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More "Twitch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... proclaimed the heiress's disregard of the insignificant interests at stake. Old Ned Van Alstyne, seated next to her in a coat that made affliction dapper, twirled his white moustache to conceal the eager twitch of his lips; and Grace Stepney, red-nosed and smelling of crape, whispered emotionally to Mrs. Herbert Melson: "I couldn't BEAR to see the ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... your helmets, gentlemen, make yourselves at home." It was a partial admission that he was the man they wanted, but not certain enough for a decision. He saw the shoulder-twitch that meant that the second one's hidden hand jerked in a moment of uncertainty, and he thought he saw something glitter under the first one's arm—the old trick of shooting from under a ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... Green's house out of her mind. Especially the thought of the kitchen, with its delicious odors of seven-layer cakes baking in the oven, and doughnuts frying on top of the range, made Miss Kitty's nose twitch. And her own particular warm spot under the range, where she basked away long hours! When she recalled that it was no ...
— The Tale of Miss Kitty Cat - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... even by a twitch; "but I knows a party as 'as, and it ain't likely, Mr. Orkins, as you'll get 'im by orferin' a price like that, for why? Why, it stands to reason—don't it, Mr. Orkins?—it ain't the dorg you're payin' for, but your feelins as these 'ere wagabonds ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... appearance. She lay as one dead. But as he spoke she uncovered her face, and terror incarnate stared wildly at him from her starting eyes. He entered without further ceremony, and closed the door behind him. In the shaded lamplight his features seemed to twitch as if he wanted to smile. So at least it seemed to her ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... afternoon set up the horse-power on the lake shore, at the foot of the slope where the white birch grew. We also contrived a log slide, or slip, down which the long birch trunks could be slid to the saw and cut up into four-foot bolts. For our plan now was to fell the trees and "twitch" them down-hill with teams to the head of this slip. By rolling the bolts, as they fell from the saw, down an incline and out on the ice of the lake, we would remove them from Mrs. Lurvey's land, and thereby comply with the letter of the law, by aid ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... square-headed money-getters alone.—Peace to them! though none of the social sprites (and there are not a few of different descriptions, who sport about the various inlets to my heart) gave me a twitch to ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... story, and bring his fist down hard on the table, with "damn the leg, sir! 'Twasn't the leg I cared for: 'twas the not having another chance at those damned British rascals;" and the wooden leg itself would twitch and rap on the floor in his impatient indignation. One of Hetty's earliest recollections was of being led about the farm by this warm-hearted, irascible, old grandfather, whose wooden leg was a perpetual and unfathomable mystery to her. Where the flesh leg left off and the wooden leg began, ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... bridled, so as to appear perfectly well-bred in my presence. The act of smiling caused the tuft of hair on her jaw to twitch horribly. A cold shiver ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... and saw that terrified look again in her face: she was staring at him, and her hand in his began to twitch and tremble. ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... a final pull and twitch to the dress of her brother, and taking him by the hand tenderly. "Now, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... is the general weakness of old people; I have had a twitch of it myself, though certainly it is the highest absurdity, and as sure a proof of dotage as pink-coloured ribands, or even matrimony. Nay, perhaps, there is more to be said in defence of the last; I ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... with her friends standing a little apart to enjoy the fun, slipped unseen quite close to the prose-bush, where the Snimmy lay with his long debilitating nose on his paws, looking up at the stars. Sara waited until the nose began to quiver and twitch; and then she suddenly emptied her whole handkerchief full of dimples ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... Kane went into action, and the noiseless bullets from his ship crashed into that twisted body, causing it to jump and twitch with the might of them, Prester Kleig gave ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... heaving painfully, as if under extraordinary pressure. Face and neck are colouring; the lips part; the throat makes a convulsive effort to swallow. The eyes are starting; they denote suffocation and terrible pain. The legs twitch; they seem struggling to come to the rescue of ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... still upon my darling, devouring her, revelling in her, when suddenly I saw her hand twitch within her step-father's arm. It was an answering start to one on his part. The cigarette was snatched from his lips. There was a commotion forward, and a cry came aft, ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... with Sandals gray, He touch'd the tender stops of various Quills, With eager thought warbling his Dorick lay: And now the Sun had stretch'd out all the hills, And now was dropt into the Western bay; At last he rose, and twitch'd his Mantle blew: To morrow to fresh ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... behavior, Harley struggled wearily to his feet. He had been a dead man as surely as though shot with a ray-gun. One twitch of those terrible rock pincers would have broken him in two pieces. It had seemed as though that deadly twitch were surely forthcoming. And then the thing had released him—and had lain down to go to sleep! ...
— The Planetoid of Peril • Paul Ernst
... "present or accounted for." At the hospital, roll-call was not necessary, but they found an attendant playing possum! A lantern held close to his face did not waken him, although it made his eyelids twitch, and they found that his heart was beating at a furious rate. His clothes had been thrown down on the floor, but socks were not to be ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... Laguerre had caught the words, and turned his eyes on me. Like the real princess who could feel the crumpled rose-leaf under a dozen mattresses, I can feel it in my bones when I am in the presence of a real soldier. My spinal column stiffens, and my fingers twitch to be at my visor. In spite of their borrowed titles, I had smelt out the civilian in Reeder and had detected the non-commissioned man in Heinze, and just as surely I recognized the ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... splinter of glass!" And the Master shook off the blood with a twitch of his head. "That was a neat bull's-eye you made on him, Captain. It saves you from punishment for forgetting you were under arrest; for climbing the ladder and coming above-decks. Yes—I've got to rescind my order. You're at ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... never had to give her biggest marbles to a great lubberly boy, because he would thrash her if she didn't. I guess she never had a "hockey stick" play round her ankles in recess, because she got above a fellow in the class. I guess she never had him twitch off her best cap, and toss it in a mud-puddle. I guess she never had to give her humming-top to quiet the baby, and had the paint all sucked off. I guess she never saved up all her coppers a whole winter to buy a trumpet, and then ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... speak lightly and smile. Millar, watching her closely, saw her lips twitch, and it was with difficulty ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... attendance on the Governor-General Zonnenberg, to whom he happened to be distantly related. Panshin's father, a retired cavalry officer and a notorious gambler, was a man with insinuating eyes, a battered countenance, and a nervous twitch about the mouth. He spent his whole life hanging about the aristocratic world; frequented the English clubs of both capitals, and had the reputation of a smart, not very trustworthy, but jolly good-natured fellow. In spite of his smartness, he was almost always on the brink of ruin, ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... on the other side of the bridge. The fourth gentleman, who had forgotten his hat, and was clad in a holland smock, sandals, and no stockings, leaned over luxuriously, with his elbows on the low wall and his bare legs thrust out. He was very still, even trying not to twitch when William licked his bare legs, as he did at intervals just to show he was there ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... said what any other man would have said under similar circumstances." There was a quiet dignity about the way in which he uttered these words, although his fingers still continued to twitch. ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... for several hours at a stretch with one's legs crossed in the same position, if one knows that there's nothing to prevent one's changing one's position; but if a man knows that he must remain sitting so with crossed legs, then cramps come on, the legs begin to twitch and to strain towards the spot to which one would like to draw them. This was what Vronsky was experiencing in regard to the world. Though at the bottom of his heart he knew that the world was shut on them, he put it to the test whether the world ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... hearth. It was the fragments of the toy stiletto, broken by an uncontrollable twitch of the ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... feather that made Tommy's nose twitch and wrinkle and tremble. Tommy sniffed and sniffed at the bit of down, for he liked the smell of it. It made him feel very hungry. And at last he felt so hungry that he decided he would go home and see if his ...
— The Tale of Tommy Fox • Arthur Scott Bailey
... could not be hampered by the sled. This was to be a race—he must travel long and fast. The sick man saw the preparations, and cried weakly, the tears freezing on his cheeks, and still he lingered, lingered maddeningly, till at last, when Captain had lost count of the days, he passed without a twitch and, before the body had cooled, the northward bluffs hid the plodding, snow-shoed figure hurrying ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... reached the place and found them there, waiting us. We were placed twelve paces apart; he had the first shot. I stood gayly, looking him full in the face; I did not twitch an eyelash, I looked lovingly at him, for I knew what I would do. His shot just grazed ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... all that had passed between himself and the master's mate, taking care to give Jane a due place in his history. Nelson began to twitch the stump of his arm, and by the time the story was told Clinch's promotion was settled. An order was sent forthwith to the secretary, to make out the orders, and Cuffe carried them back with him to the Proserpine that night, when he returned to his ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... hunting knife and deliberately and slowly opened the side of my thumb, more to the pain of Jimmy, I fancy, than to myself, as I could see by the twitch of his features. ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... little twitch at my heart, Lucy. I was sorry for it: but my judgment was entirely ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... lad at moments like these, when he strode along, forgetful of her presence, oblivious of everything but his own thoughts; his face set, save for those glowing eyes, and now and then an involuntary twitch of the lips. In her own poor way she could grasp the trend of his mind, could toil ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... all went well. In his role of lecturer he offended no one, and Phyllis and her father behaved admirably. They received his strangest theories without a twitch of the mouth. ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... was a violent twitch at the end of the rod, the reel spun round with a sharp whirr-r, and every nerve in Mr Sudberry's system received an electric shock as he bent forward, straddled his legs, and made a desperate effort to fling the ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... cat and waved her hand to them; the maid drew her back from the window; the two girls saw her ladyship twitch away from the detaining ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... arrangement doesn't suit; some of the stars are hidden; see them twitch it; it will be down! Now that one has it looped just to her fancy. No! I declare, there it comes down again! The other one twitched it this time; they are not of the same mind. Girls, do look! It is fun to watch them; they work as though the interests of this meeting all turned on a right arrangement ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... answered for a moment. Then the officer with the humorous twinkle about the eyes and the twitch at the lip corners, bent forward, placed his elbows on his knees, his fingers tip to tip, gazed dreamily at ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... verse, "should not triumph over me; for when my foot slipped, they rejoiced greatly against me." In the course of the verse the unhappy performer executed a perfect fandango on the pedals. I looked guiltily at the senior churchwarden, and saw his mouth twitch. ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... that her left arm began to twitch so that she couldn't control it. Then she took to writing with her left hand, exactly like my father's hand-writing. She could write twenty different kinds of writing before she was twelve. These messages were all signed, and all said that she was to ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... bas-relief in bronze ye promised me, Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and perchance Some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so, The Saviour at his sermon on the mount, Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan 60 Ready to twitch the Nymph's last garment off, And Moses with the tables . . . but I know Ye mark me not! What do they whisper thee, Child of my bowels, Anselm? Ah, ye hope To revel down my villas while I gasp Bricked o'er with beggar's ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... me with a twitch of the shoulders. "That's the worst of these professors," said he; "they never will use their heads. They see the pegs, and they mean to hit 'em; but that's all they do see and mean, and they think we're the same. No wonder we licked them ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... explained, and she saw that same strained uneasiness in his bright eyes. "I'm not THIRSTY—I'm shaky inside. My ego is wabbling on its pins and I'm rattling to pieces. I manage well enough when you're around, but when I'm alone I— remember." She felt him twitch and shiver nervously. "And there are so many places to get booze! Everywhere I look I see a bartender with arms outstretched. When I grit my teeth the damned appetite leaves me alone, but when I'm off my guard it gumshoes in again. I get tired ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... with the Indian lad, came running towards him. The youth supposed that he was advancing to kill him, and in the twinkling of an eye let fly an arrow. It passed through Curner's dress, and grazed his side; and but for the timely twitch which Lyttle gave the lad's arm, would have killed him. His other arrows were then taken away, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... by, until this sufferer (violently striving in her fit) snatched at, took hold and tore off the corner of that sheet. Her father, being by her, endeavored to lay hold of it with her, that she might retain what she had gotten; but at the passing away of the spectre, he had such a violent twitch of his hand as it would have been torn off. Immediately thereupon appeared in the sufferer's hand the corner of a sheet, a real cloth, visible to the spectators, which (as it is said) ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... I shall forget. If you see me doing anything wrong, just remind me by a wink, will you?" returned Jo, giving her collar a twitch and ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... brows together with an attempt at pious frowning and indignation; but there was a cold, sneering smile now turned upon him, and it changed the frown to anxiety, and made his lips twitch, and the food he had eaten grow heavy ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... sly. Next, on the lowest bench, the Vestals, old and young, the elder looking on with hard faces and dry eyes, the youngest with wide and startled looks, and parted lips, and quick-drawn breath that sobs and is caught at sight of each deadly stab and gash of broadsword and trident, and hands that twitch and clutch each other as a man's foot slips in a pool of blood, and the heavy harness clashes in the red, wet sand. Then grey-haired senators; then curled and perfumed knights of Rome; and then the people, countless, vast, frenzied, blood-thirsty, stretching out a hundred ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... too; ain't too tight ner nothin'," giving her shoulders a little twitch, and moving her ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... of those nervous spasms that would now and again twitch his lips and chin. "Out there in the big open spaces where men are men—that's the idea. And you build up a little gray home in the West for yourself and your poor old mother who never lost faith in you. There'll be a lot of good Western stuff in this—Buck Benson stuff, ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... shook his first at the lad, half severely, half smiling, as though in the bottom of his heart he felt some pride in his nephew's scrapes, who received his reprimand with grimaces that made his face twitch like that of a monkey, while his eyes retained their fixed ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... two Jakoff was silent. Then his fingers began to twitch with extraordinary rapidity, and, changing the expression of deferential vacancy with which he had listened to his orders for one of shrewd intelligence, he turned his tablets ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... he went on, "he's got my stunt mule, my family assassin! That long-ear has twenty-three casualties to his credit, including a Brigadier. I have to twitch him to harness him, side-line him to groom him, throw him to clip him, and dhrug him to get him shod. Perceive the jest now? Esteemed comrade Monk is afther pinchin' an infallable packet o' sudden death, an' he don't ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... merit of this collection. Gilpin classes these "Innocent Impostors" among the most entertaining of his works, and is delighted by the happiness with which he has outdone in their own excellences the artists whom he copied; but Strutt, too grave to admit of jokes that twitch the connoisseurs, declares that they could never have deceived an experienced judge, and reprobates such kinds of ingenuity, played off at the cost of the venerable brotherhood of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... day there was the lad at work under her window again, but as he had his wig on he was just as ugly as before. Then the Princess said to her maid, "Go down there where the gardener's lad is working and creep up behind him and twitch his wig off." ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... whimpered a little, but managed to remain silent for several minutes. Then he gave a sudden twitch and grabbed ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... him curiously as he passed her, and scented drama in the set of his shoulders and the twitch of ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... stop and examine it. I never have been quite certain what it really was. The sand was hot enough to hatch a turtle's egg, so we laid Billy down on it and set to work to rub him all over his body. After a time an eyelid moved, and then his limbs began to twitch, and that encouraged us to rub harder and harder, till at length, to my infinite relief, he breathed, and, getting rid of some of the salt water he had swallowed, he sat up and stared round him, exclaiming, "Hallo, mates, have you caught ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... every inch, and only yielding to a strength a thousand times greater than his own, when the trailer caught on a sunken log and held fast. Instantly the strain on his mouth relaxed. The angler was no longer pulling on him, but on the log. He could jerk now, and he immediately began to twitch his head this way and that, backward and forward, right and left, tearing the hole in his lip a little larger at every yank, until the hook came away ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... of the wine quirked time for him, making this for a fleeting moment the dining room at Red Springs during a customary after-dinner gathering of the men of the household. The talk there, too, had been of horses—always horses. Then Drew came back in a twitch of eyelid to the here and now, to Hunt Rennie watching him with a measuring he did not relish, to Bartolome's round face with its close-to-hostile expression. Deliberately Drew sipped again before answering ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... genius try. The Graces three, the Muses nine salute, Should those who love them try to con thy lore. The country, city seek, grand thrones to boot, With gentle courtesy humbly bow before. Should nobles gallant, soldiers frank and brave Seek thy acquaintance, hail their first advance: From twitch of care thy pleasant vein may save, May laughter cause or wisdom give perchance. Some surly Cato, Senator austere, Haply may wish to peep into thy book: Seem very nothing—tremble and revere: No forceful eagles, butterflies e'er look. They love not thee: of them then little ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... frantically. He stood motionless while they adjusted the rope round his bronzed throat. They had judged him for a villain; they should at least know him a man. So he stood there straight and lithe, wide-shouldered and lean-flanked, a man in a thousand. Not a twitch of the well-packed muscles, not a quiver of the eyelash nor a swelling of the throat betrayed any fear. His cool eyes were ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... it,—indeed they ought." Then he told the whole story of Dan Stringer, and how he had found Dan out, looking at the top of Dan's hat through the little aperture in the wall of the inn parlour. "When I saw the twitch in his hat, John, I knew he had handled the cheque himself. I don't mean to say that I'm sharper than another man, and I don't think so; but I do mean to say that when you are in any difficulty of that sort, you ought to go to a lawyer. It's his business, and ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... walrus-tusk. Indeed, it was a wonder he had not stabbed him; for the movement was remarkably quick and cat-like. Donovan sprang forward; but Kit caught his arm, and dealt him a blow with his fist that sent him reeling to the ground. Don seized him by the collar of his bear-skin smock, and, with a twitch and a kick, sent him spinning into the ring. Several of the remaining men had run to their tents, and now re-appeared with harpoons in their hands. Kit took his musket, and, walking up to one of them, struck the dart out of his hand with a tweak ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... Samuel, is sitting in his doorway watching the show, when the suffering Christ begs permission to rest a moment on his threshold. He says churlishly, Anda!—"Begone!" "I will go, but thou shalt go forever until I come." The Jew's feet begin to twitch convulsively, as if pulled from under him. He struggles for a moment, and at last is carried off by his legs, which are moved like those of the walking dolls with the Greek names. This odd tradition, so utterly in contradiction with the picture the Scriptures give ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... of her head merely, this time, but of her whole self—the Nipper went on tiptoe to Mr Dombey's door, and knocked. 'Come in!' said Mr Dombey. Susan encouraged herself with a final twitch, and ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... With a twitch—not of her head merely, this time, but of her whole self—the Nipper went on tiptoe to Mr Dombey's door, and knocked. 'Come in!' said Mr Dombey. Susan encouraged herself with a final ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... in the glass; While both are one: and henceforth be it known, Fools of both sides shall stand for fools alone. "But who art thou?" methinks Florello cries; "Of all thy species art thou only wise?" Since smallest things can give our sins a twitch, As crossing straws retard a passing witch, Florello, thou my monitor shalt be; I'll conjure thus some profit out of thee. O thou myself! abroad our counsels roam, And, like ill husbands, take no care at home: Thou too art wounded with the common dart, And love of fame lies throbbing at thy ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... certain of that. Those are stone-dead eyes in the picture...The loneliness must have been awful, if even Owen couldn't keep her from dying of it. And to feel it so she must have HAD feelings—real live ones, the kind that twitch and tug. And all she had to look at all her life was a gilt console—yes, that's it, a gilt console screwed to the wall! That's exactly and absolutely ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... the room, giving a twitch to his companion's blanket and finally gaining the door. His feeling was that of a nurse who had earned personal rest by having made everything straight. "Involving more things than I can think of breaking ground on now. But don't be afraid—you shall have them from me: you'll probably ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... As might have been supposed, teeth which were sharp and powerful enough to go through a walnut shell, would not he likely to be stopped by a leathern glove; and Jonas, startled by the sudden cut, gave a twitch with his hand, and, at the same instant, let go of the squirrel. Bunny grasped the edge of the howl with his paws, and leaped out, bringing the bowl itself at the same instant over upon him, spattering him all over from head to tail with ...
— Rollo at Play - Safe Amusements • Jacob Abbott
... at him, and gave the hammock a vicious twitch which caused him to rock with some violence for several seconds. As he was wont pathetically to remark, everyone bullied him because he was small and possessed only one arm, having shed the other by inadvertence somewhere on the ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... the object he had in view. There was an almost insensible tightening of the muscles of the fingers closing around the handle of the knife, the faintest possible quiver passed through the thighs, or showed in a single twitch of the toes of the left foot, which inched forward. The Panther gave a quick inhalation, and while the words recorded were in the mouth of Kenton, ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... Lucien saluted his father with a kiss, waved his hand gracefully to Hugot, and followed. Francois remained a moment behind the rest—rode up to Hugot—caught hold of his great moustache, gave it a twitch that caused the ex-chasseur to grin again; and then, with a loud yell of laughter, wheeled his pony, ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... SIDROPHELLO'S thrust, And in right manfully he rusht; l060 The weapon from his gripe he wrung, And laid him on the earth along. WHACHUM his sea-coal prong threw by, And basely turn'd his back to fly But HUDIBRAS gave him a twitch 1065 As quick as light'ning in the breech, Just in the place where honour's lodg'd, As wise philosophers have judg'd; Because a kick in that place more Hurts honour than ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... wondering if I should ever be able to hold my own against him in our outdoor intercourse as easily as I certainly could hold it in our class at school. But soon I was interrupted by feeling another twitch at my line. I hauled in another sillock; and having now completed my two dozen fish, I gathered them and my lines together, thrust my fishhooks into my trousers' pocket, and went off to school, only staying a few minutes on the way ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... was noticed that any stimulus might cause (1) a twitch in the limb stimulated, or (2) a twitch followed by a jump, or (3) a sudden jump previous to which no twitch could be detected. And it soon appeared that these types of reaction, as it seems proper to call them, would have to be considered ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... the tribe of Bingham,[17] For he never fails to bring 'em; And that base apostate Vesey With Bishop's scraps grown fat and greasy, While Wynne sleeps the whole debate, They submissive round him wait; (Yet would gladly see the hunks, In his grave, and search his trunks,) See, they gently twitch his coat, Just to yawn and give his vote, Always firm in his vocation, For the court against the nation. Those are Allens Jack and Bob,[18] First in every wicked job, Son and brother to a queer Brain-sick ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... in the black frock-coat and hat was standing quite grave and dignified on the lawn, save for his slight twitch of one limb, and he did not seem by any means unworthy of the part which the other ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... had lost that smile for a kind of wistfulness. He made another of those little supple bows straight at her—it seemed to Gyp—and jerked his violin up to his shoulder. "He's going to play to me," she thought absurdly. He played without accompaniment a little tune that seemed to twitch the heart. When he finished, this time she did not look up, but was conscious that he gave one ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... seat beside Hank, gave his shoulders an impatient twitch. "Fifty thousand dollars," ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... handing out the cups as Glory filled them. He was looking at her attentively, vexed at the change in her manner since John Storm entered. When he returned to his seat on the sofa he began to twitch the ear of her pug, which lay coiled up asleep beside him, calling it an ugly little pestilence, and wondering why she carried it about with her. Glory protested that it was an angel of a dog, whereupon ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... it comes: You've just to twitch the wire and the bell rings: You'll learn the trick, soon, Ruth. (To MICHAEL) Bat, don't you see I've just put on my nightcap, ready for bed— Grannie's frilled mutch? I leave you, Michael? Son, The time came, as it comes to ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... and not give in and not let the wolf get me, and then I'll go back to Paris. Everything goes round here, very slow, and seems far off; that's why I can't get along, and I'm that hungry that sometimes I twitch all over. I'm down. I ain't got another cent of money and I lost my job at the paint-shop. There's where I drew down twenty dollars a week painting landscapes on ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... hope that it might be so. The horse was going very well, and very willingly. His head was stretched out, he was pulling, not more, however, than pleasantly, and he seemed to be as anxious as his rider. But there was a little twitch about his ears which his rider did not like, and then it was impossible not to remember that awful warning given by the groom, "It's only sometimes, sir." And after what fashion should Phineas ride him at the obstacle? He did not like to strike ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... is very good," said the countess; "very good indeed. If Twitch got it, and didn't tell me, that was not my fault." Twitch was her ladyship's lady's-maid. Crosbie, seeing how the land lay, said nothing more about ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... "Is it true," asked a lady aggressively fat, Who, fierce as a female Leviathan, sat By another that look'd like a needle, all steel And tenuity—"Luvois will marry Lucile?" The needle seem'd jerk'd by a virulent twitch, As though it were bent upon driving a stitch Through somebody's character. "Madam," replied, Interposing, a young man who sat by their side, And was languidly fanning his face with his hat, "I am ready to bet my new Tilbury that, If Luvois has proposed, the Comtesse ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... for keeps in all these games; and in knucks, if you won, you had a shot or shots at the knuckles of the fellow who lost, and who was obliged to hold them down for you to shoot at. Fellows who were mean would twitch their knuckles away when they saw your toy coming, and run; but most of them took their punishment with the savage pluck of so many little Sioux. As the game began in the raw cold of the earliest spring, every boy had chapped hands, and nearly every one had the skin worn off the knuckle ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... fortitude. Rude oaths were muttered from time to time, and teeth ground together, with that strange wild look that heralds insanity. Once or twice I fancied that I observed a look of still stranger, still wilder expression, when the black ring forms around the eye—when the muscles twitch and quiver along gaunt, famished jaws—when men gaze guilty-like at each other. O God! it was fearful! The half-robber discipline, voluntary at the best, had vanished under the levelling-rod of a common suffering, and I trembled ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... care little for that. It is for my dinner alone that I care. Since you have eaten it you shall certainly die," and he began to scratch fiercely at the mouth of the hole. The Rat trembled more than ever. But suddenly he had an idea which made his whiskers twitch. ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... mistrustful, but attentive, eye. "If, as I imagine, sir," continued Horace, "you are, though temporarily deprived of speech, perfectly capable of following an argument, will you kindly signify it by raising your right ear?" The mule's right ear rose with a sharp twitch. ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... her right eye twitch[68] as she enters the cart.] Why should my right eye twitch now? But the sight of Charudatta will smooth away the ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... to twitch. Evidently he was getting rather homesick. Rob noticed his face, and went on: "Of course we will get out of here before long, someway," he said. "Meanwhile, we will have to make the best living here we can. If we ever ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... Columbia, and scowling, beetle-browed Modocs of upper Nevada he had often met, and their shifting eyes dropped before the keen gaze of the dominant soldier, but this son of the Sierras never so much as suffered the twitch of a muscle, the droop of an eyelash. In the language of the "greaser" cargador, whose border vernacular had suffered through long contact with that of the gringo, "'Tonio didn't scare worth a damn, even when the lieutenant tried bulldozing," but that ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... this harpooneer, the more I abominated the thought of sleeping with him. It was fair to presume that being a harpooneer, his linen or woollen, as the case might be, would not be of the tidiest, certainly none of the finest. I began to twitch all over. Besides, it was getting late, and my decent harpooneer ought to be home and going bedwards. Suppose now, he should tumble in upon me at midnight—how could I tell from what vile ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... Faulkners were not there, and did her very best, by precept and example, to make Clara fit her arrows to the string in her own direct and purpose-like way, draw the bow-string to her ear with a steady effort and aim, instead of a fitful jerk or twitch; and in fact shoot, if she was to shoot, like a sensible woman, who really intended damage to the target. Clara was very much obliged, and made some progress; but Marian thus did herself little good with any one else, for her love of the sport, and ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... listened to the tirade without the twitch of a muscle—stolidity that proved him to be well used to such flaying. Three out of four boys in that family "turned out badly," and were cried down by a scandalized community for disgracing a decent and godly ancestry. Hearing ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... boys had succeeded in driving a little eel into a corner and in throwing it ashore; and there they were, dancing about like mad creatures, unable to hold it, more than half afraid to touch it, but always contriving to twitch the wretched wriggling thing further from the water. One brave little maid managed for a moment to catch it in her pinafore but dropped it instantly, as all the boys screamed: "Put it down! he'll bite 'ee." And so they went on babbling their loudest, when the ragged man in ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue
... said caressingly, and catching the thin little face between her soft thumb and forefinger and giving it a loving twitch. But, instead of smiling back at her, a piteous little tremor came around the baby's mouth. His thin forehead wrinkled and he ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... Lady Maude as he said this, and was rejoiced to see a sudden twitch of her lower lip as ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... fixed. If you call again to inform them that the writ has arrived, they rejoin, that perhaps after all there may not be a contest. If you call a third time, half dead with fatigue, to give them friendly notice that both you and your rival have pledged yourselves to go to the poll, they twitch their trousers, rub their hands, and with a ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... to come from her heart, and I saw the old man's face quiver and twitch; but he did not ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... among them. So far from doctoring or heightening any of the incidents, I have rather understated them; but I hope I have made it clear that through all the haste and fury of these multiplied actions, when life and death and destruction turned on the twitch of a finger, not one life of any non-combatant was wittingly taken. They were carefully picked up or picked out, taken below, transferred to boats, and despatched or personally conducted in the intervals of business to the safe, ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... gangsters lamped the loot, their greedy eyes and greasy fingers twitched, and when a hood's eyes and fingers twitch, watch out; ...
— Mars Confidential • Jack Lait
... sit in the room, smoking his pipe; often the corners of his mouth would twitch as if he ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... three feet long. What to do she did not know: there was but one window in the room, and no recess into which her portly beauty could retreat. Once more she tried the curtain, giving it a forcible twitch, and this time it came down—but the whole fixture came with it, and, after striking her on the head, slid out of the window into the street, much to the amusement of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... him!" he jerked. "And God forgive me, for I have doubted him at times! He was so—so—so demned good"—and Graeme's lips twitched in spite of himself, so closely was the expression in accord with his own feelings. But Pixley did not see the twitch, for he was looking at Margaret and Hennie Penny, and ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... twitch—not of her head merely, this time, but of her whole self—the Nipper went on tiptoe to Mr Dombey's door, and knocked. 'Come in!' said Mr Dombey. Susan encouraged herself with a final ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... mind." His meaning was plain. The Kid suddenly jerked open the drawer before him, but Glenister clenched his right hand and leaned forward. The miner could have killed him with a blow, for the gambler was seated and at his mercy. The Kid checked himself, while his face began to twitch as though the nerves underlying it had broken bondage and were dancing ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... glance at the girl, keen, searching. Then, without so much as the twitch of an eyelid, he accepted his defeat, took a cigar from his pocket and lit it, the flame of the match revealing no expression other than the nonchalance for which he was noted; then, picking up his hat and coat he walked slowly to the door. Here he halted ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... Again that fierce twitch of the features went over the other's face; and he stared straight at her with narrowed eyes. Then a change again came over him; and he laughed, like barking, ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... out the snakes and skunks. Through it when his protectors were away he could escape the rush of pursuing coyotes, or sally forth with equal ferocity when sheep dogs were about. He peered out of his porthole for a moment, warily, then his stump tail began to twitch, he worked his hind claws into the wood, and leapt. A yelp of terror from the ramada heralded his success and Creede ran like a ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... then, from a Zincala— Unmake yourself from being child of mine! Take holy water, cross your dark skin white; Round your proud eyes to foolish kitten looks; Walk mincingly, and smirk, and twitch your robe: Unmake yourself—doff all the eagle plumes And be a parrot, chained to a ring that slips Upon a Spaniard's thumb, at will of his That you should prattle o'er his ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... cups as Glory filled them. He was looking at her attentively, vexed at the change in her manner since John Storm entered. When he returned to his seat on the sofa he began to twitch the ear of her pug, which lay coiled up asleep beside him, calling it an ugly little pestilence, and wondering why she carried it about with her. Glory protested that it was an angel of a dog, whereupon he supposed it was now dreaming of paradise—listen!—and then ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... putting tongs and twitches in their ears when they shoe them. Now, against all these barbarous and inhuman practices, I here, in the name of humanity, enter my protest. The animal becomes almost worthless by the injuries caused by such practices. There are extreme cases in which the twitch may be resorted to, but it should in all cases be applied to the nose, and only then when all milder means ...
— The Mule - A Treatise On The Breeding, Training, - And Uses To Which He May Be Put • Harvey Riley
... or a guilty twitch of an eyelid he handed her the book, and we both stood watching while the fat, heavily ringed and rosily manicured ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... together with an attempt at pious frowning and indignation; but there was a cold, sneering smile now turned upon him, and it changed the frown to anxiety, and made his lips twitch, and the food he had eaten grow ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... thought she perceived some black object behind one of the chairs, and, on going up to it, found Glumdalkin, with her eyes closed, her head very erect, her tail curled very tight round her toes, and her whole person apparently immovable, except, now and then, an angry twitch at the end ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin
... quite aware that by-and-by there would perhaps be repentance, but who could think of repentance now, with the feast—and such a feast!—on the board, and Fiddler Joe making such exquisite, mad, intoxicating music (it caused your feet to twitch so that they could scarcely keep still), and that floor as smooth as glass, and the summer moon entering through a chink in the big tent, and the gayly dressed people, and all the merry voices? Oh, it was ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... then a creak from the steps, and then another creak, and another. I saw Jim's face as if it had been carved out of ivory, with his parted lips and his staring eyes fixed upon the black square of the stair opening. He still held the light, but his fingers twitched, and with every twitch the shadows sprang from the walls to the ceiling. As to myself, my knees gave way under me, and I found myself on the floor crouching down behind Jim, with a scream frozen in my throat. And still the step came slowly ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... have curried a horse, or stood by during the process, and watched him shrug and twitch with pleasure as the little iron teeth scratched his skin, and have seen his coat grow glossy and satiny as the brush was applied as soon as the ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 57, December 9, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... lips began to twitch with a humorous smile; presently he too began to laugh, and seemed not to know ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... the cost. The firm was established, but it was as heavily in debt as its credit would stand. Newmark himself, though as calm and reserved and precise as ever, seemed to have turned gray, and one of his eyelids had acquired a slight nervous twitch which persisted for some months. He took his seat at the desk, however, as calmly as ever. In three days the scandalised howls of bribery and corruption had given place in the newspapers to some ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... took in the full sense of the words, and sunk down on the big stone jar. She turned all over of a burning heat; she felt her hands beginning to twitch with emotion. ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... however, all went well. In his role of lecturer he offended no one, and Phyllis and her father behaved admirably. They received his strangest theories without a twitch of the mouth. ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... red in the face whenever he told the story, and bring his fist down hard on the table, with "damn the leg, sir! 'Twasn't the leg I cared for: 'twas the not having another chance at those damned British rascals;" and the wooden leg itself would twitch and rap on the floor in his impatient indignation. One of Hetty's earliest recollections was of being led about the farm by this warm-hearted, irascible, old grandfather, whose wooden leg was a perpetual and unfathomable mystery to her. Where ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... again to hide a twitch of regret. "Why, I'm afraid it hardly produces a living wage; and I've got to think of that." He coloured suddenly, as if suspecting that Miss Hicks might consider the avowal an opening for he hardly ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... on his arm. She felt it suddenly harden and twitch with murderous anger. But, by an effort that made the veins of his temple swell like whipcord, he refrained ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... the tree, yonder." As I spoke, he craned his head towards me, and I saw his pale lips twitch suddenly. "And why have you dogged me; why have you followed me all ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... half a mile from the shore, and then, in tacking, gave it such a sudden twitch as to throw Mr. Parasyte, who was still standing, off his balance, and he went over the side ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... counterpart of the Glorious Ippolita) would hang upon the melancholy noise, and observe with adoring interest every twitch and distension of the fat-cheeked hero; and at the end sigh ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... said——" The old man paused abruptly and Alice was surprised, in a dull and tired way, when she saw that his lips had begun to twitch and his eyelids to blink; but he recovered himself almost at once, and continued: "I want him to remember, 'Forgive us our transgressions, as we forgive those that transgress against us'; and if he and I been transgressing against each other, why, tell ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... well, over the years. A mournful quiet was in his face. They could follow for a little way the cause of his sad thoughts, and were willing, each in her own degree of impulse, to block him in it, make running incursions into the road, twitch him by the coat and cry, "Listen to us. Talk to us. You can't go there where you were going. That's the road to hateful memories. Listen to that bird and tell us about the ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... speaker must beware of falling into ludicrous and disgusting habits of deportment. Nervousness will often cause one in the presence of an audience to keep making an unsightly gesture, a peculiar twitch or step that will absolutely ruin his whole speech. Some speakers have been known to change their weight from one foot to the other as often as twenty or thirty times a minute. Other speakers have adopted a peculiar jerk of the head or a constant ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... afternoon, when it was "prime" coasting. I guess she never had to give her biggest marbles to a great lubberly boy, because he would thrash her if she didn't. I guess she never had a "hockey stick" play round her ankles in recess, because she got above a fellow in the class. I guess she never had him twitch off her best cap, and toss it in a mud-puddle. I guess she never had to give her humming-top to quiet the baby, and had the paint all sucked off. I guess she never saved up all her coppers a whole winter to buy a trumpet, and then was told she must not blow ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... very good," said the countess; "very good indeed. If Twitch got it, and didn't tell me, that was not my fault." Twitch was her ladyship's lady's-maid. Crosbie, seeing how the land lay, said ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... health," said the Major, filling a cup to the brim, to show the zeal with which he drank the toast, "and victory over all our enemies, and particularly over Argyle! I hope to twitch another handful from his board myself—I have had one ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... thoughts were wandering. The twitch of Davidson's face proved that, though he spoke of scientific things, his mind was busy in the same direction. Suddenly, while the doctor was giving some experience of practice on the Flanders front, rather prosily, he sprang to his feet ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... of her nephew's remark caused a sudden twitch to the High Church embroidery in Lady Mary's hand; but she went on a moment later in ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... many as possible into this helpless condition appeared to be the general object as far as any purpose was manifested. The crowd seemed to regard poor, demented Hannah as inspired, for a space was kept clear before her. When she began to sway in her weird fashion, and her face to twitch, she was the priestess and the oracle. The hymn she began was taken up first by two self-appointed ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... A twitch of surprise, not even Ransom could call it alarm, drew his mouth still further towards his ear; but his manner hardly altered and it was in the same affable tone ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... went on, "he's got my stunt mule, my family assassin! That long-ear has twenty-three casualties to his credit, including a Brigadier. I have to twitch him to harness him, side-line him to groom him, throw him to clip him, and dhrug him to get him shod. Perceive the jest now? Esteemed comrade Monk is afther pinchin' an infallable packet o' sudden death, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... had grown thin, with pouches under their eyes. Jake's right eye had begun to twitch uncontrollably whenever anyone came within three yards of him. "We can't go on like this, you know. The people ...
— The Coffin Cure • Alan Edward Nourse
... after him as if spell-bound. Then she struck her slender hand against her forehead, threw herself down by the spring again and stared into space; there she lay motionless, only her mouth continued to twitch. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a lady. The lady is in the dress of the days of the French Revolution. She is young and vivid, and looks down at me under lowered eyelids in amused and enticing scrutiny. Her little mouth has the faintest trace of a contemplative smile; and as I look at her I could swear the corners of her mouth twitch, as if in the ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... somehow she couldn't get Mrs. Green's house out of her mind. Especially the thought of the kitchen, with its delicious odors of seven-layer cakes baking in the oven, and doughnuts frying on top of the range, made Miss Kitty's nose twitch. And her own particular warm spot under the range, where she basked away long hours! When she recalled that it was no wonder that ...
— The Tale of Miss Kitty Cat - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... die just yet: you must not die—not wholly die—until you have heard what I have to say to you. I do not ask you to answer in words—you are past that, and I am not unreasonable. Only, when I finish, make some sign—a sigh, a movement of the eyelid, a twitch of the lips, even in the small corners of the mouth; nothing more than that, just to show that you have heard, and I shall be satisfied. Remember all the years that I have been your protector, and this long journey that ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... difficulty of casting a long line with a steep bank behind him. Once already the old gentleman had hanked on the bank a little lower down, but so slightly that a twitch brought the flies away. Now, however, the hank was too complicated to give way to a twitch, for the glengarry held hard on to the heather. In desperate haste, Junkie, bending low, tried to extract the hook. It need scarcely be said that a hook refuses to be extracted in haste. Before he could ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... that the vein or the artery may be wounded, but such accident is of little importance. All that is necessary in that case is to partly withdraw the needle and again insert it. It is advisable to use a twitch. ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... Venus breaks the fastenings of his helmet, which alone remains in Menelaus' hands. Then she spirits Paris back to the Trojan palace, where she leaves him resting on a couch, and hurries off, in the guise of an old crone, to twitch Helen's veil, whispering that Paris awaits her at home. Recognizing the goddess in spite of her disguise, Helen reproaches her, declaring she has no desire ever to see Paris again, but Venus, awing Helen into submission, leads her back ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... in the comfortless position of peeping over his left shoulder; not always so, indeed, but often enough to be remarkable; and then he would occasionally start it straight again, eyes right, with a nervous twitch, any thing but pleasant to the marvelling spectator. It was as if he was momentarily expecting to look upon some vague object that affrighted him, and sometimes really did see it. Mr. Jennings had consulted high medical ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... sad-eyed man with a humorous twitch to his mouth, looked a bit astonished at this statement. He had been laboring under the idea that it was just the other way around—that he preferred a girl and his wife a boy—but it made very little difference. ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... on the station platform was Kennicott, faithfully waving his hand, his face so full of uncomprehending loneliness that he could not smile but only twitch up his lips. She waved to him as long as she could, and when he was lost she wanted to leap from the vestibule and run back to him. She thought of a ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... three Indians. Their profiles stood out clearly against the white background; their shoulders seemed to dissolve into the fog. They passed slowly on up the stream, looking straight ahead, without a twitch of the eyelids, like a ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... their lashes, brilliant and profound. He reflected that her one weak point, the shortness of her legs, was not noticeable when she was sitting down. He also wondered how he could ever have thought her mouth hard. It moved with a little tender, sensitive twitch, like the flutter of her eyelids, and he conceived that she was drawn to him and held ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... there is the skiff, in which you came off, still alongside, and your own two stout fellows will soon twitch you to yon point. A propos of those two men, are they included ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... the enraged animal turned upon his assailant, and probably Will would have fared badly had not a drover arrived, who, possessing himself of the rope, gave a sudden and sharp twitch at the bull's nose, a form of punishment so agonising and alas, so familiar, that the animal was instantly subdued, and brought under comparative control, not, however, before his horn had slightly ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... social distempers out of one. The blue devils take flight at once if they see you mean to bury them and make compost of them. Emerson intimates that the scholar had better not try to have two gardens; but I could never spend an hour hoeing up dock and red- root and twitch-grass without in some way getting rid of many weeds and fungi, unwholesome growths, that a petty indoor life is forever fostering in ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... that Prince Charles has left his mark on Jersey," observed Max, giving the bell-pull a vigorous twitch. "Tell him, Uncle, about his ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... inconceivable that she should have seen him; and yet a peculiar knowledge had enveloped her, as though she had seen obliquely through her down-dropped eyelids; and then it was well known women could see round corners! And that twitch of the arm! He did not know what to think. "Well, it's all one to me," he thought, "for I'm not going to be led by ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... her father's arm twitch as they issued from their gates; and, looking up to see why, she saw that his face was twitching too. She did not know how near her mother was, nor that her father and John had their ears on the stretch for a hail from the voice they dreaded above all others in the ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... sins and fears, And gave thee stones for bread and tares for corn And plume-plucked gaol-birds for thy starveling peers Till death clipt close their flight with shameful shears; Till shifts came short and loves were hard to hire, When lilt of song nor twitch of twangling wire Could buy thee bread or kisses; when light fame Spurned like a ball and haled through brake and briar, Villon, our sad bad glad ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... said he. With exceeding quickness were their hands thrust into their pockets, while the eyes of those who stood by watched close. As the Prophet of Galilee did take on his palm the coins, the corners of his beard did twitch yet was his voice grave as he said, 'Whose is this image and superscription?' With one voice they did answer, 'Caesar's'—and by my most precious beard so bore the coins the image of Tiberius! Dost thou get the flavor of the situation? Breathing out fierce contention for the letter of the Law, ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... It was the fragments of the toy stiletto, broken by an uncontrollable twitch of the small fingers ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... made a frantic grab for the stanchion, then relaxed. Cirgamesc had taken the Great Twitch. It was an illusion, a psychological quirk. One instant the planet lay ahead; then a man winked or turned away, and when he looked back, "ahead" had become "below"; the planet had swung an astonishing ninety degrees across the sky, and ...
— Sjambak • John Holbrook Vance
... it in front of the frame, and I had to sit down on it, and turn my face sideways to him. I sat thus for some minutes perfectly still, without stirring. After a while, however—I am sure I do not know why—I felt that I could endure it no longer; every part of me began to twitch, and besides, there hung directly in front of me a piece of broken looking-glass into which I could not help glancing perpetually, making all sorts of grimaces from sheer weariness. The painter, noticing this, burst into a laugh, and waved his hand to signify ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... bedroom. Here they were invited to spread out on a mountainous white featherbed the cashmere mantles under which the solemnity of the occasion had compelled them to swelter, and when they had given their black silks the necessary twitch of readjustment, and Evelina had fluffed out her hair before a looking-glass framed in pink-shell work, their hostess led them to a stuffy parlour smelling of gingerbread. After another ceremonial pause, ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... moment Fionn was thoughtful, and now, although running hard, he was thoughtful. There was no movement of his beloved hounds that he did not know; not a twitch or fling of the head, not a cock of the ears or tail that was not significant to him. But on this chase whatever signs the dogs gave were ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... upon my darling, devouring her, revelling in her, when suddenly I saw her hand twitch within her step-father's arm. It was an answering start to one on his part. The cigarette was snatched from his lips. There was a commotion forward, and a cry came aft, ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... do feel proud of it," said the good-looking motherly dame in charge, with a little twitch of her shoulders, which revealed the horrible fact that both her arms had been taken off above the elbows, "the child'n are very good, and they do sing bootiful. Now then, let the gentlemen hear you—'O ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... a long snicker from Jimmie, whose nose cannot be kept quite in control. It is becoming too much for poor Betsy Dan, whose lips begin to twitch. ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... than his own, when the trailer caught on a sunken log and held fast. Instantly the strain on his mouth relaxed. The angler was no longer pulling on him, but on the log. He could jerk now, and he immediately began to twitch his head this way and that, backward and forward, right and left, tearing the hole in his lip a little larger at every yank, until the hook came away and he ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... had other troubles to encounter. All at once, as he rode through Boston streets, with his little charge behind him, after leaving his friend's house, he felt a vicious little twitch at his hair, which he wore in a queue tied with a black ribbon after the fashion of the period. Twitch, twitch, twitch! The water came into Samuel Wales' eyes, and the blood to his cheeks, while the passers-by began to hoot and laugh. His horse became alarmed at the hubbub, ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... than pull it. There is a knack in pulling mushrooms, easily attained by practice. And even when they come up in thick bunches and it would appear impossible to pull out the full-grown ones without disturbing the others, a practiced hand will give them a twitch and a pull—they often part from the bed by the gentlest touch—and get them out without unfastening any of the multitude of small buttons that may ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... shot took effect as he intended; O'Grady's arm was ripped up from the wrist to the elbow; but so determined was his will, and so firm his aim, that the wound, severe as it was, produced but a slight twitch in his hand, which threw it up slightly, and saved Edward's life, for the ball passed through his hat just above ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... moment I am forced to recall: there is nothing that happened in those ill-starred years that I cannot recreate in that chamber of the brain which is set apart for grief or for despair; every strained note of your voice, every twitch and gesture of your nervous hands, every bitter word, every poisonous phrase comes back to me: I remember the street or river down which we passed: the wall or woodland that surrounded us; at what figure on the dial stood the hands of the clock; ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... regard for this interesting exile is very praiseworthy. But beware of——." She hesitated; a remorseful twitch in her own breast stayed the warning that was rising to her tongue; and blushing at a motive she could not at the instant assign to friendship, selfishness, or to any interest she would not avow to herself, she touched the cheek of ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... me!" he said at last. "And then think of her!—Little, young, a school-teacher, too, and taking poetry to read on the train same as you or I would take a newspaper! Gee! What would you expect?" Again his mouth began to twitch a little. "And I thought it was her fault—'most all of the first year," he confessed delightedly. "And then, all of a sudden," he continued eagerly, "all of a sudden, one day, more mischievous-spiteful than anything ...
— The Indiscreet Letter • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... and some others of the ill-tempers, gain control of the nerves and muscles of the human countenance, they pull and twitch and knot and tie these nerves and muscles, until it is almost impossible to ...
— Lill's Travels in Santa Claus Land and other Stories • Ellis Towne, Sophie May and Ella Farman
... a lover at last, Nancy?" says Algy, the corners of his mouth beginning to twitch in a way which looks badly for the ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... threatened to drop upon the shirt-bosom gayly showing between the lapels of his dark-blue silk house-coat. He slowly closed his mouth, moving his teeth back into place with his tongue—a gesture that made her face twitch with rage ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... no amour propre. We move about in the dry open wood, keeping always near the trees, and truffle after truffle is turned up from the reddish light soil mixed with fragments of calcareous rock. The forgotten training soon comes back to our invaluable auxiliary; a mere twitch of the ear is a sufficient hint for her to retire at the right moment, and wait for the corn that is in variably given in exchange for the cryptogam. Indeed, before we leave the ground, the animal has got so well into work that ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... them her eyes searched along the river-bank, if haply help might be near; but all the anglers had departed. Rosewarne's face stared up at her, blue as a dead man's in the dazzling light. At first it seemed to twitch with each opening of the heavens; but this must have been a trick of eyesight, for his head lay quiet against her arm as she raised him a little, shielding him against the torrential rain which now hissed down, in ten seconds drenching her to the skin, blotting out river and meadow ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... in finding these nests. He has watched the birds making them, which they do by turning round and round, with the breast or belly on the ground, thus forming a saucer-shaped hollow, in which they sometimes place two or three fibres of twitch as a lining. One bird makes three or four of such nests, and finally selects the one which, presumably, she deems ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... or two after the house was built Mrs. Polk had given magnificent entertainments, scattering her husband's dollars in a manner that made his thin nostrils twitch, and without the formality of his consent. Magdalena paused at a bend of the stair and tried to conjure up a brilliant throng in the dark hall below, the great doors of the parlours rolled back, the ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... not move at this question. They merely saw his shoulders twitch as though he didn't wish to ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... children were only waiting for him to rush at them and strike them. Although they kept right on singing and praying, they were ready to cut and run the instant he made a move. Presently a pair of them noticed that Felt's face was beginning to twitch. 'Now he'll go for us,' they thought, getting up to flee. But the old man blinked his one good eye, and a tear rolled down his cheek. 'Hallelujah!' the youngsters shouted, and now, as I've already told you, it's all up with Felt. Now he does nothing but run about to meetings, and fasts ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... sir,' said Tom, with a wink and a twitch of his thumb towards the bag, 'I haven't ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... Stephens' hands behind his back, and with the most devilish cruelty tied the cord far tighter than might be needed for the most refractory culprit. Indeed, his arms were almost dislocated at the shoulders, and when the brutal jailer saw the corners of his mouth twitch under the torture, he said, with a ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... profound affairs, Is held as needful as his clyster.[2] With head reclining on his shoulder, He deals and hears mysterious chat, While every ignorant beholder Asks of his neighbour, who is that? With this he put up to my lord, The courtiers kept their distance due, He twitch'd his sleeve, and stole a word; Then to a corner both withdrew. Imagine now my lord and Bush Whispering in junto most profound, Like good King Phys and good King Ush,[3] While all the rest stood gaping round. At length a spark, not too well bred, Of forward face and ear acute, Advanced on tiptoe, ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... of days, any way; but as for themselves, they had never given out yet, and never meant to do so. While she was speaking, Florimonde's voice faltered, and the sentence was finished under the breath. Her voice had given out. At the moment the muscles round that handsome mouth of hers began to twitch ridiculously: she yawned and threw up her arms, as a baby stretches itself, and stiffened in that position, with her teeth set and her eyes rolled out of sight, and lay there like a corpse. Florimonde had given out. As I sprang to investigate this surprising condition ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... day, were it from Jove's own poculum!" Le Gardeur repelled the temptation more readily as he felt a twitch on his sleeve from ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... both her round and chubby white arms; and two pretty and active legs, that made themselves very useful in skipping and jumping from morning till night; and just the prettiest golden brown wig you ever saw. It was fastened on so tight, that the kitten, with all her scratchings, could never twitch it off; in fact, every single hair was fastened by a root in her dear little head, and fell in soft, natural curls over her ...
— The Two Story Mittens and the Little Play Mittens - Being the Fourth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... and the room glowed with the burning: and next the smoke rose and made his head swim and his eyes darken, and the sound of Kalamake muttering ran in his ears. And suddenly, to the mat on which they were standing came a snatch or twitch, that seemed to be more swift than lightning. In the same wink the room was gone and the house, the breath all beaten from Keola's body. Volumes of light rolled upon his eyes and head, and he found himself transported to a beach of the sea, under a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... m. skull. crear create. crecer grow, rage, increase. creer believe, think. crescendo Ital. crescendo. crespn m. crape. criatura f. creature, being, man. crimen m. crime. crispante adj. shivery. crisparse twitch. cristal m. crystal, glass. cristalino, -a crystalline, transparent, bright. Cristo pr. n. m. Christ, image of Christ. crudeza f. severity, cruelty. crudo, -a raw. cruel adj. cruel, intolerable. crujido m. crackling. crujir clash, click, clank, crack, crackle, creak, ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... done, I glanced up quickly, armed with a shield of my own. She pierced through my shield; she gazed into my eyes as if searching any sediment of courage at the depths of them and damping it to clay. Her twitch alone denied all hope, ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... not attempt to improve upon her advantage. A less consummate general might have tried to do so, and ruined all. She stood silent and submissive, noting the quick play of thought which peeped from his eyes and lip. There was a sparkle in the one and a twitch of amusement in the other, as he at ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... about the room, then suddenly his eyes fell upon the butcher knife. I saw him tense, saw his lips twitch under the lash of ...
— The Homicidal Diary • Earl Peirce
... sitting quite by herself on an ottoman. She was bolt upright, with her hands before her on her lap, striving to look as though she were perfectly indifferent to what had taken place. But there was ever and again a little twitch about her mouth, and an involuntary movement in her eye which betrayed the effort, and showed that for this once Lady Ruth had conquered. Mr. Fuzzybell was standing with a frightened look at the fireplace; while Mrs. King Garded hung sorrowing over her cards, ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... standing with his hands behind him, thinking back, the girls knew well, over the years. A mournful quiet was in his face. They could follow for a little way the cause of his sad thoughts, and were willing, each in her own degree of impulse, to block him in it, make running incursions into the road, twitch him by the coat and cry, "Listen to us. Talk to us. You can't go there where you were going. That's the road to hateful memories. Listen to that bird and tell us about the ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... a wild reach with the hook, but it was too short. Just as I thought I should succeed, the face gave a convulsive twitch, as if in a parting outburst of hate and wrath, and the body sank out of sight. We waited for a few minutes, but there was no further sign. The other tug that had hovered near us turned about and made for the Oakland ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... both are one: and henceforth be it known, Fools of both sides shall stand for fools alone. "But who art thou?" methinks Florello cries; "Of all thy species art thou only wise?" Since smallest things can give our sins a twitch, As crossing straws retard a passing witch, Florello, thou my monitor shalt be; I'll conjure thus some profit out of thee. O thou myself! abroad our counsels roam, And, like ill husbands, take no care at home: Thou too art wounded with the common dart, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... ground, and his heart is much like that of the eagle in the air. He is crouched in a thicket about twenty yards away, and his lips are drawn back from his sharp fangs. His nostrils twitch with the odor of our food, and his yellow eyes are staring at us. Oh, he hates us because he hates everything except his own kind and very often he hates that. He wants our food because he's hungry—he's ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... his classical spit, With a stuffing of praise and a basting of wit, You may twitch at your collar and wrinkle your brow, But you're up on your legs, and you're in ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... began the big man again, who hadn't even heard Mr. King's tirade, "for now—" and he gave his black beard a final twitch, and his eyes suddenly lightened with a smile that ran all over his face, "I can speak to you of dis ting dat ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... instinct, to watch the effect of this broadside. A faint nervous twitch of the chin and the eyelids—then absolute immobility. The Potato Baron had assumed the "poker face" of all Orientals—wherefore Bill Conway knew the man was on his guard and would admit nothing. ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... Silvestro (tanned counterpart of the Glorious Ippolita) would hang upon the melancholy noise, and observe with adoring interest every twitch and distension of the fat-cheeked hero; and at the end sigh ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... and your warning!" All this time neither of them had moved or raised his voice, only Mr. Chichcster's thin, curving nostrils began to twitch all at once, while his eyes gleamed beneath their narrowed lids. But now Barnabas stepped clear of the doorway, the heavy stick ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... him full in his frowning face. "Yes," he said, "I caught him, with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world, and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread." ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... know best; but what about Fanny? I shall not ask her again. How very forward, and indeed altogether"—Another stoppage, another twitch at her gown, with another fidget on the chair, the eyes going up to Dr. Flavel's bands as before. "In OUR house too—to put herself ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... He too was full of May. He would get up and go about his work. He knew he could if they would only let him. It was the mere rebellion of unspent energies that craved to be used, like the muscular vivacity of suddenly severed limbs that still toss and twitch with hot life; yet it inspired Theophil one afternoon when he had been a fortnight or so in bed, during a brief absence of his nurse, to rise and dress, and as by a miracle keep an appointment to speak ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... morn went out with sandals gray; He touch'd the tender stops of various quills, With eager thought warbling his Doric lay: And now the sun had stretch'd out all the hills, And now was dropt into the western bay: At last he rose, and twitch'd his mantle blue: To-morrow to ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... Innesmore Mansions figured as his abode, the correspondence which led to the dinner having centered in his club. But not a flicker of eyelid nor twitch of mobile lips showed the slightest concern on Forbes's part. Rather did he display at once a well-bred astonishment on ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... not impatient. There was nothing the matter with him at all. But he was steadily beating the horse; not harshly, gently in truth. He beat the horse without ill-will, almost without knowing he was doing it. It was a sort of wrist exercise. A quick, delicate twitch of the whip that caught the animal under the belly, always in the same place. It was very skilful, but the driver was so proficient in his art that one wondered why he had to practice at it any longer. And the horse did not make any objection! Not even ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... be restrained in the standing position, and in the average instance, a twitch and hood are all the restraining ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... I am at practice," I answered, and out of the corner of my eye I caught the grim approving twitch of ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... one of irritation. He couldn't bear the Honeychurch habit of sitting in the dark to save the furniture. Instinctively he give the curtains a twitch, and sent them swinging down their poles. Light entered. There was revealed a terrace, such as is owned by many villas with trees each side of it, and on it a little rustic seat, and two flower-beds. But it was transfigured ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... was broken by Mr F.'s Aunt, who had been sitting upright in a cataleptic state since her last public remark. She now underwent a violent twitch, calculated to produce a startling effect on the nerves of the uninitiated, and ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... last the convulsive movements quieted, and the Shaman lay like one dead, except for an occasional faint twitch, the Boy realised for the first time that the sick man, too, was dumb. Dead? The only sound now was the wind up in the world above. ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... if I mistake you not, Who lately with a supplicating twitch Plucked at the pockets of the London rich And paid your share-engraver ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... West Inges now; and money's plenty in Charleston, and I can't bring up so much-half so much. Don't be bothering with yer West Inge nonsense. If ye try to raise a fuss here, I'll make the Captain suffer. Ye must learn that it won't do for a nigger to dispute a white man in Charleston; we'd twitch ye up by the same law; we'd put it to our own niggers, and ye'd git trised up, and about fifty paddles on yer bare butt." The Dutchman put down a dollar and seventy cents, but Manuel refused to take it up; when this fellow, Dunn, pretending to be the friend of Manuel, held out his ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... hollow. They were quite aware that by-and-by there would perhaps be repentance, but who could think of repentance now, with the feast—and such a feast!—on the board, and Fiddler Joe making such exquisite, mad, intoxicating music (it caused your feet to twitch so that they could scarcely keep still), and that floor as smooth as glass, and the summer moon entering through a chink in the big tent, and the gayly dressed people, and all the merry voices? Oh, it ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... [With a little nervous twitch.] Did I? Yes, I suppose I did. [Vehemently, but not loudly.] No—I may just as well make a clean breast of it at once! For it must all come out ...
— Hedda Gabler - Play In Four Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... old Flint sat there motionless and staring. Then, moving his head forward with a peculiar, pecking twitch that still further enhanced his likeness ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... tirade without the twitch of a muscle—stolidity that proved him to be well used to such flaying. Three out of four boys in that family "turned out badly," and were cried down by a scandalized community for disgracing a decent and ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... hall, the twitch of an inserted latchkey came to his ears. Then pressure was put upon the front door. This, however, remained fast shut. The key was withdrawn violently, reinserted, and wrenched. The pressure upon the door being maintained, the ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... what brightenings? As Thunder writhes the lash of his long lightnings About the growling heads of the brute main Foaming at mouth, until it wallow again In the scooped oozes of its bed of pain; So all the gnashing jaws, the leaping heads Of hungry menaces, and of ravening dreads, Of pangs Twitch-lipped, with quivering nostrils and immitigate fangs, I scourge beneath the torment of my charms That their repentless nature fear to work thee harms. And as yon Apollonian harp-player, Yon wandering psalterist of the sky, With flickering strings which scatter melody, The silver-stoled ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... know it's cold," he laughed as the water stung the broken skin and made her twitch involuntarily, "but bathing will do it good. I just know it feels better ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... thus enabled to fire first, yet with such cool precision, that his shot took effect as he intended; O'Grady's arm was ripped up from the wrist to the elbow; but so determined was his will, and so firm his aim, that the wound, severe as it was, produced but a slight twitch in his hand, which threw it up slightly, and saved Edward's life, for the ball passed through his hat just above ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... Puget's Sound, Klickatats of the Columbia, and scowling, beetle-browed Modocs of upper Nevada he had often met, and their shifting eyes dropped before the keen gaze of the dominant soldier, but this son of the Sierras never so much as suffered the twitch of a muscle, the droop of an eyelash. In the language of the "greaser" cargador, whose border vernacular had suffered through long contact with that of the gringo, "'Tonio didn't scare worth a damn, even when the ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... in her wake, and was just thinking to herself, "Those girls won't get over this very soon, I fancy," when all in one moment she heard Fletcher exclaim, wrathfully, "Hang the flounces!" she saw a very glossy black hat come skipping down the steps, felt a violent twitch backward, and, to save herself from a fall, sat down on the lower step with most ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... have a causal relation—whatever there is of wild life in nature, withdraws more deeply within itself; it curls up and dreams. On calm summer mornings you hear no sound except the chirping and twittering of the sleeping birds. The birds are great dreamers—like dogs; like dogs they will twitch and stir in their sleep, as if they were running and flying and playing and chasing each other. Just stalk a bird's nest of which you know at half past two in the morning, some time during the month of July; ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... him, and I saw her lips twitch with an impulse towards laughter; but Mr. Quorn obviously misunderstood ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... fierce twitch of the features went over the other's face; and he stared straight at her with narrowed eyes. Then a change again came over him; and he laughed, like barking, yet ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... memory of Tom Gray continue to haunt her? Grace gave her shoulders an impatient twitch. How foolish she was to allow herself to grow retrospective over Tom. She had deliberately sent him away because she did not, nor never could, love him. Still she wished that the memory of him would ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... out she noted another queer-like circumstance. Mr. Rattar had stretched out his hand towards the toast rack while he spoke. The toast stuck between the bars, and she caught a glimpse of an angry twitch that upset the rack with a clatter. Never before had she seen the master do a thing ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... after her. All this was so plainly expressed in his attitude, that I burst out laughing. Rubens chose to take this as a sound to the chase, and only by the most peremptory orders could I induce him to keep quiet. As to the cat, I saw one convulsive twitch of the very tip of her tail, eloquent of wrath; otherwise ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... slipped, they rejoiced greatly against me." In the course of the verse the unhappy performer executed a perfect fandango on the pedals. I looked guiltily at the senior churchwarden, and saw his mouth twitch. ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... his breath. There was a murmur of interest and curiosity among the crowd. Bobby felt his legs twitch nervously, but his ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... sits down, but rises again.] If at least I could remain seated! Six times I mechanically took my hat in my hand; to that extent my old habit of being together with the forester makes my hands and feet twitch worse than the gout. In the meantime a thought struck me—but first of all: How do matters stand with the obstinate ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... me, holding me in one iron fist, and leaning almost more of his weight on me than I could carry. "Lead me straight up to him, and when I'm in view, cry out, 'Here's a friend for you, Bill.' If you don't, I'll do this," and with that he gave me a twitch that I thought would have made me faint. Between this and that, I was so utterly terrified by the blind beggar that I forgot my terror of the captain, and as I opened the parlor door, cried out the words he had ordered in ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the ball of a demon who would strike him on the shoulder with a familiar air and say to him: "Do you notice that enchanting smile? It is a grin of hatred." And then the demon would strut about like one of the captains in the old comedies of Hardy. He would twitch the folds of a lace mantle and endeavor to make new the fretted tinsel and spangles of its former glory. And then like Rabelais he would burst into loud and unrestrainable laughter, and would trace on the street-wall a word which might ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... it herself, my sister picked it up and presented it to her, when Lady Holland, taking it from her, merely said, "Ah! I thought you'd do it." Adelaide said she felt an almost irresistible inclination to twitch it from her hand, throw it on the ground again, and say, "Did you? then now do ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... at her, and saw that terrified look again in her face: she was staring at him, and her hand in his began to twitch and tremble. ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... a distemper that is often fatal to young children, and frequently proceeds from the brain, originating either from the parents, or from vapours, or bad humours that twitch the membranes of the brain; it is also sometimes caused by other distempers and by bad diet; likewise, the toothache, when the brain consents, causes it, and so does a sudden fright. As to the distemper itself, it is manifest and well enough known where ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... four couples married after church to-day, Andrew and Phoebe of Pine Grove among the rest. Mr. Phillips tried to tie all four knots at one twitch, but found he had his hands full with two couples at once and concluded to take them in detail. They all behaved very well and seemed impressed with the ceremony, so it certainly has an excellent ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... lorum) is used with almost surgical delicacy of touch to hook away two or three of the leaves. Then it is placed parallel to whatever increased length has thus been made visible, and with a decisive twitch the eel is torn from its retreat and ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... In addition to unbroken rest at night it is well for the prospective mother quietly to withdraw from the family circle, when the first signs of fatigue begin to appear, and indulge in a little rest, before she gets into a state of nervousness—where nerves twitch and she becomes irritable. ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... knows the difficulty of casting a long line with a steep bank behind him. Once already the old gentleman had hanked on the bank a little lower down, but so slightly that a twitch brought the flies away. Now, however, the hank was too complicated to give way to a twitch, for the glengarry held hard on to the heather. In desperate haste, Junkie, bending low, tried to extract the hook. ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... broomstick plain as plain can be; On every stick there's a witch astride, The string you see to her leg is tied. She will do a mischief if she can, But the string is held by a careful man, And whenever the evil-minded witch Would cut come caper, he gives a twitch. As for the hag, you can't see her, But hark! you can hear her black cat's purr, And now and then, as a car goes by, You may catch a gleam ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... went past him, with the military quintet five hundred yards in the rear, he gave Brigham's blind bridle a twitch, and in a few jumps the trained hunter was at the side of the rear buffalo; Lucretia Borgia spoke, and the buffalo fell dead. Without even a bridle signal, Brigham was promptly at the side of the next buffalo, not ten feet away, and this, too, fell at the first shot. The maneuver ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... in such a leisurely way some instinct assured her of safety, and she came out of her door like a Jack-in-the-box, while old Major, only too ready for a halt, stood still in spite of a desperate twitch of the reins, which had as much effect as pulling at a fish-hook which has made fast to an anchor. Mrs. Meeker ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... thousand bones that he would be dropped before he could touch his shootin' irons. An' then what happened? Hal Purvis jest flashed a gun—and that feller shot it out'n his hand. I never seen a draw like that. His hand jest seemed to twitch—I couldn't follow the move he made—an' the next second his gun ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... me for a moment in the face, incredulously. I tried to keep my countenance, and to play Indian, but it would not do. My muscles began to twitch; my feelings all at once gave way. I caught her in my arms; laughed, cried, and danced about the room, like a crazy man. From that time forward, we ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... at the back of the cave. The Little Sly One, instead of bothering to spit when there were other things more important to be done, had run up the wall and hidden in a crevice, so still she didn't even let her tail twitch. Of course, like all her family, she didn't really have a tail, but merely a little blunt stub, perhaps two inches long. But that stub could have twitched, and wanted desperately to twitch, only she would ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... improbable; for the charms of the poor little bride were not to be compared with those of her maturer sister. Yet, as we all know, there are other attractions than those offered by beauty. I have since heard it broadly stated that the peculiar twitch of the lip observable in all the Moores had proved an irresistible charm in the unfortunate Veronica, making her a radiant image when she laughed. This was by no means a rare occurrence, so they said, before the fancy took her to be married in the ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... toward her. The nervous twitch was to be seen again in her face, and she seemed to be ...
— Sara Crewe - or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the young author, with a certain vinegary twitch, "that you are unacquainted with my opuscula. I am a convinced authoritarian. I share none of those illusory, Utopian fancies with which empirics blind themselves and exasperate the ignorant. The day of these ideas is, believe me, past, or at ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... asked Mr. Tanter mildly. Just his left eye seemed to blink this time. And the edge of his mouth gave the veriest twitch. ...
— Two Plus Two Makes Crazy • Walt Sheldon
... aim. They began to snarl at each other, and they also pressed their horses closer and closer before they even attempted to fire. And the result was that Andy, waving his hat, felt it twitch sharply in his hand, and then he saw a neat little hole clipped out of the very edge of the brim. It was a pretty trick to see, until Andy remembered that the thing which had nicked that hole would also cut its way through him, body and bone. He ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... 'em out, I knew by the sound of the hoofs, what horse an' what rider. They passed close—so close I could have reached out an' touched 'em with my quirt. Then I saw what made my heart jump an' my eyes fair pop out of my head. The Red King flashed by—no saddle, no bridle, not even an' Injun twitch, mane an' tail flarin' out in the wind of his own goin', an' the white foam flyin' in chunks from his open mouth; an' on his back sat Tex, empty handed an' slick heeled. I thought I caught a glimpse of ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... trying to hide now. Perhaps some faint hope took possession of them that they might be unnoticed if they did not move; just as the still hunter, stalking a feeding deer, will watch its short tail, and whenever he sees it twitch he stands perfectly motionless; for he knows that the animal is about to raise his head, and that he will probably be taken for a stump if he does not move hand ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... uncouth Swain to th' Okes and rills, While the still morn went out with Sandals gray, He touch'd the tender stops of various Quills, With eager thought warbling his Dorick lay: And now the Sun had stretch'd out all the hills, And now was dropt into the Western bay; At last he rose, and twitch'd his Mantle blew: To morrow to fresh ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... come from her heart, and I saw the old man's face quiver and twitch; but he did not ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... sack it up.' So he did, an' Bill took the bag out to the cart. 'Now for the next,' says I. Philp's a greedy fellow: he stuck there lookin' so hard at the weighin'-scoop, wonderin' how much overplush he'd get this go, he didn' see me twitch the tailmost sack out o' the line wi' th' end o' my crutch, nor Bill pick it up casual as he came along an' toss it away into the corner. When George had weighed out the eleven, I says to Philp, 'Well, now, I hope you're ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... was noticeable at once. Slowly the warm blood flowed back into the dusky cheeks, the limbs began to twitch, the breathing grew audible, and the wounded man began to show signs of ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... me on the train, very good indeed. I can't deny that he flushed a little when I told him frankly what I wanted of him. At first I thought that he was going to be angry. Then I saw the corners of his mustache twitch. Then our sense of humor got the better of us, and then I laughed, and then he laughed, and I felt that the crisis was passed. I explained to him while we were in the Pullman car, as well as I could without being overheard by a fat lady with three chins, and a girl ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... busy with her breakfast. The cat beside her chair purred loudly and rose at intervals on its hind legs to twitch her dress; and Ruhannah occasionally bestowed alms and ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... situation when his temples were throbbing, harking back, with time's reversal of conditions, to a situation after the duel in the arroyo was over and he had used the right word when her temples were throbbing and her hands splashed. If retribution were her object, she had repaid in nerve-twitch of torture for nerve-twitch of torture. The picture that had been alive and out of its frame was back on cold canvas. Even the girl he had known across the barrier, even the girl in armor, seemed more kindly. But one ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... return the blows. Then came a new pleasure—the pleasure of smacking his face. And the plough-men, the servant girls and even every passing vagabond were every moment giving him cuffs, which caused his eyelashes to twitch spasmodically. He did not know where to hide himself and remained with his arms always held out to guard against people coming ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... mischievous satyr with his tipsy wreath, Who kept us laughing at his pranks, and made Old Pyrrho angry. Him too sleep hath bound Upon his rough-hewn couch with subtle thong, Crowding his brain with odd fantastic shapes. Even in sleep his little limbs, I think, Twitch restlessly, and still his tongue gibes on With inarticulate murmur. Ah, quaint Maeon! And Manto, poor old Manto, what dim dreams Of darkly-moving chaos and slow shapes Of things that creep encumbered with huge burdens Gloom and infest her through ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... middle of a bright and verdant but painfully circular lawn stood two figures. One of them was a small, sharp-looking man with black whiskers and a very polished hat (I presume Dr Colman), who was talking very quietly and clearly, yet with a nervous twitch, as it were, in his face. The other was our old friend, listening with his old forbearing expression and owlish eyes, the strong sunlight gleaming on his glasses as the lamplight had gleamed the night before, when the boisterous Basil had rallied him on his studious ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... this laughter boisterous and irritating; if his nephew had been a canary in a cage, he would have covered him with a table-cloth. Aunt Helen, if she was caught up in one of Mark's narratives, would twitch until it was finished, when she would rub her forehead with an acorn of menthol and wrap herself more closely in a shawl of soft Shetland wool. The antipathy that formerly existed between Mark and his father was much sharper between Mark ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... vein or the artery may be wounded, but such accident is of little importance. All that is necessary in that case is to partly withdraw the needle and again insert it. It is advisable to use a twitch. ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... remained quite still. His lip twitched—I had seen it twitch like that before, when he was deeply moved. At ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... out of her against her will. Directly she had said them she bitterly regretted them. They were the cry of her undying vanity that must try to put itself right, to stand up for itself at whatever cost. Directly she had spoken them she saw a slight twitch pull the left side of his face upward. It had upon her a moral effect. She felt it as his irresistible comment—a comment of the body, but coming from elsewhere—on her and her nature, and her recent association with Arabian. And suddenly her hatred died, and she longed to do something to establish ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... caricature of Arion on his dolphin; he wears a cap ending in a long proboscis-like horn, and plays a violin with a curious twitch of the bow and wag of the head, very graphically expressed, but still without anything approaching to the power of Northern grotesque. His dolphin has a goodly row of teeth, and the waves beat ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... stretch with one's legs crossed in the same position, if one knows that there's nothing to prevent one's changing one's position; but if a man knows that he must remain sitting so with crossed legs, then cramps come on, the legs begin to twitch and to strain towards the spot to which one would like to draw them. This was what Vronsky was experiencing in regard to the world. Though at the bottom of his heart he knew that the world was shut on them, he put it to the test whether ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... stumps loom up beside the ditch, Uncannily nod the bushes, The boy running on, each nerve a twitch, Through a jungle of spear-grass pushes. And where it trickles and crackles apace Is the Spinner's unholy hiding-place, The home of the cursed Spinning-witch Who turns her wheel 'mid ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... hesitated, and I saw his underlip twitch. Nayland Smith, taking two long strides, stood immediately in front of him, glaring grimly ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... as he noticed on my face a twitch in one of the muscles which tuck up the corner of the mouth, (zygomaticus major,) and which I could not hold back from making a little movement ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... quivered across its surface like widening rings on the waters of a pool. The mountain man threw himself on the edge and looked down. The figure lay limp among the bushes thirty feet below. He watched it, his body still as a panther's crouched for a spring. He saw one of the hands twitch, a loosened sliver of slate slide from the wall, and cannoning on projections, leap down and bury itself in the outflung hair. The face looking up at him with half-shut eyes that did not wink as the rock dust sifted into them, ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... Joel, trying to twitch back again; "it's an ugly mean old adder, Polly, but he's most ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... her bolder voice And Kings and Battles were her lofty choice, Phoebus did twitch his Ear, mean thoughts infuse, And with this whisper check't th' inspiring Muse. A Sheapard, Tityrus, his Sheep should feed, And choose a ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... lids twitch and knew she lived. Yet even as he thanked God and took a firmer hold on her, consciousness lapsed again, and with it all realization ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... did not move a limb, shut an eye or twitch a muscle during the entire hour he sat in the Senate chamber. Nor did he betray the faintest evidence of self-consciousness or emotion, and as I thought of the dingy office over the livery stable but three years before he struck ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... it lay on the table between them, rather like a plump leech a foot and a half long. It was motionless except that the end nearest her shifted in a short arc from side to side, as if the thing suffered from a very slow twitch. ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... money,' said he. With exceeding quickness were their hands thrust into their pockets, while the eyes of those who stood by watched close. As the Prophet of Galilee did take on his palm the coins, the corners of his beard did twitch yet was his voice grave as he said, 'Whose is this image and superscription?' With one voice they did answer, 'Caesar's'—and by my most precious beard so bore the coins the image of Tiberius! Dost thou get the flavor ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... as the crown of Time That House wherein the all-envious world acclaims Such glory that the reflex of it shames All crowns bestowed of men for prose or rhyme. The serf, the cur, the sycophant is he Who feels no cringing motion twitch his knee When from a height too high for Shakespeare nods The wearer of a higher than Milton's crown. Stoop, Chaucer, stoop: Keats, Shelley, Burns, bow down: These have no part with you, O ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... in driving a little eel into a corner and in throwing it ashore; and there they were, dancing about like mad creatures, unable to hold it, more than half afraid to touch it, but always contriving to twitch the wretched wriggling thing further from the water. One brave little maid managed for a moment to catch it in her pinafore but dropped it instantly, as all the boys screamed: "Put it down! he'll bite 'ee." And so they went ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue
... cruelty and indifference! You, with your nose of coral pink, your velvet ears that twitch in your dreams, and your blue-white breast! You, who since yesterday morning have gnawed to death two helpless little birds in my hedge which you still think I have not discovered! And yet I still continue to feed you by hand piecemeal since you ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... the far end, she thought she perceived some black object behind one of the chairs, and, on going up to it, found Glumdalkin, with her eyes closed, her head very erect, her tail curled very tight round her toes, and her whole person apparently immovable, except, now and then, an angry twitch at the end of ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin
... who in defiance of tradition is called Samuel, is sitting in his doorway watching the show, when the suffering Christ begs permission to rest a moment on his threshold. He says churlishly, Anda!—"Begone!" "I will go, but thou shalt go forever until I come." The Jew's feet begin to twitch convulsively, as if pulled from under him. He struggles for a moment, and at last is carried off by his legs, which are moved like those of the walking dolls with the Greek names. This odd tradition, so utterly in ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... fantastic behavior, Harley struggled wearily to his feet. He had been a dead man as surely as though shot with a ray-gun. One twitch of those terrible rock pincers would have broken him in two pieces. It had seemed as though that deadly twitch were surely forthcoming. And then the thing had released him—and had lain down to go to sleep! Or ...
— The Planetoid of Peril • Paul Ernst
... of the French Revolution. She is young and vivid, and looks down at me under lowered eyelids in amused and enticing scrutiny. Her little mouth has the faintest trace of a contemplative smile; and as I look at her I could swear the corners of her mouth twitch, as if in ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... purchase at some monster sale for which a gull has been mulcted. Meretricious finery to deceive the eye. Observe the attention to details of dustspecks. Never put on you tomorrow what you can wear today. Parallax! (With a nervous twitch of his head) Did you hear my brain ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... guilty twitch of an eyelid he handed her the book, and we both stood watching while the fat, heavily ringed and rosily manicured ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... be hampered by the sled. This was to be a race—he must travel long and fast. The sick man saw the preparations, and cried weakly, the tears freezing on his cheeks, and still he lingered, lingered maddeningly, till at last, when Captain had lost count of the days, he passed without a twitch and, before the body had cooled, the northward bluffs hid the plodding, snow-shoed figure hurrying along ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... O wych, Sting you like scorn! You, too, brave hollies, twitch Sidelong from thorn. Even the rank poplars bear Illy a rival's air, Cankering in black ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... When the noise was loudest, walrus hides booming and priests a- singing, I says, 'Are you ready?' Gawd! Not a start, not a shot of the eyes my way, not the twitch of a muscle. 'I knew,' she answers, slow and steady as a calm spring tide. 'Where?' 'The high bank at the edge of the ice,' I whispers back. 'Jump out ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... the morning, push-carts loaded with red gooseberries, green peas, fresh sardines, and mackerel, their sides shining like silver, line the curb in front of the small shops. Diminutive donkeys, harnessed to picturesque two-wheeled carts piled high with vegetables, twitch their long ears and doze in the shady corners of the street. The gutters, flushed with clear water, flash in the sunlight. Baskets full of red roses and white carnations, at a few sous the armful, brighten the cool shade ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... as common, Brother Roach, well as common. Yit a twitch here and a twinge there tells us we're moving along to'rds eternity. It's age that's a-feeling of us, Brother Roach; and when ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... I dare trust Robin's fiddle to ye,' said Willie, bluntly. His wife gave him a twitch. 'Hout awa, Maggie,' he said in contempt of the hint; 'though the gentleman may hae gien ye siller, he may have nae bowhand for a' that, and I'll no trust Robin's fiddle wi' an ignoramus. But that's no sae muckle amiss,' he added, as I began to touch the instrument; 'I am thinking ye have ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... while a tall, spare, wiry-looking sergeant sat stiffly in saddle, his fur-covered hand at salute, his long gray mustache and stubbly beard and thin hooked nose being almost all that could be seen of the face; yet the twinkle in his waiting captain's eyes and a twitch in the muscles of the veteran's lips set Geordie to staring, and presently out went his hand and up went his ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... whispered hoarsely, and the midshipman felt the fingers which gripped his wrist twitch and jerk as he was pulled towards the corner of the room ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... with intent To overturn the government,)— Such is our mild and tolerant way, We only curse them twice a day (According to a Form that's set), And, far from torturing, only let All orthodox believers beat 'em, And twitch their beards ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... cane among the debris on the floor and then he began to twitch the loose skin of his lower face and smiled. "Thank you, Cap," he chirped. "How good and beautiful a thing it is to blow off steam in a barn to your ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... frieze to come beneath? The bas-relief in bronze ye promised me, Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and perchance Some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so, The Saviour at his sermon on the mount, Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan Ready to twitch the Nymph's last garment off, And Moses with the tables ... but I know Ye mark me not! What do they whisper thee, Child of my bowels, Anselm? Ah, ye hope To revel down my villas while I gasp Bricked ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... others who had asked her to dance! It was inconceivable that she should have seen him; and yet a peculiar knowledge had enveloped her, as though she had seen obliquely through her down-dropped eyelids; and then it was well known women could see round corners! And that twitch of the arm! He did not know what to think. "Well, it's all one to me," he thought, "for I'm not going to be ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... fellow-revolutionist. At that point I thought he was going to speak vehemently; but he only astounded me by the convulsive start of his whole body. He restrained himself, folded his loosened arms tighter across his chest, and sat back with a smile in which there was a twitch of scorn and malice. ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... closed to pin-pricks, as if at will. There was a fakir by the Taksali Gate who had just this gift and made money by it, especially when cursing silly women. Kim stared with interest. His disreputable friend could further twitch his ears, almost like a goat, and Kim was disappointed that this new ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... Marton could scarcely control the skin of his head, so often did he have to twitch his eyebrows in order to express the above opinion, which he held about ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... their instruments, an exact interpretation of the author's purpose. In no degree could they have succeeded more admirably than on this occasion. Never was an entire audience so completely carried beyond the borders of reality than now. From the first until the last note not a twitch of a muscle could be seen in all that mass of humanity, which now resembled a great concourse of motionless statues. The musicians themselves, with their minds and souls bent upon giving the fullest expression to their ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... of her much-tried companion's sigh, and instantly her lips began to twitch and curve slightly in a smile that had suspicion of triumph ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... traces of earnestness visible, I fancy, on my inky face, for I saw Mr Barnacle look at me curiously as I spoke, while there was the faintest perceptible twitch at the corners ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... feverishly. That he had been drinking heavily was evident, but Kirby fronted him in apparent cold indifference, his feelings completely masked, with the cards he held bunched in his hands, and entirely concealed from view. No twitch of an eyelash, no quiver of a muscle revealed his knowledge; his expressionless face might have been carved out of stone. Between the two rested a stack of gold coin, a roll of crushed bills, and a legal paper of some kind, the ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... strap smith twist when shun prick string track whist trash brick smack crash whim chest crust stump stock which script scrub splash scrap whisk spend shred struck block ship cramp grunt scamp frank chill smash print shrink throb chat twitch stack thump pluck sprang spring drink thrush shrub sham switch check stretch brush ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett
... point, the object he had in view. There was an almost insensible tightening of the muscles of the fingers closing around the handle of the knife, the faintest possible quiver passed through the thighs, or showed in a single twitch of the toes of the left foot, which inched forward. The Panther gave a quick inhalation, and while the words recorded were in the ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... his brows together with an attempt at pious frowning and indignation; but there was a cold, sneering smile now turned upon him, and it changed the frown to anxiety, and made his lips twitch, and the food he had eaten grow heavy ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... collect and bring back the burden. To prevent the escape of these Indians, each one was led by a chain, fastened around his neck or waist. Sometimes these natives would make the most desperate efforts to escape; by a sudden twitch upon the chain they would endeavor to pull it from the hands of their guard, or to throw him down and, seizing any club within their reach, would spring upon him with the ferocity ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... imposes daily upon itself new taboos, new rituals. Yet there is the phenomenon of its tolerance toward the idol breakers. From the lowest depths of the crater of Riabba in which he sits enthroned the monarch of the Laongos condemns to death with a twitch of his brows all who seek to question the sanctity of the taboos. But this other occupant of the crater of Riabba-our Republic-raises gentle eyes to the idol wreckers, to the taboo destroyers. An occasional, "tut tut" escapes ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... whatever is inconvenient or disagreeable to the English mind could be annihilated by not thinking about it. He used to sit low in his chair and look mulish. "Militarism," he would declare in a tone of the utmost moral fervour, "is a curse. It's an unmitigated curse." Then he would cough shortly and twitch his head back and frown, and seem astonished beyond measure that after this conclusive statement we could still go on talking ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... and choose among them. So far from doctoring or heightening any of the incidents, I have rather understated them; but I hope I have made it clear that through all the haste and fury of these multiplied actions, when life and death and destruction turned on the twitch of a finger, not one life of any non-combatant was wittingly taken. They were carefully picked up or picked out, taken below, transferred to boats, and despatched or personally conducted in the intervals of business to the safe, unexploding beach. Sometimes they part from their chaperones ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... a constitutional objection to whatever pleases me, and would find some objection to any plan that gave me pleasure!" Her tone was light, but there was a bitter twitch to her lips ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... said the experienced Mullins, 'or his pulse wouldn't act. 'Tisn't a fit or he'd snort and twitch. It can't be sunstroke, this term, and he hasn't been over-training for anything.' He opened Winton's collar, packed a cushion under his head, threw a rug over him and sat down to listen to the regular breathing. Before ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... Audaine) was that afternoon in a mighty cruel humor. Though I had omitted no reasonable method to convince her of the immensity of my passion, 'twas without the twitch of an eyelash she endured the volley of my sighs and the fusillade of my respectful protestations; and candor compels me to admit that toward the end her silvery laughter disrupted the periods of a most elegant and sensible peroration. And ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... this collection. Gilpin classes these "Innocent Impostors" among the most entertaining of his works, and is delighted by the happiness with which he has outdone in their own excellences the artists whom he copied; but Strutt, too grave to admit of jokes that twitch the connoisseurs, declares that they could never have deceived an experienced judge, and reprobates such kinds of ingenuity, played off at the cost of the venerable brotherhood of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... that he saw a slim Chinese girl in loose blue silks go off the floor ten minutes or so ago with a tall musketeer. He goes over and touches Ted on a particolored arm—the latter is dressed as a red and gilt harlequin—and feels the muscles he touches twitch under his hand. ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... seen such a sight. The man's face peeled off under the sponge like the bark from a tree. Gone was the coarse brown tint! Gone, too, was the horrid scar which had seamed it across, and the twisted lip which had given the repulsive sneer to the face! A twitch brought away the tangled red hair, and there, sitting up in his bed, was a pale, sad-faced, refined-looking man, black-haired and smooth-skinned, rubbing his eyes and staring about him with sleepy bewilderment. Then suddenly realising the exposure, he broke into a scream and threw himself ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... Ulster Scot though he was, he didn't regret it—apart even from its bringing him Granya. Perhaps at the news of it, some hard English official might feel a twitch at his heart-strings, and remembering that the Irish were as little children, be kind to some reprobate Celt.... An action had so many antennae. One never knew where its effects stopped, ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... what any other man would have said under similar circumstances." There was a quiet dignity about the way in which he uttered these words, although his fingers still continued to twitch. ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... fast, but even in that dim light Mr. Sabin knew quite well that she was shaking with fear. He could see the corners of her mouth twitch. Her black eyes rolled incessantly, but refused to meet ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... done a wonderful job so far," Burris said. "You'll get a raise and a better job when all this is over. Who else would have thought of looking in the twitch-bins for telepaths? But you did, Malone, and I'm proud of you, and you're stuck with it. We've got to use them now. We have to find that spy!" He took a breath. "On to Yucca ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... of quarters. But that night every man was "present or accounted for." At the hospital, roll-call was not necessary, but they found an attendant playing possum! A lantern held close to his face did not waken him, although it made his eyelids twitch, and they found that his heart was beating at a furious rate. His clothes had been thrown down on the floor, but socks were not to ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... keenest when most recent. As he approached I saw he was more irritated and upset than at the moment of the accident. Above his pinched, cleanshaven chin his lips shot out with an angry twitch. The portfolio shook under his arm. He flung me a look full of tragedy and went ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... night searching for the needle in this bottle of hay? Elizabeth's face began to twitch with uncomfortable merriment. Should she go and knock up the housekeeper and instal her as chaperon, or take a stand, and insist on going to ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... from Suez to Yokohama: down to the desert, damn it, to show the whole world what an artiste he, Clifton, he, the father, had made of his Lily! And he looked at her with loving eyes, applauded her with a smile, restored her self-possession with a twitch of the eyebrow and counted her twirls on ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... with a humorous twitch to his mouth, looked a bit astonished at this statement. He had been laboring under the idea that it was just the other way around—that he preferred a girl and his wife a boy—but it made very little difference. She was going to have what she wanted, even to the extent of making ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... do as you have done and say what you have said, unless it was so clear that he couldn't help but know," he replied. He turned to the neighbors. "I'm afraid," he said, "I have in part spoiled your pleasure, and," he added, with a twitch of the muscles of his face, "made a fool of myself, besides. ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... that he would be dropped before he could touch his shootin' irons. An' then what happened? Hal Purvis jest flashed a gun—and that feller shot it out'n his hand. I never seen a draw like that. His hand jest seemed to twitch—I couldn't follow the move he made—an' the next second ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... troubles to encounter. All at once, as he rode through Boston streets, with his little charge behind him, after leaving his friend's house, he felt a vicious little twitch at his hair, which he wore in a queue tied with a black ribbon after the fashion of the period. Twitch, twitch, twitch! The water came into Samuel Wales' eyes, and the blood to his cheeks, while the passers-by began to hoot and laugh. His horse became alarmed at the hubbub, and started ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... shifting the angle. But I overdid the thing. This time it went biasing off in the other direction and left an untidy smudge of paste on Westbury's nice, clean strip. I reflected that this would probably dry out—if not, I would hang a picture over it. Then I gave the strip I was hanging a little twitch, being a trifle annoyed, perhaps, by this time, and was pained to see that an irregular patch of it remained on the wall, while the rest of it fell sloppily into my hands. It appeared that wall-paper became tender with damp paste on it and should not be jerked ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... minute or two Jakoff was silent. Then his fingers began to twitch with extraordinary rapidity, and, changing the expression of deferential vacancy with which he had listened to his orders for one of shrewd intelligence, he turned his ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... was that her left arm began to twitch so that she couldn't control it. Then she took to writing with her left hand, exactly like my father's hand-writing. She could write twenty different kinds of writing before she was twelve. These messages were all ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... done in January to make ready for the busy spring, and every moment usefully employed will relieve the pressure later on. Survey the stock of pea-sticks, haul out all the rubbish from the yard, and make a 'smother' of waste prunings and heaps of twitch and other stuff for which there is no decided use. If properly done, the result will be a black ash of the most fertilising nature, such as a mere fire will not produce. Should the soil be frost-bound wheel out manure and lay it in heaps ready to be spread and ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... haggard face, which looked still more haggard and pale with the firelight flickering over it, confronted Frank steadily; then the lips began to quiver, and the eyelids to twitch, while great tears gathered in Arthur's eyes, until at last, covering his face with his hands, he staggered to the couch, and throwing himself ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... the most sumptuous repast that ever he had seen. There were dishes upon dishes of tasty sweetmeats, huge platters of luscious fruits, many bottles of wine, and covered bowls from which arose the most appetizing aroma. Abi Fressah's mouth began to twitch and his eyes glowed. He moved forward to ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... thus in this more then man, Turnes flesh to ayre possest, and in a storme Teares men about the field like autumne leaves? He turnd wilde lightning in the lackies hands, Who, though their sodaine violent twitch unhorst him, 15 Yet when he bore himselfe, their saucie fingers Flew as too hot off, as hee had beene fire. The ambush then made in, through all whose force Hee drave as if a fierce and fire-given canon ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... a-twitch, but intent upon the corridor door, then composed himself with indifferent success, approached and opened the door. The girl Chou Nu slipped in, offered a timid courtesy, and ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... companion still maintained the conversation and I was obliged to reply, she hung back a little to catch my words. At such times she would also turn her pretty head partially round so as to see me: then her glances, beginning at my face, would wander down to my legs, and her lips would twitch and curl a little, seeming to express disgust and amusement at the same time. I was beginning to hate my legs, or rather my trousers, for I considered that under them I had as good a pair of calves as ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... invincibly valiant and steadfast man—was, beyond comparison, the fittest for this office. Pitt is now fairly in power; and perceives,—such Pitt's originality of view,—that an Army with a Captain to it may differ beautifully from one without. And in fact we may take this as the first twitch at the reins, on Pitt's part; whose delicate strong hand, all England running to it with one heart, will be felt at the ends of the earth before many months go. To the great and unexpected joy of Friedrich, for one. "England has taken long to produce a great man," ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... Casey, giving the handcuffs an expert twitch that wrenched a groan out of McFluke. "Proving anything takes time. We got time. You got time. What more do ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... out a sovereign, and with a twitch of the thumb, he sent it high in the air. "Heads, you win. Tails, I win." Then catching it as it fell: "By Jove, you have it. Present my compliments to Mistress Jean," he cried, with a grandiloquent bow, "and tell her how near she came to being Mrs. ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... morning, push-carts loaded with red gooseberries, green peas, fresh sardines, and mackerel, their sides shining like silver, line the curb in front of the small shops. Diminutive donkeys, harnessed to picturesque two-wheeled carts piled high with vegetables, twitch their long ears and doze in the shady corners of the street. The gutters, flushed with clear water, flash in the sunlight. Baskets full of red roses and white carnations, at a few sous the armful, brighten the cool shade ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... about the room, giving a twitch to his companion's blanket and finally gaining the door. His feeling was that of a nurse who had earned personal rest by having made everything straight. "Involving more things than I can think of breaking ground on now. But ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... and his heart is much like that of the eagle in the air. He is crouched in a thicket about twenty yards away, and his lips are drawn back from his sharp fangs. His nostrils twitch with the odor of our food, and his yellow eyes are staring at us. Oh, he hates us because he hates everything except his own kind and very often he hates that. He wants our food because he's hungry—he's always hungry—and ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... was dragged into the water. I picked it up, and promptly checked the operations of the angry skipper. I checked them rather suddenly. Mr. Waterford was at the stern of the boat; and as he raised his oar to give it another push, I gathered up all my strength, and made a desperate twitch at the rope. ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... skin. The more I pondered over this harpooneer, the more I abominated the thought of sleeping with him. It was fair to presume that being a harpooneer, his linen or woollen, as the case might be, would not be of the tidiest, certainly none of the finest. I began to twitch all over. Besides, it was getting late, and my decent harpooneer ought to be home and going bedwards. Suppose now, he should tumble in upon me at midnight —how could I tell from what vile hole he had been coming? Landlord! I've changed my mind ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... these nests. He has watched the birds making them, which they do by turning round and round, with the breast or belly on the ground, thus forming a saucer-shaped hollow, in which they sometimes place two or three fibres of twitch as a lining. One bird makes three or four of such nests, and finally selects the one which, presumably, she ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... more this day, were it from Jove's own poculum!" Le Gardeur repelled the temptation more readily as he felt a twitch on his sleeve from the hand ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... in Mr. Barrymore's eyes and a twitch of his lips, as he bent down over the machinery without answering a word, and I couldn't resist the temptation of letting him see that I was in his secret. There couldn't be any harm in it's ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... On the very tick of the minute he was there at the old moss-grown lych-gate, and there Miss Lorne found him when she drove up in Lady Drood's pony phaeton a little time afterward. She was not alone, however. She had spoken of a friend, and a sharp twitch disturbed Cleek's heart when he saw that a young man sat beside her, a handsome young man of two-or three-and-twenty, with a fair moustache, a pair of straight-looking blue eyes, and that squareness of shoulder and uprightness of bearing which tells ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... little distance ahead of them put an abrupt termination to the conversation. Gibault threw forward the muzzle of his gun, and glanced at his comrade. The glance did not tend to comfort him. The artist was pale as death. This, and an occasional twitch of the lip, were clear and unmistakable signs to the backwoodsman that fear had taken possession of his friend, and that he was not to be counted on in the moment of danger. Yet there was a stern knitting of the eyebrows, and a firm pressure of the lips, that ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... saw her mouth twitch. For some reason Angela was keen to get away, but nevertheless there was sound reasoning in Devinne's argument. At Dawson food would fetch a fabulous price, until the freights could bring in bigger supplies. Devinne, with his acute business acumen, had insured ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... the whole course of my life saw such villains as these. I do not regret having gone to see them and talked to them as if I were their equal. Now, take this torn coat off me, and help me to undress. Before I go to the feast I will take a hasty plunge in my bath, for I twitch in every limb, I feel as if I had got dirty ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... some hurry; some look up and down nervously, others glance over the shoulder as if dreading to be apprehended; some turn red, others pale, according to complexion and temperament; some swing their arms, others trip on their gowns; some twitch the buttons of a glove, or tweak a flower or a jewel. Francesca rose superior to all these weaknesses, and I doubt if the Gallery of the Kings ever served as a background for anything lovelier or more high-bred than that untitled slip of ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... silent bystanders gazed at one another. The alferez made a sign that they should take the body down, and then moved away thoughtfully. Dona Consolation applied the lighted end of her cigar to the bare legs, but the flesh did not twitch and the fire ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... feeling it gave one to see the regiment go past the saluting base on review-days, at the gallop, with lances down. One wanted to shout, to laugh—to cry. (It made one's mouth twitch and chin work.) ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... Hing: preterite of hang. Ladysmock: the cardamine pratensis. Pink: the chaffinch. Pooty: the girdled snail shell. Ramping: coarse and large. Rawky: misty, foggy. Rig: the ridge of a roof. Sueing: a murmuring, melancholy sound. Swaly: wasteful. Sweltered: over-heated by the sun. Twitchy: made of twitch ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... not liking the slow pace in which old Battle was proceeding to make room for him, laid his whip briskly over his haunches, quickening his movements, but driving the major into a furious passion. The sudden twitch landed us both upon the sandy road, under the pile of sheepskins we had used for a seat. In this dilemma the major called loudly for assistance, swearing that if the stage driver would but stop he would give ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... —— of my invention. coyuntura f. joint. crneo m. skull. crear create. crecer grow, rage, increase. creer believe, think. crescendo Ital. crescendo. crespn m. crape. criatura f. creature, being, man. crimen m. crime. crispante adj. shivery. crisparse twitch. cristal m. crystal, glass. cristalino, -a crystalline, transparent, bright. Cristo pr. n. m. Christ, image of Christ. crudeza f. severity, cruelty. crudo, -a raw. cruel adj. cruel, intolerable. crujido m. crackling. crujir ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... seances attended by Goosie and Mrs Antrobus, even stranger things had happened, for the Princess's hands, as they held a little preliminary conversation, began to tremble and twitch even more strongly than Colonel Boucher's, and Mrs Quantock hastily supplied her with a pencil and a quantity of sheets of foolscap paper, for this trembling and twitching implied that Reschia, an ancient Egyptian priestess, was longing to use the Princess's hand ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... are going to ruin; the land's full o' twitch; There's no one to clean out a drain or a ditch; The gates are all broken, the fences all down; And the state of our farm is the talk of ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... involved In mist opaque Venus with ease divine Snatch'd thence, and in his chamber placed him, fill'd With scents odorous, spirit-soothing sweets. Nor stay'd the Goddess, but at once in quest 455 Of Helen went; her on a lofty tower She found, where many a damsel stood of Troy, And twitch'd her fragrant robe. In form she seem'd An ancient matron, who, while Helen dwelt In Lacedaemon, her unsullied wool 460 Dress'd for her, faithfullest of all her train. Like her disguised the Goddess thus began. Haste—Paris calls thee—on his sculptured couch, (Sparkling alike ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... of trap was more ingenious. It was on the plan of the twitch-up snare, common in New England. A young tree, very strong and flexible, is bent down till the upper end touches the ground. To this extremity is attached a stout cord, and fastened to a stake in the ground. A slip-noose is so arranged that the tiger thrusts his ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... While Lubberkin sticks firmly to the last; O were his lips to mine but joined so fast! With my sharp heel I three times mark the ground, And turn me thrice around, around, around. As Lubberkin once slept beneath a tree, I twitch'd his dangling garter from his knee; He wist not when the hempen string I drew. Now mine I quickly doff of inkle blue; Together fast I tye the garters twain, And while I knit the knot, repeat the strain: Three times a true-love's ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... "Good sport, gentlemen?" The big things answered by bowing and waving their flippers like the Frog Footman. When they began feeding again Kotick saw that their upper lip was split into two pieces that they could twitch apart about a foot and bring together again with a whole bushel of seaweed between the splits. They tucked the stuff into ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... you just going out? I'm glad I did not disturb you. Shall I hold it open for you?" She stepped to one side and waited gravely without moving a muscle till Lucine after a withering stare had stalked angrily back to her window. The corner of Berta's mouth gave a quick, queer little twitch before ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... up he caught a sarcastic twitch of Rose Leyburn's lip and understood it in a moment. Incontinently he forgot the squire and fell to asking himself what had possessed him on that luckless journey down. He had never seemed to himself more perverse, more unmanageable; and for once his philosophy did not enable him to swallow ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... cold," he laughed as the water stung the broken skin and made her twitch involuntarily, "but bathing will do it good. I just know it ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... distemper that is often fatal to young children, and frequently proceeds from the brain, originating either from the parents, or from vapours, or bad humours that twitch the membranes of the brain; it is also sometimes caused by other distempers and by bad diet; likewise, the toothache, when the brain consents, causes it, and so does a sudden fright. As to the distemper itself, it is manifest and well enough known where it is; and as to the cause whence it ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... ears, the head lowered beside Dan, and the quivering, delicate muzzle stole towards a fragment of the "pone." Joan watched breathlessly and then she saw that in spite of the caution of that movement her father knew all about it—just a glint of amusement in the corner of his eyes, just a slight twitch at the corners of his mouth to tell Joan that he was as delighted as a boy playing a trick. Barely in time to save the morsel of pone, he spoke and the head was dashed up. Yet Satan was not entirely discouraged. If he could not steal the bread he would beg for ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... imagined. It beat the joys of the birthday hollow. They were quite aware that by-and-by there would perhaps be repentance, but who could think of repentance now, with the feast—and such a feast!—on the board, and Fiddler Joe making such exquisite, mad, intoxicating music (it caused your feet to twitch so that they could scarcely keep still), and that floor as smooth as glass, and the summer moon entering through a chink in the big tent, and the gayly dressed people, and all the merry voices? Oh, it was ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... Vesey With Bishop's scraps grown fat and greasy, While Wynne sleeps the whole debate, They submissive round him wait; (Yet would gladly see the hunks, In his grave, and search his trunks,) See, they gently twitch his coat, Just to yawn and give his vote, Always firm in his vocation, For the court against the nation. Those are Allens Jack and Bob,[18] First in every wicked job, Son and brother to a queer Brain-sick brute, they call a peer. We must give them better quarter, For their ancestor trod mortar, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... he was running on at this rate, lo! Fuscus Aristius comes up, a dear friend of mine, and one who knows the fellow well. We make a stop. "Whence come you? whither are you going?" he asks and answers. I began to twitch him [by the elbow], and to take hold of his arms [that were affectedly] passive, nodding and distorting my eyes, that he might rescue me. Cruelly arch he laughs, and pretends not to take the hint: anger galled my liver. "Certainly," ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... "We shall see. Who wins boasts. I'm not so mad, anyhow, as the marchesa, who shuts up her palace on the festival, and offends St. Nicodemus and all the saints and martyrs," and Carlotta's eyes flash, and her white eyebrows twitch. ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... The Graces three, the Muses nine salute, Should those who love them try to con thy lore. The country, city seek, grand thrones to boot, With gentle courtesy humbly bow before. Should nobles gallant, soldiers frank and brave Seek thy acquaintance, hail their first advance: From twitch of care thy pleasant vein may save, May laughter cause or wisdom give perchance. Some surly Cato, Senator austere, Haply may wish to peep into thy book: Seem very nothing—tremble and revere: No forceful ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... or return the blows. Then came a new pleasure—the pleasure of smacking his face. And the plough-men, the servant girls and even every passing vagabond were every moment giving him cuffs, which caused his eyelashes to twitch spasmodically. He did not know where to hide himself and remained with his arms always held out to guard against people ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... cat's, and Rubens would have been after her. All this was so plainly expressed in his attitude, that I burst out laughing. Rubens chose to take this as a sound to the chase, and only by the most peremptory orders could I induce him to keep quiet. As to the cat, I saw one convulsive twitch of the very tip of her tail, eloquent of wrath; ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the chair shot forward, the hand of the sheriff was faster still. Bull saw the big guns twitch up, silver in the moonshine. They exploded in one voice, as if the flying mass of wood were an animate object. Then the sheriff was struck and hurled ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... becoming little then, nor sharply turn our heads when she said wonderingly how small her arms had grown. In her happiest moments - and never was a happier woman - her mouth did not of a sudden begin to twitch, and tears to lie on the mute blue eyes in which I have read all I know and would ever care to write. For when you looked into my mother's eyes you knew, as if He had told you, why God sent her into the world - it was to open the minds of all who looked to beautiful ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... wych, Sting you like scorn! You, too, brave hollies, twitch Sidelong from thorn. Even the rank poplars bear Illy a rival's air, Cankering in black despair ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... unco fright ye gae me when ye cam ahint and took a grip o' me," said Jenny, giving him a sly twitch with her finger and her thumb—"if ye hadna been an auld acquaintance, ye ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... compunction, repentance, remorse; regret &c. 833. self-reproach, self-reproof, self-accusation, self-condemnation, self- humiliation; stings of conscience, pangs of conscience, qualms of conscience, prickings of conscience[obs3], twinge of conscience, twitch of conscience, touch of conscience, voice of conscience; compunctious visitings of nature[obs3]. acknowledgment, confession &c. (disclosure) 529; apology &c. 952; recantation &c. 607; penance &c. 952; resipiscence|!. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... in defiance of tradition is called Samuel, is sitting in his doorway watching the show, when the suffering Christ begs permission to rest a moment on his threshold. He says churlishly, Anda!—"Begone!" "I will go, but thou shalt go forever until I come." The Jew's feet begin to twitch convulsively, as if pulled from under him. He struggles for a moment, and at last is carried off by his legs, which are moved like those of the walking dolls with the Greek names. This odd tradition, so utterly in contradiction with the picture the Scriptures ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... companion had got all the feather bed; so mighty is instinct. They lay between two beds; the lower one hard and made of straw, the upper soft and filled with feathers light as down. Gerard pulled at it, but the experienced drunkard held it fast mechanically. Gerard tried to twitch it away by surprise, but instinct was too many for him. On this he got out of bed, and kneeling down on his bedfellow's unguarded side, easily whipped the prize away and rolled with it under the bed, and there lay on one edge of it, and curled the rest round his shoulders. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... she went out she noted another queer-like circumstance. Mr. Rattar had stretched out his hand towards the toast rack while he spoke. The toast stuck between the bars, and she caught a glimpse of an angry twitch that upset the rack with a clatter. Never before had she seen the master do a ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... ardent ignorance; and nobody has ever been able to offer any theories of moral heredity which justified themselves in the only scientific sense; that is that one could calculate on them beforehand. There are six cases, say, of a grandson having the same twitch of mouth or vice of character as his grandfather; or perhaps there are sixteen cases, or perhaps sixty. But there are not two cases, there is not one case, there are no cases at all, of anybody betting half a crown that ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... was never the man for successful subterfuge, especially with his daughter; she could read every look in his eye, every twitch of his mouth, and now, over many miles of country telephone lines, she knew that her beloved old humbug of a male parent was "holding out on her." Her first impulse was to face him down and demand ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... Brother Roach, well as common. Yit a twitch here and a twinge there tells us we're moving along to'rds eternity. It's age that's a-feeling of us, Brother Roach; and when ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... forced out of her against her will. Directly she had said them she bitterly regretted them. They were the cry of her undying vanity that must try to put itself right, to stand up for itself at whatever cost. Directly she had spoken them she saw a slight twitch pull the left side of his face upward. It had upon her a moral effect. She felt it as his irresistible comment—a comment of the body, but coming from elsewhere—on her and her nature, and her recent association with Arabian. And suddenly her hatred died, and she longed to do ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... painfully, as if under extraordinary pressure. Face and neck are colouring; the lips part; the throat makes a convulsive effort to swallow. The eyes are starting; they denote suffocation and terrible pain. The legs twitch; they seem struggling to come to the rescue of ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... upon the hearth. It was the fragments of the toy stiletto, broken by an uncontrollable twitch of the ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... up, out of curiosity. She's twenty, though she might well pass for fifteen. She is not happy; there's a deal of conflict in that little head of hers. When she stands looking out at the hills and the sea, and her mouth gives that little twitch, that little spasm of pain, then she is suffering; but she is too proud, too obstinate for tears. She is more than a bit romantic; a powerful imagination; she is waiting for a prince. What was that about a certain five-daler note you were ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... once thoughtful and jocular, offered to pull a hair out of your head without your feeling it. And this he accomplished, by taking hold of the doomed hair, and then giving you a knock on the head that brought tears to your eyes. For, in the more vivid sensation of that knock you never felt the little twitch of the hair as it quitted its hold. Yes, the stronger impression makes you unaware of the weaker. And the impression produced either upon thought or feeling by outward scenes, is so much weaker than that produced by the companionship of our kind, ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... tree, yonder." As I spoke, he craned his head towards me, and I saw his pale lips twitch suddenly. "And why have you dogged me; why have you followed me all the ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... sun-bonnet, and more apples in her lunch bag, had come in a vision of old orchard and sun-bathed river, to put her warm little hand in her brother's again, and lead him home. And before the clock struck again, Robert Toland, with not even a twitch of his kind old face, went smiling away from earth in a dream of childhood, and Richie, with a finger on the silent pulse, and Jim, with a hand on the silent heart, had said ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... he noticed on my face a twitch in one of the muscles which tuck up the corner of the mouth, (zygomaticus major,) and which I could not hold back from making a little movement on ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... lovers fled away into the storm. That night the Baron dreamt of many a woe, And all his warrior-guests, with shade and form Of witch, and demon, and large coffin-worm, Were long be-nightmar'd. Angela the old Died palsy-twitch'd, with meagre face deform; The Beadsman, after thousand aves told, For aye unsought for ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... Still without looking at him, she tied her shoelaces with an impatient twitch that came near breaking them, and walked haughtily to where Concho stood dutifully waiting. With an impulsive movement, she threw her arms around his neck, and hid her hot face ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... out frantically. He stood motionless while they adjusted the rope round his bronzed throat. They had judged him for a villain; they should at least know him a man. So he stood there straight and lithe, wide-shouldered and lean-flanked, a man in a thousand. Not a twitch of the well-packed muscles, not a quiver of the eyelash nor a swelling of the throat betrayed any fear. His cool eyes were ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... ensued was broken by Mr F.'s Aunt, who had been sitting upright in a cataleptic state since her last public remark. She now underwent a violent twitch, calculated to produce a startling effect on the nerves of the uninitiated, and with the deadliest ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... sit for several hours at a stretch with one's legs crossed in the same position, if one knows that there's nothing to prevent one's changing one's position; but if a man knows that he must remain sitting so with crossed legs, then cramps come on, the legs begin to twitch and to strain towards the spot to which one would like to draw them. This was what Vronsky was experiencing in regard to the world. Though at the bottom of his heart he knew that the world was shut on them, he put it to the test whether the world had not changed by now and would not ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... Towards the end, his features began to twitch, and, a moment after Godfrey had ceased, a spasm of laughter ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... first at the lad, half severely, half smiling, as though in the bottom of his heart he felt some pride in his nephew's scrapes, who received his reprimand with grimaces that made his face twitch like that of a monkey, while his eyes retained their fixed ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... it was said that Bigot, in his coltish days, had a shrewish Gascon wife, whom he took leave to send to heaven before her time. I saw the Intendant's mouth twitch angrily. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... crowd. It was a sight, a spectacle that racked them in every fibre of their beings, that stirred them to pity, to hope, to fear, until the awful misery of this blighted and crawling thing was their own in its every twitch of agony—that struck them with a terror, the greater because it was indefinable, a prescience, a reaching out beyond human realm, the invoking of a supernal power—the thought of which very power, once ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... old grammar," suggested one, trying to twitch away his book; and another pulled the chair ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... the chill wind was changed into sound. Like a restless insect he hovered about her, like a butterfly whose antennae flicker and twitch sensitively as they gather intelligence, touching the aura, as it were, of the female. He was exceedingly delicate ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... the middle of a bright and verdant but painfully circular lawn stood two figures. One of them was a small, sharp-looking man with black whiskers and a very polished hat (I presume Dr Colman), who was talking very quietly and clearly, yet with a nervous twitch, as it were, in his face. The other was our old friend, listening with his old forbearing expression and owlish eyes, the strong sunlight gleaming on his glasses as the lamplight had gleamed the night before, when the boisterous Basil had rallied him on his ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... sufficient for absolving felons, and for setting aside wills. His grimaces, his gestures, his mutterings, sometimes diverted and sometimes terrified people who did not know him. At a dinner table he would, in a fit of absence, stoop down and twitch off a lady's shoe. He would amaze a drawing-room by suddenly ejaculating a clause of the Lord's Prayer. He would conceive an unintelligible aversion to a particular alley, and perform a great circuit rather than see the hateful place. He would set his heart ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... be predominant and the negative effect would become inconspicuous. When the two constituent responses are of the same order of magnitude, we shall have a positive response followed by a negative after-vibration; the first twitch will belong to the one which responds earlier. If the response of A is very much reduced, then the positive effect will be reduced to a mere twitch and the negative effect ...
— Response in the Living and Non-Living • Jagadis Chunder Bose
... sound of her much-tried companion's sigh, and instantly her lips began to twitch and curve slightly in a smile that had suspicion of ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... lived in a larger and more beautiful house than the Kennedys, and a well-behaved maid showed the children into a room which was so dark that Biddy and Katy could hardly see anything at first. Biddy felt Katy twitch at her hand as if she would dart off and rush out into the merry sunlight again. All the way up stairs Katy had been making droll faces at the maid, who went on before them, and mimicking her walk ...
— Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... will be my successor. It will not be held against him that I married his beautiful young mother and chose to keep the matter a secret. I have long been known as a peculiar person given to arranging my affairs according to my own liking. The Head of the House of Coombe"—with an ironic twitch of the mouth—"will have the law on his side and will not be asked for explanations. A romantic story will add to public interest in him. If your child is a daughter she will be protected. She will not be lonely, she will have friends. She will have all ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... handsome horses, the line of limbers accurately covering the guns, and, still farther back, Mr. Pierce could be heard shouting his orders for the alignment of the caissons. In the twinkling of an eye the rush and thunder were stilled, the battery without the twitch of a muscle stood ready for review, and old Brax, sitting in saddle at the reviewing point, watching the stirring sight with gloomy and cynical eye, was chafed still more to hear in a silvery voice from the group of ladies the unwelcome words, "Oh, wasn't that ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... mother, and I saw his lip twitch under his beard. After all, he was younger and less sure of ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... views; Nor wash his toes but with intent To overturn the government,)— Such is our mild and tolerant way, We only curse them twice a day (According to a Form that's set), And, far from torturing, only let All orthodox believers beat 'em, And twitch their beards where'er ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... win without count of the cost. The firm was established, but it was as heavily in debt as its credit would stand. Newmark himself, though as calm and reserved and precise as ever, seemed to have turned gray, and one of his eyelids had acquired a slight nervous twitch which persisted for some months. He took his seat at the desk, however, as calmly as ever. In three days the scandalised howls of bribery and corruption had given place in the newspapers to some ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... work—archaeology?" He smiled again to hide a twitch of regret. "Why, I'm afraid it hardly produces a living wage; and I've got to think of that." He coloured suddenly, as if suspecting that Miss Hicks might consider the avowal an opening for he hardly knew what ponderous offer of aid. The Hicks ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... Through it when his protectors were away he could escape the rush of pursuing coyotes, or sally forth with equal ferocity when sheep dogs were about. He peered out of his porthole for a moment, warily, then his stump tail began to twitch, he worked his hind claws into the wood, and leapt. A yelp of terror from the ramada heralded his success and Creede ran like a boy ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... the current, moving the anode and the cathode slowly. I had often seen the experiments on the nerves of a frog that had been freshly killed, how the electric current will make the muscles twitch, as discovered long ago by Galvani. But I was not prepared to see it on a human being. Torreon muttered something and ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... fixed her feet in the stirrup-irons in an instant. The colt was looked upon as a champion bucker, and he deserved the honour, for rising into the air with all four feet off the ground, he gave a twitch that must have dislodged most riders, but Hil and the horse were one. After bucking and pigging all he knew, without succeeding in upsetting his rider, the wary animal tried a new dodge. He reared suddenly ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... said Bill, tryin' to comfort him; 'it seemeth hard; but I'm an older man nor you be, Tom, the matter of several years;' and he gave his trowsers a twitch (you know they don't wear galluses, though a gallus holds them up sometimes), shifted his quid, gave his nor'wester a pull over his forehead, and looked solemncholly, 'and my experience, Tom, is, that this life ain't all beer ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... on the one side, the merchant felt his cloak receive an intelligent twitch upon the other, and, looking round upon the signal, he saw a dame, whose black kerchief was affectedly disposed, so as to give an appearance of solemnity to a set of light laughing features, which must have been captivating when young, since they retained so many good points when at least forty ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... charming as a handsome girl will look, in spite of a line of care upon her her head and a twitch of anxiety upon the corners of her lips, was distributing coffee, and alternating the task by cutting bread-and-butter—thin-thick for her brother Hendon, who was reading a sporting paper, and thin-thin for Dr Chartley, who was gazing in an abstracted manner ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... said, giving a final pull and twitch to the dress of her brother, and taking him by the hand tenderly. "Now, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... such beguiling? Annie looked up at him and saw his Dean mark give a little mocking twitch as if it rejoiced in ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... some games," he said; and I grasped directly what it meant, for the big fellow went quietly up behind the little Chinaman, and with a clever twitch unfastened the pin, or whatever it was which held up the coil, and the long tail untwisted and rolled down on the deck amidst a roar of laughter—one which increased as the Chinaman turned to see who had played the trick, but only to find the man standing near with his ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... then! I could see his eyelids twitch. A moisture broke out on his lower lip, in that country where perspiration was so little known. "And you!" he said. "But then, it didn't take much brains to guess that. It was the same way with you. We all of us came here to Heart's Desire because some time, some where, ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... imparting to it a gimlet-like twist; it was a countenance by no means lacking in character, very evenly tinted with a diffused red, lighted up by a pair of bright little eyes, with a sardonic look in them, while a certain sarcastic twitch of the purpled lips ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... of it made Sanderson's lips twitch queerly. He saw Mary cringe from Dale and press her hands over her breast. Dale's voice ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... tears, he was powerless. The children were only waiting for him to rush at them and strike them. Although they kept right on singing and praying, they were ready to cut and run the instant he made a move. Presently a pair of them noticed that Felt's face was beginning to twitch. 'Now he'll go for us,' they thought, getting up to flee. But the old man blinked his one good eye, and a tear rolled down his cheek. 'Hallelujah!' the youngsters shouted, and now, as I've already told you, it's all up with Felt. Now he does nothing but run about ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... in the room, smoking his pipe; often the corners of his mouth would twitch as if he could ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... frieze to come beneath? The bas-relief in bronze ye promised me, Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and perchance Some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so, The Saviour at his sermon on the mount, Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan 60 Ready to twitch the Nymph's last garment off, And Moses with the tables . . . but I know Ye mark me not! What do they whisper thee, Child of my bowels, Anselm? Ah, ye hope To revel down my villas while I gasp Bricked o'er with beggar's ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... lavender. Fast on the points of a spear the fish gives an occasional and violent spasmodic jerk, when the prettily tinted liquid is ejected from all the little cones. After a pause, during which it seems to concentrate its energies, there is another and another twitch, each the means of sprinkling broadcast what is said to be a corrosive liquid, almost as virulent as vitriol. From almost any part of the body this liquid exudes ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... of mild snow he could see her face shining out darkly, and his bare, eager fingers moved toward her arm, and except when the spasmodic twitch locked his features, his face, too, was thrust forward, keen and close ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... expression, so monstrously inconsistent and inadequate to what was going on around him, and so hopelessly stupid—if a mere simulation—that the angry suspicion that he was acting a part slowly faded from her eyes, and a hysterical smile began to twitch her set lips. She still gazed at him. The wind howled drearily in the chimney; all that was economic, grim, and cheerless in the room seemed to gather as flitting shadows around that central figure. Suddenly she arose with such a quick rustling of ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... will be good enough to explain," said Dr. Lyden, permitting a faint smile to twitch the foxy moustache, "how Mrs. Darcy's boot affected ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... 'n' sech-like now, 'n' I reckon thar's nothing he's seed or heerd that he don' talk about. He's been a-goin' on about you," he added, abruptly. The girl's hands gave a nervous twitch. "Oh, he don't say nothin' ag'in' ye. I reckon he tuk a fancy to ye. Mam was plumb distracted, not knowin' whar he had seed ye. She thought it was like his other talk, 'n' I never let on-a-knowin' how mam was." A flush rose like a flame from the girl's throat to her ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... know, sir; and that's what troubles me so." Here the good Mrs. Crull began to twitch about the mouth. But she did not cry. She had too much of the masculine element for that. Her whole life was a struggle between the weakness of her feminine body and the strong self-control of her manly soul, in which the latter, after an effort, ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... dreadful stinking did hang in all that part of the Gorge, by reason of the Slug; and signs of disgust, as you shall think; and the great and mildewed body of the thing yet to settle and twitch, as I did look, as it did come properly unto death in all that mighty bulk. And everywhere, the skin of the Beast did be set into great wrinklings, and horrid blotchings to be upon the improper whiteness thereof; ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... very rude o' me to hae said—'No, I thank you, sir,' and especially at my time o' life, wi' twa younger sisters married that had families; so I blushed, as it were, and giein my powny a twitch, he sprang on to his saddle, and came trotting along by my side. He was very agreeable company; and, when he said, 'I shall be most happy to pay you a visit, Miss Darling,' I didna think o' what I had said, until after that I had answered him, 'I shall be very happy to see ye, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... he was saying. She was nervously careful about choosing her steps so that she would not stumble and jolt her father. She did not believe that he was wholly unconscious, for she had seen his eyelids tighten and his lips twitch several times, when she waiting for Swan. He had seemed to be in pain and to be trying to hide the fact from her. She felt that Swan knew it, else he would have talked of her dad, would at least have tried to reassure her. But it is difficult to speak of a person who hears what ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... a swift glance about the room, then suddenly his eyes fell upon the butcher knife. I saw him tense, saw his lips twitch under the lash ...
— The Homicidal Diary • Earl Peirce
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