fishing, under pretence of the Nationals. It may bring a good bit of money to the place, for the lining of one or two pockets, such as John Prater's and Cheeseman's; ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... appears, at one time thought of writing an Epic Poem upon Friedrich the Great, 'upon some action of Friedrich's,' Schiller says. Happily Schiller did not do it. By oversetting fact, disregarding reality, and tumbling time and space topsy-turvy, Schiller with his fine gifts might no doubt have written a temporary 'epic poem,' of the kind read an admired by many simple persons. But that would have helped little, and could not have lasted long. It is not the untrue imaginary Picture ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... world, came upon him, and he racked his brains to imagine how he could ever find such a good place for his book-case as the gallery in the old maid's house. Fancying he saw his books scattered about, his furniture defaced, his regular life turned topsy-turvy, he asked himself for the thousandth time why the first year spent in Mademoiselle Gamard's house had been so sweet, the second so cruel. His troubles were a pit in which his reason floundered. The canonry seemed to him small compensation for so much misery, and he compared ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... it go:—it will one day be found With other relics of "a former World," When this World shall be former, underground, Thrown topsy-turvy, twisted, crisped, and curled, Baked, fried, or burnt, turned inside-out, or drowned, Like all the worlds before, which have been hurled First out of, and then back again to chaos— The superstratum ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... people began to think that topsy-turvy Louisa would amount to something after all, since she could do so well as housemaid, teacher, seamstress, ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... if she had been born of middle-class parentage. He laughed bitterly. Middle class. A homeless, countryless derelict, and he had the impudence to revert to comparisons that no longer existed in this topsy-turvy old world. He was an upstart. The final curtain had dropped between him and his world, and he was still thinking in the ancient make-up. Middle class! He was no better than a troglodyte, set down ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... no time in making a thorough examination of the Lodge. In the bedrooms they found everything topsy-turvy, the bed clothes having been hauled near the windows where the incoming snow might fall upon them. In the kitchen they found many of their cooking utensils in the sink, and over them had been poured a mixture of flour, catsup, maple syrup, and condensed milk. ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... us less than his art and humor. We have seen the nature of his plots. In such a topsy-turvy world there is little opportunity for nice delineation of character. His personages are mainly symbols or caricatures. Yet they are vividly if broadly sketched, and genuine touches of human nature lend verisimilitude to their most ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... reading a ghost-book," said Carlyle. "Wilson's folly has turned the house topsy-turvy. ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... of topsy-turvy Coqueville, Delphin preserved the laughter of a love-sick boy, who scorned the rest, provided Margot was for him. He followed her zigzags as one follows hares. Very wise, despite his simple look, he wanted the cure to marry them, so that ...
— The Fete At Coqueville - 1907 • Emile Zola
... young men, materially aided by Jennie, speedily turned the house topsy-turvy. There was no resisting their overrunning spirits, though now and then the mother ventured on a mild protest, but the smile which always accompanied the gentle reproof betrayed the truth, that she was as happy as they in their merriment, with which ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... lest worse should befall. Disappear he did, remaining for the next two months concealed in the outskirts of Paris, where he practised swordsmanship against his next meeting with his enemy. The situation was cynically topsy-turvy. As M. Foulet points out, Rohan had legally rendered himself liable, under the edict against duelling, to a long term of imprisonment, if not to the penalty of death. Yet the law did not move, and Voltaire was left to take the only course open in those ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... of view of a rationalist, the whole world is rendered almost irrational by the single phenomenon of Christian Socialism. It turns the scientific universe topsy-turvy, and makes it essentially possible that the key of all social evolution may be found in the dusty casket of some discredited creed. It cannot be amiss to consider this phenomenon as ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... these calculations, and when at last I got to my sum total I felt so light-headed that it seemed as though I were walking on air. Indeed, I fairly was stunned by my tremendous good fortune and could not think clearly: and it was because my mind thus was turned all topsy-turvy, I suppose, that the odd thought popped into it that in the matter of weight my gold ingots were pretty much the same as the tins of beans to get which I was about to return to the barque—a foolish notion which so tickled my fancy that I burst ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... with the conservation menus, and it is funny to see how topsy-turvy everything is. It is perfectly patriotic to eat mushrooms and lobsters and squabs and ducklings, and it is unpatriotic to serve sausages and wheat cakes. And Cook can't get adjusted to it. She will insist upon bacon for ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... sweet to think we grow more wise When Radcliffe's page we cease to prize, And turn to Malthus, and to Hervey, For tombs, or cradles topsy-turvy; 'Tis sweet to flatter one's dear self, And altered feelings vaunt, when pelf Is passion, poetry, romance; — And all our faith's in three per cents." R. ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... printed on page seventh a hieroglyphic 'representing a great sickness and mortality, wherein you may see the representation of people in their winding sheets, persons digging graves and sepultures, coffins, etc.;' and on another page another hieroglyphic representing a fire: two twins topsy-turvy, and back to back, falling headlong into a fire. 'The twins signify Gemini, a sign in astrology which rules London:' all around stand figures, male and female, pouring liquids (oil or water?) on the flames. When, therefore, the great fire of 1666 followed the plague ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... Workingmen will then lose their positions and discontent will be far more prevalent than ever. Again, if laboring men can only be made to break their wage contracts soon after every victorious strike, the industries of the whole country will soon be "topsy-turvy." ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... what happened?" asked Mr. Damon. "I saw Eradicate pull on that lever as you told him to, Tom, and then things all went topsy-turvy! Did ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton
... persons who indulged in secret debaucheries at least kept up a respect for appearances; but from the time that Maintenon's reign began, and the King's illegitimate children were made a part of the Royal Family, all was turned topsy-turvy. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... desolate night that he spent in the topsy-turvy cottage. He was quite alone except for the queer shapes and shadows that haunted him. When he was downstairs he could hear strange whisperings above; when he was upstairs the mutterings were below. ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... conferences of Buddhism; and for centuries the people have gathered at Pun, Hurdwar, Trimbak, and Benares in immense numbers. A great meeting, what you call a mass meeting, is really one of the oldest and most popular of Indian institutions in this topsy-turvy land, and though they have been employed in clerical work for generations they have no practical knowledge of affairs. A ship's clerk is a useful person, but he is scarcely the captain; and an orderly room writer, however ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... shown actually leaving the place. It is singular how ill-designed many of the classical crowds are, especially the battle-scenes: they are constructed without regard for the human necessity of standing on something; and we have grotesque topsy-turvy compositions, the individual parts of which are unrivalled in technique.[197] Michael Angelo's first and last representation of a crowd in sculpture shows the same fault, which, indeed, was far from uncommon.[198] It arose from ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... mixture of manly strength and child-like simplicity, exceptional executive ability and credulity, kindliness and quick temper, he would never in the wide world have become responsible for the state of affairs at present turning his old home topsy-turvy, and in a fair way to undo all the good works of others, and certainly ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... departure!—for we shall find our delicate modern ears unable to endure the vast uproar which is about to commence in celebration of the king's escape! Listen! it has already commenced. See!—the whole town is topsy-turvy. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the goal both of imagination and conduct. Oscar Wilde's epigrams, and more particularly his fables, are examples of a thoroughgoing naturalist's insolent indifference to any form of restraint. All things, whether holy or bestial, were material for his topsy-turvy wit, his literally unbridled imagination. No humanistic law of decency, that is to say, a proper respect for the opinions of mankind, and no divine law of reverence and humility, acted for him as a restraining force or a ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... rather Yeomanry life, its fatigues and worries, big and small, on men hitherto unaccustomed to such things, has been marvellous, and productive of a topsy-turvy dom of character, after Mr. W. S. Gilbert's own heart. To commence with, it is curious to note that in many cases men who claim to have roughed it in various parts of the world have been amongst the ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... the form of scolding. She was not a stupid woman by any means, but there was one thing in the world she never could understand, and that was Austin himself. He wasn't like other boys one bit, she always said. He had such a queer, topsy-turvy way of looking at things; would express the most outrageous opinions with an innocent unconsciousness that made her long to box his ears, and support the most arrant absurdities by arguments that conveyed not the smallest meaning to her intellect. Look ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... turning cart-wheels, somersaults, and walking all about us on their hands, with feet in the air, to attract attention and elicit pennies. One little fellow gyrated about in a most marvelous style, keeping so persistently topsy-turvy as to grow black in the face, and we finally paid him to keep right side uppermost. Begging is reduced to a science in India, and our little party were beset, as by an ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... from my topsy-turvy Close, and, I reckon, rather true. Some are fine fellows: some, right scurvy; Most, a dash between the two. But it's a woman, old girl, that makes me Think more kindly of the race, And it's a woman, old girl, that shakes me When the Great Juggler I ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... Sheepshanks, with a gleeful laugh. "I have made a discovery, sir—a great discovery. I happened to look out of the window, a moment ago, and I saw a couple of little chaps racing up and down, and playing at that topsy-turvy game you saw me trying just now. Their cheeks were so fat, and their frames so sturdy, that I feel convinced such exercises are the best promoters of health in the world; and as I am getting rather broken down myself, while I am finding out what is the best way ...
— Funny Big Socks - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... terrific, blinding, tropical in their almost ceaseless roar and fury. Surely only madmen or fiends would fight in such an elemental maelstrom. We may be both, and perhaps we are, now that the whole world is topsy-turvy; for we are going savagely on at this dread business, half blind and wholly desperate. If the furious sky were to rain red-hot pitchforks the contending armies would still be undismayed and would crawl, if not fly, at one ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... the many topsy-turvy things in topsy-turvy China that this prosaic people is so addicted to picturesque and significant terms. I found the names of some of the monasteries quite as interesting as anything else about them. From the "Pinnacle of Contemplation" ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... in her glittering dress, or bending over the boy, or holding her face to his as he kissed her on the stairs. Never since had she shown him the smallest glimpse of such a mood. What was wrong with her and with himself? Something, since May, had turned their life topsy-turvy, and it seemed to Ashe that in the general unprofitable rush of futile engagements he had never yet had time to stop and ask himself what it ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... think you loved the sea, and your own people, too well to leave us forever—but I see it is not so—and I must say you've turned all my plans topsy-turvy! But perhaps, if you'll come down, and talk it over with me, I can bring myself to forgive you. Do come, Sara! If you go so far away, I may never see you again; for Polly and I are getting older, and more set ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... up somewhat and set ourselves different tasks. Jones had misplaced or lost his wire and began to turn the camp topsy-turvy in his impatient efforts to locate it. The wire, however, was not to be found. This was a calamity, for, as we asked each other, how could we muzzle lions without wire? Moreover, a half dozen heavy leather straps which I had bought in Kanab for use as lion collars had disappeared. We had only ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... go:—it will one day be found With other relics of 'a former world,' When this world shall be former, underground, Thrown topsy-turvy, twisted, crisp'd, and curl'd, Baked, fried, or burnt, turn'd inside-out, or drown'd, Like all the worlds before, which have been hurl'd First out of, and then back again to chaos, The superstratum which will ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... to patronise Mr. Page, the Dollington professor, and partly, I fancy, to show that she could turn things topsy-turvy in this town of Gylingden, had made a point, with the rulers of the feast, that her client should sing half-a-dozen songs in the ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Imperial Decree raising him to the Chinese equivalent of the peerage. Henceforth he belonged to the distinguished company of Iron Hatted Dukes—at least not he but his ancestors did, for this was no ordinary father-to-son patent of nobility. The topsy-turvy honour reached backward instead of forward, diminishing one ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... that the seas we had taken aboard had washed the fire out and made a regular wreck of the place, everything being turned topsy-turvy and mixed up into ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... amongst us, after which I will withdraw this right arm from a cause I cannot approve; but to cherish principles one should not lack means; therefore, [taking the feather from his cap and throwing it down] lie thou there, carnal device! and I will go look for a barber and be despoiled, like a topsy-turvy Samson, not to lose strength, but to gain it. I thank heaven that our camp did yesterday fall in dry places, for there were many of these sour-visaged soldiers called me Jonah, and I did well to escape ducking in a horse-pond. Soft, here ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... to get out of reach of the wrath of the Count of Biaucaire. The vessel, however, is soon overtaken by a terrible tempest, which, after tossing it about for seven days, drives it into the harbor of Torelore. This is the mediaeval "topsy-turvy land," for on entering the castle Aucassin learns that the king is lying abed, because a son has been born to him, while the queen is at the head of the army fighting! This state of affairs so incenses Aucassin, that armed with a big stick he enters the king's room, gives ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... the funereal coal-hod fermented with all manner of high thoughts and heroic purposes "to do or die,"—perhaps both; and the heart under the fuzzy brown coat felt very tender with the memory of the dear old lady, probably sobbing over her army socks and the loss of her topsy-turvy Trib. ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... she is!" cried Mr. Vanstone, entering the room while Miss Garth was making her quotation, with the dogs at his heels. "Well; live and learn. If you're all rakes, Miss Garth, the sexes are turned topsy-turvy with a vengeance; and the men will have nothing left for it but to stop at home and darn the stockings.—Let's ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... Maggie, who had stolen to her father's elbow again, listening with parted lips, while she held her doll topsy-turvy, and crushed its nose against the wood of the chair—"father, is it a long way off where Tom is to go? Shan't we ...
— Tom and Maggie Tulliver • Anonymous
... the way," muttered Rachel; "shut the stable door after the horse is stolen. Folks never learn from experience till it's too late to be of any use. I don't see what the world was made for, for my part. Everything goes topsy-turvy, and all sorts of ways except the right way. I sometimes think 'tain't ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... if in the matter of your visit to us you cannot alter your plans, which have already been turned topsy-turvy once to suit ours, we will go at some other time to Belvoir, and my sister must e'en give it up, as in my professional days I had to forego Stoke, Chatsworth, and, hardest by far ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... harmony should become "like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh." Although order is heaven's first law, it occasionally happens that it is better to break the law than to be broken by it. And so, when the young housekeeper's nicely arranged plans for each day in the week are suddenly turned topsy-turvy, let her take heart of grace, remembering that there are whole days that "ain't teched yet," and ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... Polynesia are never at a loss; their etiquette is absolute and plenary; in every circumstance it tells them what to do and how to do it. The Gilbertines are seemingly more free, and pay for their freedom (like ourselves) in frequent perplexity. This was often the case with the topsy-turvy couple. We had once supplied them during a visit with a pipe and tobacco; and when they had smoked and were about to leave, they found themselves confronted with a problem: should they take or leave what remained ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shouldn't preach to those that need it most. It's only called a 'Bible reading'"—here Charley carefully spread his gloves across his right knee—"there's no law against reading the Bible to men?" he added, looking up with a quick winning smile. "Now you see she turns the scripture topsy-turvy. Instead of women having to inquire of their husbands at home, men are obliged to inquire of their wives and sweethearts. I don't mind that, though. I'd rather hear it from you than from Mrs. Frankland any day." And he gathered ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... strange topsy-turvy state all that day. Sometimes she would forget herself and "cosy up" against Stair as she used to snuggle close to her Uncle Julian. Then something in the strong, clear voice, the square unyieldingness of shoulders, ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... mischief.[62] She hath been known to come at the head of these rascals, and beat her lover until he was sore from head to foot, and then force him to pay for the trouble she was at. Once, attended with a crew of ragamuffins, she broke into his house, turned all things topsy-turvy, and then set it on fire. At the same time she told so many lies among his servants, that it set them all by the ears, and his poor Steward was knocked on the head;[63] for which I think, and so doth all the Country, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... House I was, and hard I worked; and so did Hannah: she was charmed to see how jovial I could be amidst the bustle of a house turned topsy-turvy—how I could brush, and dust, and clean, and cook. And really, after a day or two of confusion worse confounded, it was delightful by degrees to invoke order from the chaos ourselves had made. I had previously taken a journey to S—- to purchase some new furniture: my cousins ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... of Cyrus, with its whimsical villagers, is abruptly turned topsy-turvy by the arrival in its midst of an actress, distractingly feminine, Lila Laughter; and, at the same time, an ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... Raskolnikov trembled; he recognised the voice—it was the voice of Ilya Petrovitch. Ilya Petrovitch here and beating the landlady! He is kicking her, banging her head against the steps—that's clear, that can be told from the sounds, from the cries and the thuds. How is it, is the world topsy-turvy? He could hear people running in crowds from all the storeys and all the staircases; he heard voices, exclamations, knocking, doors banging. "But why, why, and how could it be?" he repeated, thinking seriously that he had gone mad. But no, he heard too distinctly! And they would come ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... party-badge is reverenced and hugged as the African reverences and hugs his fetish. And surely it is a case for congratulation, when some great, exciting question breaks out and jars these conventional idols, and so sweeps and shatters these party organizations and turns them topsy-turvy, that a man is shaken out of his harness, does not know exactly what party he does belong to, and begins to feel that he has a soul of his own. I am not denying the use and the necessity of parties as instruments, but protest against them as ends, especially ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... as many an Englishman would not hesitate to do, a topsy-turvy morality, let us realize that sayings such as these really give us the true values of things as nothing else could. For there are more sins "in heaven and earth than are dreamt of" in a nation's classified immoralities. Stealing a shilling is a recognized immorality, and as ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... morning, an' he was carryin' Ipsie Frost on his shoulder, an' leadin' all the children wi' the Maypole into the big meadow, an' all was as right as right could be,—yet 'ere we're onny just in August an' everything's topsy-turvy like. Lord, Lord!—'ow trifles do make up a sum o' life to be sure, as the copybooks sez—for arter all, what's 'appened? Naught in any wise partikler. Miss Vancourt 'as come 'ome to her own,—an' she's 'ad a few friends from Lunnon stayin' with 'er. ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... to say you are going to let that man turn every thing topsy-turvy, and the congregation out of the ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... and a successful one, so far as getting on my feet was concerned. When I woke up this morning it occurred to me, like a reproach, that I had come with you, sir, to wait on you and not to be waited on by you—which latter arrangement was a sort of turning things topsy-turvy—" ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... home swiftly through the early night, his brain seething with tumultuous thoughts. The revelations of the day were staggering; the whole universe seemed to have turned topsy-turvy since that devastating hour at Burton's Inn. Somehow he was not able to confine his thoughts to Hetty Castleton alone. She seemed to sink into the background, despite the absolution he had been so ready, so eager to grant her on hearing the story from Sara's lips. Not that ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... youthful lines so that she seemed nearer twenty-five than thirty-five. Her hair was still soft and shining. She had been a pretty girl, she was a beautiful woman. But the greatest change was in her attitude toward life. In Paris her golden-rule philosophy had been turned topsy-turvy. ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... buggy through the old lady's potato-field into the bush. E—— tore after it, and in a few hundred yards came up to the horse standing trembling, and gazing at the shattered remains of our poor vehicle. He had tried to turn the corner, when the whole thing capsized topsy-turvy, and he had almost freed himself of all the harness; luckily he was considerate enough not to have given that "one more struggle" which would have indeed settled the whole question, and obliged us to foot it on our ten toes home. Curiously enough the shafts were not broken, ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... can only say the whole question demands much more anxious thought than you seem to have given it. You say that he is a gentleman. He knows how to behave, I admit; but if his morals are as topsy-turvy as his tastes and—er—politics, as I've no doubt they are, then—er—In short, I do not approve of Brian Strange as a husband for my ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne
... fear of injury to their constitutions. So the rich Aldermen's daughters were actually out in the fields herding sheep, and their sons sweeping chimneys or carrying newspapers; and while the poor charwomen's and coal-heavers, children spent their time like princesses and fairies. Such a topsy-turvy state of society was shocking. While the Mayor's little daughter was tending geese out in the meadow like any common goose-girl, her pretty elder sister, Violetta, felt very sad about it and used often to cast about in her mind for some ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... doctrines that are turning our practice topsy-turvy have absolutely no support from competent psychologists. The doctrine of spontaneity and its attendant laissez-faire dogma of school government is thoroughly inconsistent with good psychology. The radical ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... the children did as far as possible," he said with a laugh. "But we can't get the letter back until the wind is ready to turn the dunes topsy-turvy again. That may be in years and it may be never. Let me have your address and if ever it is found it shall be sent directly back to you, and the children can inherit the money if I'm not here to ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the Kempt family now and then, if they will let me. I must get away for a time and think. My life has suddenly become all topsy-turvy, and I need to get my bearings, as does a ship that has been through a storm and lost ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... think it premature. Her furniture was topsy-turvy, and her hair in curl-papers; she obviously did not expect visitors, and resented this curtailment of the honeymoon. She showed it even when Dorothea, after apologies, came ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... having accidents. Why, only last week, they run over a steer, somewhere in this locality, the engine was derailed, two cars smashed, the road bed torn up, baggage and express stuff scattered all over, everything upside down, topsy-turvy and—" ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young
... hotel was equally friendly, racking his brains to find a way of serving Monte by serving madame. It made him feel quite like those lordly personages who used to come here with a title and turn the place topsy-turvy for themselves and for their women-folk. He recalled a certain count of something who arrived with his young wife and who in a day had half of Nice in his service. Monte felt like him, only more so. There was a certain obsequiousness that the count demanded which vanished the moment ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... you all have been so naughty. Winthrop!—your finger! Instantly! Clemence, baby, where on earth did you acquire all that grime on your face and fists?" And to her brother: "Such a household, Phil! Everybody incompetent—including me; everything topsy-turvy; and all five dogs perfectly possessed to lie on that pink rug in the music room.—Have they been there ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... "Anti-Eternitarians," scandal bearing, and other petty sins and sinners. For political readers a gentleman contributes a conversation between a Hanoverian and an English lady, in which the latter has the best of the argument. An account of Topsy-Turvy Land satirizes illogical practices in a manner familiar to the readers of "The Bab Ballads." The few literary papers are concerned with true and false taste, the delights of reading, Mr. Akenside's "Pleasures of the Imagination" and the horrors of the same, the outwearing of romance, ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... who has just been under instruction; let him chatter freely, ask questions, and talk at his ease, and you will be surprised to find the strange forms your arguments have assumed in his mind; he confuses everything, and turns everything topsy-turvy; you are vexed and grieved by his unforeseen objections; he reduces you to be silent yourself or to silence him: and what can he think of silence in one who is so fond of talking? If ever he gains this advantage and is aware of it, farewell education; from that moment all is lost; he is no longer ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... a strange appearance. It is full of young spruce trees, and the lower branches have been lopped down, but not cut through or killed. Under each tree there is now a grand hiding-place for foxes and rabbits—a sort of big umbrella turned topsy-turvy. The rabbits appreciate the pains we have been at; but I fear the foxes, for whom it was intended, at present look on the shelter with suspicion. They dislike the gum which oozes continually from the gashes in the bark; it sticks to their coats, and gives ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... dipped in the water, and let it come out with the cut cicatrised. The miracle will be quite as great, and I shall bow to it respectfully." Then he added: "If I possessed a source which could thus close up sores and wounds, I would turn the world topsy-turvy. I do not know exactly how I should manage it, but at all events I would summon the nations, and the nations would come. I should cause the miracles to be verified in such an indisputable manner, that I should be the master of the earth. Just think what an extraordinary power ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... you topsy-turvy old humbug," cried Tom wrathfully. "Think I don't know you?" and he ran on, and caught up to his uncle as he was passing through ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... contracted, it must cling to one corner of the world. Grief ought to be a concentration; but for the agnostic its desolation is spread through an unthinkable eternity. This is what I call being born upside down. The sceptic may truly be said to be topsy-turvy; for his feet are dancing upwards in idle ecstasies, while his brain is in the abyss. To the modern man the heavens are actually below the earth. The explanation is simple; he is standing on his head; which is a very weak pedestal to stand on. But when he has found ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... sat staring, for her world had gone topsy-turvy again. She had wanted to leave Jail Canyon and go out into the world, but was it possible that there existed a state of society where there was no right and wrong? She sat thinking a minute, her head in a whirl, and then ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... had one of those dreamy periods of existence in which people doubt whether they are awake or asleep. The world seemed all turning topsy-turvy. I was filled with curiosity, which I could with difficulty keep within the limits ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... stout swinging Mastives; and the Bearard having brought the Bear to the Stake, unrings him, and turns him about, so that he may see the Dog, that's to play at him; the Challenger lets fly his Dog, which being a cruel strong Cur rises up to the Bears nose, fastens and turns him topsy-turvy; there's no small joy and an eccho of Shouts that makes the very earth tremble; then there's pulling and hawling to get him off from the Bear: Then the Adversary let's fly his Dog, who coming to fasten, the Bear being ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... Perth House, that Mrs. Williams had taken for the season. But if he had said, "Now I am going home," the little Duchess would have known that he was going to sail away in a great ship to a strange, topsy-turvy land known in her set as "the States," a kind of deep well from which people hoist gold in buckets, surrounded by Indians. Home did not mean even his father's house. Let Fitzhugh Williams but catch sight of the long, ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... things"—was from the first his endeavour in literature, nay more, it was the main passion of his life: and the instrument that should serve his purpose could not be forged in haste. Neither was it easy for this past master of the random, the unexpected, the brilliantly back-foremost and topsy-turvy in talk, to learn in writing the habit of orderly arrangement and organic sequence which even the lightest ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... seemed to attract his attention, for he spent much time skating over the glasses and studying the designs. Sometimes I would find him staring at my Madonna, as if he said, 'What in the world are all those topsy-turvy children about?' Then he'd sit in the middle of a brook, in a water-color sketch by Vautin, as if bathing his feet, or seem to be eating the cherry which one little duck politely offers another little duck, in Oscar Pletch's Summer Party. He frequently ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... or two,—episodes that had their compensation. Beppo, then, on this particular rainy afternoon, came in with a flat basket full of newly cut wood on his head, respectfully saluted the Padrona, and, after throwing down his load in a corner of the kitchen, leisurely turned his basket topsy-turvy, seated himself upon it, and prepared to take his part in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... He had thought and thought and thought, until it seemed to him that his head would split; and with all his thinking, he didn't understand things any more now than he had in the beginning. You see, Jerry Muskrat's little world was topsy-turvy. Yes, Sir, Jerry's world was upside down! Anyway, it seemed so to him, and he couldn't ...
— The Adventures of Jerry Muskrat • Thornton W. Burgess
... not at war with Germany, and Muller could carry on the shipping business without interruption, his own name being substituted for mine. I should instruct him to do no trade with the interior; everything will be turned topsy-turvy, and all trade of that sort would be at an end. On the other hand, with the French masters here, a considerable number of French and Italian ships will be coming in with stores of all kinds, these will often need supplies, repairs, and so on; and as we have ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... head. He hated clashing and conflict above all things, and was for peace. Why should they thus rush to thrust themselves into trouble? Let matters abide as they were a little longer; surely life was pleasant enough without turning it all topsy-turvy. Then, with a sort of indignation, why should Myles, who had only come among them a month, take such service more to heart than they who had endured it for years? And, finally, with the hopefulness of so many of the rest of us, he advised Myles to let matters ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... mining and establishing fisheries, organising lines of land traffic, perpetually moving from place to place, and leaving wherever they went abundant proofs of their diligence and capacity for hard work. From Thasos in the East, where Herodotus saw "a large mountain turned topsy-turvy by the Phoenicians in their search for gold,"[315] to the Scilly Islands in the West, where workings attributable to them are still to be seen, all the metalliferous islands and coast tracts bear traces ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... with the dense and variegated atmosphere around them. This is a fair specimen of the whole establishment, with the exception of the travelers' room. The beds in these cabins are the chief articles of luxury. Feathers being abundant, they are sewed up in prodigious ticks, which are tumbled topsy-turvy into big boxes on legs that serve for bedsteads, and then covered over with piles of all the loose blankets, petticoats, and cast-off rags possible to be gathered up about the premises. Into these comfortable nests the sleepers dive every night, and, whether in summer or winter, ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... absorbed by the present: it was impossible for her to linger over the past. She adapted herself to things as they were, and would adapt herself to whatever happened. If the revolution were to come and turn everything topsy-turvy she would soon manage to be standing firmly on her feet, and do everything that was there to do; she would be in her place wherever she might be set down. At heart she had only a modified belief in the revolution. She had hardly any real faith in anything whatever. ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... his father's title-deeds which he has been charged to recover, and the still more startling incident of the heroine living for some years in disguise as a monk. The following epistle, however, from the heroine to the hero, will show better than anything else the topsy-turvy condition which sensibility had already reached. All that need be said in explanation of it is that the father (who is furious with his son, and not unreasonably so) has shut him up in a dungeon, in order to force him to ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... promised to write to you when I should have returned home. Returned home I am, but you may conceive that many, many matters solicit attention and demand arrangement in a house which has lately been turned topsy-turvy in the operation of unroofing. Drawers and cupboards must wait a moment, however, while I fulfil my promise, though it is imperatively necessary that this fulfilment should be achieved ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... not slide down the sloping floor into the street. But everything remains moveless and placid. The bedroom is like a show. It might be the bedroom of some famous man exposed to worshipping tourists at sixpence a head. A few chairs have fallen out of the house, and they lie topsy-turvy in the street amid the debris; no one has thought to touch them. In all directions thoroughfares branch ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... his ideals were all topsy-turvy. He burlesqued his own religion as the most earnest constantly do, for we all revolve around ourselves as ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... murderous assault in his little cottage upon the outskirts of town, and was even now lying at the point of death in The Samaritan Hospital. That robbery had been the motive was amply indicated by the topsy-turvy condition of the contents of the three rooms which Baggs called home. As the victim still was unconscious no details of the crime were obtainable. Yet even this atrocious deed had been capped by one ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... The apartment was still topsy-turvy. The valet de chambre had not dared to put the things in order, as if there reigned, amid the scattered packages and the yawning drawers, the majesty ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... had other views of it. Even when at last he was relieved from duty he never closed an eye. The blowing out of the lamp had turned his ideas and hopes all topsy-turvy. His heart sang loud and turbulent within him. He had kissed other girls indeed before at kirns and country dances. He laughed triumphantly within him at the difference. They had run into corners and screamed and struggled, and held up ineffectual hands. And when his ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... ice, has weathered away, leaving the rock quite rough; its general outlines alone tell the tale of the battle with the ice. But on the east side a huge mass of rock, that had been planed and gouged by the glacier, was detached and toppled over, turning topsy-turvy before it had weathered, and it lies in such a position, upheld by two rock fragments, that its glaciated surface, though protected from the weather, is clearly visible. You step down two or three feet between ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... in the days of their mother before them, when she came here to lay her eggs, like a cuckoo in another bird's nest—I wish they had been addled, I do indeed—we may expect to have the whole place turned topsy-turvy, I suppose. It is a pretty assortment, faith (as Tanty says herself); an old papist, and two young ones, fresh from a convent school—and of these, one a hoyden, and the other lovesick! Faugh! Sophia you will have to keep your ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... of the humors of the camp—a practical manifestation of the facetious spirit that had found literary expression in the topsy-turvy obituary notice from the pen of Hurdy-Gurdy's great humorist. Perhaps it had some occult personal signification impenetrable to understandings uninstructed in local traditions. A more charitable hypothesis is that it was owing to a misadventure ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... contain me, nor could I even promise to return to it: in concession to which weakness, it was agreed that I should call in about an hour at the office of the lawyer, whom (as he left the library) Uncle Adam should waylay and inform of the arrangement. I suppose there was never a more topsy-turvy situation: you would have thought it was I who had suffered some rebuff, and that iron-sided Adam was a generous conqueror ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... We hate to see it tampered with; we are on thorns as the translator approaches, and we resent his operations as an individual hurt, a personal affront. What business has he to be trampling among our borders and crushing our flowers with his stupid hobnails? Why cannot he carry his zeal for topsy-turvy horticulture elsewhere? He comes and lays a brutal hand on our pet growths, snips off their graces, shapes them anew according to his own ridiculous ideal, paints and varnishes them with a villainous compound of his contrivance, and then bids us admire the effect and thank him ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... joining, the dispersing and collecting which will take place in the course of a battle, may give the appearance of disorder when no real disorder is possible. Your formation may be without head or tail, your dispositions all topsy-turvy, and yet a rout of your forces quite out of ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... the housewife seized her. She would surprise him on his return by opening the door to him upon a house swept and garnished. She would show him that she could be of some use even in such a primitive topsy-turvy world as this into which Fate had thrust ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... their vast diving operations on the River Seine are the wonder and amusement of the idle. It is true that through some miscalculation they have chosen the wrong branch of the river. As for the Prince, that sublime person, having now served his turn, may go, along with the Arabian Author, topsy-turvy into space. But if the reader insists on more specific information, I am happy to say that a recent revolution hurled him from the throne of Bohemia, in consequence of his continued absence and edifying neglect of public business; and that his Highness now keeps a cigar store in Rupert Street, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... possession of which they have sacrificed the lives of so many thousand men, and have spent their own in hurry and trouble. Men have before them vast tracts of land uninhabited and uncultivated; and they turn mankind topsy-turvy for one nook of that neglected ground in dispute. The earth, if well cultivated, would feed a hundred times more men than now she does. Even the unevenness of ground which at first seems to be a defect turns either ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... fault," he answered laughing. "I thought I was stepping across about a foot's distance, and I fell into a hole ten feet deep! I never shall get used to it. It will teach us to sound every step before we advance. Ears hear and eyes see all topsy-turvy in ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... feverish idea that she resembled the girl pictures of his mother. Nor could he rid himself of the fantastic impression. In the growing unreality of it all, in the distorted outlines of a world gone topsy-turvy, amid the deadly blurr of things material and mental, Ailsa Paige's face alone remained strangely clear. And, scarcely knowing what he was saying, he leaned forward ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... Gothic church of St. Eloi, of which one aisle had been shattered; then, turning another corner, we came on a poor bourgeois house that had had its whole front torn away. The squalid revelation of caved-in floors, smashed wardrobes, dangling bedsteads, heaped-up blankets, topsy-turvy chairs and stoves and wash-stands was far more painful than the sight of the wounded church. St. Eloi was draped in the dignity of martyrdom, but the poor little house reminded one of some shy humdrum person suddenly exposed in the glare of a ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... me progenissors did, in Munster, before you English konkered us an' turned us topsy-turvy. But nivver mind. I don't bear no ill-will to 'ee, darlint, bekaise o' the evil deeds o' yer forefathers. I'm of a forgivin' disposition. An' it's a good quane you'll make, too, av ye don't let the men have too much o' their own way. But I do think that you an' me togither'll be more ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... out, for we can't have her here," said Briar. "It is absolutely impossible. She'll try to turn us into fine ladies, and she'll talk about the dresses we should have, and she'll want father to get some awful woman to come and live with us. She'll want the whole house to be turned topsy-turvy." ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... gift. The little bit of stone which I possess is worth much more than that. And the proof of it lies in all the pains which you are at to take it from me. Aha! Months devoted to looking for it, as you yourself confess! Months in which you turned everything topsy-turvy, while I, who suspected nothing, did not even defend myself! Why should I? The little thing defended itself all alone.... It does not want to be discovered and it sha'n't be.... It likes being here.... ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... year. This, indeed, I can well believe, for I have seen the ancient mines which were worked, for the most part as open quarries, still showing plenty of visible gold on the face of the slopes. Yet to these alleged Jews this gold was of no account. Imagine it; as Quick said, such a topsy-turvy state of things was enough to make a mere Christian feel cold down the back and go to bed thinking that the world must ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... is very funny about Maud, the oddest thing about us, though we are rather a topsy-turvy family. Maud is only eight and a half, but she's ...
— The Girls and I - A Veracious History • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... than the doctor," I thought, half angrily, "and yet the General will be a gay old bird as long as the gout permits him to hobble." And it seemed to me suddenly that the moral order, on which the doctor loved to dilate, had gone topsy-turvy while I stood on the General's porch. As if reading my thoughts the great man looked up at me, with his ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... arm-in-arm with me, or you'll be judging by appearances, and says you, 'Lor', what a thousander fellow this is!' and 'What a millioner fellow that is!' You'll be giving your millions and your thousands to the wrong people, when they haven't got a penny. All London 'll be topsy-turvy to you, unless you've got a guide, and he'll show you a shabby-coated, head-in-the-gutter old man 'll buy up the lot. Everybody that doesn't know him says—look at him! but they that knows him—hats off, I can tell you. And talk about lords! ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... passed a hand over it. Yes, undoubtedly it was a table-leg and the table lay topsy-turvy. But how came it so? Who had upset it, and why? I took another step, sideways, and my boot struck against something light, and, by its sound, hollow and metallic. Stooping very cautiously—for by this time I had taken alarm and was holding my breath—I passed ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... all topsy-turvy once more. The seventh Janissary regiment, when the two-and-thirty Janissaries returned to them with bloody swords boasting of their deed, rushed upon them and cut them to pieces. The new Janissary Aga was shot dead within his own gates. ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... in one corner of the place, and making believe to read out of a picture-book, which one of them held topsy-turvy. It was a grave and dreadful tract, of Mr. Bolton's collection. Fanny did not hear her sisters prattling over it. She noticed nothing ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... solitary line of verse might be romantic or classic, according as the humor took it. When we received this intelligence, we could not close our eyes all night. Two years of peaceful conviction had vanished like a dream. All our ideas were turned topsy-turvy; for it the rules of Aristotle were no longer the line of demarcation which separated the literary camps, where was one to find himself, and what was he to depend upon? How was one to know, in reading a book, which school it belonged to? . . . Luckily ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... "Get out, you topsy-turvy old humbug," cried Tom wrathfully. "Think I don't know you?" and he ran on, and caught up to his uncle as he was passing ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... broomstick, perhaps you will say, is an emblem of a tree standing on its head; and pray what is man but a topsy-turvy creature, his animal faculties perpetually mounted on his rational, his head where his heels should be, groveling on the earth! and yet, with all his faults, he sets up to be a universal reformer and corrector of abuses, a remover of grievances, * * sharing deeply all the ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... small schooners which carry on the St. Lawrence trade head up the bay. They work in close to shore, drop their anchors and wait for the tide to go out. It leaves them high and dry, and tilted sometimes at an angle which suggests that everything within must be topsy-turvy, until the vessel is afloat again. With a strong wind blowing from the north-east the bay is likely to be, at high tide, an extremely lively place for the mariner; a fact which helps perhaps to explain the sinister French name of Malbaie. The huge waves, ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... whose square answereth to the square of her figure, and to the character which her Lord hath given of his own, and so the game began. For so soon as this mistress became a dame in the world, and found that she had her stout abettors, she attempts to turn all things topsy-turvy, and to set them and to make of them what she lists. And now she will have an altar like that which was Tiglath-pileser's. Now must the Lord's brazen altar be removed from its place, the borders of the basis must be ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of a joke On the poor, long-suffering mortal folk; And a few mysterious words he said, His fool's cap close to her flower-crowned head. Then he laughed till he made his cap-bells ring, At the thought of the topsy-turvy Spring. "'Tis a fair exchange," he said, with a wink— "It is!" she said, and what do you think? The flowers that should bloom in the month of May Every one of them came on an April day! And they looked for April showers in vain, But all through May it ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... opposite position to the goal of his desires as I was at that moment. The regions around the North Pole — well, yes, the North Pole itself — had attracted me from childhood, and here I was at the South Pole. Can anything more topsy-turvy be imagined? ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... homewards, he was almost frightened out of his wits by the shrieks of some little creature captured by the cruel owl, and, immediately afterwards, a rabbit, alarmed by the same ominous sounds and bolting to her warren in the wood, knocked him topsy-turvy as he crouched in hiding among the leaves. These adventures taught him salutary lessons, and henceforth the confidence of youth gave place to extreme caution; he avoided the risk of lying near a rabbit's "creep," and was quick to discern the ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... closet topsy-turvy to find her a spoon and a napkin; and she took her seat opposite him, assisting him and laughing a little at the difficulties attending her entertainment. She was less pale already, and there was a pretty sparkle in her eyes, composed of the tears of a moment ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... raising him to the Chinese equivalent of the peerage. Henceforth he belonged to the distinguished company of Iron Hatted Dukes—at least not he but his ancestors did, for this was no ordinary father-to-son patent of nobility. The topsy-turvy honour reached backward instead of forward, diminishing one rank with each ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... they belong to the young men who have turned the house topsy-turvy with their tableaux, their Revolution celebration, their banner, and carousing generally," said Mrs. Jeffrey, rather pleased than otherwise at being the first ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... became so boisterous and mischievous that they not only handled the dogs too roughly, but when the old Indian and his wife left camp at any time, they went on the rampage: chasing the dogs about, ransacking the larder, turning the camp topsy-turvy, and scattering everything in confusion. So the old couple decided that it was now high time to put their skins upon the skin-stretcher in readiness to sell to ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... mean with your topsy-turvy? Everything will be ruled like a sheet of music-paper. Have you forgotten what I have just told you about turning the staircase and hiring the first floor of the next house?—which is all settled with the umbrella-maker, ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... see it dipped in the water, and let it come out with the cut cicatrised. The miracle will be quite as great, and I shall bow to it respectfully." Then he added: "If I possessed a source which could thus close up sores and wounds, I would turn the world topsy-turvy. I do not know exactly how I should manage it, but at all events I would summon the nations, and the nations would come. I should cause the miracles to be verified in such an indisputable manner, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... way," muttered Rachel; "shut the stable door after the horse is stolen. Folks never learn from experience till it's too late to be of any use. I don't see what the world was made for, for my part. Everything goes topsy-turvy, and all sorts of ways except the right way. I sometimes think 'tain't much ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... think that if you marry Ida this place will, as times are, keep your hands pretty full, especially when you have an obstinate donkey like that fellow George to deal with. I am getting too old and stupid to look after it myself, and besides things are so topsy-turvy that I can't understand them. There is one thing more that I want to say: I forbade you the house. Well, you are a generous- minded man, and it is human to err, so I think that perhaps you will understand my action and ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... want that—go on Bruyn!" Bruyn! Bruyn! And always Bruyn in such a way that Bruyn was more worn-out by the clemency of his wife than he would have been by her unkindness. She turned his brain wishing that everything should be in scarlet, making him turn everything topsy-turvy at the least movement of her eyebrow, and when she was sad the seneschal distracted, would say to everything from his judicial seat, "Hang him!" Another would have died like a fly at this conflict with the maid's innocence, but Bruyn was of such an iron nature ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... policy. If something is not done pretty soon, decisive, either evacuation or expulsion, the whole country will become so disgusted with the sham of Southern independence that the first chance the people get at a popular election they will turn the whole movement topsy-turvy so bad that it never on ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... that upon arrival we should find that those same birds had played havoc with our previous day's work. And so we did; for when we reached the spot we found our neatly arranged rows of oysters turned topsy-turvy by the birds in their endeavours to get at the fish, while the odour that emanated from the millions of dead bivalves was already powerful enough to upset any but a ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... scales could there be in the heart of this woman? By what measure did she weigh her love? She took off her ducal coronet, and flung it on the platform of a clown! She took from her brow the Olympian aureola, and placed it on the bristly head of a gnome! The world had turned topsy-turvy. The insects swarmed on high, the stars were scattered below, whilst the wonder-stricken Gwynplaine, overwhelmed by a falling ruin of light, and lying in the dust, was enshrined in a glory. One all-powerful, revolting against beauty and splendour, gave herself to the damned of night; preferred ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... DeSmythe home; "confusion worse confounded;" everything topsy-turvy. Mrs. DeSmythe on couch; Madam Sateene and she looking over lace samples, of which they have a great number. Madam in "swell" ...
— The Sweet Girl Graduates • Rea Woodman
... of Roosevelt spring from his sense of humor—humor which recognizes the topsy-turvy of life and its swift changes, and still laughs—or from the instinct which knows that even in the sweetest of all experiences there must be a drop of bitterness? Whatever their cause, they proved to be a true foreboding. He had not been home twenty four hours before he perceived, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... shall return to the Kempt family now and then, if they will let me. I must get away for a time and think. My life has suddenly become all topsy-turvy, and I need to get my bearings, as does a ship that has been through a ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... mortal son an' gal of ye! I'm riled—I'm mad. Here am I left in charge, so to speak, of your doin's, and of the work on the ranch, anyways. Your smart-aleck work has turned everything topsy-turvy. Men took from their reg'lar jobs to go hunt worthless Chinamen, and take his place a-cookin'. Hens dyin' to right an' left—pizened by some your ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... be. I saw the money; saw it in the hand of the person who hid it there. Let me look for it, constable. I will not give up the search till I have turned the place topsy-turvy." ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... an honest soaker, he has a cellar at your antipodes. If I travel, aunt, I touch at your antipodes—your antipodes are a good rascally sort of topsy-turvy fellows. If I had a bumper I'd stand upon my head and drink a health to 'em. A match or no match, cousin with the hard name; aunt, Wilfull will do't. If she has her maidenhead let her look to 't; if she has not, let her keep her own counsel in the meantime, and ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... return home with the rich prize he had brought from the Indian seas and the coast of Africa, and meantime he lay there in the Delaware Bay waiting for a reply. Before he left he turned the whole of Tom Chist's life topsy-turvy with something that he ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... answer, in the mildly deprecating tone in which the elder sometimes do answer the younger in these topsy-turvy days:— ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... "Everything's topsy-turvy nowadays," said Frank. "It used to be armies that did the fighting. Now it's whole nations. But look at that scrap going on ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... hast not tumbled the bed topsy-turvy. I am glad to see thou hast yet some grace and manners in thy vocation. Now, Sir Messenger, to requite thee for this thy courtesy and forbearance, I will show thee a secret tabernacle, which all thy prying has not ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... the high-flown in such a paragraph as that which tells us that "a common bond unites all these men—Dickens, Carlyle, Ruskin and Morris. They differed in much; but, like great mountains lying apart in the base, they converge high up in the air." The landscape suggested in these sentences is more topsy-turvy than the imagination likes to dwell upon. And the criticisms in the book are seldom lightning-flashes of ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... cattle, and do him all manner of mischief.[62] She hath been known to come at the head of these rascals, and beat her lover until he was sore from head to foot, and then force him to pay for the trouble she was at. Once, attended with a crew of ragamuffins, she broke into his house, turned all things topsy-turvy, and then set it on fire. At the same time she told so many lies among his servants, that it set them all by the ears, and his poor Steward was knocked on the head;[63] for which I think, and so doth all the Country, that she ought to be answerable. To conclude her character; ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... recall to mind the observation of the old gentleman with whom we travelled from Cobourg to Rice Lake. We console ourselves with the prospect that by next summer the boards will all be seasoned, and then the house is to be turned topsy-turvy, by having the floors ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... "unassisted triple play" in a world's series, and doubtless that night the Cleveland second baseman was the most envied baseball player in the world. For one man to do, alone, what thousands of onlookers could not do, was enough to turn all fandom topsy-turvy in ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... you hurry me so, it puts every thing topsy-turvy in my head; I could tell it as fast as possible ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... first thing done was to change the officers, and to order a place to be made round the mouth of the pit for the Swaggerer and the Huntress, linked face to face, and for the other rebels, bound topsy-turvy together; and a law was published that whosoever of the demons or of the damned thenceforth transgressed his duty should be thrown into their midst till doomsday. At these words all the fiends and even Lucifer himself trembled and were sore ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... Shopman; Monsieur de Soulanges and Monsieur de Ronquerolles and others, they are satisfied. When I think that if that cuirassier had only had the courage to let himself be killed like the rest I should still be happy at the gate of the Avonne, and that it was he that turned my life topsy-turvy, it ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... reverence came to me, leaving the porter just outside the door in older to come to his help should I be violent, and then he read me a very purty lecture on my conduct, saying I had turned the religious house topsy-turvy, and corrupted the scholars, and that I was the cheat of the world, for that on inspecting the pack he had discovered the dirty marks which I had made upon the trump cards for to know them by. He ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... by which he gains his livelihood, and with which he toils. So would it be if the falcon were to flee from the duck, and the gerfalcon from the heron, and the great pike from the minnow, and if the stag were to chase the lion; so do things go topsy-turvy. But a desire comes upon me to give some reason why it happens to true lovers, that wit and courage fail them to express what they have in their thoughts when they have leisure and opportunity ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... but convicts could colonists look to cultivate their lands, to tend their flocks, to reap their harvests?" In the month of May, 1853, Sir William wrote that "the discovery of gold had turned him topsy-turvy altogether," and he rejoiced that no gold had been discovered in his island. Then the Legislature perversely offered a reward of five thousand pounds to any man who would discover a gold field in Tasmania, but, as a high-toned ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... you, I am not responsible for that. It is I who should rather complain; you prostituted me vilely to scoundrels, whose laudations and cajolery of you were only samples of their designs upon me. As to your saying that I wound up by betraying you, you have things topsy-turvy again; I may complain; you took every method to estrange me, and finally kicked me out neck and crop. That is why your revered Dame Poverty has supplied you with a smock-frock to replace your soft raiment. Why, I begged and prayed Zeus (and Hermes heard me) that I might be excused from ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... 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[obs3], contrariant[obs3]; opposite, counter, dead against; converse, reverse; opposed, antithetical, contrasted, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... the two boys. And David Linton's went further back, to the day when he had first driven Norah's mother over the Billabong track; little and dainty and merry, while he had been as always, silent, but unspeakably proud of her. The little mother's grave had long been green, and the world had turned topsy-turvy since then, but the old track was the same, and the memory, and the pride, were no ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... over the world as quickly as you could write them. Her mother had tried to explain it, but granny declared it sounded like some wicked thing done by evil spirits, and she wasn't going to believe it. Elsie was inclined to feel very much like poor old granny, who thought the world was turning topsy-turvy since her young days. But although she could not understand it, Elsie had a dim uneasy feeling that there was too much likelihood of Mrs. Donaldson's words being true ones ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... thoughts in great measure from the other events which were preparing, and finally carried her off altogether on the eve of many and great changes, such as turned topsy-turvy the life of the Warrenders. She was naturally very much taken up by her husband and her new surroundings, and the delightful trouble of settling down in her new parish and home. And she was at a considerable distance from them, half a day's journey, which made very ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... house turned topsy-turvy!" said Lucy. "Really and truly, mother, I wish we had thought it over before we did ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... that in my absence you could have behaved badly! Another in your place would have turned the house topsy-turvy, but you have only broken a pane of glass! God bless you for your considerateness. Go on in the same way and you will ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... bid him clear the way. The poor man used his utmost endeavors to avoid the danger that threatened him, but his horse proved unmanageable. To make short of it, the coach-and-six turned them both topsy-turvy; but at the same time the coach, too, was completely overturned. In an instant the horse and the man, instead of amusing themselves with having their limbs broken, rose almost miraculously; the man remounted, and galloped away, and is galloping still, for aught I know; while the ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... blue glass windows should have power to turn the whole world topsy-turvy, or to create a new one, of an entirely original colour-scheme! But so it was. Those people seated in their grand, travelling "bed-sitting rooms," had only a superficial resemblance to the passengers of ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... morning Sholto MacKim had other views of it. Even when at last he was relieved from duty he never closed an eye. The blowing out of the lamp had turned his ideas and hopes all topsy-turvy. His heart sang loud and turbulent within him. He had kissed other girls indeed before at kirns and country dances. He laughed triumphantly within him at the difference. They had run into corners and screamed and struggled, and held up ineffectual hands. And when his lips ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... What's the row here—hey? I was gone just half an hour, and everything has gone topsy-turvy. Lipa, why did you let the chickens get into the raspberry bushes? Go and drive 'em away, damn you! I am talking to you—yes, to you! Go, or I'll go ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... Issoudun and go to America on a venture. I should be the first to advise you to give him an outfit, and to wish him a safe voyage. He would soon make a fortune there, and that is far more honorable than turning Issoudun topsy-turvy at night, and playing ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... which, as he said at Liverpool the other day, he is thoroughly attached, "to see how good Conservatives enjoy CHAMBERLAIN'S Speech. They are as jubilant now as they were a few years ago, when I attacked JOSEPH in connection with Aston-Park Riots. A topsy-turvy world; most of us where we never thought to find ourselves, or be found; oddest of all, surely, is to hear CHAMBERLAIN of Birmingham enthusiastically cheered in House of Commons by great Conservative Party. They mean it, too," GRANDOLPH ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 22, 1893 • Various
... habit then of parting and brushing about an inch of his hair, leaving the rest all topsy-turvy. My recollection of that boyhood habit served me as a defense in later years when he would call my attention ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... not come on that occasion and have my place searched?' I did so, hah! hah! I went when you were ill in bed—but, let me tell you, not officially, not in my magisterial capacity; but go I did. We had your rooms turned topsy-turvy at our very first suspicions, but umsonst! Then I said to myself: 'That man will make me a call, he will come of his own accord, and that before very long! If he is guilty, he will be bound to come. Other kinds of men would not do so, ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... them. To mark the fifth, they chose a V, which is made out by bending inwards the three middle fingers, and stretching out only the thumb and the little finger; and for the tenth they used an X, which is a double V, one placed topsy-turvy under the other. From this the progression of these numbers is always from one to five, and from five to ten. The hundred was signified by the capital letter of that word in Latin, C—centum. The other letters, D for 500, and M for a 1000, were afterwards added. They subsequently abbreviated ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the point of view of the mere systematist, seems as far removed from those that wear hoofs as it could be, but the philosopher, considering the point at which it has arrived, rather than the route by which it got there, will class it with them, for its idea of life is just theirs turned topsy-turvy. The nails of the sloth, instead of being hammered into hoofs on the hard ground, have grown long and curved, like those of a caged bird, and become hooks by which it can hang, without effort, in the midst of the leaves on which it feeds. A minimum of intellect is required ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... question with me, as a man of honour (and I may tell you an over-nice sense of honour has been a drawback I've had to struggle against all my life), the question with me is this: Is it not my plain duty to step in and put a stop to this topsy-turvy state of things, to show you up as the barefaced young impostor you are, and restore my unhappy brother-in-law to ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... Dream reasoning, turning common-sense topsy-turvy, and treating the words of God in the very reverse way from that in which all sane people agree to treat the words ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... like a May lady, and, as most of our gentlewomen are, "was [5037]more solicitous of her head-tire than of her health, that spent her time between a comb and a glass, and had rather be fair than honest" (as Cato said), "and have the commonwealth turned topsy-turvy than her tires marred;" and she did nought but brag of her fine robes and jewels, and provoked the Roman matron to show hers: Cornelia kept her in talk till her children came from school, and these, said she, are my jewels, and so deluded and ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... irritable sort, and generally took the form of scolding. She was not a stupid woman by any means, but there was one thing in the world she never could understand, and that was Austin himself. He wasn't like other boys one bit, she always said. He had such a queer, topsy-turvy way of looking at things; would express the most outrageous opinions with an innocent unconsciousness that made her long to box his ears, and support the most arrant absurdities by arguments that conveyed not the smallest meaning ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... think so once, Julie," said Peter, "but I believe you're right now. It's a topsy-turvy world, little girl, and one never knows where one is ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... sky and hills of Hymettus, with its paradoxical antitheses: of flowers and flannels; strawberries and sealskin sacks; open fires with open windows; snow-capped mountains and orange blossoms; winter looking down upon summer—a topsy-turvy land, where you dig for your wood and climb for your coal; where water-pipes are laid above ground, with no fear of Jack Frost, and your principal rivers flow bottom side up and invisible most of the time; where the boys climb ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... made it substantial, as nothing else did, was the girl—the girl and all she meant to him. It must be a very genuine emotion to turn the world topsy-turvy for him as it had. This afternoon for instance, it was she who filled the sunbeams with golden light, who warmed the blue sky until it seemed of hazy fairy stuff, who sang among the leaves, who urged him on with a power that placed ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... was a pause, while Mr. Bill Hen wondered if this were a floating lunatic asylum or a nest of pirates, that had come so easily up their quiet river and turned the world topsy-turvy. At length—"Your force, Senor Pike," the Skipper said, "I perceive it not, for to take away this child. Have you the milizia—what you call soldiers, police—have you them summoned and concealed behind the rocks, as in the theatres of Havana? I see no one but your one self. Surely you have ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... curious and interesting enough, if comprised in a single essay, but rather long-drawn-out, when spread over four hundred pages. Suppose, for instance, is the writer's mode of argument, a malicious demon let loose, with power to set the earth topsy-turvy, on condition of keeping it still an earth. With what exultation does he bestride the Himalayas to watch the convulsions which he causes! How does he kick his heels against the mountain-flanks, in ecstasy at seeing men bleached and blistered with the chlorine or nauseated with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... It may have been that the quarrel between the Bergenheims and Corandeuils had reached the canine species; it may have been at the instigation of the footmen, who all cordially detested the beast—the sad fact remains that she was pounced upon in a moment as if she were a deer, snatched, turned topsy-turvy, rolled, kicked about, and bitten by the forty four-legged brigands, who each seemed determined to carry away as a trophy some portion ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... is a misfortune. It is a misfortune to feel guilty because you do not give something you cannot give. O my God!' he added, with a gesture of his arm. 'If it all happened reasonably, and not all topsy-turvy—not in our way but in a way of its own! Why, it's as if I had stolen that love! You think so too, don't deny it. You must think so. But will you believe it, of all the horrid and stupid things I have found time to do in my life—and there are many—this is ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... and were cast together into the basket. The last fragment of all that we saw tumble down was the head, and no sooner had that touched the ground than he who had snatched up all the limbs and put them in the basket turned them all out again topsy-turvy. Then straightway we saw with these eyes all those limbs creep together again, and in short, form a whole man, who at once could stand and go just as before, without showing the least damage! Never in my life was I so astonished as when I beheld this wonderful ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Highness Eberhard Ludwig of Wirtemberg; in having kept back from his knowledge many facts in the administration of the country, and destroying documents addressed to him. Also in having been untrue to him in word and deed. Almost comic this last—a sort of topsy-turvy adultery charge! ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... LAETITIA,—I promised to write to you when I should have returned home. Returned home I am, but you may conceive that many, many matters solicit attention and demand arrangement in a house which has lately been turned topsy-turvy in the operation of unroofing. Drawers and cupboards must wait a moment, however, while I fulfil my promise, though it is imperatively necessary that this fulfilment should ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... accommodating itself kindly to the knobs of coal; it would lean forward with a drunken air, and dribble, a very Idiot of a kettle, on the hearth. It was quarrelsome, and hissed and spluttered morosely at the fire. To sum up all, the lid, resisting Mrs. Peerybingle's fingers, first of all turned topsy-turvy, and then, with an ingenious pertinacity deserving of a better cause, dived sideways in—down to the very bottom of the kettle. And the hull of the Royal George has never made half the monstrous resistance to coming out of the water which the lid of that kettle employed against Mrs. ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... represented as the highest aim of life. Woman's virtues, yea, even her vices, were invested with exaggerated importance. Woman became accustomed to think that she could be neither faithful nor faithless without turning the world topsy-turvy. She shared the fate of all objects of excessive adulation: flattery corrupted her. Thus it came about that love of woman overshadowed every other social force and every form of family affection, and so ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... black, and the red spots burned again, as Marcia replied: "Well, I should think so—he proposes to turn things topsy-turvy!" ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various
... language; but the occasion warranted it. I was flabbergasted, bewildered, out-raged, humiliated, delighted, incredulous, and generally turned topsy-turvy. In conversation one has no time for so minute an analysis of one's feelings. I therefore summed them up in the only word. Captain Vauvenarde! The wild goose of my absurd chase! Found by this Flibbertigibbet ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... whilom capital of the tiny feudal kingdom; topsy-turvy, higgledy-piggledy, coated of many colours are its zig-zag little streets, one house tumbling on the back of its neighbour, another having contrived to wedge itself between two of portlier bulk, a third coolly taking possession of some inviting frontage, shutting out its fellow's light, ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... stop, as if by enchantment, and in the course of a very few years the poor little framework of human society, of which we are now so proud, would totally change its aspect, and the whole world would be turned topsy-turvy. ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... indeed, as though the sense of sin did not reside in the act at all, but only in the sense that the act is committed in defiance of light and higher instinct. Even our own morality, on which we pride ourselves, how confused and topsy-turvy it is in many respects! How monstrous it is that a hungry man should be punished legally for theft, while an ill-tempered and unjust parent or schoolmaster should be allowed, year after year, to make the lives of the children about them into misery and heaviness. ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the wildest whirl of weather imaginable. The rains have been terrific, blinding, tropical in their almost ceaseless roar and fury. Surely only madmen or fiends would fight in such an elemental maelstrom. We may be both, and perhaps we are, now that the whole world is topsy-turvy; for we are going savagely on at this dread business, half blind and wholly desperate. If the furious sky were to rain red-hot pitchforks the contending armies would still be undismayed and would crawl, if not ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... murder'd Common Sense. Farewel, vain world! to Ignorance I give thee, Her leaden sceptre shall henceforward rule. Now, priest, indulge thy wild ambitious thoughts; Men shall embrace thy schemes, till thou hast drawn All worship from the Sun upon thyself: Henceforth all things shall topsy-turvy turn; Physick shall kill, and Law enslave the world; Cits shall turn beaus, and taste Italian songs, While courtiers are stock-jobbing in the city. Places requiring learning and great parts Henceforth shall all be hustled in a hat, ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... for my hat; it was lying topsy-turvy in the middle of the path, and Ethelbertha's favourite hound was swallowing the balls as fast as he ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... are no dead lifeless dogs, as you mayhap think them. All sorts of things dwell and bustle about in them, things that you call powers and the like: these can't endure to have their old quiet abodes turned topsy-turvy in this manner, and dug away and blown up with gunpowder under their very feet. The whole country for miles and miles round is smoking and steaming, and clattering, and hammering; people are shovelling and poking, and digging, ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... door, and looked forth, while Bob, in eager curiosity, looked out the same instant. There was now sufficient light for them to see every object in the room. A scene of wild disorder revealed itself. All the furniture was turned topsy-turvy. The door leading to the gallery was open, and there, before their eyes, standing on the sofa, was the being that ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... Alcides always managed to send the canoe on to some rock, which quickly brought me back, not to earth but to water. His principle in life was always to do the worst thing and then you knew that nothing worse could happen—a topsy-turvy philosophy for which we all had to suffer. Emerging from the basin, we had two channels before us, one to the N.N.E., the other N.N.W. Gigantic palm trees such as we had seen along the River Arinos were now to be seen all ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... Lady Chelford chose to patronise Mr. Page, the Dollington professor, and partly, I fancy, to show that she could turn things topsy-turvy in this town of Gylingden, had made a point, with the rulers of the feast, that her client should sing half-a-dozen songs in the ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... vision. It seemed to be running straight for them, and instinctively they dodged—all but Tom and John. These old veterans continued to gaze coolly straight ahead as though nothing had happened. Crash-h! went a clap of thunder. It seemed as if the whole heavens were being turned topsy-turvy. Even the airplane, usually so steady, heaved and rode like ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... said; "everything seems topsy-turvy up here. Why, to-day I saw a man come in with a box of apples which the crowd begged him to open. He was selling those apples at a dollar apiece, and the folks were just ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... thirty-five. Her hair was still soft and shining. She had been a pretty girl, she was a beautiful woman. But the greatest change was in her attitude toward life. In Paris her golden-rule philosophy had been turned topsy-turvy. ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... turn off was found the question of Wade versus Washington Street was settled. A topsy-turvy sign at the intersection announced that Wade Street was ahead. Emma Sanderson's grandson lived a couple of blocks ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... forgiven; an exile from France of his own free will when Louis banished his first cousin, the King of England, in order to truckle to the triumphant usurper. He had led an adventurous life, and had cared very little what became of him in a topsy-turvy world. But now all things were changed. Richard Cromwell's brief and irresolute rule had shattered the Commonwealth, and made Englishmen eager for a king. The country was already tired of him whose succession had been admitted with blank acquiescence; ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... themselves of their mess. But they had done what they wanted—they had finished the door on the birthday, and proud enough they were of it. The griffins, cupids, and so on, were, I must own, most beautiful to behold; though so many in number, so entangled in flowers and devices, and so topsy-turvy in their actions and attitudes, that you felt them unpleasantly in your head for hours after you had done with the pleasure of looking at them. If I add that Penelope ended her part of the morning's work by being sick in the back-kitchen, it is in no unfriendly spirit ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... from the stepladder. He and Yardsley go out. The pictures are piled up on the floor, the furniture is topsy-turvy, and the portieres lie in a heap on ...
— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs
... brought into incongruous juxtaposition. The exercise of this sense of humour ... compels the mind to form a picture to itself, accompanied by pleasurable emotion; and what is this but setting the imagination to work, though in topsy-turvy fashion? Nay, in such a case, imagination plays a double part, since it is only by instantaneous comparison with ideal fitness and proportion that it can grasp at full force ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... that was distressing to some of the Melmottites. There was much to be done about the dinner,— which could not be omitted; and much also as to the election,—which was imperative. The two Grendalls, father and son, found themselves to be so driven that the world seemed for them to be turned topsy-turvy. The elder had in old days been accustomed to electioneering in the interest of his own family, and had declared himself willing to make himself useful on behalf of Mr Melmotte. But he found Westminster to be almost too much ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... corps that shows itself efficient is sure to be chosen when there is work to be done, and will be doing outpost duty, whilst many of the others will be kept within the walls as being of no practical use. Just at present everything is topsy-turvy, but you may be sure that Trochu and Vinoy, and the other generals will gradually get things into shape, and will not be long before they find what corps are to be depended on ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... fifty, which were supplied to the favored few at "Special Rates." This was just such a freak as would have occurred to Field, and in Denver there was no restraint upon the act following upon any wild thought that flitted through his topsy-turvy brain. ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... going to turn around and fight our way back against the gale. We may be turned topsy-turvy ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton
... astonishment to observe the great uneasiness you show in your last letter, lest, through my not having written, I should have forgotten you. Still it is nothing new or marvellous when so many other things go counter, that this also should be topsy-turvy. For what your lordship says to me, I could say to yourself: nevertheless, you do this perhaps to try me, or to light a new and stronger flame, if that indeed were possible: but be it as it wills: I know well that, at this hour, I could as easily forget your name as ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... a crazy world. Everything's topsy-turvy. Even the streets have gone insane. They wind and twist until they cross their own tracks. I know I'll get lost looking for that French bakery. (He goes to the ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... linguistic cracks of the whip certain theories which seemed to be advanced by the bolder auditors with a view to palliating, persuading and tranquilizing his just wrath, he made for the nearest paillasse, turned it topsy-turvy, slit it neatly and suddenly from stem to stem with a jack-knife, banged the hay about, and then went with careful haste through the pitifully minute baggage of the paillasse's owner. Silence fell. No one, least of all the owner, ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... felt uncannily that Jolyon would rather like to pay them—the chap was so loose. Besides, to claim damages was not the thing to do. The claim, indeed, had been made almost mechanically; and as the hour drew near Soames saw in it just another dodge of this insensitive and topsy-turvy Law to make him ridiculous; so that people might sneer and say: "Oh, yes, he got quite a good price for her!" And he gave instructions that his Counsel should state that the money would be given to a Home for Fallen Women. He was a long time hitting off exactly ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... residents on the new building estate found his cupboard doors numbered on the panels two, six, eight, in gilt figures inside, and in fact they were made of pew doors which the contractor had got out of some old church he had ransacked and turned topsy-turvy to the order of the vicar. He would have run up a new Salt Lake City cheap, or built a new Rome at five per ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... what it rightly is to faint, but I do know that for the next little while the whole world swam away from before me in a whirling mist; Silver and the birds, and the tall Spy-glass hilltop, going round and round and topsy-turvy before my eyes, and all manner of bells ringing and distant ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... history. He evidently looked upon Shelby as a new-comer who might be pre-empted for a regular customer before Mrs. L. Bowers, the rival grocer, got him. It somehow hurt Shelby's homesick heart to be unrecognized, more than it pleased him to enjoy time's topsy-turvy. Here he was, returned rich and powerful, to patronize the taskmaster who had worked him hard and paid him harder in the old years. Yet he dared not proclaim himself and take ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... no topsy-turvy straining after new effects, which is so wearisome to those who love the racy naturalism of Parson Adams and Edie Ochiltree. But let us have no pessimism also. The age is against the romance of colour, movement, passion, and jollity. But ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... little into the country, lest worse should befall. Disappear he did, remaining for the next two months concealed in the outskirts of Paris, where he practised swordsmanship against his next meeting with his enemy. The situation was cynically topsy-turvy. As M. Foulet points out, Rohan had legally rendered himself liable, under the edict against duelling, to a long term of imprisonment, if not to the penalty of death. Yet the law did not move, and Voltaire was left to take the ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... "that men's heads do not grow out of their sides, or from their breasts, and that they do not walk topsy-turvy, with ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... GOOSE; Who near, on a common, en passant, they saw, [p 26] And had heard she had lately come out of the straw. But the GOOSE of their tale not a word understood, And still cackled away to her terrified brood; While immers'd in a pond, to complete their ill luck, Topsy-turvy appear'd, at a distance, ...
— The Peacock and Parrot, on their Tour to Discover the Author of "The Peacock At Home" • Unknown
... it: in concession to which weakness, it was agreed that I should call in about an hour at the office of the lawyer, whom (as he left the library) Uncle Adam should waylay and inform of the arrangement. I suppose there was never a more topsy-turvy situation: you would have thought it was I who had suffered some rebuff, and that iron-sided Adam was a generous conqueror who scorned ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... children. Josie, mother feels dreadfully because you all have been so naughty. Winthrop!—your finger! Instantly! Clemence, baby, where on earth did you acquire all that grime on your face and fists?" And to her brother: "Such a household, Phil! Everybody incompetent—including me; everything topsy-turvy; and all five dogs perfectly possessed to lie on that pink rug in the music room.—Have they been there to-day, Drina?—while you ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... called me one side this afternoon and asked me, in a whisper, to buy for them a skillet and a pair of green belluses, with a sprig of flowers painted on them, and a brass nose. Who'd thought of a wedding setting her topsy-turvy! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... thought of the mask which I had brought in case of emergency; and, clapping it on, resolved to brazen out the affair. Meanwhile I saw all notions of gallantry turned topsy-turvy, for my Lord was laughing quietly, while my adored Dorothy called aloud upon the name ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... Monsieur at the bureau, of the prison. Monsieur made me turn everything topsy-turvy and inside out. Monsieur expressed great surprise at a huge shell: where did I get it?—I said a French soldier gave it to me as a souvenir.—And several tetes d'obus?—also souvenirs, I assured him merrily. Did Monsieur suppose I was caught in the act of blowing ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... their constitutions. So the rich Aldermen's daughters were actually out in the fields herding sheep, and their sons sweeping chimneys or carrying newspapers; and while the poor charwomen's and coal-heavers, children spent their time like princesses and fairies. Such a topsy-turvy state of society was shocking. While the Mayor's little daughter was tending geese out in the meadow like any common goose-girl, her pretty elder sister, Violetta, felt very sad about it and used often to cast about in her mind ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... walking the other day, she said she had often thought what a beautiful world this would be, when we should see every thing right side up. Now, we see every thing topsy-turvy, and all is confusion.' For a person who knows nothing of this fact in the science of optics, this seemed quite a ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth
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