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More "Wriggle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on the 2nd December the hole in the engine room bulkhead was cut completely. I climbed through it, followed by Bowers, the carpenter, and Teddy Nelson, and when we got into the hold there was just enough room to wriggle along to the pump-well over the coal. We tore down a couple of planks to get access to the shaft and then I went down to the bottom to find out how matters stood. Bowers came next with an electric torch, which he shone downwards whilst I got into the water, ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... worse,' he says. 'Th' throuble about divoorce is it always lets out iv th' bad bargain th' wan that made it bad. If I owned a half in a payin' business with ye, I'd niver let th' sun go down on a quarrel,' he says. 'But if ye had a bad mouth I'd go into coort an' wriggle out iv th' partnership because ye'ar a cantankerous old villain that no wan cud get on with,' he says. 'If people knew they cudden't get away fr'm each other they'd settle down to life, just as I detarmined to like coal smoke whin I found th' collection wasn't ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... lacked the courage of his race; but, having seen the man for years, as it were, through a magnifying lens, he could not, all in a moment, see him for the thing he was:—dangerous as a snake, yet swift as a snake to wriggle out of ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... as I do. Follow close," urged Jack; and, wading to the edge of the wall, he felt along under the water for a moment, then knelt down, ducked his head, gave a wriggle, and disappeared. Rickerl followed him, kneeling and ducking his head. At the same moment he felt a powerful current pulling him forward, and, groping around under the shallow water, his hands encountered ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... telescope. The foremast across which he lay was complete almost to the royal-mast, though the yards were gone; and to his left, just above the battered fore-top, five men were lashed, dead and drowned. Most of them had their eyes wide open, and seemed to stare at Zeb and wriggle about in the stir of the sea as if they lived. Spent and wretched as he was, it lifted his hair. He almost called out to them at first, and then he dragged his gaze off them, and turned it to the ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... to say to me? For the last hour I have been asking you to marry me, and you have said nothing; only just 'wriggle, wriggle,' talking off on ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... temple. But without paying the least homage to the image of the 'Lo' spirit, he simply kept his eyes fixed intently on it; for albeit made of clay, it actually seemed, nevertheless, to flutter as does a terror-stricken swan, and to wriggle as a dragon in motion. It looked like a lotus, peeping its head out of the green stream, or like the sun, pouring its rays upon the russet clouds in the early morn. Pao-y's tears ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... that isn't worth the paper it is written on. And when you'd got fooled so you thought C. & S.C. would pay par for your stock, what do you do but go around and tell a man you know is working for me all about it! And now when I've got you just where I want you, where you can only wriggle, you come around and try to scare me. Do you know what you are? You're just ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... with his agreeable discourse. He consoled him for the misfortunes of his family, by assuring him, that in England nothing could be more honourable, or indeed profitable, than the character of a physician, provided he could once wriggle himself into practice; and insinuated, that, although he was restricted by certain engagements with other persons of the faculty, he should be glad of an opportunity to show his regard for Doctor Fathom. This was a very effectual method which ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... our riflemen marching as escort, smart and gay in their brown forest-dress, the green thrums rippling and flying from sleeve and leggin' and open double-cape, and the raccoon-tails all a-bobbing behind their caps like the tails that April lambkins wriggle. ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... apart, and gesticulating so vehemently, with the Hebrew stamp on every line of their dark, keen faces, are blockade-runners: they bewail their captivity more loudly than their fellows; but, be sure, they will wriggle out, soonest of all, if freedom can be purchased by hard swearing or gold. The profits of a single successful venture are simply fabulous; the smugglers are frequently captured with dollars on their persons by tens of thousands: they will ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... had gone back to the Giant Suttung with the tale of how he had seen the mysterious serving-man change into a snake and wriggle through a hole in the mountain; and Suttung at once guessed that they had to deal with Odin himself. So he hurried to the hole and sat there to watch for the return ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... conferred upon him, by general consent of the several ministers, on account of his inability to walk as other men do. In fact, Hop-Frog could only get along by a sort of interjectional gait—something between a leap and a wriggle—a movement that afforded illimitable amusement, and of course consolation, to the king, for (notwithstanding the protuberance of his stomach and a constitutional swelling of the head) the king, by his whole court, was accounted a ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... live in Ireland. (Let us leave this insurrection of a week out of the question.) Life is not safe in Ireland. Property shivers in terror of daily or nightly appropriation. Other, undefined, but even more woeful glooms and creeps, wriggle ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... sharp bark. Then he was on the bed before I saw his good brindled head, almost, and in my arms. I pressed my face against his dear, quivering coat, I surrendered my cheek to his warm, rough tongue, I translated each happy convulsive wriggle. ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... final wriggle and Twaddles deftly backed out of the oven, turning to show a flushed face and a pair of dark, ...
— Four Little Blossoms on Apple Tree Island • Mabel C. Hawley
... wasn't," cried Esau; "and there I hung for ever so long, giving myself a bit of a wriggle now and then, but afraid to do much, it hurt so, dragging at my arms, while they were twisted up. I s'pose I must have been 'bout an hour like that, but it seemed a week, and I was beginning to get sick again, when all at ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... life-long litigant, passing all his days in the courts, either as plaintiff or defendant, but is actually led by his bad taste to pride himself on his litigiousness; he imagines that he is a master in dishonesty; able to take every crooked turn, and wriggle into and out of every hole, bending like a withy and getting out of the way of justice: and all for what?—in order to gain small points not worth mentioning, he not knowing that so to order his life as to be able to do without a napping judge is a far higher and nobler sort of thing. ...
— The Republic • Plato
... not read the dressmaking periodicals. She never heard of the Wednesday matinee. When she takes the air she rides in a carriage that has a sheltering hood, and she is veiled up to the eyes, and she must never lean out to wriggle her little finger-tips at men lolling in front of the cafes. She must not see the men. She may look at them, but she must not see them. No wonder the sisters in Michigan are organizing to batter down the walls of tradition, and bring to her the more ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... to clear the soot out of 'is lungs an' breathin' toobs. But if Pint-o'-Bass does smoke more'n is good for 'im or any other respectable factory chimney, I'll admit the smoke 'asn't sooted up 'is intelleck none, an' 'e can wriggle 'is way out of a hole where a double-jointed snake 'ud stick. An' durin' the Retreat, when, as you knows, cigarettes in the Expeditionary Force was scarcer'n snowballs in 'ell, ole Pint-o'-Bass managed to carry on, an' wasn't never seen without 'is fag, excep' at meal-times, an' sleep-times, ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... knife. Dip not the meat in the same. Hold not thy knife upright but sloping, and lay it down at the right hand of plate with blade on plate. Look not earnestly at any other that is eating. When moderately satisfied leave the table. Sing not, hum not, wriggle not.... Smell not of thy Meat; make not a noise with thy Tongue, Mouth, Lips, or Breath in Thy Eating and Drinking.... When any speak to thee, stand up. Say not I have heard it before. Never endeavour to help him out if he tell it not right. Snigger ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... bits between the bushes with bracken and leaves," said Kathleen, avoiding the question; "don't wriggle, Mabel, or you'll waggle ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... as noiselessly as possible he began to wriggle away, inch by inch, from Bill, and toward the fire. Several times he fancied the men moved restlessly in their sleep, but when he looked toward them they appeared to be still sleeping heavily. On each occasion, however, he lay still until he became wholly satisfied that he had been ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... snake-skin to show you when I return. Edward, Richard's big brother, found it in the woods, and made it a present to me. A snake! What a present! and to think of a snake wanting to wriggle out of his skin! You wouldn't do ...
— The Little Nightcap Letters. • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... details limned from life. 'The Jesuits have so many loopholes for escape, pretexts, colors of insinuation, that they are more changeful than the Sophist of Plato; and when one thinks to have caught them between thumb and finger, they wriggle out and vanish' (ib. vol. i. p. 230). 'The Jesuit fathers have methods of acquiring in this world, and making their neophytes acquire, heaven without diminution, or rather with augmentation, of this life's indulgences' (ib. vol. i. p. 313). 'The Jesuit fathers used to ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... "Please," and added to the force of the word with another little wriggle against Forrester. It solved his problems. There was now only one thing to do, ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... a heave, and wriggle, "that circus boy," as Trix had nicknamed him, performed the feat of getting her out of the falling castle, and the Corner House girls received her ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... neck! Have you ever felt a mustache on your neck? It intoxicates you, makes you feel creepy, goes to the tips of your fingers. You wriggle, shake your shoulders, toss back your head. You wish to get away and at the same time to remain there; it is delightful, but irritating. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... planking could withdraw without the loss of its sword. Mr. Buckland said that fish have no power of "backing," and expressed his belief that he could hold a swordfish by the beak; but then he admitted that the fish had considerable lateral power, and might so "wriggle its sword out of the hold." And so the insurance company will have to pay nearly L600 because an ill-tempered fish objected to be hooked and took its revenge by running full tilt against ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... another, and springing up the bars of the cage. The little monkey jumps, catches a rope, drops to the ground, and springs at another rope. Now he is in a corner, the others have him; but no, with a dive and a wriggle he has slipped through them, and is chattering and grimacing on the other side of ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... flow into, flow in, creep into, creep in, slip into, slip in, pop into, pop in, break into, break in, burst into, burst in; set foot on; ingress; burst in upon, break in upon; invade, intrude; insinuate itself; interpenetrate, penetrate; infiltrate; find one's way into, wriggle into, worm oneself into. give entrance to &c (receive) 296; insert &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... mounted the stairs. At the top he paused to deliberate. Would it not be better to keep her in ignorance? What was to be gained by revealing to her the—But Miss Thackeray was luring him on to destruction. She stood outside the door and beckoned. That in itself was ominous. Why should she wriggle a forefinger at him instead of calling out in her usual free-and-easy ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... the pack, which all previous polar explorers had regarded as certain death. It is not merely difficult to grasp this; it is simply impossible — to us, who with a motion of the hand can set the screw going, and wriggle out of the first difficulty we encounter. These men were heroes — heroes in the highest sense of ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... under Fire. Bridal Ceremony in a Beleaguered City," murmured the enthusiastic journalist. Her gold fountain-pen, hanging at her chatelaine, seemed to wriggle like a thing of life, as she imagined herself aiding, planning, assisting at, and finally sitting down to describe the ceremony and the wedding-veil on the little Greek head. She babbled as her quick, bird-like gait carried her along beside the tall, stately-moving ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... the cat that saved the situation and its life at the same time. Mary-'Gusta was near the edge of the pine grove and Con was close at her heels. David gave one more convulsive, desperate wriggle, slid from the girl's arms and disappeared through the pines like ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... own natural stance. A change of the position of the feet by even a couple of inches one way or the other may alter the stance altogether, and knock the player clean off his putting. In this new position he will wriggle about and feel uncomfortable. Everything is wrong. His coat is in the way, his pockets seem too full of old balls, the feel of his stockings on his legs irritates him, and he is conscious that there is a nail coming up on the inside of the sole of his boot. It is all because ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... for Rollo who was usually pretty alert and ready in emergencies of difficulty or danger, when he found himself rolling down the slope, though he could not stop, still contrived to wriggle and twist himself off to one side, so as to get clear of the horse and roll off himself in a different direction. They both, however, the animal and the boy, soon came to a stop. Rollo was up in an instant. The horse, ...
— Rollo in Switzerland • Jacob Abbott
... avail to kick and scream and wriggle in the arms of a strong, decided young aunt. For the second time that day, a vociferously struggling baby was borne back to ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... that will not run straight; For it turns and it twists and it wanders about To the left and the right, as in humorous doubt. 'Tis a humorous path, and a joke from its birth Till it ends at the door with a wriggle of mirth. And here in the mount lives the queer tinker man With his little red dog ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... of fancy, Genius rises, And like the rare Leviathan surprises; But the small fry of scribblers!—tiny souls! They wriggle ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... warm in here, and no mistake. If I mistake not, you have been trying to wriggle out ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... run a ferry boat, you are! But while I'm alive Mary Jane takes no singing lessons. Do you understand? It's bad enough to have her battering away at that piano like she had some grudge against it, and to have her visitors wriggle around and fidget and look miserable, as if they had cramp colic, while you make her play for them and have them get up and lie, and ask what it was, and say how beautiful it is, and steep their souls in falsehood and hypocrisy ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... abdomen and corselet on; so that a disapproving friend had to divide his sympathy, and to feel for each of the pieces. And what appeared to us worthy of remark was, that whereas, when a snake was decollated, it was only the tail that continued to wriggle—when a worm was divided, all the segments writhed in the same way, and manifested an equal irritability; showing the difference between creatures of annulated structure, according as they ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... he would really have liked to take the little boy up to his breast and hold him there, he knew not how; and he would even be careful not to restrain the little hand in his own—to hold it, yet to leave it free to withdraw at its first uneasy wriggle. ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... circumstances that no one who had not been brought up in the school of Mr. Gladstone could doubt that the two expressions referred to the same thing. He seems to have felt that he must be a poor wriggler if he could not wriggle out of this; give him any loophole, however small, and Mr. Darwin could trust himself to get out through it; but he did not like saying what left no loophole at all, and "my theory of descent with modification" ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... keep him quiet in the evenings. Since your father has been so worried over his business, he needs all the relaxation possible at home, he enjoys reading aloud in the evenings, and Johnny's fidgeting annoys him. A ten-year-old boy is all wriggle and racket without something ...
— The Quilt that Jack Built; How He Won the Bicycle • Annie Fellows Johnston
... shouted from the lodge to the eager crowd without. Pocahontas knew as well as if she could see them that the squaws were hurrying about to prepare the food, and from her low seat she could see between the legs of the braves before her how a number of boys were lying on their stomachs, trying to wriggle into the lodge that they might hear for themselves the interesting things going on and observe for themselves whether the captives showed any sign ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... not begin screaming or wriggle out of the bundle," thought the collegiate assessor. "This is indeed a pleasant surprise! Here I am carrying a human being under my arm as though it were a portfolio. A human being, alive, with soul, with feelings like anyone else.... If by good luck ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... of it, I would rather live with a humanitarian, myself, even if his soul was carnally bow-legged. But my sort of charity is so perverse, so awry with humour, that the constant contemplation of a man trying to wriggle out of the flesh through some spiritual key-hole, made by his own imagination, into a form of existence much higher than agreeable, would be, to say the least of ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... and teachers, awaited the party from the vicarage. The thick and darkened sunshine of Bludston flooded the asphalt of the yard, which sent up a reek of heat, causing curates to fan themselves with their black straw hats, and little boys in clean collars to wriggle in sticky discomfort, while in the still air above the ignoble town hung the heavy pall of smoke. Presently there was the sound of wheels and the sight of the head of the vicar's coachman above the coping of the schoolyard wall. Then the gates opened and the vicar ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... the ground of its own accord, and, spreading its little pair of wings, it half hopped, half flew, and leaned itself against the wall of the cottage. There it stood quite still, except that the snakes continued to wriggle. But, in my private opinion, old Philemon's eyesight had been playing him ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... into his world, a light, tall figure of a girl, fluttering a short petticoat. Hatless she was, brown, flushed, and her dark hair tossing loose, and in a moment she had the snarling furious dogs apart, each gripped firmly by its collar. Then with a wriggle black was loose and had closed again. Inspired by the best traditions of chivalry Benham came to her assistance. He was not expert with dogs. He grasped the black dog under its ear. He was bitten in the wrist, rather in excitement than malice, and ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... out of it, leaving the dragon with only a green silk bow in one of his claws. That knife would never have cut Harry's jacket-tail off, though, and when Effie had tried for some time she saw that this was so and gave it up. But with her help Harry managed to wriggle quietly out of his sleeves, so that the dragon had only an Eton jacket in his other claw. Then the children crept on tiptoe to a crack in the rocks and got in. It was much too narrow for the dragon to get in also, so they stayed in there and waited to make faces at the dragon when he felt rested ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... time," began Dan, with a twinkle in his eye, "the pigs were swine." Roseen gave an impatient wriggle. "Well, well, it's too bad to be tormentin' ye that way. I'll begin right now.—Well, very well then. There was wan time the Spider an' the Gout was thravellin' together, goin' to seek their fortun's. Well, they come ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... ear for my song; Hush'd the caves of its breath, and the finger of death The raised features hath flatten'd along. The eyes' wonted beam, and the eyelids' quick gleam— The intelligent sight, are no more; But the worms of the soil, as they wriggle and coil, Come hither their dwellings to bore. No lineament here is left to declare If monarch or chief art thou; Alexander the Brave, as the portionless slave That on dunghill expires, is as low. Thou delver of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... crickets, with their long filaments sticking out like the whips of four-horse stage-coaches; motionless, slug-like creatures, larvae, perhaps, more horrible in their pulpy stillness than even in the infernal wriggle of maturity! But no sooner is the stone turned and the wholesome light of day let upon this compressed and blinded community of creeping things, than all of them that enjoy the luxury of legs—and some of them have a good many—rush round wildly, butting each other and everything ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... come to fill their jars in the pond, and your huge black shadow would wriggle on the water like sleep struggling ...
— The Crescent Moon • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... foremost a solar plexus, dear reader; and the solar plexus is a great nerve center which lies behind your stomach. I can't be accused of impropriety or untruth, because any book of science or medicine which deals with the nerve-system of the human body will show it to you quite plainly. So don't wriggle or try to look spiritual. Because, willy-nilly, you've got a solar plexus, dear reader, among other things. I'm writing a good sound science book, which ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... and tasteless productions the signs of a progressive movement—the possibility, at least, of a true advance. For the contortions of the 'Precious' writers were less the result of their inability to write well than of their desperate efforts to do so. They were trying, as hard as they could, to wriggle themselves into a beautiful pose; and, naturally enough, they were unsuccessful. They were, in short, too self-conscious; but it was in this very self-consciousness that the real hope for the future lay. The teaching of Malherbe, ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... money-bag, down on your stomach," said the other, "and wriggle like a snake through a hedge, or we shall leave our carcasses behind us ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... his mouth if he offers to holler. We can do it all in two minutes by the help of the lantern. The light'll dazzle him so as he'll not be able to make any on us out; and then we must slip out of the window and be off afore he's had time to wriggle himself out of the ropes. Eh, won't he be a lovely pictur next day!—his best friends, as they say, won't know him. Won't he just look purty at the meeting! There's a model teetottaller for you! Do you think he'll have the ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... observed. "These Shakespearean heroines are a bad lot. May I ask just why you want me to propose to you, my dear? Do you have to collect a certain number of scalps by this particular rare day in June? Or is it that you think you would enjoy the exquisite pleasure of seeing me writhe and wriggle when you refuse me?" ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... leaves to fan them. Children are wilted into silence and slumberous nonentity; boys do not bathe to-day—they welter, hour after hour, in the dark water near the shaded rock. Even they and the tadpoles can hardly be seen to wriggle. The cow has found a shade, and, preferring repose to munching, lies contented under the one great elm mercifully left in the ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... infantrymen's trousers. One cannot make out their coats, but their red trousers show as they wriggle ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... a string to one end of this unpleasant-looking thing, led it around the stable, and, by vigorous manipulations, succeeded in making it wriggle realistically; but he was not satisfied, and, dropping the string listlessly, sat down in the wheelbarrow to ponder. Penrod sometimes proved that there were within him the makings of an artist; he had become fascinated by an idea, and could not be content until that idea was beautifully ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... of life of fallacies, permit me to say, is shockingly unphysiological. They, like other low organisms, are independent of brains, and only wriggle the more, the more they are smitten on the place where the brains ought to be—I don't know B., but I am convinced that A. has nothing but a spinal cord, devoid of any cerebral development. Would Mr. Cross give him up for purposes of experiment? Lingen and you might perhaps be got to join in ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... on some tree-roots while we prospected. We should have known enough by that time to leave four or five men on guard close by; as it was, when the men still on board the dhow began kicking up a babel, Fred and I came running and jumping back through the marsh just in time to see a crocodile wriggle off into the water, with the corpse in his jaws feet first. Fred fired a shotted salute, but missed, and that ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... presently I came in sight of the village church, sitting solitary within its circle of elms. From forth the vestry window projected two small legs, gyrating, hungry for foothold, with larceny—not to say sacrilege—in their every wriggle: a godless sight for a supporter of the Establishment. Though the rest was hidden, I knew the legs well enough; they were usually attached to the body of Bill Saunders, the peerless bad boy of the village. Bill's coveted booty, too, I could easily guess ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... attracted her notice, when she asked me (in that musical voice of hers, with more volume in it, as it seemed to me, than all other voices), 'What are you doing little one? Why do you look at me?'—I used to come nearer and wriggle and bite my finger-nails, and redden and say, 'I do not know.' And if she chanced to stroke my hair with her white hand, and ask me how old I was, I would run away and call from a ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... of whip or edge of steel Cannot hold them in your keeping; With the wriggle of an eel From your grasp they still ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... hidden, then I thought it to be; soon at its look and feel, impatience got the better of me; hurredly I covered it with my body and shed my sperm in it. Then with what curiosity I paddled my fingers in it afterwards, again to stiffen, thrust, wriggle, and spend. All this I recollect as if it occurred but yesterday, I shall recollect it to the last day of my life, for it was a honey-moon of novelty, years afterwards I often thought of it when fucking ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... status of the owners and rulers of rural England throughout recent centuries. Our esquires did not win their estates till they had given up any particular fancy for winning their spurs. Esquire does not mean squire, and esq. does not mean anything. But it remains on our letters a little wriggle in pen and ink and an indecipherable hieroglyph twisted by the strange turns of our history, which have turned a military discipline into a pacific oligarchy, and that into a mere plutocracy at last. And ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... called out in triumph. "I knew how it would be when any real test came. Fortunately, too, it is wildly wrong—neither the letter before nor the letter after the right one, so you cannot wriggle out of ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... young man, hard and fast," Mr. Bartholomew said. "If I was inclined to want to wriggle out, I see no chance of it. But I don't. You have set forth here exactly my meaning and intent. I want your best efforts in this matter, Mr. Swift, and if you give them to me I'll foot the bill ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... gave her final wriggle and cheeped her last little cheep, Babe had to be carried over and held down where she could kiss mamma good night. Casey got rather white around the mouth, then. But he didn't say a word. Indeed, he had ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... reached the limits of his shelter he dropped upon his stomach and began to wriggle through the grass. It pleased him to do this. It gave him a sense of delight at the thought of the horrible awakening the cowardly ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... he ended savagely. "Why, I'm not even pre-eminent as far as my position in the social puddle is concerned; there are sets that wouldn't endure me; there's at least one club into which I couldn't possibly wriggle; there are drawing-rooms where I wouldn't be tolerated, because I've nothing on earth to recommend me or to distinguish me from Algernon FitzNoodle and Montmorency de Sansgallette except an inflated income! What have I to offer anybody ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... when some poor sufferer was passing away and would recommend Rushton & Co. to the bereaved and distracted relatives. By these means often—after first carefully inquiring into the financial position of the stricken family—Misery would contrive to wriggle his unsavoury carcass into the house of sorrow, seeking, even in the chamber of death, to further the interests of Rushton & Co. and to earn his miserable two and a ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... parish and given to one who had a large Protestant flock—an arrangement which would disgust the Catholics as much as or more than any other, and be considered a perfect mockery. The fact is we may shift and change and wriggle about as much as we will, we may examine and report and make laws, but tithe, the tithe system is at an end. The people will not pay them, and there are no means of compelling them. The march of events is just as certain as that of the seasons. The question which is said ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... returned Smith. "He's yonder behind the camp. He'd be an eel or a sarpint to wriggle out ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... people—not even if the backslider be my own husband. Thar's got to be some few folks on the side of decency, an' I'm one of 'em. Virtue's a slippery thing—that's how I look at it—an' if you don't git a good grip on it an' watch it with a mighty stern eye it's precious apt to wriggle through yo' fingers. I'm an honest woman, Mr. Fletcher, an' I wouldn't blush to own it in the presence ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... now, Molly," he suggested at last. Then he turned to Chris, who was watching him with almost no expression. "You can wriggle your chair to the phone in half an hour, I guess. Knock the phone off and yell for help. It's better than you deserve, unless you really ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... Quarriar clearly condemns him. The partner will be there, and I have arranged for Quarriar's landlord to appear if you think it necessary. I may add that I have very good reason to believe that Quarriar does not mean to appear. I fancy he is trying to wriggle out of ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... little more money needed than we had. And when you came she couldn't bear to have the strain touch you, and almost the last thing she said was, 'You'll make it easier for her, she's such a little tot.' It wasn't because I meant to wriggle out of my promise that made me pretend not to see when your shoes gave out and your dresses got old and things in the house didn't ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... never have to do another day's worrying or pinching in all your life. But never you nor anybody else depend upon an Arab's gratitude or an Arab's generosity. He'll promise you the moon, and then wriggle out of giving you so much as a star—just as Abdul ben Meerza did with me.' And upon Miss Morrison asking what he meant by that, he replied, laughingly: 'Ask Van; he knew the old codger better than I—knew his whole blessed family, blow ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... cavalry officers on the frontier, is a strong advocate of this. Either the pennon should be knotted, or a boss of some sort affixed about eighteen inches below the point. Unless this be done there is a danger of the lance penetrating too far, when it either gets broken or allows the enemy to wriggle up and strike the lancer. This last ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... began to tug and haul at it until it came loose, while the taller girl began to divest herself of her handsome fur collar and coat. Eleanor gasped, and the next moment nearly passed away, for now Miss "Chiffon-Veil's" skirts fell from her, and Miss "Tall-Blonde" began to wriggle out of her garments as a boy might wriggle out of his coat and vest.... It was all Eleanor could do to repress a cry of horror. Then off fell the big hat, the hair coming with it, and before her stood a tall, fair boy in his trousers ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... to get at. If there is not, and especially if anything is there which he wishes to shun, a four hundred and fifty pounder cannot crash a hole large enough for you to push him through. By such a pitiful chink as that did his Infallible Highness wriggle himself out of the range of my guns, and pursue his line ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... into the pot, took hold of the ferret, and was about to place it in the box; but it gave a wriggle and writhe, glided out of Mercer's hand, crept under the corn-bin, and, as he tried to reach it, I saw it run out at the back, and creep down a hole in the floor boards, one ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... in great haste," retorted Barnes, striving to wriggle free from her grip. "I would advise you to call ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... above the water, tossing the fish in its jaws and making a tremendous commotion. I was much struck also by the singular appearance presented by certain diving birds having very long and snaky necks (the Plotus Anhinga). Occasionally a long serpentine form would suddenly wriggle itself to a height of a foot and a half above the glassy surface of the water, producing such a deceptive imitation of a snake that at first I had some difficulty in believing it to be the neck of a bird; it did not remain long in view, but soon plunged again ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... take his place among the toilers. By nightfall the whole of our catch was on board, excepting such toll as the hungry hordes of sharks had levied upon it in transit. A goodly number of them had paid the penalty of their rapacity with their lives, for often one would wriggle his way right up on to the reeking carcass, and, seizing a huge fragment of blubber, strive with might and main to tear it away. Then the lethal spade would drop upon his soft crown, cleaving it to the ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... this young man should press his right thumb against the wall in taking his hat from the peg! Such a very natural action, too, if you come to think of it." Holmes was outwardly calm, but his whole body gave a wriggle of suppressed excitement as he spoke. "By the way, Lestrade, who made ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... chunks of plaster in front of me in such a way that their fall made no noise. When the moment came, at the very second when my swooning features vanished before your eyes, I simply jumped into my retreat, thanks to a rather plucky little wriggle of ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... coolly awaiting my arrival. On the whole, I think that being in his grasp was almost preferable to the feeling that he was dogging my steps. His left hand gripped the collar of my jacket and flannel shirt, and instantly I began to wriggle, twisting my leg about his own in an attempt to bring him to the ground; but the man was of enormous strength, and, freeing himself, he shook me as a terrier shakes a rat, until I felt there was little breath left in ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... Although your painter may drop hints for the soul, let him not strain above his pitch lest he crack his larynx. To his colour he may add form in the flat; but he cannot escape the flat, however he may wriggle, any more than the sculptor can escape the round, scrape he never so wisely. Buonarroti will scrape and shift; the Fleming has scraped and shifted all his days to as little purpose. His seed-pearls invite your touch. Touch them, my friend, you will smear your fingers. Ne sutor ultra ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... wriggle back from the brushwood screen. He was filled with the sort of sick rage that comes when you can't actively resent insolence and arrogance. He hated the people who wanted the world to collapse, and this was part of their effort to bring ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... glad light, and she took Patricia in her arms. "It's perfectly glorious, Miss Pat, darling," she said with a rapturous squeeze. "I'm so delighted I can't help kissing you on the spot," and she did it with a heartiness that made Patricia wriggle. ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... several times over, it usually happened that one of the songsters who claimed to be gifted with more perspicuity than his comrades would remind them that he had seen the old squirrel wriggle under the lash of the song. And so their wretched days of starvation were often made shorter by a more or less harmless attack on the poor skipper, who might only be the instrument of a parsimonious managing owner. But that was not the only ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... nice circus, and all the boys from the camp went to it—also Edward, who managed to scramble over and wriggle under benches till he was sitting near ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... else be blamed for what you have done," he said once to her. "I understand that you are not really a coward, Sarah—you have to fight an extra enemy called Fear. So when you do wrong and see a chance to escape blame and punishment and refuse to wriggle out, you are really braver than the girl who isn't afraid to say she did it. And every time you conquer Fear, Sarah, you've made the next conquest easier. ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... away?" muttered the submarine boy. "Well, that's it should be. I wonder if there are any more of this strange crew—men or women spies that don't happen to have suspected so far? If there are, I don't believe they'll wriggle through the meshes of old Uncle Sam's Secret ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... the first? Hall did not hesitate, however, for one instant. Up he went again. But, in fact, his best chance was in going up, for he was within four yards of the top when the mishap occurred. With a sigh of relief I saw him at last throw his arm over the verge and then wriggle his body upon the ledge. A few seconds later he was lying on his stomach, with his face over the edge, ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... hound. The way to put an end to the gaudy crimes that the suffragist alarmists talk about is to shave the heads of all the pretty girls in the world, and pluck out their eyebrows, and pull their teeth, and put them in khaki, and forbid them to wriggle on dance-floors, or to wear scents, or to use lip-sticks, or to roll their eyes. Reform, as usual, mistakes the ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... way blindly through the dark chambers, calling the great thoats after me. They had difficulty in negotiating some of the doorways, but as the buildings fronting the city's principal exposures were all designed upon a magnificent scale, they were able to wriggle through without sticking fast; and thus we finally made the inner court where I found, as I had expected, the usual carpet of moss-like vegetation which would prove their food and drink until I could return them ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the teeth of all the maxims recognised by worldly prudence. He says, in effect, 'Mind very little about getting on and getting up. Do God's will wherever you are, and let the rest take care of itself.' Now, the world says, 'Struggle, wriggle, fight, do anything to better yourself.' Paul says, 'You will better yourself by getting nearer God, and if you secure that—art thou a slave? care not for it; if thou mayest be free, use it rather; art thou bound to a wife? seek not to be loosed; ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... the other hand, will show clearly by the violence of the response provoked that their nervous system is easily stimulated and exhausted. They will wriggle and squirm for hours together, emitting the same constant reflex cry. The whole body will start convulsively at a sudden touch or a loud sound which would evoke no response from a more stolid infant. The sleeplessness and crying exhaust the baby, rendering the ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... is well used at that school or not, don't draw Dicky into a corner of the playground, and with tender kisses and promises of inviolable secrecy coax him to open his little heart to you, and tell you whether he is really happy; leave such folly to women—it is a weakness to wriggle into the ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... in a loud whisper, "why do they crowd these lifts in this disgusting way? And WHY," with another wriggle, "do they permit PERSONS with packages to ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... like a banjo and guitar," said Katy. "Oh, I do love a guitar. It always makes me think of 'Gaily the troubadour.'" Katy gave a wriggle of delight at this romantic ending to the night's festivities. She was already planning to tell the girls at ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... I lay flatten'd along the beam, scarce daring to breathe. But at length, when the man had pass'd below for the sixth time, I found heart to wriggle myself toward the doorway over which the gallows protruded. By slow degrees, and pausing whenever the fellow drew near, I crept close up to the wall: then, waiting the proper moment, cast my legs over, dangled for a second or two swinging myself toward the sill, flung myself off, and, touching ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... we must tax raw materials. But this move again was promptly checkmated by the clear and repeated declaration of the Colonial representatives that they did not expect us to tax raw materials. And so nothing was left to Ministers, determined as they were to wriggle out of any agreement with the Colonies at all costs, except to fall back on the old, weary parrot-cry—"Will you tax corn?" "Will you tax butter?" and so on through the whole list of articles of common consumption, the taxation of any one of which ...
— Constructive Imperialism • Viscount Milner
... was forced to halt and, in the dark, loosen and pick out stones embedded in the mud bottom narrowing the passage. On the other side of that danger point, he was free to wriggle on. Could the box trace him now? He had no idea of the principle on which it operated; he ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... hairdresser is lacing for one of his customers. Another of the party, who has completed the upper part of his toilet, is so hampered with the voluminous folds and stiffening of his cravat that he cannot wriggle into his unmentionables. The caricaturists take us into the garrets of these fellows, abodes of squalor and wretchedness, and show us that beneath their exterior magnificence there is nothing, or next ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... mother, who are no more than her chief ministers, walk before her out of the saloon, and then she—swims after them. But swimming is not the proper word. Fishes, in making their way through the water, assist, or rather impede, their motion with no dorsal wriggle. No animal taught to move directly by its Creator adopts a gait so useless, and at the same time so graceless. Many women, having received their lessons in walking from a less eligible instructor, do move in this way, and such women this unfortunate ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... by any chance I do—we shall have no time to spare, and must have Simpkins definitely committed to the marriage as soon as possible. Not that it will really be much use if the judge gets at him. Simpkins is just the sort of dishonourable beast who'd seize on any excuse to wriggle out of an engagement; particularly as he'll know that Miss King is scarcely in a position to go into court and get damages for breach ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... I did bring up by Doc's camp-fire shows that I am able to take care of myself. If I get into scrapes, I can wriggle out of them again," maintained the kid of the camp, with a brazen look, while his eyes showed flinty sparks, caused by the inspiring purpose hidden behind them, which had little to ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... use. I recollect another instance which was not so tragical. A Hottentot was carried off by a lion during the night, wrapped up in his sheep-skin kaross, sleeping, as they usually do, with his face to the ground. As the lion trotted away with him, the fellow contrived to wriggle out of his kaross, and the lion went off ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... as if I was wrong, for he tried it again. Another shock he got, burst himself a'most wid a most fearful yell, an' bolted. His brothers didn't seem to understand it quite. They looked after him in surprise. Then the biggest wan gave a wriggle of his curly tail, an' wint to the post as if to inquire what was the matter. When he got it on the nose the effect was surprisin'. The curl of his tail came straight out, an' it quivered for a minute all over, wid its mouth wide open. The screech ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... and in their pictures we lend Nature enough humanity to make her interesting. My lord is lascivious? Correggio will give him a background to his mood. My lord is majestic? Michelangelo will tell him that man is, indeed, a noble animal whose muscles wriggle heroically as watch-springs. The sixteenth century produced a race of artists peculiar in their feeling for material beauty, but normal, coming as they do at the foot of the hills, in their technical proficiency and aesthetic indigence. Craft holds the candle that betrays the bareness ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... said, "that Mrs. Geraghty will be up at the house again. Aunt Juliet wouldn't trust anybody else to hook up Lady Torrington's back. I can do my own, of course; but nobody can who is either fat or dignified. I'm pretty lean, but even I have to wriggle a lot." ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... a noiseless graceful bound, and Punch was at his side. A wild scrambling rush, a wriggle on the sill, a patter over the window-seat, and Scamp was twisting himself into white figure-eights all over the room, with tremendous energy but not a sound save the soft pad ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... come the Judge, tougher than rawhide, half walking and half flying, his wings spread out, 'cree-ing' to himself about bulldogs and their ways; next come Bobby, still sputtering and swearing, and behind ambled Thomas at a lively wriggle, a coy, ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... itself—he was too much alive to need driving in that respect. But he did show nervous timidity at feeding with the other horses, and so Miguel cheerfully went to the urging with fork and tongue. But only the one time. Soon the colt took to burying his nose in the box along with the others, and would wriggle his tail with a vigor that seemed to tell of his gratitude at being accepted as part of the great establishment and its devices. And then another thing. With this change in his method of feeding, he soon came to reveal steadily increasing courage and independence. Oftentimes ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... understand how public opinion tolerated for so long the abominable cruelty of forcing little boys to clamber up flues. These unhappy brats were made to creep into the chimneys from the grates, and then to wriggle their way up by digging their toes into the interstices of the bricks, and by working their elbows and knees alternately; stifled in the pitch-darkness of the narrow flue by foul air, suffocated by the showers of soot that fell on ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... untended, without dressings, food, or water, and harassed by the fire from both sides and from our artillery. It was a very painful thing to watch these poor fellows moving about feebly and trying to wriggle themselves into some position of safety, and it reminded me of the wounded Dervishes after Omdurman—only these were ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... said my father. "Your chain is locked, I see:—but no matter,—I can loosen it so that you can wriggle through." By having cut the cords, around which the chain had been passed, he had relieved the tautness, and was now able to do what he promised. He then took off my boots, and, grasping me under the arms, ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... other for close fighting. Assegais, you know. That's the name of it. Only the eyes. Creeping, creeping, creeping. No noise. One raised. Waggons drawn up in laager. Oxen out-spanned in the middle. Trekking all day. Tired out; dog tired. Crawl, crawl, crawl! Hands and knees. Might be snakes. A wriggle. Men sitting about the camp fire. Smoking. Gleam of their eyes! Under the waggons. Nearer, nearer, nearer! Then, the throwing ones in your midst. Shower of 'em. Right and left. 'Halloa! stand by, boys!' Look up; see 'em swarming, black like ants, over the waggons. ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... sat and stood round watching them in a ring for a long time, but to a rational, common-sense, shrewd, unimaginative set of people like the Fans, just standing hour after hour gazing on a dance you do not understand, and which consists of a wriggle and a stamp, a wriggle and a stamp, in a solemn walk, or prance, round and round, to the accompaniment of a monotonous phrase thumped on a tom- tom and a monotonous, melancholy chant, uttered in ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... a couple of the new tight beams installed to channel Moon and Mars on the cube. Much better than the usual staged bilge. Say, that reminds me, a couple hours ago Mars projector had a scanner on one of the exploration parties caught out in a psychosonic storm. Jove, did they wriggle! Even in atomsuits they were better than Messalina Magdalen working on her last G-string. Here, I'll switch it ...
— Zero Data • Charles Saphro
... not permit on any account. They had been used to having their kings rule in a truly grand and kingly manner; and they insisted that he have built for himself the most magnificent palace ever seen. In all else they let him have his own way absolutely; but they wouldn't allow him to wriggle out of any of the ceremony or show that goes with being a king. A thousand servants he had to keep in his palace, night and day, to wait on him. The Royal Canoe had to be kept up—a gorgeous, polished mahogany boat, seventy feet long, inlaid with mother-o'-pearl ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... be Napoleon's double. Hippolyte Charles had been the friend of Leclerc, and Paulette resolutely set her mind on inflicting salutary punishment on her sister-in-law for the wrong she was doing her brother. She quickly managed to wriggle confidences out of Leclerc concerning the Josephine-Charles connection, then peached. Charles was banished from the army, and, on the authority of Madame Leclerc, we learn that Josephine "nearly died of grief." The ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... done yet. You'll be glad o' my advice in the end. Experience 'elps a lot. Some men wot's goin' to be married gets a sort o' funk at the last minnit and, bless you, they'd wriggle out o' it, yes, even if they was goin' to marry an angel out o' 'eaven. My friend's 'usband was one o' them sort—wanted to stop the 'ole thing with the weddin' cake ordered, an' lodgings taken at Margate for the ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... "Selina Brown and Laura Nelson ought to have more principle than engage in anything so dishonorable. They've managed to wriggle out of it at Marian's expense, but they have both lost caste by it. Depend upon it, a great many girls here will have their own opinion of the whole affair and it won't be complimentary to Marian, ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... said the gentleman, as the Phoenix, with one last wriggle that melted into a flutter, got out of its nest in the breast of Robert and stood up on ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... a lump of ice!" Irene Paul often said, putting her own plump arms about Adelle's thin little body; and while Adelle tried to wriggle out of the embrace she teased her by assuming the ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... nervously at a neatly trimmed brown beard, trying to wriggle out of the dilemma into which Hal put him. Yes, it might possibly be that a young miner was being followed on the streets of the town; but whether or not this was against the law depended on the circumstances. If he had made a disturbance ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... no doubt, but Paul hardly felt like laughing, just then. He tried to wriggle around so as to get at the loop, in the hope that he might loosen the same; but all his efforts ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... man spread his arms in a wide, Gallic gesture. "They looked for him everywhere. No sign. But by and by some one saw a quite large piece of mud on the hospital roof begin to wriggle. The little Garin was that large piece of mud. They brought him down and put him in the hospital which he had saved. For a long time he had shell-shock. Even now he cannot speak of the war without his nerves being affected. When ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... pony to the horseblock, and by much squirming managed to wriggle on; then trotted over ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... too proud to ask his client to keep the deadly secret, or to apply the famous wriggle of Hippolytus: "My tongue hath sworn, but my heart ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various
... "There, don't wriggle that way or I shall stick the needle in you. To go and have a big genuine fight like that and ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... had been lured to the house under false pretences, grew among Lady Dauntrey's visitors and was expressed stealthily, a word here, a word there, and sullen looks behind the backs of host and hostess. Even on the first day disappointment began to wriggle from guest to guest, like a little cold, sharp-nosed snake, leaving its clammy trail ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... never let it mar the mutual love, That now unites us eye to eye, If, superficially, we seem to shove Our fingers in your Irish pie— An action which, if you should so behave, Would make old MONROE wriggle in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... of the men and many of the women shrank back while those that had babies, or little folks, snatched up their children, fearing lest the poisonous snakes might wriggle towards them. ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... rambles on in her aimless talking the children are bored, inexpressibly bored. It is axiomatic that the learning process does not flourish in a state of boredom. Under the ordeal of verbal inundation the children wriggle and squirm about in their seats and this affords her a new point of attack. She calls them ill-bred and unmannerly and wonders at the homes that can produce such children. She does not realize that if these children were ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... to Montreuil-sur-Mer, on a shining summer afternoon. A road between dusty hedges, choked, literally strangled, by a torrent of westward-streaming troops of all arms. Every few minutes there would come a break in the flow, and our motor would wriggle through, advance a few yards, and be stopped again by a widening of the torrent that jammed us into the ditch and splashed a dazzle of dust into our eyes. The dust was stifling—but through it, what ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... a 325-mm. shell has knocked a clean hole through which a mastodon might wriggle. Just opposite this transept, amid universal wreckage, a cafe is miraculously preserved. Its glass, mugs, counters, chairs, and ornaments are all there, covered with white dust, exactly as they were left one night. ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... to be too sanguine. You know my philosophy. I've seen a scratched finger kill a man; I've known puny babes wriggle out of Death's hand when I could have sworn it had closed upon them for good and all. Where there ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... found it very trying to his patience and began to understand how Quonab had felt about himself a year ago. "See," said Rolf, "lift your legs so; don't turn your feet out that way. Look at the place before you put it down again; feel with your toe to make sure there is no dead stick, then wriggle it down to the solid ground. Of course, you'd do better in moccasins. Never brush past any branches; lift them aside and don't let them scratch; ease them back to the place; never try to bend a dry branch; go around it," etc. Van had not thought of these things, ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... noise. So they came and peeping from behind the curtains saw the King lying on his back and upon him Ali Shar, thrusting and slashing whilst she puffed and blew and wriggled. Quoth they, "Verily, this be no man's wriggle: belike this King is a woman.''[FN325] But they concealed their affair and discovered it to none. And when the morrow came, Zumurrud summoned all the troops and the lords of the realm and said to them, "I am minded to journey to this man's country; so choose you a viceroy, who shall rule ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... tried to laugh and wriggle away, but the cashier's gimlet eyes kept boring him, and eventually he fished out a five-dollar bill and handed it in. Mr. Hooker placed the two bills in the envelop, sealed it, and handed it to ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... with a conceited wriggle, what could be the merits of a country, where gentlemanly, gliding, thin-skinned creatures like himself were unable to move about without personal annoyance? Whereupon the amiable 'SOMETHING' made no scruple of telling the lob-worm that his BETTERS found no ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... ones found their way into the pool, and on Friday the cook and his men supplied the tables with fresh fish. How many times have I seen those fine fish, caught on the prongs of a spear, writhe and wriggle to get off. At first I could not taste them, I felt so sorry to see them killed in that way. I would not go out on Friday until after the fishing was done. The lamper eels crawled up the stream and the men gathered them by the barrels full ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... so loose in their partially emptied box that they could wriggle and even change positions if they liked. The big young man wheeled, passed his arm round Winifred's waist as if for a waltz, half lifted her off her feet, and set her down where he ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... maternity of eels, we know a great deal about their childhood and youth, or, to speak more eelishly, their grigginess and elverhood. The young grigs, when they do make their appearance, leave us in no doubt at all about their presence or their reality. They wriggle up weirs, walls, and floodgates; they force there way bodily through chinks and apertures; they find out every drain, pipe, or conduit in a given plane rectilinear figure; and when all other spots have been fully occupied, they take to ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... leave four or five men on guard close by; as it was, when the men still on board the dhow began kicking up a babel, Fred and I came running and jumping back through the marsh just in time to see a crocodile wriggle off into the water, with the corpse in his jaws feet first. Fred fired a shotted salute, but missed, and that ended ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... crawled and revelled in darkness. And the myth has a great truth in it. The light of God's face slays evil, of whatsoever kind it is; and just as the unlovely, loathsome creatures that live in the dark and find themselves at ease there writhe and wriggle in torment, and die when their shelter is taken away and they are exposed to the light beating on their soft bodies, so the light of God's face turned upon evil things smites them into nothingness. Thus 'the secret of His countenance' is the shelter ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... few of the men and many of the women shrank back while those that had babies, or little folks, snatched up their children, fearing lest the poisonous snakes might wriggle towards them. ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... I must die On gallows high And wriggle in a noose, I'll none repine Nor weep nor whine, For where would be the use? Yet sad am I That I must die With rogues so base and small, Sly coney-catchers, Poor girdle-snatchers, That do ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... to the camp she felt a trifle remorseful about her behavior. Some day she would marry him—she had got far enough to admit that—and perhaps it was unkind of her not to let the matter be settled. And at that she gave a petulant wriggle of her shoulders under her cotton blouse. Wasn't that his business? Wasn't he the one to end it, not wait on her pleasure? Were all men so easily ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... trench. If they really intended business against us, which I doubt, they were half-hearted in carrying it out. They didn't show for five minutes, and they left two or three score men on the ground. Whenever we saw a man wriggle we were told to fire at him; it might be an unwounded man trying to crawl back. For a time our guns gave them beans. Then it was practically over, but about sunset their guns got back at us again, and the artillery fight went on until it was moonlight. The chaps in our third company caught it ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... villains stood together a plaguey time perfecting their plans, and Robin dared scarcely breathe. Once, when he attempted to wriggle his way through the bracken, at the first sound of movement both men had become utterly silent, showing that they had heard and waited ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... him. I have the priestling in a sack. I have him trussed and bound and gagged, so that he can neither speak nor wriggle!" ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... just a lump of ice!" Irene Paul often said, putting her own plump arms about Adelle's thin little body; and while Adelle tried to wriggle out of the embrace she teased her by assuming the man's ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... limits of his shelter he dropped upon his stomach and began to wriggle through the grass. It pleased him to do this. It gave him a sense of delight at the thought of the horrible awakening the cowardly boy was presently ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... may have lurked in it when first removed. Lay the turves out in a frame, grass side downwards, and give them a soaking with water in which a very small quantity of salt has been dissolved. This will cause the remaining bots and slugs to wriggle out, and by means of a little patient labour they can be gathered and destroyed. In January or February sow the seed rather thickly in lines along the centre of each strip of turf, and cover with fine ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... but wriggle restlessly about on their seats, pick their nostrils, and bite their nails. They are always wanting to be doing something, but soon tire of it, and start something else, which is as quickly cast aside; their energy ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... Metaphor is an enigma, wherein the thief who is plotting a stroke, the prisoner who is arranging an escape, take refuge. No idiom is more metaphorical than slang: devisser le coco (to unscrew the nut), to twist the neck; tortiller (to wriggle), to eat; etre gerbe, to be tried; a rat, a bread thief; il lansquine, it rains, a striking, ancient figure which partly bears its date about it, which assimilates long oblique lines of rain, with the dense and slanting pikes of the lancers, and which compresses into a single word the popular ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... could mention who took part in this contention, And at first 'twas my intention, but at present I forbear; There's young Look-sharp, and Wriggle, who would make an angel giggle, And a young conceited Zeigel, who was seated near the door; If you could only see them, you'd laugh till you were sore, And then ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... every spring and fall he had helped the maids "clean house," taking up and laying carpets. The knowledge stood him in good stead now. What window upstairs would be open, he wondered. The bath-room, of course; it was small, but he could wriggle through it, he told himself, or he would break every bone in his body, at least, trying. All this time he was running and crouching along the shadow of the high stone wall, that, bordered with shrubs, made splendid "cover." He reached the kitchen, and, without waiting ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... polite address, and pleased with his agreeable discourse. He consoled him for the misfortunes of his family, by assuring him, that in England nothing could be more honourable, or indeed profitable, than the character of a physician, provided he could once wriggle himself into practice; and insinuated, that, although he was restricted by certain engagements with other persons of the faculty, he should be glad of an opportunity to show his regard for Doctor Fathom. This was a very effectual method ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... dislocated by my trifling experiment! The thought, again, of the mighty revolution in human beliefs and affairs that might grow out of the same insignificant little phenomenon. A wine-glassful of clear liquid growing muddy. If we had found a wriggle, or a zigzag, or a shoot from one side to the other, in this last flask, what a scare there would have been, to be sure, in the schools of the prophets! Talk about your megatherium and your megalosaurus,—what are these to the bacterium and the vibrio? These are the ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... said, though in tones little like any he was used to hearing from his own lips. But he would not dare look himself in the face again if he did not make at least a wriggle before surrendering. ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... vivacious attack upon the Cippenham Motor Depot, it is doubtful whether anyone could have enabled the Government to wriggle out of the demand for an independent inquiry. At any rate Lord INVERFORTH was insufficiently agile. The innumerable type-written sheets which he read out laboriously may have contained a complete reply to Lord DESBOROUGH'S main allegations, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... to himself; but presently he began to wriggle backward, keeping the greasewood clump, and afterwards certain rocks and little ridges, between himself and a view of the point he had fixed upon as the spot ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... his foot and scraped some snow off a nearby log, and set the baby down there while he took off his coat and wrapped it around him, buttoning it like a bag over arms and all. The baby watched him knowingly, its eyes round and dark blue and shining, and gave a contented little wriggle when Bud picked it up again in ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... sufferer was passing away and would recommend Rushton & Co. to the bereaved and distracted relatives. By these means often—after first carefully inquiring into the financial position of the stricken family—Misery would contrive to wriggle his unsavoury carcass into the house of sorrow, seeking, even in the chamber of death, to further the interests of Rushton & Co. and to earn his miserable two and ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... the little beggars one at a time—go for them, throttle them, wring their necks, jump on them; and if they wriggle, stamp!" ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... water—a straight, well-built, ruddy-skinned fellow—every inch a man! What birth and station had done for him would become apparent when his valet began to hand him his Bond Street outfit. The next instant William stood beside him. Then there came a wriggle about the shoulders, the slip of a buckle, and he was overboard and out again before my lord had discarded his ...
— The Parthenon By Way Of Papendrecht - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... hand had returned him to the warm dugs. Again came the harsh, suspicious nose of the foster about Finn's tail, and this time a low growl followed the resentful sniff, and blind, helpless, unformed little jelly that Finn was, instinct made him wriggle fearfully from under that cold nose. The language in which bitches speak to the very young among puppies is simplicity itself. The Master, human though he was, had not failed to catch the sense of this observation of ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... Bingham, not excepting the wooden Indian girl in front of the cigar-store, and not one of 'em but our Abby ever got a chance to name the day. Abby was as set as the everlastin' hills, and if she'd made up her mind to have a man he could n't wriggle away from her nohow in the world. It beats all how girls do run after these slick-haired, sweet-tongued, Miss Nancy kind o' fellers, that ain't but little good as beaux an' worth ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... was tied up at the end of a stone wharf, obviously awaiting them, and the captives were tied hand and foot and tossed into the hold. Jason managed to wriggle around until he could get his eye to a crack between two badly fitting planks and recited a running travelogue of the cruise, apparently for the edification of his companions, but really for his own benefit since the sound of his own voice ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... asked with the expression of pained surprise that never failed to make his ward wriggle with delight. There were links in the educational scheme that Jimmie forged better than any of the cooperative guardians. Not even Jimmie realized the value of the giggle as a developing factor in Eleanor's ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... Hush'd the caves of its breath, and the finger of death The raised features hath flatten'd along. The eyes' wonted beam, and the eyelids' quick gleam— The intelligent sight, are no more; But the worms of the soil, as they wriggle and coil, Come hither their dwellings to bore. No lineament here is left to declare If monarch or chief art thou; Alexander the Brave, as the portionless slave That on dunghill expires, is as low. Thou delver of death, in my ear let thy breath Who tenants my hand, unfold; That my voice may not ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... kept the refractory head in order; he endeavoured to kick and hit, but Gascoyne's left hand encircled him in such a comprehensive embrace and pressed him so powerfully to his piratical bosom that he could only wriggle. This he did without ceasing, until Gascoyne suddenly planted him on his feet, panting and dishevelled, before the astonished faces of Frederick Mason and ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... now so loose in their partially emptied box that they could wriggle and even change positions if they liked. The big young man wheeled, passed his arm round Winifred's waist as if for a waltz, half lifted her off her feet, and set her down where ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... to their experienced leader's satisfaction, they wrapped themselves like Indians in their blankets and tumbled down upon the heap of boughs; the air trembled with a chorus of strange sounds as one by one they dropped off into a drowsy sleep, with an occasional wriggle as a knot, or the end of a limb, made itself felt through the many-folded blanket, and engraved a distinct dent upon the sleeper's back; while overhead, the giant cloud crept upward slowly, slowly toward the zenith, spreading east and west without a break. One half of the valley ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... so as to leave openings. These openings are, say, 2 feet or more above the level of the front outside platform, and 1 foot or more above that of the inside floor, and are usually very small; so that, in entering or leaving the building, you have to step up to, or even climb, and wriggle yourself through the opening, and then step down on the other side. Inside the building you find the centre of the floor space occupied by a longitudinal fireplace, about 2 feet broad, extending from front ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... bear any one to make a noise but himself. In furtherance of this, he called in the aid of his Oxfordshire rhetoric. He would halloo at people, designating them by some peculiarity that he thought he could wriggle out of, if necessary, instead of attacking them by name. Thus, if a man spoke, or placed himself where Waffles thought he ought not to be (that is to say, anywhere but where Waffles was himself), he would exclaim, ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... hand into the pot, took hold of the ferret, and was about to place it in the box; but it gave a wriggle and writhe, glided out of Mercer's hand, crept under the corn-bin, and, as he tried to reach it, I saw it run out at the back, and creep down a hole in the floor boards, one evidently made ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... settled," replied Frank, tranquilly, and glancing furtively toward Burrill, who was beginning to wriggle uneasily in his chair. "Do you want to go anywhere ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... than they mean when they are engaged in emptying mine host's cellar. Come, gentlemen, another bottle. We must hang the damned young rebel, but we'll do him this much grace—we'll drink a happy despatch to him, a short wriggle at the end of his rope, and a pleasant journey to ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... which can only be set right by the truth of love. So long as the powers build a league on the foundation of their desire for safety, secure enjoyment of gains, consolidation of past injustice, and putting off the reparation of wrongs, while their fingers still wriggle for greed and reek of blood, rifts will appear in their union; and in future their conflicts will take greater force and magnitude. It is political and commercial egoism which is the evil harbinger of war. By different combinations it changes its shape and ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... say," put in Jake Brewer, grasping a large pickerel and thrusting his blade into its quivering body after removing the scales, "that it hurts her insides to see the critters wriggle under the knife. She air that ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... the paper it is written on. And when you'd got fooled so you thought C. & S.C. would pay par for your stock, what do you do but go around and tell a man you know is working for me all about it! And now when I've got you just where I want you, where you can only wriggle, you come around and try to scare me. Do you know what you are? You're just a ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... timekeepers to slide into it;) black, glossy crickets, with their long filaments sticking out like the whips of four-horse stage-coaches; motionless, slug-like creatures, young larvae, perhaps more horrible in their pulpy stillness than even in the infernal wriggle of maturity! But no sooner is the stone turned and the wholesome light of day let upon this compressed and blinded community of creeping things, than all of them which enjoy the luxury of legs—and some of them have a good many—rush round wildly, butting each other and everything in ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... this. I believe it is because the man has departed even by a trifle from his own natural stance. A change of the position of the feet by even a couple of inches one way or the other may alter the stance altogether, and knock the player clean off his putting. In this new position he will wriggle about and feel uncomfortable. Everything is wrong. His coat is in the way, his pockets seem too full of old balls, the feel of his stockings on his legs irritates him, and he is conscious that there is a nail coming up on the inside of the sole of his ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... came a small voice belittling the great man as "quite too 'loud,' painfully excessive." Browning was manly enough to laugh at all ghoulish cries of any kind whatsoever. Once in a way the lion would look round and by a raised breath make the jackals wriggle; as when the poet wrote to a correspondent, who had drawn his attention to certain abusive personalities in some review or newspaper: "Dear Sir—I am sure you mean very kindly, but I have had too ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... narrow brown pathway that will not run straight; For it turns and it twists and it wanders about To the left and the right, as in humorous doubt. 'Tis a humorous path, and a joke from its birth Till it ends at the door with a wriggle of mirth. And here in the mount lives the queer tinker man With his little red dog and his ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... There is not, in or out of an attorney's office in the county of Erie, or elsewhere, one who could raise a doubt, or a particle of a doubt, about the meaning of this provision of the Constitution. He may act as witnesses do, sometimes, on the stand. He may wriggle, and twist, and say he cannot tell, or cannot remember. I have seen many such efforts in my time, on the part of witnesses, to falsify and deny the truth. But there is no man who can read these words of the Constitution of the United States, and say they are not clear and ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... side of the Nevsky about four o'clock in the afternoon. Though it was hardly a stroll so much as a series of innumerable miseries, humiliations and resentments; but no doubt that was just what I wanted. I used to wriggle along in a most unseemly fashion, like an eel, continually moving aside to make way for generals, for officers of the guards and the hussars, or for ladies. At such minutes there used to be a convulsive twinge at my heart, and I used to feel ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... is required to stand on his hands with legs stretched at full length in the air, and then wriggle the ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... game!"—there was bitter anger in his voice now. "You see the game! He wanted to get me in deep enough so that I couldn't wriggle out, deeper than ten thousand that I could get at any time on my insurance, he wanted me where I couldn't get away—and he got me. The first ten thousand wasn't enough. I went to him for a second, a third, a fourth, ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... to think that if he looked at no one and addressed nobody, when he spoke, he might the more easily wriggle out of his ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... well-dressed and civilised savages, wet, cross, weary, all anxious to get in—eager for home and dinner; five hundred stiffened and cramped folk equally eager to get out—mix on a narrow platform, with a train running off one side, and a detached engine gliding gently after it. Push, wriggle, wind in and out, bumps from portmanteaus, and so at last out ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... too wretched to hear this tirade, could only mumble and wail and wriggle closer and closer into the folds of ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... tried to illustrate how thoughtful and generous Hogboom was he blundered into the story of the time Hoggy bet all of his money on a baseball game at Muggledorfer, and of how he walked home with his chum and carried the latter's coat and grip all the way. That made the Faculty wriggle, I can tell you. He illustrated the pluck of the deceased by telling how Hogboom, as a Freshman, dug all night alone to rescue a man imprisoned in a sewer, spurred on by his cries—though Rogers explained in his halting way, it afterward turned out that this was only ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... him blankly. Wally gave an expressive wriggle in his chair, and Jim sat up suddenly, with a flush ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... sand when the tide has just gone. With quick but steady movements, you make a series of deep "criss-crosses;" and when the fish is disturbed by the hooks you whip him smartly out, and put him in the basket before his magical wriggle has taken him deep into the sand again. The women stooping over the shining floor look like ghostly harvesters reaping invisible crops. They are very silent, and their steps are feline. Peggy worked out her day, and then she would go home and cut up the eels for the next ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... says I. I looks roun' fur somethin' good fur beatin' out brains, an' dar lays my ax. I grabs it up, now ready fur a cleaver, an' no mistake. Big Injun ain't, though; he ain't ready fur any sich a thing. Up he comes wid a whirl, an' down I goes wid a fling, my ax a-flyin' way out yander. But in de wriggle uf a buck's tail comes up nigger ag'in; goes down Injun ag'in. Yes, an' a leetle mo' dan dat: nigger an' Injun clean ober de turn uf de hill, an' now a-slidin', slidin' down whar it ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... he is without a wig, for we saw him, on the occasion to which we are so guardedly referring, both in a wig and out of it; he passed behind a screen without it, and immediately (as quickly as we write) popped out in it, giving it a finishing touch rather like the butler's wriggle to his coat as he goes to the door. There are the two kinds of learned brothers, those who use the screen, and those who (so far as the jury knows) sleep in their wigs. The latter are the swells, and include the judges; whom, however, we have ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... I'll wriggle my way to that tree," pointing, "and you creep behind that one," pointing again, this time to a tree perhaps a hundred yards ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... throw the chunks of plaster in front of me in such a way that their fall made no noise. When the moment came, at the very second when my swooning features vanished before your eyes, I simply jumped into my retreat, thanks to a rather plucky little wriggle of the loins. ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... moon also, the earth is motionless: these are natural physical prejudices. But that lobsters are good for the blood, because when cooked they are red; that eels cure paralysis because they wriggle; that the moon affects our maladies because one day someone observed that a sick man had an increase of fever during the waning of the moon; these ideas and a thousand others are the errors of ancient charlatans ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... Need n't wriggle, Mistah Catfish, case I got you jes' de same, You been eatin', I 'll be eatin', an' we needah ain't to blame. But you need n't feel so lonesome fu' I 's th'owin' out to see Ef dey ain't some of yo' comrades ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... soon as they was paid off, with a view to saving. I knew one man as used to keep all but a shilling or two in a belt next to 'is skin so that he couldn't get at it easy, but it was all no good. He was always running short in the most inconvenient places. I've seen 'im wriggle for five minutes right off, with a tramcar conductor standing over 'im and the other people in the tram reading their papers with one eye and ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... my wilful companion sent me off at a fresh angle, and presently I came in sight of the village church, sitting solitary within its circle of elms. From forth the vestry window projected two small legs, gyrating, hungry for foothold, with larceny—not to say sacrilege—in their every wriggle: a godless sight for a supporter of the Establishment. Though the rest was hidden, I knew the legs well enough; they were usually attached to the body of Bill Saunders, the peerless bad boy of the village. Bill's coveted booty, ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... Lizard," I heard the mayor mutter to himself, "like a snake you wriggle where honest folk fall to destruction!" But he spoke condescendingly to the bright-eyed, breathless child. "I'll pay six sous ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... was certain that if that little monkey had managed to wriggle through some hole into the sea, on her voyage home, she would have swum after the ship and climbed up the rudder chains. Possibly, but she was only twelve months old! If, however, she had met with an early death, her mother's lot would have lacked ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... have the advantage. She would catch him in her powerful grasp, and, lifting him off his feet, swing him in the air as if about to slam him to his final resting-place, when by some inexplicable manoeuvre he would writhe from between her fingers or wriggle himself to the back of her neck and mash her nose flat against her breast as if bent on suffocating her or breaking her neck. In a moment she would reach back with both hands and pull him over her head very much as men doff a shirt. Likely as not, Chang came down with his heels in the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... let someone else be blamed for what you have done," he said once to her. "I understand that you are not really a coward, Sarah—you have to fight an extra enemy called Fear. So when you do wrong and see a chance to escape blame and punishment and refuse to wriggle out, you are really braver than the girl who isn't afraid to say she did it. And every time you conquer Fear, Sarah, you've made the next conquest easier. You'll ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... a river, was carried away by the current, but managed to wriggle on to a bundle of thorns which was floating by, and was thus carried at a great rate down-stream. A Fox caught sight of it from the bank as it went whirling along, and called out, "Gad! the ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... days last fall when he had been so closely cornered by his creditors that it took many a writhe and a wriggle to get through. Nobody but himself, unless it was the dour Tom Barton, knew how overwhelmingly ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... armed with trepans, bores through rock on the feeble Fly's behalf. Urged by a presentiment that to us remains an unfathomable mystery, the Cerambyx-grub leaves the inside of the oak, its peaceful retreat, its unassailable stronghold, to wriggle towards the outside, where lives the foe, the Woodpecker, who may gobble up the succulent little sausage. At the risk of its life, it stubbornly digs and gnaws to the very bark, of which it leaves no more intact than the thinnest ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... it's going to be nip and tuck if we ever get out of this? You've shown yourself, from start to finish, a miserable cheat; there's no trust to be put in either your judgment or your intentions. Be still," he commanded, as she sought to wriggle out of his grasp, to avoid the direct blaze of his eyes. "I am going to do what I can for you; to see you safe through this, if I can. Not because you are anything to me, but just because you are Ben Gaynor's, and ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... instance which was not so tragical. A Hottentot was carried off by a lion during the night, wrapped up in his sheep-skin kaross, sleeping, as they usually do, with his face to the ground. As the lion trotted away with him, the fellow contrived to wriggle out of his kaross, and the lion went off with ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the two families, each presented with a bamboo climbing-pole, leave their respective wallets. There is nothing remarkable about the mode of egress. The precincts to be crossed consist of a very slack net-work, through which the outcomers wriggle: weak little orange-yellow beasties, with a triangular black patch upon their sterns. One morning is long enough for the whole family to ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... had found her breath, and taken one quick look round as if to satisfy herself she was unobserved, suddenly cast herself down, in her turn, upon the damp earth, and inserting her head beneath the prickly barricade of the holly leaves, begin to crawl and wriggle forward until she had completely disappeared under it. What in the ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... country women, poorly groomed and inspiring him with disgust. He had given up his cowboy attire, and was displaying with childish satisfaction, the new suits in which a tailor of the Capital was trying to disguise him. When Elena wished to accompany him to Buenos Aires, he would wriggle out of it, trumping up some absorbing business. "No; you go ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... chorus of voices. 'Yes, it is Gauger Westhouse,' said the man calmly, giving his neck a wriggle as though he were in pain. 'I represent the King's law, and in its name I arrest ye all, and declare all the contraband goods which I see around me to be confiscate and forfeited, according to the second section of the first clause of ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... myself with the erotic intensity of pleasure, and soon began a rather furious pushing; each drive increased my ardour, making her wriggle and squirm her buttocks about so that had I not got a firm grasp with my hands I should have lost my position. Mary's fingers frigged her rapidly as well, and she managed with her other hand to caress my testicles, and every now and then grasped the root of my prick, drawing back the ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... incessantly and very objectionably," Molly says, thoughtfully. "I hate a man who sneezes publicly; and his sneeze is so unpleasant,—so exactly like that of a cat. A little wriggle of the entire body, and then ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... lest the sun should set,' he answered, and began to wriggle along so fast that the ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... on such occasions, Johnnie tried to wriggle out of milking. But he soon learned better. His father told him that a ...
— The Tale of the The Muley Cow - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... allude to that little innocent playfulness on your part, my dear sir," said Rodin, in his softest tone, approaching the two sisters with a wriggle which was peculiar to him; "if I allude to it, you see, it was suggested by the involuntary recollection of the little services I was happy enough to render you." Dagobert looked fixedly at Rodin, who instantly veiled his ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... I ever got my clutches on that has got away after it, and the first one that I ever felt like lettin' go. Somehow or other my old gun didn't burn and wriggle when I sot my eyes on him, as it is used to doin' in such cases; and if it wasn't fur that red hide of hisn' I wouldn't believe ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis
... for, because society is not animated, or instinct enough with life, but in the condition of some snakes which I have seen in early spring, with alternate portions of their bodies torpid and flexible, so that they could wriggle neither way. All men are partially buried in the grave of custom, and of some we see only the crown of the head above ground. Better are the physically dead, for they more lively rot. Even virtue is no longer such if it ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... spread wet raincoats. Two opened umbrellas wheeled in the current of air that came around the house; the porch ran water. While Margaret was adding her own rainy-day equipment to the others, a golden brown setter, one ecstatic wriggle from nose to tail, flashed into view, and came fawning ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... before once or twice these spring days, and Sol never took notice. The worst of it is, my husband told me I hadn't orter keep it open, even a speck, while the bird was out of his cage. 'Sol can wriggle through the smallest kind of a crack,' says he; and it appears he was right. My, but he'll be angry! 'Marthy, it'll ...
— Peggy in Her Blue Frock • Eliza Orne White
... plank like a man," continued Ebony, "hims dood eberyting like a man. An' w'en hims topple into de sea hims give sitch a most awful wriggle dat his bonds bu'sted. But hims berry sly, was Massa Zeppa—amazin' sly. I t'ought him lie on's back zif him be dead. Jest move a leetle to look like drownin', an' w'en he long way astern, he slew round, off ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... lave hoult of him," said Pat, solemnly. "The sort of her Ladyship houlds on the tighter the more you wriggle. He's preparing a quare bed of repentance for himself, so he is, the langwidge he's usin' about her all over the house. By-and-by he'll be rememberin' she's Sir Gerald's widdy, and'll be askin' me ashamed-like, 'I hope I didn't ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... desperately endeavouring to hook themselves on to the wealthier and younger members of the male community. They poison the air round them with sickly perfumes; they assume titles, and speak of one another as "cette chere comtesse;" their walk is something between a prance and a wriggle; they prowl about the terrace whilst the music is playing, seeking whom they may devour, or rather whom they may inveigle into paying for their devouring: and, bon Dieu! how they do gorge themselves with food and drink when some silly lad or aged roue allows himself ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... satisfaction in being out in the open again, grew somewhat tired of its monotonously even wagon-rutted width, and longed for a trail—a faint, meandering trail that would swing from the road, dip into a sand arroyo, edge slanting up the farther bank, wriggle round a cluster of small hills, shoot out across a mesa, and climb slowly toward those hills to the west, finally to contort itself into serpentine switchbacks as it sought the crest—and once on the crest (which was in reality but ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... mess you made. Beastly quiet it was, too. The only excitement was a playful habit the Chink had contracted of picking up a rusty rifle and a salvaged clip of cartridges, pointing the gun anywhere and pulling the trigger to make it say Bang! I often found myself doin' the old B.E.F. tummy-wriggle when the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... cannot wriggle out of expressing an opinion of some sort, they will commonly retail those of some one who has already written upon the subject, and conclude by saying that though they quite admit that there is an element of truth in what the writer has said, there are many points ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... power of altering its own gravity, as after wading about two, or perhaps five minutes, where it could just get its head out, it would suddenly rise to the surface and begin to swim, which it does quite as well as the Water-hen. The awkward, tumbling, shuffling wriggle which it appears to have, is occasioned by the incessant motion of its head as it turns over the gravel in search of creepers, which appear to me to form the bulk ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... she cried. 'I won't let you speak. You've said it, a satellite, you're not going to wriggle out of ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... on the other hand, will show clearly by the violence of the response provoked that their nervous system is easily stimulated and exhausted. They will wriggle and squirm for hours together, emitting the same constant reflex cry. The whole body will start convulsively at a sudden touch or a loud sound which would evoke no response from a more stolid infant. The sleeplessness and crying exhaust the baby, rendering the nervous system more and more ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... father. "Your chain is locked, I see:—but no matter,—I can loosen it so that you can wriggle through." By having cut the cords, around which the chain had been passed, he had relieved the tautness, and was now able to do what he promised. He then took off my boots, and, grasping me under the arms, drew me backward out of the loosened ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... progressive movement—the possibility, at least, of a true advance. For the contortions of the 'Precious' writers were less the result of their inability to write well than of their desperate efforts to do so. They were trying, as hard as they could, to wriggle themselves into a beautiful pose; and, naturally enough, they were unsuccessful. They were, in short, too self-conscious; but it was in this very self-consciousness that the real hope for the future lay. The teaching of Malherbe, if it did not influence the actual form of their work, ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... when the wind sheers nor'-east, he always beats for open sea. It isn't the sea he fears. It is these rock ramparts and saw-tooth reefs sticking up through the lace fret. Suddenly you twist round a sharp angle of rock like the half closed leaf of a book. You slip in behind the leaf of rock, and wriggle behind another angle—"follow the tickles o' water" is, I believe, the term—and there opens before you a harbor cove, land-locked, rock-walled from sea to sky, with the fishermen's dories awash on ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... surprise, Flint felt himself fingering in his pocket for a dime, and heard himself say, "That's all right, I don't want the stuff. Take it in to that little chap in a striped suit, in the next car,—dirty little beggar, wriggled like an eel all day. This will probably make him wriggle all night. Never ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... of the face, was covered by a tangled mass of jet-black hair some eight or ten inches in length. Each hair was about the bigness of a large angleworm, and as the thing moved the muscles of its scalp this awful head-covering seemed to writhe and wriggle and crawl about the fearsome face as though indeed each separate hair was ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the morning, if the hour is early, you will find the old woman giving the baby its bath. The poor, little thin thing will wriggle joyously in the warm water, once it gets used to the daily bathing. Its head will be soaped first, then sponged. It will be dried with a warm towel, and you can hit the tin bathtub with your keys to keep it from crying while its ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... him, and fell into a sullen silence. The man was a study for me, and I observed every change in his fleeting moods. Generally his condition was that of miserable despair, which he attempted bravely to conceal. Even the boon of suicide had been denied him, for when he would wriggle into an erect position the rail of his pen was a foot above his head, so that he could not clamber over and break his skull on the stone floor beneath; and when he had tried to starve himself the attendants forced ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... the right would that eel squirm and wriggle. I chased him round grindstones, in and out of water-troughs, from behind posts and planks, from under benches, but I could not get him to the door; and I firmly believe that night would have fallen with me still hunting the slimy ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... the legs pushed the abdomen and corselet on; so that a disapproving friend had to divide his sympathy, and to feel for each of the pieces. And what appeared to us worthy of remark was, that whereas, when a snake was decollated, it was only the tail that continued to wriggle—when a worm was divided, all the segments writhed in the same way, and manifested an equal irritability; showing the difference between creatures of annulated structure, according as they have or have not a brain. A new argument against ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... was one of those multitudes that fill our English air all the time that warm weather lasts, and is exactly of the shape of that I observ'd to be generated and hatch'd out of those little Insects that wriggle up and down in Rain-water. But, though many were of this form, yet I observ'd others to be of quite other kinds; nor were all of this or the other kind generated out of Water Insects; for whereas I observ'd that those that proceeded from ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... the house. I cannot understand how public opinion tolerated for so long the abominable cruelty of forcing little boys to clamber up flues. These unhappy brats were made to creep into the chimneys from the grates, and then to wriggle their way up by digging their toes into the interstices of the bricks, and by working their elbows and knees alternately; stifled in the pitch-darkness of the narrow flue by foul air, suffocated by the showers of soot that fell on them, perhaps losing their way in the ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... Far-Off Times the Elephant, O Best Beloved, had no trunk. He had only a blackish, bulgy nose, as big as a boot, that he could wriggle about from side to side; but he couldn't pick up things with it. But there was one Elephant—a new Elephant—an Elephant's Child—who was full of 'satiable curtiosity, and that means he asked ever so many questions. ...
— Just So Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... Jean with a shudder. "I hate things that writhe, and squirm, and wriggle. Imagine being so near those hideous creatures! Why, if I once should see them I should never dare to go in bathing again. I'd rather not know ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett
... a dozen feet of the entrance, and, like the rest, it presently narrowed down through a slope in the roof; but just at its narrowest, when he feared he had come to the end, there came a dip in the flooring corresponding to the slope up above, and he found he could wriggle through. Once through, the passage widened and continued to widen, and the going became very rough and broken, with piles of ragged rock and deep black ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... of wriggle, and he prepared for a discussion. He had never fathomed Miss Bartlett. As he had put it to himself at Florence, "she might yet reveal depths of strangeness, if not of meaning." But she was so unsympathetic that she must be reliable. He assumed ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... pop in, break into, break in, burst into, burst in; set foot on; ingress; burst in upon, break in upon; invade, intrude; insinuate itself; interpenetrate, penetrate; infiltrate; find one's way into, wriggle into, worm oneself into. give entrance to &c. (receive) 296; insert &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... must pick them out right. But all I mean is—for I express myself with violence—that she's in a position to watch me. There's an element of suspense for me, and she can see me wriggle. But my wriggling doesn't matter," he pursued. "I can bear it. Besides, ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... post it to her. At least she will acknowledge its receipt; we can kiss the paper her hand has rested on. The great doors groan, then quiver. Ah, the wild thrill of that moment! Now push for all you are worth: charge, wriggle, squirm! It is an epitome of life. We are through—collarless, panting, pummelled from top to toe: but what of that? Upward, still upward; then downward with leaps at risk of our neck, from bench to bench through the gloom. We have gained the front row! Would we exchange sensations with ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... simply devoted to Miss Beaubien until Alice Renwick came; then he dropped her like a hot brick. By the Eternal, Rollins, he hasn't gotten off with that old love yet, you mark my words. There's Indian blood in her veins, and a look in her eye that makes me wriggle, sometimes. I watched her last night at parade when she drove out here with that copper-faced old squaw, her mother. For all her French and Italian education and her years in New York and Paris, that girl's got a wild streak in her somewhere. ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... hunted man caught a glimpse of uncouth shapes wriggling along a fence ridge several rods away. No more than the barest glimpse, it served: with a mighty heave and wriggle he breasted the lower platform, shifted a hand to the top of its railing, heaved himself up to a foothold, and swarmed up the iron ladder with an agility ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... bloody fangs. An' it's a sap as follows the bad un's feet, Hal—follows the bad un's feet wheresomever they goes; it's a sap as goes slippin' thro' the dews o' the grass on the brightest mornin', an' dodges round the trees in the sweetest evenin', an' goes wriggle, wriggle across the brook jis' when you wants to enjoy yourself, jis' when you wants to stay a bit on the steppin'-stuns to enjoy the sight o' the dear little minnows a-shootin' atween the water-creases. That's what ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... to wriggle back from the brushwood screen. He was filled with the sort of sick rage that comes when you can't actively resent insolence and arrogance. He hated the people who wanted the world to collapse, and this was part of their effort to bring ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... together exactly, either; for Rollo who was usually pretty alert and ready in emergencies of difficulty or danger, when he found himself rolling down the slope, though he could not stop, still contrived to wriggle and twist himself off to one side, so as to get clear of the horse and roll off himself in a different direction. They both, however, the animal and the boy, soon came to a stop. Rollo was up in an instant. ...
— Rollo in Switzerland • Jacob Abbott
... the boudoir, the singer found that Madame Hulot had fainted; but in spite of having lost consciousness, her nervous trembling kept her still perpetually shaking, as the pieces of a snake that has been cut up still wriggle and move. Strong salts, cold water, and all the ordinary remedies were applied to recall the Baroness to her senses, or rather, to the apprehension of ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... said Gefroi, and groaned again. "The favour of a lord is a slippery thing—much like an eel—quick to wriggle away. An hour agone my lord Duke held me in much esteem, while now? And he struck me! On the face, here!" Slowly Gefroi got him upon his feet, and having donned cap and pourpoint, shook his head and sighed; ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... themselves—save in the case of the incomparable bowman of Rome, and then only when he knew that no one dared stand against him. But Boyd Connoway fought many a losing fight that his small citizens might wriggle with delight on their truckles. "The Christians to the lions!" Yes, that was noble. But then they had no choice, while Boyd Connoway, a willing martyr, fought his ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... lower down and hidden, then I thought it to be; soon at its look and feel, impatience got the better of me; hurredly I covered it with my body and shed my sperm in it. Then with what curiosity I paddled my fingers in it afterwards, again to stiffen, thrust, wriggle, and spend. All this I recollect as if it occurred but yesterday, I shall recollect it to the last day of my life, for it was a honey-moon of novelty, years afterwards I often thought of it when fucking ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... this very moment that the foxhound puppy chose for rushing in—all wriggle and bark and clumsy paws—and plunging between Fina's feet. She reeled, staggered, and she, the puppy, the stand, the glass case, and the precious pagoda, all went down together in ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... not wriggle and twist to try to avoid admitting that the calling of the martyred Zacharias, 'the son of Barachias,' is an error of some one who confused the author of the prophetic book with the person whose murder is narrated in 2 Chronicles ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... that sometimes, in the lulls of telephoning and signing contracts and talking to salesmen and preparing estimates and dictating letters "that must get off to-night" and trying to wriggle out of serving on the golf club's house committee, my friend flings away his cigar, gets a corncob pipe out of his desk drawer, and contemplates his key ring a trifle wistfully. This nubby little tyrant that he carries about with him always makes him think of a river in the ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... laugh and wriggle away, but the cashier's gimlet eyes kept boring him, and eventually he fished out a five-dollar bill and handed it in. Mr. Hooker placed the two bills in the envelop, sealed it, and ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... know you'd enjoy putting a harpoon—a pillar of the church. Look at the cut of those solemn Presbyterian whiskers. It makes me faint to remember how many times I've tried and failed to get my hooks into him. I know you could land the deacon. I'd joyfully give you a million just to see him wriggle ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... curates and teachers, awaited the party from the vicarage. The thick and darkened sunshine of Bludston flooded the asphalt of the yard, which sent up a reek of heat, causing curates to fan themselves with their black straw hats, and little boys in clean collars to wriggle in sticky discomfort, while in the still air above the ignoble town hung the heavy pall of smoke. Presently there was the sound of wheels and the sight of the head of the vicar's coachman above the coping of the schoolyard wall. Then the gates opened and the vicar and his wife and ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... made no answer, but watched the beautiful face, now very pale, behind which conflicting thoughts seemed to wriggle like a knot of vipers. Suddenly she ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... crime; for the simple-minded burglar or embezzler may blithely make way with a silver service or bundle of bank notes only to find himself floundering, horse, foot and dragoons, in a quagmire of phraseology from which he cannot escape, wriggle as he will. Many such a one has thrown up his hands—and with them silver service, bank notes and all—in horror at what the grand ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... on my feet in such a way that I was very uncomfortable and tried to readjust matters, but the slightest wriggle of my toe was enough to make him snap at it so fiercely that nothing but thick woollen bedclothes saved me from being ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... her heels into the soft ground with a little wriggle of content; here she would be free from anything that could mar her perfect enjoyment of life as it appeared to her. Here there was nothing to spoil her pleasure. Her head had drooped during her thoughts, and for the last few minutes her eyes had been fixed on the dusty tips of her riding-boots. ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... beast of prey watching for its spoil, and, suddenly, with a swift movement, he darted his forked weapon into the sea so vigorously that it secured a large fish swimming near the bottom. It was a conger eel, which managed to wriggle, half dead as it was, into a puddle of ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... returning. First come the Judge, tougher than rawhide, half walking and half flying, his wings spread out, 'cree-ing' to himself about bulldogs and their ways; next come Bobby, still sputtering and swearing, and behind ambled Thomas at a lively wriggle, a coy, large smile upon ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... Hosea Hessel, of the blue nose. And several boys took hold of me, all together, turned me over on the bench, face upwards. Two sat on my legs, two on my arms, and one held my head, so that I should not be able to wriggle. And another placed his left forefinger and thumb at my nose. (It seemed he was left-handed.) He curled up his finger and thumb, closed his eye, and began to fillip me on the nose. And how, do you think? ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... it were, head and tail, a contest for upper place now began. One-Eye writhed like a hairy animal (this the swish-swishing). Being both slender and agile, he managed to wriggle out from beneath Big Tom, who instantly turned about and caught him, and once more laid upon him the whole of his ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... mate Maxims wise to rule the state. Pulteney deep, accomplish'd St. Johns, Scourge the villains with a vengeance; Let me, though the smell be noisome, Strip their bums; let Caleb[3] hoise 'em; Then apply Alecto's[4] whip Till they wriggle, howl, and skip. Deuce is in you, Mr. Dean: What can all this passion mean? Mention courts! you'll ne'er be quiet On corruptions running riot. End as it befits your station; Come to use and application; Nor with ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... riflemen marching as escort, smart and gay in their brown forest-dress, the green thrums rippling and flying from sleeve and leggin' and open double-cape, and the raccoon-tails all a-bobbing behind their caps like the tails that April lambkins wriggle. ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... Superintendent with satisfaction. "He has no doubt, very powerful friends, and if the evidence were not so damning and direct as that collected after so much patience and perseverance by Mr. Garfield, he might perhaps wriggle out of it. But once we have him he can hope for no escape," he added. "And we shall arrest him before an hour is out. Fortunately he is still quite unsuspicious, though his chief fear is of Mr. Garfield, and of the ugly revelations which either Moroni or Sanz ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... through the dark chambers, calling the great thoats after me. They had difficulty in negotiating some of the doorways, but as the buildings fronting the city's principal exposures were all designed upon a magnificent scale, they were able to wriggle through without sticking fast; and thus we finally made the inner court where I found, as I had expected, the usual carpet of moss-like vegetation which would prove their food and drink until I could return them to their own enclosure. That they would be as quiet and contented here as elsewhere ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... behind the plantation. There was no sheltering cove to lie in on the river front; and besides, to make the visit at the regular pier was so hopelessly commonplace. Any of the ordinary palace yachts could do the thing that way. But it took a gypsy craft like Gadabout to wriggle up the little back-country creek and to land among the chickens and the geese and—bulls perhaps; but then all explorers ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... the air is thick with danger. When the blackness of night comes, then will come, also, those who make war from behind the trees of the forest. In the darkness, how is the young white and his friends to tell enemies from friends? The jackals will wriggle through and over the wall of trees like snakes through tall grass. After what they have seen, can my white friends expect mercy ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... midnight, and amused ourselves vastly. I happened to say that I was rather scared at the thought of the wild beasts I might encounter, probably under my camp-bed, in the jungle; so a man, Captain Rawson, drew out a table for me to take with me into camp. One heave and a wriggle means a boa-constrictor, two heaves and a growl a tiger—and so on. So you can imagine me in a tent, in the dead of night, sitting up, anxiously striking matches and consulting my table as to what ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... shrewd code—"All as says they be land-lubbers when I says they baint, be liars, and all liars be seamen"—effectually shut that door in his face. There were other openings, it is true, whereby a knowing chap might wriggle free, but officers and medicoes were extremely "fly." He had not practised his many deceptions upon them through long years for nothing. They well knew that on principle he "endeavoured by every stratagem in his power ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... fell upon the waters or blew away over the meadows, and it was cold. Mr. Gabriel wrapped the cloak about Faith and fastened it, and tied her bonnet. Just now Dan was so busy handling the boat—and it's rather risky, you have to wriggle up the creek so—that he took little notice of us. Then Mr. Gabriel stood up, as if to change his position; and taking off his hat, he held it aloft, while he passed the other hand across his forehead. And leaning against the mast, he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... felt very uneasy. She tried to wriggle away from her companion, who held her arm firmly. ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... your brother and all heirs to estates joy, for old Shutz is dead, and cannot wriggle himself into any more wills. The ministry is not yet hatched; the King of Prussia is conquering the world; Mr. Chute has some murmurs of the gout; and I ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... Christians, no doubt; Till the rescuing earthquake cracked. Thus are we man made firm; Made warm by the numbers compact. We follow no longer a trumpet-snout, At a trot where the hog is tracked, Nor wriggle the way ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... thing was that she loved them. At bottom it was not Beethoven, nor Thome, nor Bach, nor Grieg that she loved, but the notes, the sounds, the fingers running over the keys, the thrills she got from the chords which tickled her nerves and made her wriggle ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... the temple. But without paying the least homage to the image of the 'Lo' spirit, he simply kept his eyes fixed intently on it; for albeit made of clay, it actually seemed, nevertheless, to flutter as does a terror-stricken swan, and to wriggle as a dragon in motion. It looked like a lotus, peeping its head out of the green stream, or like the sun, pouring its rays upon the russet clouds in the early morn. Pao-y's tears unwittingly ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... on the back of Zo's neck; and his patient acknowledged the process with a wriggle and a scream. The performance being so far at an end, Zo called to the dog, and issued her orders ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... him with all my might as the goad flew over me. He turned to run as I jumped, and I bore him to the ground, came down right upon him, and slipped upon his smashed body and fell. He seemed to wriggle under ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... and Laura Nelson ought to have more principle than engage in anything so dishonorable. They've managed to wriggle out of it at Marian's expense, but they have both lost caste by it. Depend upon it, a great many girls here will have their own opinion of the whole affair and it won't be complimentary to ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... and pretty well cleansed of the insect larvas that may have lurked in it when first removed. Lay the turves out in a frame, grass side downwards, and give them a soaking with water in which a very small quantity of salt has been dissolved. This will cause the remaining bots and slugs to wriggle out, and by means of a little patient labour they can be gathered and destroyed. In January or February sow the seed rather thickly in lines along the centre of each strip of turf, and cover with fine earth. By keeping the frame closed a more regular sprouting ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... pour into, pour in, flow into, flow in, creep into, creep in, slip into, slip in, pop into, pop in, break into, break in, burst into, burst in; set foot on; ingress; burst in upon, break in upon; invade, intrude; insinuate itself; interpenetrate, penetrate; infiltrate; find one's way into, wriggle into, worm oneself into. give entrance to &c. (receive) 296; insert &c. 300. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... a dozen of the rascals, whom we had a rare hunt after through the hold and fo'c's'le before we could collar them. They are fast bound now, though, lashed head and feet to the mainmast bitts; and it will puzzle them to wriggle themselves loose from old Masters' double hitches, I know. Besides which, two of our men are guarding there, with boarding-pikes in their hands and orders to run 'em through the gizzard if they ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... said Nancy, "but I don't expect ever to be, myself I don't think I could be. You might as well teach a snake not to wriggle." ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... arms while Mrs. Spaniel was busy trying to keep their socks on. When the curate exhorted him "to follow the innocency" of these little ones, it was disconcerting to have one of them burst into a piercing yammer, and wriggle so forcibly that it slipped quite out of its little embroidered shift and flannel band. But the actual access to the holy basin was more seemly, perhaps due to the children imagining they were going to find tadpoles there. When Mr. Poodle held them up they smiled with ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... captain, safely landing him on deck, where he was unhooked, and left to wriggle and jump out ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... a wriggle, add a pint of nearly milk, Smother with a pillow any sneeze; Baste with talcum powder and mark upon its back— "Don't forget that ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... Dicky is well used at that school or not, don't draw Dicky into a corner of the playground, and with tender kisses and promises of inviolable secrecy coax him to open his little heart to you, and tell you whether he is really happy; leave such folly to women—it is a weakness to wriggle into the ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... on the edge of the caribou barrens. There for hours at a time they hunted elusive grasshoppers, rushing helter-skelter over the dry moss, leaping up to strike at the flying game with their paws like a kitten, or snapping wildly to catch it in their mouths and coming down with a back-breaking wriggle to keep themselves from tumbling over on their heads. Then on again, with a droll expression and noses sharpened like exclamation points, to ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... binding, upon the completion of which they found themselves absolutely helpless; for now both their hands and their feet were lashed together so tightly and securely that it was quite impossible for them to move otherwise than to give an occasional feeble, impotent wriggle. ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... sap, Hal, an' a sap wi' bloody fangs. An' it's a sap as follows the bad un's feet, Hal—follows the bad un's feet wheresomever they goes; it's a sap as goes slippin' thro' the dews o' the grass on the brightest mornin', an' dodges round the trees in the sweetest evenin', an' goes wriggle, wriggle across the brook jis' when you wants to enjoy yourself, jis' when you wants to stay a bit on the steppin'-stuns to enjoy the sight o' the dear little minnows a-shootin' atween the water-creases. That's what the Romany ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... baptism, but it was conferred upon him, by general consent of the several ministers, on account of his inability to walk as other men do. In fact, Hop-Frog could only get along by a sort of interjectional gait—something between a leap and a wriggle—a movement that afforded illimitable amusement, and of course consolation, to the king, for (notwithstanding the protuberance of his stomach and a constitutional swelling of the head) the king, by his whole court, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... sure you behave yourselves," she warned them. "Don't walk in the dust. Don't stop in the porch to talk to the other children. Don't squirm or wriggle in your places. Don't forget the Golden Text. Don't lose your collection or forget to put it in. Don't whisper at prayer time, and don't forget to pay attention to ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Ceremony in a Beleaguered City," murmured the enthusiastic journalist. Her gold fountain-pen, hanging at her chatelaine, seemed to wriggle like a thing of life, as she imagined herself aiding, planning, assisting at, and finally sitting down to describe the ceremony and the wedding-veil on the little Greek head. She babbled as her quick, bird-like gait ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... thoats after me. They had difficulty in negotiating some of the doorways, but as the buildings fronting the city's principal exposures were all designed upon a magnificent scale, they were able to wriggle through without sticking fast; and thus we finally made the inner court where I found, as I had expected, the usual carpet of moss-like vegetation which would prove their food and drink until I could return them to their own enclosure. ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... with modification," under such circumstances that no one who had not been brought up in the school of Mr. Gladstone could doubt that the two expressions referred to the same thing. He seems to have felt that he must be a poor wriggler if he could not wriggle out of this; give him any loophole, however small, and Mr. Darwin could trust himself to get out through it; but he did not like saying what left no loophole at all, and "my theory of descent with modification" closed all exits ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... 'em,—so little Jeff Carew says. He jumped through the window-pane himself. We wouldn't believe that until we measured one there at the jail of the same size as Blenkins's window-glass, and he went through it without a wriggle." ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Captain Ortega, with the aid of the engineer, to effect any change in the position of the tugboat, while it stuck to the submerged bank, like a bull ramming its head against a stone wall. Instead of staying motionless the stern swung slowly to the right and then to the left, as if trying to wriggle its nose out of the mud. This caused the muzzle of the cannon to wabble, sometimes being directed straight at the sailboat, and sometimes to one side of it. But the gun was so easily shifted that the ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... worst, Bertrand. What is man?—a beast of prey. An hour ago, and I'd have taken a crust and gone in peace. But no: they would trick and juggle, curse them: they would wriggle and cheat! Well, I accept the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to close the gate behind her, the cow's calf had entered and was rushing to its mother. With an ejaculation of impatience Dixie threw her arms about the calf's neck and tried to pull it from the cow's bag, but it was of no avail. The strong young beast would wriggle from her clutch and ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... thought that it was venomous, but I did. I tried to smash the thing in my hand—tried again and again, and I have a good grip—but might just as well have tried to crush a piece of wire. There was no give to it. It tried to wriggle backwards but I had it under its jaws. So there we were: it wriggling, writhing and lashing and me laying there holding it at arms length. I felt the sweat start on me and the hair at the nap of my neck raise up, and I did ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... feet in such a way that I was very uncomfortable and tried to readjust matters, but the slightest wriggle of my toe was enough to make him snap at it so fiercely that nothing but thick woollen bedclothes saved me from being ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... slowly—very slowly—begin to open. A little wider—a little wider—and yet a little wider; but still nothing came. Ah! Letty's heart turned to ice. Another inch, and a shadowy something slipped through and began to wriggle itself stealthily over the floor. Letty tried to divert her gaze, but could not—an irresistible, magnetic attraction kept her eyes glued to the gradually approaching horror. When within a few feet of her it halted; ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... If you knew what I have to endure! I sometimes envy you. 'Pon my honour, I sometimes wish I had married a fishmonger! Silva, indeed, is a most excellent husband. Polished! such polish as you know not of in England. He has a way—a wriggle with his shoulders in company—I cannot describe it to you; so slight! so elegant! and he is all that a woman could desire. But who could be safe in any part of the earth, my dears, while papa will go about so, and behave so extraordinarily? I was at dinner at your English embassy a month ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Tooter still refused to give up the little package, and Holmes, losing his patience, walked over to him and grabbed his left arm, while Tooter doggedly tried to wriggle out of his grasp. In a moment, Holmes, by a quick turn of his wrist, had forced the little package out of Tooter's hand, and it fell on the floor. Holmes immediately pounced on it, picked it up, and started to open it, but suddenly his jaw dropped, his face showed deep disappointment, ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... hunter said contemptuously; "why, a redskin would make no more noise in cutting them holes and gashes, than you would in cutting a hunk of deer's flesh for your dinner. He would lie on the ground, and wriggle from one to another like an eel; but I reckon he didn't begin till the camp was still. The canoes wasn't hauled up till we had sarched the woods, as we thought, and then we was moving about close by ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... bases an advice, dead in the teeth of all the maxims recognised by worldly prudence. He says, in effect, 'Mind very little about getting on and getting up. Do God's will wherever you are, and let the rest take care of itself.' Now, the world says, 'Struggle, wriggle, fight, do anything to better yourself.' Paul says, 'You will better yourself by getting nearer God, and if you secure that—art thou a slave? care not for it; if thou mayest be free, use it rather; art thou bound to a wife? seek not to be loosed; art thou loosed? seek not to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... chimney-sweep detailed to clear the soot out of 'is lungs an' breathin' toobs. But if Pint-o'-Bass does smoke more'n is good for 'im or any other respectable factory chimney, I'll admit the smoke 'asn't sooted up 'is intelleck none, an' 'e can wriggle 'is way out of a hole where a double-jointed snake 'ud stick. An' durin' the Retreat, when, as you knows, cigarettes in the Expeditionary Force was scarcer'n snowballs in 'ell, ole Pint-o'-Bass managed to carry on, an' wasn't never ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... dressmaking periodicals. She never heard of the Wednesday matinee. When she takes the air she rides in a carriage that has a sheltering hood, and she is veiled up to the eyes, and she must never lean out to wriggle her little finger-tips at men lolling in front of the cafes. She must not see the men. She may look at them, but she must not see them. No wonder the sisters in Michigan are organizing to batter down the walls of tradition, and bring to her ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... you know that? Well, then I HAVE got some news!" Miss Flora gave the satisfied little wriggle with which a born news-lover always prefaces her choicest bit of information. "Frank has sold ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... up the cliff! Creep, crawl, wriggle, slide, clamber, scramble, clutch, climb, here jumping—actually jumping, I!—over a crevice, then drawing myself round an insuperable jut by two honest sturdy weeds—many thanks to them!—which had the consideration to be there and to plant themselves ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... than useless. The ganger's shrewd code—"All as says they be land-lubbers when I says they baint, be liars, and all liars be seamen"—effectually shut that door in his face. There were other openings, it is true, whereby a knowing chap might wriggle free, but officers and medicoes were extremely "fly." He had not practised his many deceptions upon them through long years for nothing. They well knew that on principle he "endeavoured by every stratagem in his power to impose"—that ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... had been toppled over them. A young Armenian named Hackatur related the story of his escape from a well in which the bodies of the dead had been crammed. He had fallen with the others and was flung into the well, but he managed to wriggle through the bodies lying on top of him, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... sailed right into the heart of the pack, which all previous polar explorers had regarded as certain death. It is not merely difficult to grasp this; it is simply impossible — to us, who with a motion of the hand can set the screw going, and wriggle out of the first difficulty we encounter. These men were heroes — heroes in the highest sense of ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... pointed. "Those are little baby snakes," said Becky mysteriously. "The well is full of 'em. Sometimes you can see 'em, sometimes you can't, but they're always there. They never grow big down the well; it's too dark 'n' cold. But you drink that water and the snakes will grow and wriggle and work all through ye, and eat your insides out, and you'll die. Your mother"—in a whisper—"she drunk that water, and she died. Your sister Ruth, and Dirck, and Jimmy, they drunk it, and they died. Now if Emmy wants to die"—Large eyes of horror fastened on the speaker's ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... that in consequence of a late discovery by one BECHAMP, of living things in chalk (he has actually seen 'em wriggle!) we are no longer at liberty to say, "As different as Chalk and Cheese." The difference is gone! If it is not, we would ask, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various
... in details limned from life. 'The Jesuits have so many loopholes for escape, pretexts, colors of insinuation, that they are more changeful than the Sophist of Plato; and when one thinks to have caught them between thumb and finger, they wriggle out and vanish' (ib. vol. i. p. 230). 'The Jesuit fathers have methods of acquiring in this world, and making their neophytes acquire, heaven without diminution, or rather with augmentation, of this life's ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... Up he went again. But, in fact, his best chance was in going up, for he was within four yards of the top when the mishap occurred. With a sigh of relief I saw him at last throw his arm over the verge and then wriggle his body upon the ledge. A few seconds later he was lying on his stomach, with his face over the edge, looking down ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... if he looked at no one and addressed nobody, when he spoke, he might the more easily wriggle out of his ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... you?" she sobbed, trying to wriggle gently out from under his grip. "Did I not tell you that I saw the witchwoman push the canoe? I lay hidden in the grass and heard all the words. She that we used to call the white Mem wanted to return to look at your face, but the witchwoman ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... is like turning over a huge stone in the meadow in springtime, that has been a hiding-place for bugs and worms that nest away in the dark. As soon as the hot, searching sunlight finds them, they will wriggle and squirm in agony until they can crawl under cover again. So I do not wonder that, when the hideous cruelty of the tenement-house sweat-shop is brought to light, the sweater and all his friends wriggle and squirm in an agony of fright ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... was in his manner a slight hesitation, and Smith expected to see his hind quarters wriggle like that of a dog—uncertain, ...
— The Terrible Answer • Arthur G. Hill
... own accord, and, spreading its little pair of wings, it half hopped, half flew, and leaned itself against the wall of the cottage. There it stood quite still, except that the snakes continued to wriggle. But, in my private opinion, old Philemon's eyesight had been ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... lean, now Luck Is fat, And wise men take her as she comes: The Bowler may be sure the Bat Will share the sugarplums. So never wriggle, nor protest, Nor eye the zenith in disgust, But, Johnson, bowl your level best, And ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... stick touched my hand. I shouted. I must have yelled jolly loud, I think. I couldn't help it. That horrible thing seemed to wriggle in ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... down at a red smashed thing on the ground that, in spite of partial obliteration, could still wriggle unavailing legs. Then, when the gaunt man pointed to another mass that bore down upon them, he drew his sword hastily. Up the valley now it was like a fog bank torn to rags. He ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... field to start with, and was well out of touch before the advance guard of the enemy bore down on him. Then it was a sight to see him wriggle and dodge, and twist and turn in and out among them, threading them like a needle through a string of beads, and slipping through ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... eyes but the History papers. I am a fish out of water.... It makes me feel growly all the time.... I can not get away from my ball and chain.... I think we'll make things snap and crackle a little.... This is the biggest swamp I ever tried to wriggle through.... We'll both put on our thinking caps and I guess get quite a lot of funnies in the reminiscences.... Now here is the publisher's screech for money.... O, to get out of this History prison!... I am too tired to write—I mean too lazy.... No warhorse ever panted for ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... which he held under the sliding door of the trap, telling Harry to pull it open. He did so, and into it glided the pailful of different kinds of fish, while one monster of an eel got half his body over the side and slipped out on to the damp floor, where he began to wriggle and twist, evidently meaning to get down one of the wheel channels. But Bob had seen one fine fellow slip away that morning, and did not mean to lose this one; for he knew it would be worth shillings to him, either to sell, ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... considered sheer folly. He did not consider that he had any "call" to be a minister, still less a doctor. As there was nothing else left, he began the study of law. It is truly amusing to see how he manages to "wriggle along" until he takes his degree of LL.B. and is admitted ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... childish clinging, her soft nestling against him, that he would hold his breath to listen to her quiet breathing and move a little away as though in sleep, so as to feel her kitten-like, half-unconscious wriggle into the curve of his arm again. It was sweet at such times to feel such utter dependence upon him as the protective male, and the best in him was stirred to response. The next morning she might jar again from the hour of getting up in their ugly ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... boy!" said Mrs. Tree, severely. "Sit there—don't wriggle in your cheer; you are not an eel, though I admit you are the next thing to it—and tell me every word about ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... always makes us write out a tense of a French verb if she sees us sitting with our legs crossed," said Lucy, laughing with much amusement at Amina's attempts to wriggle herself up on the stool whence she ...
— Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with his unrivalled agreeableness, and they are not sorry to pat him on the back as a flagellifer of the Ministers; but though they talk with expressions of regret of his having radicalised himself, and he would probably, if he saw an opening, try to wriggle himself out of Radicalism and into Toryism, they will take care, in the event of their return to office, not to let such a firebrand in amongst them. He calls his last Anti-slavery speech his [Greek: ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... into the boudoir, the singer found that Madame Hulot had fainted; but in spite of having lost consciousness, her nervous trembling kept her still perpetually shaking, as the pieces of a snake that has been cut up still wriggle and move. Strong salts, cold water, and all the ordinary remedies were applied to recall the Baroness to her senses, or rather, to ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... He began to wriggle back from the brushwood screen. He was filled with the sort of sick rage that comes when you can't actively resent insolence and arrogance. He hated the people who wanted the world to collapse, and this was part of their effort ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... she cried in an awestricken voice; "there is a split, and you'll make it worse if you wriggle about so. Be a good boy, Dickie, and try to ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... a little wriggle. "Cuckoo, you're laughing at me," she said. "I mean, have you come back to stay and cuckoo as usual and make my aunts ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... to be president, Shorty?" Lorry felt the warmth of a new life, felt the little body wriggle in snug contentment. "I wouldn't advise it. Tough job." Baby Newcomb twisted in ...
— I'll Kill You Tomorrow • Helen Huber
... ruler gave a tremendous wriggle with the whole body, which proved as ineffectual ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... nobody, without they wriggle for themselves pretty consider'ble well fust. This a'n't the newest news to me; I've been expectin' on't a long spell, an' I've talked consider'ble with Westbury folks about it; and there a'n't nobody much, round about here, but what'll ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... sometimes prove fatal to woman. On this he rose up in his place and cried: "Wata[n] Thanks! I'm glad some of them will die, for they are getting so thick that they tread on me." He fairly shook with joy at the thought, so that he fell over backward and could not get on his feet again, but had to wriggle off on his back, as the Grubworm ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... 'Dearest, you can wriggle on your tummy, if you like, so long as you get the fluid. We must have water. I can't fetch it. I'm a ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... Christmas-tree. Sometimes they talked in low voices, commenting on the scene, then they would be silent for a long period, simply drinking it in and trying to photograph it forever on their memories. Joyce frankly and openly enjoyed it all, but Cynthia seemed nervous and restless. She began at length to wriggle about, got up twice and walked around restlessly, and looked at her watch again ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... gentleman, as the Phoenix, with one last wriggle that melted into a flutter, got out of its nest in the breast of Robert and stood ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... burn off the down from the tips. Owing to the intensity of the heat this is difficult to accomplish. One warrior dashes wildly toward the fire and retreats; another lies as close to the ground as a frightened lizard, endeavoring to wriggle himself up to the fire; others seek to catch on their wands the sparks that fly in the air. At last one by one they all succeed in burning the downy balls from the wands. The test of endurance is very severe, the heat of the fire ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... make him sound lovable, but I cannot make him sound good. Of course I might leave out his doubtful qualities, and describe him merely as beautiful and affectionate; I might ... but I couldn't. I think Chum's habitual smile would get larger, he would wriggle the end of himself more ecstatically than ever if he heard himself summed up as beautiful and affectionate. Anyway, I couldn't do it, for I get carried away when I speak of him and I reveal ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... These things do happen, you know! Now then—why didn't you come to us? We have a wing quite empty. But just as you like, of course. Do you lease it from HIM?—this fellow, I mean," she added, nodding towards Lebedeff. "And why does he always wriggle so?" ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... otter began to laugh at the strange movements of the Manitou, who, hearing a noise, turned quickly and threw himself on the otter. He was going to smother him, as this was his way of killing animals. But the otter managed to wriggle from under him, and escaped ...
— Thirty Indian Legends • Margaret Bemister
... exactly, either; for Rollo who was usually pretty alert and ready in emergencies of difficulty or danger, when he found himself rolling down the slope, though he could not stop, still contrived to wriggle and twist himself off to one side, so as to get clear of the horse and roll off himself in a different direction. They both, however, the animal and the boy, soon came to a stop. Rollo was up in an instant. The horse, too, contrived, after some scrambling, to gain his feet. All ...
— Rollo in Switzerland • Jacob Abbott
... the old man, trying to wriggle out of his son's grasp; "only not just yet a whiles. I'm agoin' in here to drink your good health, Adam lad, and all here's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... marching as escort, smart and gay in their brown forest-dress, the green thrums rippling and flying from sleeve and leggin' and open double-cape, and the raccoon-tails all a-bobbing behind their caps like the tails that April lambkins wriggle. ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... but it is an advantage that also has a disadvantage, for our serpents are so lovely that even they are not easily seen by the parrots when they wriggle ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... not thy knife upright but sloping, and lay it down at the right hand of plate with blade on plate. Look not earnestly at any other that is eating. When moderately satisfied leave the table. Sing not, hum not, wriggle not.... Smell not of thy Meat; make not a noise with thy Tongue, Mouth, Lips, or Breath in Thy Eating and Drinking.... When any speak to thee, stand up. Say not I have heard it before. Never endeavour to help him out ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... sake, as it were. Why, didst thou see, it was godly Mr. Henwick that held her head when he wriggled so, and old Madam Holbrook had herself helped upon a chair to see the better. I wonder how long I might wriggle, before great and godly folk would take so much notice of me? But, I suppose, that comes of being a pastor's daughter. She'll be so set up there'll be no speaking to her now. Faith! thinkest thou that Hota really ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... is not, and especially if anything is there which he wishes to shun, a four hundred and fifty pounder cannot crash a hole large enough for you to push him through. By such a pitiful chink as that did his Infallible Highness wriggle himself out of the range of my guns, and pursue his line ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... turned to Peter with some nonsensical appeal when her heart was full and her voice a trifle unsteady. You could bury your head in Peter's little white sailor jacket just under his chin, at which he would dimple and gurgle and chuckle and wriggle, and when you withdrew your flushed face and presented it to the public gaze all the tears would have been wiped ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... I'm blind! I'm blind, and the darkness will never go away.' He made as if to leap from the bed, but Torpenhow's arms were round him, and Torpenhow's chin was on his shoulder, and his breath was squeezed out of him. He could only gasp, 'Blind!' and wriggle feebly. ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... Mrs. Vigilance," I said familiarly, endeavoring to wriggle in a way that WOULD have shaken a tail, had it been my good fortune to be the owner of one—"Good-morrow, good Mrs. Vigilance—I'm glad to meet you ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... is that it is rich in figures. Metaphor is an enigma, wherein the thief who is plotting a stroke, the prisoner who is arranging an escape, take refuge. No idiom is more metaphorical than slang: devisser le coco (to unscrew the nut), to twist the neck; tortiller (to wriggle), to eat; etre gerbe, to be tried; a rat, a bread thief; il lansquine, it rains, a striking, ancient figure which partly bears its date about it, which assimilates long oblique lines of rain, with the dense ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... to laugh and wriggle away, but the cashier's gimlet eyes kept boring him, and eventually he fished out a five-dollar bill and handed it in. Mr. Hooker placed the two bills in the envelop, sealed it, and handed ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... Christians, resplendent in gold-fringed mantles and silk-ribboned hats; for he was rumored eloquent, and Annibale de' Franchi was there in pompous presidency. One Jew came—Shloumi the Droll, relying on his ability to wriggle out of the infraction of the ban, and earn a meal or two by reporting the proceedings to the fattori and the other dignitaries of the Ghetto, whose human curiosity might be safely counted upon. Shloumi was rich in devices. Had he not even for months flaunted ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... wild to avenge to inflict an insult to wriggle he has failed in his duty he has been kept to his bed for the last two days I was careful not ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... still, but wriggle restlessly about on their seats, pick their nostrils, and bite their nails. They are always wanting to be doing something, but soon tire of it, and start something else, which is as quickly cast aside; their energy is feverish but fitful. They jump to conclusions, ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... wrath. Sometimes it makes it worse,' he says. 'Th' throuble about divoorce is it always lets out iv th' bad bargain th' wan that made it bad. If I owned a half in a payin' business with ye, I'd niver let th' sun go down on a quarrel,' he says. 'But if ye had a bad mouth I'd go into coort an' wriggle out iv th' partnership because ye'ar a cantankerous old villain that no wan cud get on with,' he says. 'If people knew they cudden't get away fr'm each other they'd settle down to life, just as I detarmined to like coal smoke whin I ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... I had was Dick's broad back, for the sapling to which he was tied was small. I drew my hunting-knife. One more wriggle brought me close to Dick, with my face near his hands, which were bound behind him. I slipped the blade under the lasso, and cut ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... danger. When the blackness of night comes, then will come, also, those who make war from behind the trees of the forest. In the darkness, how is the young white and his friends to tell enemies from friends? The jackals will wriggle through and over the wall of trees like snakes through tall grass. After what they have seen, can my white friends expect mercy at ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... dozen feet of the entrance, and, like the rest, it presently narrowed down through a slope in the roof; but just at its narrowest, when he feared he had come to the end, there came a dip in the flooring corresponding to the slope up above, and he found he could wriggle through. Once through, the passage widened and continued to widen, and the going became very rough and broken, with piles of ragged rock and deep black ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... in trouble is a very easy thing. I notice that to others it will always worries bring. But getting out of trouble's always quite the other way— The more you try to wriggle out, ...
— The Adventures of Unc' Billy Possum • Thornton W. Burgess
... arm, and, overcoming his mute resistance, dragged him into the first parlor. He managed to wriggle loose after a bit, however, and watched his opportunity made a dart for the smaller one off, and rushed into an alcove somewhat in shadow, intending to escape entirely later on. As he stumbled into its shelter some one, half hidden ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... joke to me," he said. "How would you like it if the unexpected—chance—had been carefully weeded out of your future?... It makes things mighty flat and uninteresting. I'm all wrapped up in family traditions and precedents so I can't wriggle—like an Indian baby.... Even THIS wouldn't be so rotten if it were myself they were thinking about. But they're not. I'm only an incident in the family, so far as this goes.... It's Bonbright Foote VIII they're fussing about.... It's my duty to see to it there's ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... the captain. "And take notice that if you wriggle again I will make short work of ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... latter through the air to a distance of a hundred yards or more. Other seeds are provided with floating apparatus, which enables them to travel many miles by stream or river, or rain washes. Some of these not only float, but actually swim, having spider-like filaments, which wriggle like legs, and actually propel the tiny seed along to its new home. A recent writer says of these seeds that "so curiously lifelike are their movements that it is almost impossible to believe that these tiny objects, making ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... further on, upon the same side, the stone becomes soft. Here on the right, in a little coppice beside the road, is found a place of refuge of which I give the plan as accurately as it was possible for me to take it where one had to crawl on hands and knees, and sometimes wriggle forward lying on one's stomach, over earth that was damp and rubble fallen from above, and in corridors completely filled ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... best explanation I could think of. But it was not good enough for Diana. She attempted to push me farther back, and I resisted, trying to wriggle myself free and elude her; but she was on the alert, and too quick as well as too strong ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... herself down on the grass, and Prince sat at her feet, thumping his tail on the ground, and watching intently every change that flitted across her face. Now and then he would make a snap at some flies; if Betty spoke to him, his whole body would wriggle with ecstasy; he seemed to live on ...
— Odd • Amy Le Feuvre
... gave a subtle insult to her smallest remark. The children were manifestly delighted. Cecilia was more or less in the position of a beetle on a pin, and theirs was the precious opportunity of seeing her wriggle. Wherefore they adopted their mother's tone, openly defied her, and turned school-hours ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... little wriggle of joy. "Like it? I just love it—it's like butterflies keeping house. Don't you wish everything was like that—pretty and gay, with all the lovers ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... him," said Pat, solemnly. "The sort of her Ladyship houlds on the tighter the more you wriggle. He's preparing a quare bed of repentance for himself, so he is, the langwidge he's usin' about her all over the house. By-and-by he'll be rememberin' she's Sir Gerald's widdy, and'll be askin' me ashamed-like, 'I hope I didn't say too much about her Ladyship ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... my father. "Your chain is locked, I see:—but no matter,—I can loosen it so that you can wriggle through." By having cut the cords, around which the chain had been passed, he had relieved the tautness, and was now able to do what he promised. He then took off my boots, and, grasping me under the arms, drew me backward out of the loosened coils as I moved ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... outgoing trains and the docks, and the entrances to the tubes and underground railways were watched. After enclosing London, Merrington made a wider cast, and long before nightfall he had flung around England a net of fine meshes through which no man could wriggle. ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... walk de plank like a man," continued Ebony, "hims dood eberyting like a man. An' w'en hims topple into de sea hims give sitch a most awful wriggle dat his bonds bu'sted. But hims berry sly, was Massa Zeppa—amazin' sly. I t'ought him lie on's back zif him be dead. Jest move a leetle to look like drownin', an' w'en he long way astern, he slew round, off ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... to make a doll house for little Patience, for Christmas." Lydia gave an uncomfortable wriggle. "Don't talk ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... willow wand is usually sufficient to break the spine and disable all but the monsters of the class. At the same time, although the first blow may daze a snake, it is some time before the final effect takes place, and the creature will wriggle about for some time after having been struck, while its energy is practically nil—that is to say, it merely lives ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... Gardener said with a kind of groan. "Things change so, here. Whenever I look again, it's sure to be something different! Yet I does my duty! I gets up wriggle-early at five—" ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... short laugh. "Women, you'll find when you've been here long enough, have less to do with it than rain-water full of wriggle-tails, as they call those young animals that fill our cisterns in summer time, and the no less disagreeable—to one not a native here—muddy water from the river as a beverage. One is absolutely forced to 'tip the goblet red,' in order to have something palatable to rinse down his food. Woman, ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... a glad light, and she took Patricia in her arms. "It's perfectly glorious, Miss Pat, darling," she said with a rapturous squeeze. "I'm so delighted I can't help kissing you on the spot," and she did it with a heartiness that made Patricia wriggle. ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... up," shouted Jimmy; but I ran up to where he was, and each taking one of Jack's hands he gave a wriggle, floundered a bit, and then we had him out covered with black mud; and though we were standing up, he would not trust himself just then erect, but crept after us on hands and knees, the soft bog beneath us going up and ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... wanted to watch them wriggle! I wanted to take them, one by one, and strip off their shams! Take that fellow Rutherford, the steel man! Or Plimpton, the coal baron, casting his eyes up to heaven, and singing psalms through his nose! The instant I laid eyes on that whining ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair
... modulations of meaning in the varied wag of that expressive member—oh! it's useless to attempt description. Mortal man cannot conceive of the delicate shades of sentiment expressible by a dog's tail, unless he has studied the subject—the wag, the waggle, the cock, the droop, the slope, the wriggle! Away with description—it is impotent and ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... burst into tears, when suddenly the pike came swimming ashore, holding the egg between its teeth. He took the egg, broke it, drew out the needle and broke off its little point. Then he attacked Koshchei, who struggled hard, but wriggle about as he might he had to die ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... dirtiest streets of Paris, was, and is, and probably will long be, the Rue St Denis. Beginning at the bank of the Seine, and running due north, it spins out its length like a tape-worm, with every now and then a gentle wriggle, right across the capital, till it reaches the furthest barrier, and thence has a kind of suburban tail prolonged into the wide, straight road, a league in length, that stretches to the town of Sainct-Denys-en-France. This was, from time ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... fact that I did bring up by Doc's camp-fire shows that I am able to take care of myself. If I get into scrapes, I can wriggle out of them again," maintained the kid of the camp, with a brazen look, while his eyes showed flinty sparks, caused by the inspiring purpose hidden behind them, which had little to ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... the strain, moving upward and inward upon its hinges, disclosing an oblong gap above the jamb. With a splendid wriggle the fugitive vaulted up, thrusting his person into the clear space thus provided. Balanced across the opening upon his stomach, half in and half out, for one moment he remained there, his legs kicking wildly as though for a purchase against something more solid than air. Then convulsive ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... we going to get ourselves free?" Tom demanded: "I've been trying to wriggle my hands out, but I'll admit that I ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... noiselessly as possible he began to wriggle away, inch by inch, from Bill, and toward the fire. Several times he fancied the men moved restlessly in their sleep, but when he looked toward them they appeared to be still sleeping heavily. On each occasion, however, he lay ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... small that Ben could barely get his head and shoulders through it. There was no possibility of his getting on his feet or his knees to make a leap. The only course that remained for him, therefore, was to expand the umbrella, hold on tight, and then wriggle out until he should lose his balance and fall head foremost! It was an awful position. Bold though the seaman was, and desperate the circumstances, his strong frame quivered when he gazed down and felt himself gradually toppling. The height he knew to ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne
... the fish, which appear to thrive on them better than on dead meat. Having great tenacity of life, if not snapped up immediately by the fish they remain alive for a day or two, and, as they wriggle about on the bottom, are almost certain to be finally eaten; whereas the particles of dead flesh that fall to the bottom are largely neglected by the fish and begin to putrefy in a few hours. In the fish troughs ...
— New England Salmon Hatcheries and Salmon Fisheries in the Late 19th Century • Various
... anxiety, calmly remarking, however, as I translated his jargon, that he would, as on the previous day, hold fast to my shoulder with his bill. He made Grilly get down below at the same time and hold on to my feet; and when I began to crawl and wriggle along the best way I could, I was assisted very materially by the parrot above and the ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... she slipped her feet clear of the snowshoes and went closer to the tree, so that she might try to lift him out of the fork by sheer strength of arm. But the snow was so soft that she sank in over her ankles, going deeper and deeper with every attempt which she made to wriggle herself free. ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... "O, don't wriggle, now," retorted Will, sternly. "You know you saw him in time to warn him. You wanted to get him into it. You just come along with me, and apologize. If he is an old skinflint, you've got to remember he could have sold us out last year, only ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... a vast deal of human sympathy running along that slender thread of silk. But still he followed the dreadful roar of the Minotaur, which now grew louder and louder, and finally so very loud that Theseus fully expected to come close upon him, at every new zizgag and wriggle of the path. And at last, in an open space, at the very center of the labyrinth, he did discern the ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... embezzler may blithely make way with a silver service or bundle of bank notes only to find himself floundering, horse, foot and dragoons, in a quagmire of phraseology from which he cannot escape, wriggle as he will. Many such a one has thrown up his hands—and with them silver service, bank notes and all—in horror at what the grand jury ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... shoot out a thousand serpentine heads or knots of water, which wriggle down deliberately through the air and expend themselves in mist before half the descent is over. Then a new set burst from the body and sides of the fall, with the same fortune on the remaining distance; and thus ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... grabs it up, now ready fur a cleaver, an' no mistake. Big Injun ain't, though; he ain't ready fur any sich a thing. Up he comes wid a whirl, an' down I goes wid a fling, my ax a-flyin' way out yander. But in de wriggle uf a buck's tail comes up nigger ag'in; goes down Injun ag'in. Yes, an' a leetle mo' dan dat: nigger an' Injun clean ober de turn uf de hill, an' now a-slidin', slidin' down whar it wus steep ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... Fisherman, much marvelling at what had happened to him with the Ifrit, took the fish and made for the city; and as soon as he reached home he filled an earthen bowl with water and therein threw the fish which began to struggle and wriggle about. Then he bore off the bowl upon his head and repairing to the King's palace (even as the Ifrit had bidden him) laid the fish before the presence; and the King wondered with exceeding wonder at the sight, for never in his lifetime had' he seen fishes like these in quality or in conformation. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... very elementary organism cannot so much as catch a really athletic one as yet. Meanwhile you and I are handicapped. The individual travaileth in pain. In the struggle for quality, powers, air, he spends his strength, and yet hardly escapes asphyxiation. He can no more wriggle himself free of the psychic gravitations that invest him than the earth can shake herself loose of the sun, or he of the omnipotences that rivet him to the universe. If by chance one shoots a downy hint of wings, an instant feeling of contrast puffs him with ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... she cried, and her desperate wriggle out of his hand revealed that the fright of the night had left more impression upon her delicate soul than ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... which was not so tragical. A Hottentot was carried off by a lion during the night, wrapped up in his sheep-skin kaross, sleeping, as they usually do, with his face to the ground. As the lion trotted away with him, the fellow contrived to wriggle out of his kaross, and the lion went off with ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... never suffered more than when I first came here, and Therese telling everyone how amusing I was, and myself sitting as dumb as a mummy! I can talk quite beautifully now, and wriggle about like a native. I'll teach you how to shrug your shoulders, and you hold up your dress quite differently in France, and it's fashionable to be fat. Last night Therese let me have two girls for souper. They are ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... have!" said Aunt Agatha with considerable decision. "And it's not at all likely I ever shall. There are bugs and things," she added vaguely, "and snakes that wriggle about." ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... trifle from his own natural stance. A change of the position of the feet by even a couple of inches one way or the other may alter the stance altogether, and knock the player clean off his putting. In this new position he will wriggle about and feel uncomfortable. Everything is wrong. His coat is in the way, his pockets seem too full of old balls, the feel of his stockings on his legs irritates him, and he is conscious that there is a nail coming up on the inside of ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... me infinite honour then," said Paliser, who spoke better than he knew. But her visible discomfort delighted him. He saw that she wanted to wriggle out of it and, like a true sportsman, he gave her an opening in which she ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... it was astounding. Lottie actually dropped her legs, gave a wriggle, and lay and stared. A new idea will stop a crying child when nothing else will. Also it was true that while Lottie disliked Miss Minchin, who was cross, and Miss Amelia, who was foolishly indulgent, she rather liked Sara, little as she knew ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and honorably intended to follow the same path; to keep smiles for those above him and harsh judgments for those below him; in short, like Alfred, to wriggle his way upward. But in the depths of his being his energies were working in another direction, and they continually thrust him back where he belonged. His conflict with the street-urchins stopped of itself, it was so aimless; Pelle went in and out of their houses, ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... The lights had shown him a scanty few rows of barbed wire between him and the crater; he had reckoned roughly the number of steps to it and counted as he ran, then more cautiously pushed on, feeling for the wire, found it, threw himself down, and began to wriggle desperately underneath. When he thought he was through the last, he rose; but he had miscalculated, and the first step brought his thighs in scratching contact with another wire. His heart was in his mouth, for some seconds had passed since the last light had ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... Anderson kept revolving in his mind, with satisfaction, a new plan he had evolved. The next time Jim should fall asleep he would crawl back through the aperture in the conduit wall, pry up the boards over the opening into the prison yard, wriggle out, and take his chances in getting over the wall somehow! Better even be shot by a guard than die like a rat in this unspeakable place, as he was doing, where he couldn't stand up and dared not lie down on account of the things that were forever crawling through ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... prince first," said Dora; "don't wriggle so or I can't fix you. Sometimes being made a king just happens to some one who isn't ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... to her. It would give me satisfaction to denounce the whole town to her. "Ah, I have got you!" I seemed to say to the people of Antomir. "The ghost of my mother and the whole Other World see you in all your heartlessness. You can't wriggle out of it." This was my revenge. I reveled ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... DESBOROUGH'S vivacious attack upon the Cippenham Motor Depot, it is doubtful whether anyone could have enabled the Government to wriggle out of the demand for an independent inquiry. At any rate Lord INVERFORTH was insufficiently agile. The innumerable type-written sheets which he read out laboriously may have contained a complete reply to Lord DESBOROUGH'S main allegations, even if they included no refutation of the stones of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... driving in that respect. But he did show nervous timidity at feeding with the other horses, and so Miguel cheerfully went to the urging with fork and tongue. But only the one time. Soon the colt took to burying his nose in the box along with the others, and would wriggle his tail with a vigor that seemed to tell of his gratitude at being accepted as part of the great establishment and its devices. And then another thing. With this change in his method of feeding, he soon came to reveal steadily increasing courage and independence. Oftentimes he would be the ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... enjoying his wriggle between a perception of her fun and an acknowledgment of his peccancy. She commanded him to tell her which was the glorious Valentine's day of our naval annals; the name of the hero of the day, and the name of his ship. To these questions his answers were as ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... nip and tuck if we ever get out of this? You've shown yourself, from start to finish, a miserable cheat; there's no trust to be put in either your judgment or your intentions. Be still," he commanded, as she sought to wriggle out of his grasp, to avoid the direct blaze of his eyes. "I am going to do what I can for you; to see you safe through this, if I can. Not because you are anything to me, but just because you are Ben Gaynor's, and he is ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... the world gathered together and danced and capered before the frog in order to make him laugh, but all to no purpose. Then they called up the fishes to see if they could accomplish anything, but the frog preserved a solemn face until the eel began to wriggle. ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... ceaseless dread? If you knew what I have to endure! I sometimes envy you. 'Pon my honour, I sometimes wish I had married a fishmonger! Silva, indeed, is a most excellent husband. Polished! such polish as you know not of in England. He has a way—a wriggle with his shoulders in company—I cannot describe it to you; so slight! so elegant! and he is all that a woman could desire. But who could be safe in any part of the earth, my dears, while papa will go about so, and behave ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... left by that time to cover them mercifully over with the loathsome, reeking vegetable detritus which passes here for soil, and which is so fairly animate that you can see every spadeful of it writhe and wriggle as you throw it over the rotting hour-dead shell of what was a free American citizen ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... intended to have sent you Bates's article this very day. I am so glad you like it. I have been extremely much struck with it. How well he argues, and with what crushing force against the glacial doctrine. I cannot wriggle out of it: I am dumbfounded; yet I do believe that some explanation some day will appear, and I cannot give up equatorial cooling. It explains so much and harmonises with so much. When you write ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... devoted to Miss Beaubien until Alice Renwick came; then he dropped her like a hot brick. By the Eternal, Rollins, he hasn't gotten off with that old love yet, you mark my words. There's Indian blood in her veins, and a look in her eye that makes me wriggle, sometimes. I watched her last night at parade when she drove out here with that copper-faced old squaw, her mother. For all her French and Italian education and her years in New York and Paris, that girl's got a wild streak ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... deliberate. Would it not be better to keep her in ignorance? What was to be gained by revealing to her the—But Miss Thackeray was luring him on to destruction. She stood outside the door and beckoned. That in itself was ominous. Why should she wriggle a forefinger at him instead of calling out in her usual ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... says. 'Th' throuble about divoorce is it always lets out iv th' bad bargain th' wan that made it bad. If I owned a half in a payin' business with ye, I'd niver let th' sun go down on a quarrel,' he says. 'But if ye had a bad mouth I'd go into coort an' wriggle out iv th' partnership because ye'ar a cantankerous old villain that no wan cud get on with,' he says. 'If people knew they cudden't get away fr'm each other they'd settle down to life, just as I detarmined to like coal smoke whin I found th' collection wasn't big enough to put a new ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... stooping at one moment, where the bushes grew sparse; crawling in among some sheltering rocks at another, and even getting down to wriggle along like so many snakes, when not even so much as a bush offered a means of hiding from observation, in case hostile eyes happened to be turned upwards toward the hilltop at the foot of ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... have known enough by that time to leave four or five men on guard close by; as it was, when the men still on board the dhow began kicking up a babel, Fred and I came running and jumping back through the marsh just in time to see a crocodile wriggle off into the water, with the corpse in his jaws feet first. Fred fired a shotted salute, but missed, ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... commission would let him know when some poor sufferer was passing away and would recommend Rushton & Co. to the bereaved and distracted relatives. By these means often—after first carefully inquiring into the financial position of the stricken family—Misery would contrive to wriggle his unsavoury carcass into the house of sorrow, seeking, even in the chamber of death, to further the interests of Rushton & Co. and to earn his miserable two and a ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... to get ourselves free?" Tom demanded: "I've been trying to wriggle my hands out, but I'll admit that I can't ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... done," he said once to her. "I understand that you are not really a coward, Sarah—you have to fight an extra enemy called Fear. So when you do wrong and see a chance to escape blame and punishment and refuse to wriggle out, you are really braver than the girl who isn't afraid to say she did it. And every time you conquer Fear, Sarah, you've made the next conquest easier. You'll ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... jelly are imbedded, at regular intervals, little blackish dots; these elongate rapidly, and show symptoms of head and tail curled up in a spherical cell; the jelly is gradually absorbed for their nourishment, until on some fine morning each elongated dot gives one vigorous wriggle, and claims thenceforward all the privileges attendant on this dissolution of the union. The final privilege is often that of being suddenly snapped up by a turtle or a snake: for Nature brings forth her creatures ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... is lean, now Luck Is fat, And wise men take her as she comes: The Bowler may be sure the Bat Will share the sugarplums. So never wriggle, nor protest, Nor eye the zenith in disgust, But, Johnson, bowl your level best, And recollect, ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... out by his instructions, in anticipation of the contest on which he was embarking against you and against Daubrecq, at whose house he did the same thing. He had under his orders a sort of acrobat, an extraordinarily thin dwarf, who was able to wriggle through those apertures and who thus detected all your correspondence and all your secrets. That is what his two friends revealed to me. I at once conceived the idea of saving my elder son by making ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... the sun should set,' he answered, and began to wriggle along so fast that the girl ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... they said he'd proposed to every woman in the town of Bingham, not excepting the wooden Indian girl in front of the cigar-store, and not one of 'em but our Abby ever got a chance to name the day. Abby was as set as the everlastin' hills, and if she'd made up her mind to have a man he could n't wriggle away from her nohow in the world. It beats all how girls do run after these slick-haired, sweet-tongued, Miss Nancy kind o' fellers, that ain't but little good as beaux an' worth ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... displeasure by a kind of cold rudeness that gave a subtle insult to her smallest remark. The children were manifestly delighted. Cecilia was more or less in the position of a beetle on a pin, and theirs was the precious opportunity of seeing her wriggle. Wherefore they adopted their mother's tone, openly defied her, and ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... I believe," said Nancy, "but I don't expect ever to be, myself I don't think I could be. You might as well teach a snake not to wriggle." ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... down on your stomach," said the other, "and wriggle like a snake through a hedge, or we shall leave our carcasses behind ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... they would do so, he reflected, as he felt them squirming in his arms while Mrs. Spaniel was busy trying to keep their socks on. When the curate exhorted him "to follow the innocency" of these little ones, it was disconcerting to have one of them burst into a piercing yammer, and wriggle so forcibly that it slipped quite out of its little embroidered shift and flannel band. But the actual access to the holy basin was more seemly, perhaps due to the children imagining they were going to find tadpoles there. When Mr. Poodle held them up they smiled with a vague almost bashful simplicity; ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... to slide into it;) black, glossy crickets, with their long filaments sticking out like the whips of four-horse stage-coaches; motionless, slug-like creatures, larvae, perhaps, more horrible in their pulpy stillness than even in the infernal wriggle of maturity! But no sooner is the stone turned and the wholesome light of day let upon this compressed and blinded community of creeping things, than all of them that enjoy the luxury of legs—and some of them have a good many—rush round wildly, butting ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... dropped flat on the snow. Johnny followed his example and Tommy did the same. They knew that they must be close to the bear and they held their breath; for the guide, having examined his bow and arrows carefully, began to wriggle along on his stomach. Johnny and Tommy wriggled along behind him, clutching their guns. Just at the top of the ledge the guide quietly slipped an arrow out of his quiver and held it in his hand, as he slowly raised his head and peeped over. Johnny and Tommy, guns in hand, crept up beside ...
— Tommy Trots Visit to Santa Claus • Thomas Nelson Page
... Creep, crawl, wriggle, slide, clamber, scramble, clutch, climb, here jumping—actually jumping, I!—over a crevice, then drawing myself round an insuperable jut by two honest sturdy weeds—many thanks to them!—which had the consideration to be there and to plant themselves firmly in the rock; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... Thus, Tim, philosophers suppose, The world consists of puppet-shows; Where petulant conceited fellows Perform the part of Punchinelloes: So at this booth which we call Dublin, Tim, thou'rt the Punch to stir up trouble in: You wriggle, fidge, and make a rout, Put all your brother puppets out, Run on in a perpetual round, To tease, perplex, disturb, confound: Intrude with monkey grin and clatter To interrupt all serious matter; Are grown ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... jump out, but it was wide enough for her to push her nose through. And by vigorous thrusting, with her triangular head as a wedge, she was able to widen the aperture, inch by inch. In less than three minutes she had broadened it far enough for her to wriggle out of the car and leap to the side of the track. There she ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... ungovernable glee instantly arose within him. Seizing the handle of the heavy hunting-whip, which still hung from his right wrist by a leather thong, he flourished it in the air, and brought it down on his charger's flank with a crack like a pistol-shot, causing the animal to wriggle its tail, toss its ponderous head, and kick up its heels, in a way ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... rose straight up in the middle of the road. Instantly the Serpent uncoiled itself from his neck, and, as it touched the damp earth, it resumed the shape of the lovely damsel. Pointing to the rock, she showed him an opening just big enough for a man to wriggle through. Passing into it, they entered a long underground passage, which led out on to a wide field, above which spread a blue sky. In the middle of the field stood a magnificent castle, built out of porphyry, with a roof of gold and with glittering battlements. ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... bread and jam, "whether it wouldn't be better for me to do it with a knife. Most of the best things have been brought off with a knife. And it would be a new emotion to get a knife into a French President and wriggle ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... taken one quick look round as if to satisfy herself she was unobserved, suddenly cast herself down, in her turn, upon the damp earth, and inserting her head beneath the prickly barricade of the holly leaves, begin to crawl and wriggle forward until she had completely disappeared under it. What in the world could ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... leaping in the air from one swinging rope to another, and springing up the bars of the cage. The little monkey jumps, catches a rope, drops to the ground, and springs at another rope. Now he is in a corner, the others have him; but no, with a dive and a wriggle he has slipped through them, and is chattering and grimacing on the other ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... We need not wriggle and twist to try to avoid admitting that the calling of the martyred Zacharias, 'the son of Barachias,' is an error of some one who confused the author of the prophetic book with the person whose murder is narrated in 2 Chronicles xxiv. We do not know who made the mistake, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... and away also from the lower depths. So, though the way became more and more difficult as they advanced, they continued to press on, now up, now down, at another place going on their hands and knees, and further on having to wriggle between cracks which sorely nipped the Hunter as he forced his heavy frame through. And in the end they came out on the verge of the vast vault, which appeared to fill so much of the space below; emerged on a wind-swept ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... and heard himself say, "That's all right, I don't want the stuff. Take it in to that little chap in a striped suit, in the next car,—dirty little beggar, wriggled like an eel all day. This will probably make him wriggle all night. Never ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... called for, because society is not animated, or instinct enough with life, but in the condition of some snakes which I have seen in early spring, with alternate portions of their bodies torpid and flexible, so that they could wriggle neither way. All men are partially buried in the grave of custom, and of some we see only the crown of the head above ground. Better are the physically dead, for they more lively rot. Even virtue is no ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... is the end of me," he thought in his little round head as he tried to wriggle across the road and couldn't because his back was so stiff. "Now I am an old man and I shall never see another summer. Good-bye." And Fuzzy Caterpillar rolled himself up in a gray blanket and hung himself on the end of a dried twig. "This is the last of me," he ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... fearless while haunting their nesting- places, and are not to be scared with a gun, and are often beaten down with poles and cudgels as they stoop to go under the eaves. Swifts are much infested with those pests to the genus called hippoboscoe hirundinis; and often wriggle and scratch themselves in their flight to get rid of ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... my hands in my pockets after that last remark, and walked to the window glumly; but as I stood with my back to him, I could not help wondering if he was making faces at me, or up to any other undignified antics by way of relaxation. Did he ever wriggle with merriment when he was alone? I turned suddenly at the thought. He was calmly perusing a paper through his pince-nez, with an expression of countenance at once so benign, silly, and self-satisfied, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... married," said he, "I'll keep a hand on you, my lady, that you won't be able to wriggle away from. If you are slippery, and faith you are, why I'm tough, and so you'll find it." "Get rid of your kinks before you marry," said he. "I've no use for a wife with one eye on me, and it a dubious one, and the other one squinting into a parlour two streets off. You've got to settle down ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... David in sudden wrath. "Does he wriggle? Yes. Why? Because he suffers out of water. I've caught him to eat, and I owe it to him not to make him suffer any more than is necessary. What did that boy say to ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... crosses the clearing between here and the fort, even though it be in the night, needs to wriggle along like a snake, else will one of Thayendanega's ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... force he intended it to have. He caught himself, slipped again and went down, turning completely over the table top and falling face downward to the floor. He saw Yuma throw himself forward and he tried to wriggle out of danger, but he failed. He felt the half-breed's weight on his body, saw the knife flash in the dull light. He tried to roll over and grasp the knife in its descent, but could not, his left arm, now useless, being pinned to the floor ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... of you all the same first." And kneeling down by the injured man's side, he proceeded, with Ernest Wilton's assistance, to cut away Seth's shirt, and then the end of the arrow, holding it firmly the while so that it should not wriggle about, and hurt him more than they could help, after which the barbed head was drawn out of the wound—which was just between the third and fourth ribs, and not very serious, as the ex-mate had thought— stanching the blood, and binding up the place with a silk handkerchief, ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... frequent. Obviously the tactics of the snake were wearing it down. Though the lizard seemed to have lost none of its spirit, the flesh was becoming weak. While it panted, its eyes twinkled with inane ferocity, and the snake, with that peculiar fearsome, gliding movement—neither wriggle nor squirm—typical of the species, slowly edged its victim under the shadow of a tussock. There both reposed, the snake calm in craft and design, the lizard waiting for the one chance of its life. Swallowing the lizard under any circumstances seemed an impossible feat. To begin the act in ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... while he took off his coat and wrapped it around him, buttoning it like a bag over arms and all. The baby watched him knowingly, its eyes round and dark blue and shining, and gave a contented little wriggle when Bud picked it ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... wishes to get at. If there is not, and especially if anything is there which he wishes to shun, a four hundred and fifty pounder cannot crash a hole large enough for you to push him through. By such a pitiful chink as that did his Infallible Highness wriggle himself out of the range of my guns, and pursue his line ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... where his elders had failed but he would have a try, so he went to the edge of the water and spreading out his cloth on the weeds lay down on it so that his weight was distributed; in this position the weeds supported him and he managed to wriggle himself across on his face to ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... cake standing erect and solid. Gripping her harpoon, she threw herself flat on her stomach and pushing the cake before her, began to wriggle her way ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... in bows, braids, &c., three yards at least from the crown of your head; drawl, or lisp in your speech; bring out words and phrases from every living tongue with which you may happen to be slightly acquainted; boast of "the continent;" mince your gait; wriggle forward upon your toes when you walk; and swim and dip, whenever led into the atrocity of committing a quad-rille. In brief, give yourself unimaginable airs; then protest that your manners, as well as your costume, are of the newest Parisian mode—and it is ten to one ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various
... swayed under the weight of spread wet raincoats. Two opened umbrellas wheeled in the current of air that came around the house; the porch ran water. While Margaret was adding her own rainy-day equipment to the others, a golden brown setter, one ecstatic wriggle from nose to tail, flashed into view, and ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... way. I got up and looked out on the world. I says: 'J. R., it's clear you haven't enough cash for your ambitions. But you've got a opportunity. Throw it in. Be bold. If your conscience squirms, let it squirm. If it wriggles, let it wriggle. Take the risk. Expand to large ideas.' I took it. Say, I made parties unwilling investors in me. Now, then, there they are, as delegated in you. Here's me, Julius R., monarch by purchase and election of the sovereign state of Lua. You asks, 'What next?' I says: 'This. I'll pay. I'll settle ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... influence. He cannot fail to promote me for his own sake, as well as mine; and when I have once fairly got my legs in St. Stephen's, I shall soon have my hands in office: 'power,' says some one, 'is a snake that when it once finds a hole into which it can introduce its head, soon manages to wriggle in the rest of its body.'" With such meditations I endeavoured to beguile the time and cheat myself into forgetfulness of the lameness of my horse, and the dripping wetness of his rider. At last the storm began sullenly to subside: one impetuous torrent, ten-fold more violent than those that ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... rest, it presently narrowed down through a slope in the roof; but just at its narrowest, when he feared he had come to the end, there came a dip in the flooring corresponding to the slope up above, and he found he could wriggle through. Once through, the passage widened and continued to widen, and the going became very rough and broken, with piles of ragged rock and deep black pitfalls ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... said, his intimate eyes watching her wriggle, with a sense of being ridiculous, on the hook of ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... doll house for little Patience, for Christmas." Lydia gave an uncomfortable wriggle. "Don't talk ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... one instant. Up he went again. But, in fact, his best chance was in going up, for he was within four yards of the top when the mishap occurred. With a sigh of relief I saw him at last throw his arm over the verge and then wriggle his body upon the ledge. A few seconds later he was lying on his stomach, with his face over the edge, looking down ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... so I put one foot on him to take his scalp—his rattles, I mean—when horrid thrills coursed through me. The uncanny thing began to wriggle and rattle with old-time vigour. I do not like to think of that simian inheritance. But, fortified by Nimrod's assurance that it was 'purely reflex neuro-ganglionic movement,' I hardened my heart and captured ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... are others I could mention who took part in this contention, And at first 'twas my intention, but at present I forbear; There's young Look-sharp, and Wriggle, who would make an angel giggle, And a young conceited Zeigel, who was seated near the door; If you could only see them, you'd laugh till you were sore, And ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... growing too fast. Mark Twain remarked about a dachshund that it seemed to want another pair of legs in the middle to prevent it sagging. Now, some lizards are so long that they cannot keep from sagging, and their progress becomes a painful wriggle. But if you must go by wriggling, then what is the use of legs to knock against stems and stones? So some lizards have discarded two of their legs and some all four. Zoologically they are not snakes, but snakes ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... for there looked as if there might be room for him to hide under it. It was hard work, for you know his long hind-legs, which he uses for jumping, were tied together. The best he could do was to crawl and wriggle and pull himself along. Just as Farmer Brown's boy started to climb the fence back into the Long Lane, his hat in his hand, Grandfather Frog reached the old board and ...
— The Adventures of Grandfather Frog • Thornton W. Burgess
... obesity of the chest. The organs of locomotion are something altogether different. The Cetonia-grub[4] has shown us how, with the aid of the hairs and the pad-like excrescences upon its spine, it manages to reverse the universally-accepted usage and to wriggle along on its back. The grub of the Capricorn is even more ingenious: it moves at the same time on its back and belly; instead of the useless legs of the thorax, it has a walking-apparatus almost resembling feet, which appear, contrary to every rule, ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... prove it, Bumper began to gnaw at the lining of the muff, and pretty soon got his whole body under it, and then he began to kick and wriggle to get out. He felt he was being smothered alive, and he squealed aloud. The lady finally rescued him, but not until she had torn away half the ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... sneezes very incessantly and very objectionably," Molly says, thoughtfully. "I hate a man who sneezes publicly; and his sneeze is so unpleasant,—so exactly like that of a cat. A little wriggle of the entire body, and then a ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... another penny of mine will go for masses, for if my Pat has his head and shoulders out, I can safely reckon he'll soon wriggle himself away entirely, ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... Bremner with a sudden burst of animation that induced the creature to wriggle and dance on its hind legs for at least a minute, "you and I shall have a jolly night together on the beacon; so ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... have found consolation in that senseless superstition, "the applause of posterity." Posterity! posterity which goes to Rome, weeps large-sized tears, carves beautiful inscriptions over the tomb of Keats; and the worm must wriggle her curtsey to it all, since the dead boy, wherever he be, has quite other gear to tend. Never a bone less dry ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... violate his conscience; he would be faithful to the traditions of his house and the memory of his father,—and so on, until the patience of Wellington and Peel was exhausted, and they told him he must sign the bill at once, or they would immediately resign. "The king could no longer wriggle off the hook," and surrendered. O'Connell was instantly re-elected, and took his seat in Parliament,—a position which he occupied for the rest of his life. George IV. was the last of the monarchs of England who attempted to rule by personal government. Henceforward the monarch's duty ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... answered, "one must pick them out right. But all I mean is—for I express myself with violence—that she's in a position to watch me. There's an element of suspense for me, and she can see me wriggle. But my wriggling doesn't matter," he pursued. "I can bear it. ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... some way twisted. It ached with an insistence and annoyance only second to the wound. All his most determined efforts to wriggle it straight failed lamentably. Indeed, he almost fancied that they ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... themselves on to the wealthier and younger members of the male community. They poison the air round them with sickly perfumes; they assume titles, and speak of one another as "cette chere comtesse;" their walk is something between a prance and a wriggle; they prowl about the terrace whilst the music is playing, seeking whom they may devour, or rather whom they may inveigle into paying for their devouring: and, bon Dieu! how they do gorge themselves with food and drink when some silly lad or aged roue allows himself to be bullied or wheedled ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... turtle will lie quietly at the bottom of a pond or lake, looking like an old water-soaked log with a branch—its head and neck—at one end. From the tip of the tongue the creature extrudes two small filaments of a pinkish colour which wriggle about, bearing a perfect resemblance to the small round worms of which fishes are so fond. Attracted by these, fishes swim up to grasp the squirming objects and are engulfed by the cruel mouth of the angler. Certain marine turtles ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... the insect larvas that may have lurked in it when first removed. Lay the turves out in a frame, grass side downwards, and give them a soaking with water in which a very small quantity of salt has been dissolved. This will cause the remaining bots and slugs to wriggle out, and by means of a little patient labour they can be gathered and destroyed. In January or February sow the seed rather thickly in lines along the centre of each strip of turf, and cover with ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... had been repeated several times over, it usually happened that one of the songsters who claimed to be gifted with more perspicuity than his comrades would remind them that he had seen the old squirrel wriggle under the lash of the song. And so their wretched days of starvation were often made shorter by a more or less harmless attack on the poor skipper, who might only be the instrument of a parsimonious managing owner. ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... Hal—follows the bad un's feet wheresomever they goes; it's a sap as goes slippin' thro' the dews o' the grass on the brightest mornin', an' dodges round the trees in the sweetest evenin', an' goes wriggle, wriggle across the brook jis' when you wants to enjoy yourself, jis' when you wants to stay a bit on the steppin'-stuns to enjoy the sight o' the dear little minnows a-shootin' atween the water-creases. That's what ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... That's where I quit the ways of women—yes, ma'am, and the ways of men." She stood up and walked over to the window and looked out. The dogs were sleeping in their kennels, but a chain rattled. "I've broke the wolf-pack. You've seen them wriggle on their bellies for me, haven't you? Well, my girl, do you think I can't break you?" She wheeled back and stood with her hands on her hips. It was at that moment that she seemed to fill the world. Her ruddy eyes glowed like blood. They were not quite sane. ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... was uncomplaining. She clung doggedly to the Earth man's hand when they were able to walk erect: followed swiftly and unquestioningly when they were compelled to crawl or wriggle through an almost ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... called anxiously. "Are you alive? Hurry, oh, hurry and wriggle out. The building's falling ...
— The Runaway Skyscraper • Murray Leinster
... wholly different eyes. My father was a short, powerful man, and though he was nearly fifty years old his hair was black and thick and coarse. At night he would rub his unshaven cheek on Sue's small cheek and tickle her. She would chuckle and wriggle as though it were fun. I used to watch this hungrily, and once I awkwardly drew close and offered my cheek to be tickled. My father at once grew as awkward as I, and he gave me a rub so rough it stung. And this wasn't ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... he and his two brown, ragged boys. Large fish and small, pink fish, blue, yellow, orange, striped fish and mottled, wriggled together, and flapped their tails in the well of the little boat. There were even too many to lie there and wriggle. The bottom of the boat was well covered with them, and, if she had not shipped waves enough to keep them cool, the boy Battista had bailed a plenty on them. Father and son hurried on shore, and Battista on board began to fling the scaly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... Since I must die On gallows high And wriggle in a noose, I'll none repine Nor weep nor whine, For where would be the use? Yet sad am I That I must die With rogues so base and small, Sly coney-catchers, Poor girdle-snatchers, That do in ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... through the whole island. In an instant the gates of steel burst open, and between them stood a giant with an iron club in one hand, and in the other a chain which was fastened round the neck of a serpent. Now in all the world there was no serpent more horrible than this, for it did not wriggle along the ground as serpents generally do, but advanced erect, its head higher than a man seated on a horse, while it trailed besides a tail ten feet behind it. At the sight of the young man it lashed its tail so violently that the earth trembled as if with an earthquake, while its forky ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... getting back into her own corner with a happy little wriggle, all unconscious of Grandpapa's conspiracy with Mother Fisher in regard to ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... limitations, he contrived to wriggle along until at the beginning of his junior year he was whisked away to the hospital with scarlet fever, after which, amid sage waggings of their heads, a group of doctors congregated about his bed. He was not to be alarmed, they said. His eyes were not permanently injured. ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... eel-like attribute compensated for a certain lack of pace. He was past the Donaldson's three-quarters in an instant, and running for the line, with only the back to pass, and with Clowes in hot pursuit. Another wriggle took him past the back, but it also gave Clowes time to catch him up. Clowes was a far faster runner, and he got to him just as he reached the twenty-five line. They came down together with a crash, Clowes on top, and as they fell ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... changed indeed since first the colonel, your father, presented you to me at Oxford. However, I will try." The king tried, but in vain. He was stouter than Harry, although less broadly built, and had none of the lissomness which enabled the latter to wriggle through the bars. "It is useless," he said at last. "Providence is against me. It is the will of God that I should remain here. It may be the decree of Heaven that even yet I may sit again on the throne of my ancestors. ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... With a last swift wriggle the creeping figure was at the foot of the net which shrouded Jack. The latter looked down and saw that the man was literally covered from head to foot with masses of the swarming insects. Then, with wonderful dexterity, the newcomer jerked aside the insects which ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... happen, you know! Now then—why didn't you come to us? We have a wing quite empty. But just as you like, of course. Do you lease it from HIM?—this fellow, I mean," she added, nodding towards Lebedeff. "And why does he always wriggle so?" ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the caribou barrens. There for hours at a time they hunted elusive grasshoppers, rushing helter-skelter over the dry moss, leaping up to strike at the flying game with their paws like a kitten, or snapping wildly to catch it in their mouths and coming down with a back-breaking wriggle to keep themselves from tumbling over on their heads. Then on again, with a droll expression and noses sharpened like exclamation points, to ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... in rushing into a clinch, and Tad found himself gripped in those arms of steel. Wriggle and twist as be would he could not free himself from their embrace. His adversary, on the other hand, found himself fully occupied in holding on to his slippery young antagonist, giving him neither time nor opportunity effectually to dispose of the ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... fell into a sullen silence. The man was a study for me, and I observed every change in his fleeting moods. Generally his condition was that of miserable despair, which he attempted bravely to conceal. Even the boon of suicide had been denied him, for when he would wriggle into an erect position the rail of his pen was a foot above his head, so that he could not clamber over and break his skull on the stone floor beneath; and when he had tried to starve himself the attendants ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... soot out of 'is lungs an' breathin' toobs. But if Pint-o'-Bass does smoke more'n is good for 'im or any other respectable factory chimney, I'll admit the smoke 'asn't sooted up 'is intelleck none, an' 'e can wriggle 'is way out of a hole where a double-jointed snake 'ud stick. An' durin' the Retreat, when, as you knows, cigarettes in the Expeditionary Force was scarcer'n snowballs in 'ell, ole Pint-o'-Bass managed to carry on, an' wasn't never seen without 'is fag, excep' at meal-times, ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... warriors was returning. First come the Judge, tougher than rawhide, half walking and half flying, his wings spread out, 'cree-ing' to himself about bulldogs and their ways; next come Bobby, still sputtering and swearing, and behind ambled Thomas at a lively wriggle, a coy, large ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... suspected person can get away?" muttered the submarine boy. "Well, that's it should be. I wonder if there are any more of this strange crew—men or women spies that don't happen to have suspected so far? If there are, I don't believe they'll wriggle through the meshes of old Uncle Sam's ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... The thought, again, of the mighty revolution in human beliefs and affairs that might grow out of the same insignificant little phenomenon. A wine-glassful of clear liquid growing muddy. If we had found a wriggle, or a zigzag, or a shoot from one side to the other, in this last flask, what a scare there would have been, to be sure, in the schools of the prophets! Talk about your megatherium and your megalosaurus,—what ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... that it was almost with a feeling of relief that she beheld the door slowly—very slowly—begin to open. A little wider—a little wider—and yet a little wider; but still nothing came. Ah! Letty's heart turned to ice. Another inch, and a shadowy something slipped through and began to wriggle itself stealthily over the floor. Letty tried to divert her gaze, but could not—an irresistible, magnetic attraction kept her eyes glued to the gradually approaching horror. When within a few feet of her it halted; and again Letty felt it was listening—listening to the breathing on ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... her sake, as it were. Why, didst thou see, it was godly Mr. Henwick that held her head when he wriggled so, and old Madam Holbrook had herself helped upon a chair to see the better. I wonder how long I might wriggle, before great and godly folk would take so much notice of me? But, I suppose, that comes of being a pastor's daughter. She'll be so set up there'll be no speaking to her now. Faith! thinkest thou that Hota really had bewitched her? She gave me corn-cakes, ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... to him that I like to understand what is said to me. If he comes at me with unknown tongues, I shall wish him in unknown parts. I can't stand mysteries. I am a geologist, and believe that there are rocks all the way down, and that we had much better stand on them than wriggle in mere chaotic space. Good morning, Doctor. I shall come again soon; I shall keep ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... Shorty?" Lorry felt the warmth of a new life, felt the little body wriggle in snug contentment. "I wouldn't advise it. Tough job." Baby Newcomb twisted in his ...
— I'll Kill You Tomorrow • Helen Huber
... network of barbed wire that it was evidently not considered necessary to place sentinels there. By throwing over their parcels first and working away the ground for more than an hour under the barbed wire, the men were able to crawl and wriggle their ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... such strange enchantment, of a beauty which not alone beguiles the senses—I speak from the standpoint of the ten-year-old—but throws wide to fancy the gate of dreams. Directly I was seated—in the body—and had had my hat taken off and been told not to wriggle, I vaulted airily over the unconscious audience, over an orchestra engaged in tuning up, and was lost in the marvelous landscape of the drop-curtain. The adventures which I had there put to shame ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... tall master, astounded. He represses a wriggle of healthful satisfaction on the part of his pupils by a significant lift of his ferule, then moves ponderously up the stairs for a personal visit to the chamber of the culprit. The maid had given true report; there was no one there. Never had he been ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... scratching, scratching every hour, not each other's eyes but the History papers. I am a fish out of water.... It makes me feel growly all the time.... I can not get away from my ball and chain.... I think we'll make things snap and crackle a little.... This is the biggest swamp I ever tried to wriggle through.... We'll both put on our thinking caps and I guess get quite a lot of funnies in the reminiscences.... Now here is the publisher's screech for money.... O, to get out of this History prison!... ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... she did of his companion. At first he tried to think that he was dreaming, and for a long while he kept his eyes shut very tight to what he did not want to see, but in spite of his efforts, the truth managed to wriggle through, and then the young man gave up trying to deceive himself, and set about finding some way to get the better ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... deliver, that they have one if only they can disentangle it from the unrealities which have somehow got coiled up with it. All the odd little eccentricities in the form of service and the recent fashion of spicing sermons with unexpected swear-words are just pathetic efforts to wriggle out of the ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... tongue came hissing among the trees again, darting full forty feet at a stretch. As it approached, Medea tossed the contents of the gold box right down the monster's wide-open throat. Immediately, with an outrageous hiss and a tremendous wriggle—flinging his tail up to the tip-top of the tallest tree, and shattering all its branches as it crashed heavily down again—the dragon fell at full length upon the ground, and ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the order of Hosea Hessel, of the blue nose. And several boys took hold of me, all together, turned me over on the bench, face upwards. Two sat on my legs, two on my arms, and one held my head, so that I should not be able to wriggle. And another placed his left forefinger and thumb at my nose. (It seemed he was left-handed.) He curled up his finger and thumb, closed his eye, and began to fillip me on the nose. And how, do you think? Each time I saw ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... audience looked, they saw the panel slide back, and first of all Hamar's head, and then his body, wriggle through the ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... creatures become conspicuous and important. The mere-cats sit listening, and wonder what the new sound in the grass means, not like wind or rain. Little lizards basking on the sand suddenly wake up and wriggle away to avoid the thing against which the shelter of a leaf will not avail them. And always in front hares and buck by the hundred stream away like the shadows of clouds over grass. Then someone looks at his watch and shouts "Halt!" and the welcome word is shouted and repeated down the line ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... gun!" he warned Trevison. "I'll blow a hole through you if you wriggle a finger!" Watching Trevison, he spoke to Braman: "You got a ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... great disappointment to me," he said, trying to look disappointed, but his back would wriggle. "This chain business—silly of us not to have known—well, well, we shall be wiser another ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... Miss Dorothy's smile as she returned to the parlor, so she settled herself by the side of this new friend, folded her hands and let her feet dangle over the edge of the sofa. It was rather a slippery seat and in time it might be that she would have to wriggle back to a firmer place, but its nearness to Miss Dorothy was its attraction and she felt well satisfied and entirely secure when the teacher's arm encircled her and drew her closer. "I am to have one new pupil anyhow," said Miss Dorothy, smiling down. "Won't it be ...
— Little Maid Marian • Amy E. Blanchard
... course if that's it...! I can't guarantee what's happened since I began my pilgrimages. But I think I shall wriggle off home quietly as soon as we get to Colchester. This afternoon's business has been too feverish for me. When the policeman held up his hand as we came through Ellsworth I thought you were caught. I ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... saying all yet concealing all is that it is rich in figures. Metaphor is an enigma, wherein the thief who is plotting a stroke, the prisoner who is arranging an escape, take refuge. No idiom is more metaphorical than slang: devisser le coco (to unscrew the nut), to twist the neck; tortiller (to wriggle), to eat; etre gerbe, to be tried; a rat, a bread thief; il lansquine, it rains, a striking, ancient figure which partly bears its date about it, which assimilates long oblique lines of rain, with the dense and slanting pikes of the lancers, and which compresses ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... way of "Liberty," as most people understand that word. In the place of the rusty old manacles, the chain and shot, the iron yoke, cruel, ill-fitting, violent implements from which it was yet possible to wriggle and escape to outlawry, it may be the world will discover only a completer restriction, will develop a scheme of neat gyves, light but efficient, beautifully adaptable to the wrists and ankles, never chafing, never oppressing, slipped on and worn until ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... are you?" she said, as the four lay quiet on the table. But when she carefully put them back in the water, and they didn't wriggle or squirm a bit, she knew at ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... eel!" Bob glanced admiringly at his friend. "I believe you just wriggle by on the strength ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... between them stood a giant with an iron club in one hand, and in the other a chain which was fastened round the neck of a serpent. Now in all the world there was no serpent more horrible than this, for it did not wriggle along the ground as serpents generally do, but advanced erect, its head higher than a man seated on a horse, while it trailed besides a tail ten feet behind it. At the sight of the young man it lashed its tail so violently that the earth trembled as if with an earthquake, while its forky ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... He was used not only to wriggle around the line inside of ends and to squirm through difficult outlets, but to charge the line as well, a feat of which his height and strong legs rendered him well capable. He proved a consistant ground-gainer, and with Blair, who worked like a hero, and Kingdon, who won laurels ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... all the fishes,— Who much enjoyed the joke, With many a joyous wriggle And finny punch ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... usual style, suggesting a conscientious rehash of the encyclopedia. But suppose it were done differently, and with a caption like this, 'Why Does an Angle-Worm Wriggle?' Set that in irregular type that weaved and squirmed across the column, and Jones-in-the-street-car would at ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... guardedly referring, both in a wig and out of it; he passed behind a screen without it, and immediately (as quickly as we write) popped out in it, giving it a finishing touch rather like the butler's wriggle to his coat as he goes to the door. There are the two kinds of learned brothers, those who use the screen, and those who (so far as the jury knows) sleep in their wigs. The latter are the swells, and include the judges; whom, however, we have seen in the public ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... be snapped up. We would wriggle away. We were very sorry, but we must start at once ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... will pardon me more for digressing from the subject, I will here relate a little incident that occurred on the day of Albert's arrival in the city. It only goes to show how the average young man will wriggle and tax his brain in order to get out of ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... flutter passed through the fingerling; it gave a final gasp and was still. Knitting his brows in almost comical vexation, he hastened to restore it to the stream, holding it by the tail and striving to impart a life-like wriggle to ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... about her wrist, looked up roguishly. "I couldn't possibly wriggle out of my gown, could I, Dr. Weissmann? And if I did, how could I get the tacks ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... ringlets to grace Its brow, and no ear for my song; Hush'd the caves of its breath, and the finger of death The raised features hath flatten'd along. The eyes' wonted beam, and the eyelids' quick gleam— The intelligent sight, are no more; But the worms of the soil, as they wriggle and coil, Come hither their dwellings to bore. No lineament here is left to declare If monarch or chief art thou; Alexander the Brave, as the portionless slave That on dunghill expires, is as low. Thou delver of death, in ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... mittened hands upon the arms of the chair, and gave a little wriggle, trying to get up. ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... with a short laugh. "Women, you'll find when you've been here long enough, have less to do with it than rain-water full of wriggle-tails, as they call those young animals that fill our cisterns in summer time, and the no less disagreeable—to one not a native here—muddy water from the river as a beverage. One is absolutely forced to 'tip the goblet red,' in order to have something palatable to rinse ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... conversation Gibbs had managed to wriggle his mutilated body on to a wicker chair, where he steadied himself with his crutch, evincing manifest signs of choler the while by running his fat fingers through the reddish door-mat of hair, hitching up his trowsers, and rapping nervously his timber stump of a leg on the ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... keep snakes as pets, and allow them a wriggle on the grass every day. Early last week I missed one, a little black chap about 10 to 11 in. long, and have not seen him since. Perhaps the one Mr. Harry Furniss found on Saturday is my lost pet, carried away, not by one of the expected vultures, but by ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... The hare postures and gyrates in front of the hound. The way to put an end to the gaudy crimes that the suffragist alarmists talk about is to shave the heads of all the pretty girls in the world, and pluck out their eyebrows, and pull their teeth, and put them in khaki, and forbid them to wriggle on dance-floors, or to wear scents, or to use lip-sticks, or to roll their eyes. Reform, as usual, mistakes the fish ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... drawn down into his shoulders, and a friendly leafy branch bending over him to screen him from prying eyes. As a fish swam up to his chum he would spear it like lightning; throw his head back and wriggle it head-first down his long neck; then settle down to watch for the next one. And there he stayed, alternately watching and feasting, till he had enough; when he drew his head farther down into his shoulders, shut his eyes, and went fast asleep in ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... can wriggle through if they can. One thing is certain, it won't be for lack of trying. So, whatever you may have to send to the major, get ready; the lightning express leaves at 4.30. I must go and report my movements to the commanding officer, ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... half-nude figures were describing circles upon the smooth floor. The silence and the serpentlike motions had a peculiar hypnotic effect upon us, and in a sort of dreamlike trance we watched them wriggle by the narrow aperture to which we pressed our faces. With each circle more of the brown, sweat-polished bodies showed beneath the twisted mats. The pace was beginning to tell upon them now. Slower and slower they moved ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... with trepans, bores through rock on the feeble Fly's behalf. Urged by a presentiment that to us remains an unfathomable mystery, the Cerambyx-grub leaves the inside of the oak, its peaceful retreat, its unassailable stronghold, to wriggle towards the outside, where lives the foe, the Woodpecker, who may gobble up the succulent little sausage. At the risk of its life, it stubbornly digs and gnaws to the very bark, of which it leaves no more intact than the ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... If they cannot wriggle out of expressing an opinion of some sort, they will commonly retail those of some one who has already written upon the subject, and conclude by saying that though they quite admit that there is an element of truth in what the writer has said, there are ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... would come up the creek from the ocean and the finest ones found their way into the pool, and on Friday the cook and his men supplied the tables with fresh fish. How many times have I seen those fine fish, caught on the prongs of a spear, writhe and wriggle to get off. At first I could not taste them, I felt so sorry to see them killed in that way. I would not go out on Friday until after the fishing was done. The lamper eels crawled up the stream and the men gathered them by the barrels full and ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... her eyes from a half-made catalogue-card, eyed the relentlessly slow clock and checked a long wriggle of purest, frankest weariness. Then she gave a furtive glance around to see if the children had noticed she was off guard; for if they had she knew the whole crowd might take more liberties than they ought to, and have to be spoken to by the janitor. ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... but offered to take my own tiller and lend him Grue. He couldn't wriggle out of it, seeing that his alleged motive had been the overcrowding of my boat, but he looked rather sick when ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... half a dozen of the rascals, whom we had a rare hunt after through the hold and fo'c's'le before we could collar them. They are fast bound now, though, lashed head and feet to the mainmast bitts; and it will puzzle them to wriggle themselves loose from old Masters' double hitches, I know. Besides which, two of our men are guarding there, with boarding-pikes in their hands and orders to run 'em through the gizzard ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... the manager's expressive face, but from the fact that the hands holding it tightened their grip Psmith deduced that Mr Bickersdyke's attention was not wholly concentrated on the City news. Moreover, his toes wriggled. And when a man's toes wriggle, he is interested in what you ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... staring down at a red smashed thing on the ground that, in spite of partial obliteration, could still wriggle unavailing legs. Then, when the gaunt man pointed to another mass that bore down upon them, he drew his sword hastily. Up the valley now it was like a fog bank torn to rags. He tried to ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... supposing such a thing. There is not, in or out of an attorney's office in the county of Erie, or elsewhere, one who could raise a doubt, or a particle of a doubt, about the meaning of this provision of the Constitution. He may act as witnesses do, sometimes, on the stand. He may wriggle, and twist, and say he cannot tell, or cannot remember. I have seen many such efforts in my time, on the part of witnesses, to falsify and deny the truth. But there is no man who can read these words of the Constitution of the United States, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... Claire tried to wriggle out from under the thought of Milt while, with the Gilsons as the perfect audience, she improvised on the theme of wandering. With certain unintended exaggerations, and certain not quite accurate groupings of events, she described the farmers and cowpunchers, the incredible hotels ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... interesting were we not lying trussed in this cellar," I said. "I am trying to wriggle ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... hesitate, however, for one instant. Up he went again. But, in fact, his best chance was in going up, for he was within four yards of the top when the mishap occurred. With a sigh of relief I saw him at last throw his arm over the verge and then wriggle his body upon the ledge. A few seconds later he was lying on his stomach, with his face over the edge, looking ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... 'I won't let you speak. You've said it, a satellite, you're not going to wriggle out of it. You've ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... straight, well-built, ruddy-skinned fellow—every inch a man! What birth and station had done for him would become apparent when his valet began to hand him his Bond Street outfit. The next instant William stood beside him. Then there came a wriggle about the shoulders, the slip of a buckle, and he was overboard and out again before my lord had discarded his ...
— The Parthenon By Way Of Papendrecht - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the ruler gave a tremendous wriggle with the whole body, which proved as ineffectual ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... open to let Lass jump out, but it was wide enough for her to push her nose through. And by vigorous thrusting, with her triangular head as a wedge, she was able to widen the aperture, inch by inch. In less than three minutes she had broadened it far enough for her to wriggle out of the car and leap to the side of the track. There ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... it served him as a signal. In a harsh, untuneful voice he began to chant an old coon-ditty. The effect of his music was instantaneous as regards the more sensitive ears of the pup. Its eyes opened, and it lifted its head alertly. Then, with a quick wriggle, he sat up on his hind quarters, and, throwing his lean, half-grown muzzle in the air, set up such a howl of dismay that Sunny's melody became entirely lost in a jangle of discords. He caught up his empty sack and flung it at the wailing pup's head. It missed its aim, and in ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... one stifling both the child's and the substitute's hesitation,—to allow the gaudy stranger to walk beside one the length of C Street. And though the sidewalk was crowded, for stocks were up, and one had to wriggle one's way through the people packed tight in front of the brokers' offices, yet, in the very teeth of the townsfolk, to joy shamelessly in flirtation with this gorgeous, shining, flattering stranger—a social outlaw, as well as a bird of passage, the very disrepute ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... that he was in danger, threw herself on the ground and tried to wriggle forward to him, but the low growth made the passage of her larger body impossible. She drew herself back and called frantically to the boy. She could hear the commotion and see the parrots one by one flying clumsily out as they escaped from ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... mules. Visions of men being lathered and shaved, of women having their hair dressed or their hair searched, Sicilian fashion, of youths trying to curl upward scarcely born mustaches, of children being hastily attired in clothes which made them wriggle and squint, came to the eyes from houses in which privacy was not so much scorned as unthought of, utterly unknown. Turkeys strolled in and out among the toilet-makers. Pigs accompanied their mistresses from doorway to doorway as dogs accompany ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... realistic and endowed with such benignity and such gentleness of motion that I gazed at it with the gladness of a discoverer. In response to a slight motion of the hand, the sea-serpent wriggled as though in haste; but wriggle as it might the ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... it straight; so that he can't wriggle out of it!" exclaimed Newall, as Paul paused, unable to get out the words that came as a torrent ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... trifling enough, too. The staff seemed to get up from the ground of its own accord, and, spreading its little pair of wings, it half hopped, half flew, and leaned itself against the wall of the cottage. There it stood quite still, except that the snakes continued to wriggle. But, in my private opinion, old Philemon's eyesight had been ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... bottom, where we must cross a soft mound formed of the powdery dust thrown off by the avalanche in its rush. Leo slipped over safely, but I, following a yard or two to his right, of a sudden felt the hard crust yield beneath me. An ill-judged but quite natural flounder and wriggle, such as a newly-landed flat-fish gives upon the sand, completed the mischief, and with one piercing but swiftly stifled ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... space was clear for us at the stern. The cabin was about 2 metres long, 1 1/2 metre wide, and 1 1/2 metre high, and was crammed with stuff—tinned meats, cloths, guns, trading goods, etc. One person could wriggle in it, crawling on hands and knees, but two had to wind round each other in impossible positions, and it was quite unthinkable that both should spend the night below. But with the happy carelessness and impatience of a long-delayed start, we did not think of the hardships of the future, and ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... Molly," he suggested at last. Then he turned to Chris, who was watching him with almost no expression. "You can wriggle your chair to the phone in half an hour, I guess. Knock the phone off and yell for help. It's better than you deserve, unless you really did leave ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... it looked as if I was wrong, for he tried it again. Another shock he got, burst himself a'most wid a most fearful yell, an' bolted. His brothers didn't seem to understand it quite. They looked after him in surprise. Then the biggest wan gave a wriggle of his curly tail, an' wint to the post as if to inquire what was the matter. When he got it on the nose the effect was surprisin'. The curl of his tail came straight out, an' it quivered for a minute all over, wid its mouth wide open. The screech had stuck in his throat, but it ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... to be done now? If the robber had had a knife in his pocket, Gum would have been a dead monkey in two seconds. But while he was unsuccessfully feeling for his knife, Gum suddenly came to, and with one violent wriggle shook itself free, and sprang on the highest shelf. The robber gave chase; then followed the most comical hunt you ever saw. The robber's face being now exposed (he had no idea that Donald had already recognised him), he was afraid to turn round, and he had to keep up ...
— The Monkey That Would Not Kill • Henry Drummond
... Saturday afternoon, all vanished from before me, swallowed up in a mild glory, which contained but two objects,—an angel with low neck and short sleeves, and an insensate hippopotamus of a piano, which did not wriggle all over with ecstasy when her white ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... themselves, seeing that they were utterly worn out. This unforeseen catastrophe evidently astonished their driver. Slipping from the box, he stood resting his hands against the side of the britchka, while Chichikov tumbled and floundered about in the mud, in a vain endeavour to wriggle clear of the stuff. ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... relief that she beheld the door slowly—very slowly—begin to open. A little wider—a little wider—and yet a little wider; but still nothing came. Ah! Letty's heart turned to ice. Another inch, and a shadowy something slipped through and began to wriggle itself stealthily over the floor. Letty tried to divert her gaze, but could not—an irresistible, magnetic attraction kept her eyes glued to the gradually approaching horror. When within a few feet of her it ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... patience and neatness, and above all keep him quiet in the evenings. Since your father has been so worried over his business, he needs all the relaxation possible at home, he enjoys reading aloud in the evenings, and Johnny's fidgeting annoys him. A ten-year-old boy is all wriggle and racket without something ...
— The Quilt that Jack Built; How He Won the Bicycle • Annie Fellows Johnston
... here. I'll wriggle my way to that tree," pointing, "and you creep behind that one," pointing again, this time to a tree perhaps a hundred yards distant from ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... creatures which the schoolboy loves built their queer nests among the waterweeds; and sometimes a silly adventurer—alarmed by the majestic approach of a large fish—would rush on to the loamy bank at the shallow end of the lake and wriggle piteously in hopeless failure. The afternoons were divinely restful by the varied shores of the limpid lake. Sometimes as the sun sloped there might come hollow blasts of wind that had careered for a brief space over the ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... law, and picks pockets with tricks in equity. By his means the law makes more knaves than it hangs, and, like the Inns-of-Court, protects offenders against itself. He gets within the law and disarms it. His hardest labour is to wriggle himself into trust, which if he can but compass his business is done, for fraud and treachery follow as easily as a thread does a needle. He grows rich by the ruin of his neighbours, like grass in the streets in a great sickness. He shelters himself under ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... enough, however, in a man whose kink for repudiation in general led him to promulgate the theory that one generation cannot bind another for the payment of a debt. Hamilton, having disposed of Jefferson's attempts, under the signature of Aristides, to wriggle out of both these accusations, discoursed upon the disloyal fact that the Secretary of State was the declared opponent of every important measure which had been devised by the Government, and proceeded to lash him for his hypocrisy in sitting daily at the right ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... transmitter sent out its particular whine its own similarly tuned receiver spring would wriggle ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... her desperate wriggle out of his hand revealed that the fright of the night had left more impression upon her delicate ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... the best explanation I could think of. But it was not good enough for Diana. She attempted to push me farther back, and I resisted, trying to wriggle myself free and elude her; but she was on the alert, and too quick as well as too strong for my trick ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... same. Hold not thy knife upright but sloping, and lay it down at the right hand of plate with blade on plate. Look not earnestly at any other that is eating. When moderately satisfied leave the table. Sing not, hum not, wriggle not.... Smell not of thy Meat; make not a noise with thy Tongue, Mouth, Lips, or Breath in Thy Eating and Drinking.... When any speak to thee, stand up. Say not I have heard it before. Never endeavour to help him out if he tell it not right. ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... honestly and honorably intended to follow the same path; to keep smiles for those above him and harsh judgments for those below him; in short, like Alfred, to wriggle his way upward. But in the depths of his being his energies were working in another direction, and they continually thrust him back where he belonged. His conflict with the street-urchins stopped of itself, it was so aimless; Pelle went in and out of their houses, and ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Five hundred well-dressed and civilised savages, wet, cross, weary, all anxious to get in—eager for home and dinner; five hundred stiffened and cramped folk equally eager to get out—mix on a narrow platform, with a train running off one side, and a detached engine gliding gently after it. Push, wriggle, wind in and out, bumps from portmanteaus, and so at ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... like the rest, it presently narrowed down through a slope in the roof; but just at its narrowest, when he feared he had come to the end, there came a dip in the flooring corresponding to the slope up above, and he found he could wriggle through. Once through, the passage widened and continued to widen, and the going became very rough and broken, with piles of ragged rock and deep black ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... good, Mas' Don; and we've got nothing to fight him with but pistols. Let him be, and the thing will soon wriggle out." ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... existence, and in the course of it they developed those acquired characteristics whereby the birds of the air and the beasts of the field maintain themselves in a world of carnage. They learnt to walk delicately on the balls of their feet as silently as hares, to see in the dark like foxes, to wriggle like the creeping things of the field, to lower their voices with the direction of the wind, to select a background with the moonlight, and to stand motionless on patrol with muscles rigid like a pointer when the star-shells dissolved the security of the night. They studied ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... astonished and half frightened, and as she began to wriggle uneasily, her father set ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... and gesticulating so vehemently, with the Hebrew stamp on every line of their dark, keen faces, are blockade-runners: they bewail their captivity more loudly than their fellows; but, be sure, they will wriggle out, soonest of all, if freedom can be purchased by hard swearing or gold. The profits of a single successful venture are simply fabulous; the smugglers are frequently captured with dollars on their ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... I cannot make him sound good. Of course I might leave out his doubtful qualities, and describe him merely as beautiful and affectionate; I might ... but I couldn't. I think Chum's habitual smile would get larger, he would wriggle the end of himself more ecstatically than ever if he heard himself summed up as beautiful and affectionate. Anyway, I couldn't do it, for I get carried away when I speak of him and I reveal all his ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... called upon for decision on knotty point, must needs make mistake sometimes. If he does, unless it be very serious, he should stick to it. For Chairman of Committees, better to be in the wrong and uphold authority of Chair, than to wriggle into the right at its expense. MELLOR should be more monosyllabic in his style, more ruthless in his dealing with disorderly interruption, more wary about putting his foot down, but, being planted, it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 20, 1893 • Various
... been seven years before, when he first arrived from abroad, had he been told that there was no need for him to seek or plan anything, that his rut had long been shaped, eternally predetermined, and that wriggle as he might, he would be what all in his position were. He could not have believed it! Had he not at one time longed with all his heart to establish a republic in Russia; then himself to be a Napoleon; then to be a philosopher; and then a strategist and the conqueror of Napoleon? Had he ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... enjoying herself. In early life she had been accustomed to impale fools on epigrams, like flies on pins, to see them wriggle. But with advancing years she had lost in some measure the faculty of nice discrimination,—it was pleasant to see her victims squirm, whether they were fools or friends. Even one's friends, she argued, were not always wise, and were ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... spread and spread and run down your legs." Friend Elephant did as he was ordered. Friend Mouse-deer then instructed the Elephant as follows: "As soon as I begin to lick up the molasses on your back, bellow as loud as you can and make believe to be hurt, and writhe and wriggle ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... somethin' good fur beatin' out brains, an' dar lays my ax. I grabs it up, now ready fur a cleaver, an' no mistake. Big Injun ain't, though; he ain't ready fur any sich a thing. Up he comes wid a whirl, an' down I goes wid a fling, my ax a-flyin' way out yander. But in de wriggle uf a buck's tail comes up nigger ag'in; goes down Injun ag'in. Yes, an' a leetle mo' dan dat: nigger an' Injun clean ober de turn uf de hill, an' now a-slidin', slidin' down whar it wus steep ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... about in the alders and chirped dozy notes. Peace and restfulness brooded. The man at the brook leaned low and thrust his head into the water and then rose and shook the drops from his thick thatch of brown hair. He did it with a sort of canine wriggle and smiled at the ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... clearing between here and the fort, even though it be in the night, needs to wriggle along like a snake, else will one of Thayendanega's painted beauties lift ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... cliff! Creep, crawl, wriggle, slide, clamber, scramble, clutch, climb, here jumping—actually jumping, I!—over a crevice, then drawing myself round an insuperable jut by two honest sturdy weeds—many thanks to them!—which had the consideration to be there and to plant themselves firmly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... was on the look-out with the ardent gaze of a beast of prey watching for its spoil, and, suddenly, with a swift movement, he darted his forked weapon into the sea so vigorously that it secured a large fish swimming near the bottom. It was a conger eel, which managed to wriggle, half dead as it was, into a puddle of the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... When he tried to illustrate how thoughtful and generous Hogboom was he blundered into the story of the time Hoggy bet all of his money on a baseball game at Muggledorfer, and of how he walked home with his chum and carried the latter's coat and grip all the way. That made the Faculty wriggle, I can tell you. He illustrated the pluck of the deceased by telling how Hogboom, as a Freshman, dug all night alone to rescue a man imprisoned in a sewer, spurred on by his cries—though Rogers explained in his halting way, it afterward turned out that this was only ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... tragical. A Hottentot was carried off by a lion during the night, wrapped up in his sheep-skin kaross, sleeping, as they usually do, with his face to the ground. As the lion trotted away with him, the fellow contrived to wriggle out of his kaross, and the lion went off with only ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the men and many of the women shrank back while those that had babies, or little folks, snatched up their children, fearing lest the poisonous snakes might wriggle towards them. ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... great thoats after me. They had difficulty in negotiating some of the doorways, but as the buildings fronting the city's principal exposures were all designed upon a magnificent scale, they were able to wriggle through without sticking fast; and thus we finally made the inner court where I found, as I had expected, the usual carpet of moss-like vegetation which would prove their food and drink until I could return them to their own enclosure. That they would be as quiet and contented ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... sight. The leopard and Scroope were fighting each other. The leopard, standing on one hind leg, for the other was broken, seemed to be boxing Scroope, whilst Scroope was driving his big hunting knife into the brute's carcase. They went down, Scroope undermost, the leopard tearing at him. I gave a wriggle and came out of that mossy bed—I recall the sucking sound my body made ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... answered. "Were I a younger man you might, perhaps, accuse me of scheming to wriggle myself into your good graces, Miss Enid. But I am getting old, and, moreover, I'm a confirmed bachelor, therefore you cannot, I think, accuse me of such ulterior motives. No, I only point out this peril for your ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... he paused to deliberate. Would it not be better to keep her in ignorance? What was to be gained by revealing to her the—But Miss Thackeray was luring him on to destruction. She stood outside the door and beckoned. That in itself was ominous. Why should she wriggle a forefinger at him instead of calling out in her usual ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... and sticking his stomach out. Her aunt, a lady of forty-two, drawn in tightly at the waist and fashionably dressed with sleeves high on the shoulder, evidently tried to look young and was still anxious to be charming; she walked with tiny steps with a wriggle of ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... a time," began Dan, with a twinkle in his eye, "the pigs were swine." Roseen gave an impatient wriggle. "Well, well, it's too bad to be tormentin' ye that way. I'll begin right now.—Well, very well then. There was wan time the Spider an' the Gout was thravellin' together, goin' to seek their fortun's. Well, they come to the crass roads. 'Lookit here,' says the Spider, 'it's time for you ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... subsidence of Esmeralda the lioness renewed her efforts to wriggle her huge bulk through ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... although tempestuous, were never very prolonged. The curious convulsive wriggle of one of his arms, which always showed when he was excited, gradually died away, and after looking for some time at the papers of de Meneval—who had written away like an automaton during all this uproar—he came across to the fire with a smile upon ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... asks, is to be let alone. To uncover its atrocities is like turning over a huge stone in the meadow in springtime, that has been a hiding-place for bugs and worms that nest away in the dark. As soon as the hot, searching sunlight finds them, they will wriggle and squirm in agony until they can crawl under cover again. So I do not wonder that, when the hideous cruelty of the tenement-house sweat-shop is brought to light, the sweater and all his friends wriggle and squirm in an agony of fright and shame. Neither am I alarmed that this critic, as a type ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... cried in an awestricken voice; "there is a split, and you'll make it worse if you wriggle about so. Be a good boy, Dickie, and try to ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... feature through the desert is the almost unquenchable thirst that the dry saline air inflicts upon one. Reaching a railway section-house, I find no one at home; but there is a small underground cistern of imported water, in which "wrigglers " innumerable wriggle, but which is otherwise good and cool. There is nothing to drink out of, and the water is three feet from the surface; while leaning down to try and drink, the wooden framework at the top gives way ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... advice, dead in the teeth of all the maxims recognised by worldly prudence. He says, in effect, 'Mind very little about getting on and getting up. Do God's will wherever you are, and let the rest take care of itself.' Now, the world says, 'Struggle, wriggle, fight, do anything to better yourself.' Paul says, 'You will better yourself by getting nearer God, and if you secure that—art thou a slave? care not for it; if thou mayest be free, use it rather; art thou bound to a wife? seek not to be loosed; art thou loosed? seek ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... he contrived to wriggle along until at the beginning of his junior year he was whisked away to the hospital with scarlet fever, after which, amid sage waggings of their heads, a group of doctors congregated about his bed. He was not to be alarmed, they said. ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... a policeman," said Bob, chuckling. "He walked me about two blocks, hunting for a cop. Then a crowd collected and I decided it was better to wriggle out, and I did, leaving the only coat I owned in his hands. But I never go out without looking up and down the street first. I don't want to be arrested, even if I didn't steal anything. Besides, with Peabody, ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... Even if I can wriggle my nose like a rabbit. Besides, it sounds like a muskmelon. But, anyway, the head buyer ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... facility in the most extravagant tricks for my entertainment. He afterwards came to live quite near us; he was my daily guest at all meals, and accompanied me on my usual walks to the Sihlthal. He soon tried to wriggle out of these, however. He also went with me on a visit to Minna at Brestenberg. As I had to repeat these expeditions regularly every week, being anxious to watch the result of the treatment, Tausig endeavoured to escape from these also, as neither ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... creatures please me better. They spin round on the surface of the water and their black backs gleam in the sun. If I lift a hand to seize them, that moment they disappear, I know not where. It's a pity: I should have much liked to see them closer and to make them wriggle in a little bowl which I should have put ready ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... lest anything I might do should keep my foe awake! I believe he did doze a little. The pressure of the great paw upon my back seemed to relax a trifle. I waited what seemed to me a quarter of an hour; then—my heart in my mouth—I tried a tiny little wriggle. In a moment the pressure increased, a roar rent the air, I thought my last moment had arrived and a prayer came to my lips. I felt my left shoulder or upper arm seized. 'Heaven help me!' I muttered aloud—my head swam—I ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... side, He never fail'd to save his tide, But got the start of ev'ry state, And at a change ne'er came too late; Cou'd turn his word, and oath, and faith, 375 As many ways as in a lath; By turning, wriggle, like a screw, Int' highest trust, and out, for new. For when h' had happily incurr'd, Instead of hemp, to be preferr'd, 380 And pass'd upon a government, He pay'd his trick, and out he went But, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... opened into each other and were quite large, and both were covered with heavy rugs. Pussy's favorite game was to race back and forth from one end of the rugs to the other; sometimes he would poke his nose under the edge of a rug and wriggle in between the rug and the floor until he was simply a hump in the middle of it, like a dumpling. It was well Miss Mary always knew where he was, or he might have been stepped on some fine evening. But he was ...
— Dew Drops, Vol. 37. No. 16., April 19, 1914 • Various
... should have known enough by that time to leave four or five men on guard close by; as it was, when the men still on board the dhow began kicking up a babel, Fred and I came running and jumping back through the marsh just in time to see a crocodile wriggle off into the water, with the corpse in his jaws feet first. Fred fired a shotted salute, but missed, and that ended ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... she called anxiously. "Are you alive? Hurry, oh, hurry and wriggle out. The building's falling ...
— The Runaway Skyscraper • Murray Leinster
... evening. This is a racial trait worthy of the scientific consideration of Professor Hugo Munsterberg and other students of our national psychology. So far the Munsterberg school has overlooked it—but the canny Parisians have not. They long ago studied out every quirk and wriggle of it, and capitalized it to their own purpose. Liberality! Economy! Frugality!—there they are, everywhere blazoned forth—Liberality for you, Economy and Frugality for them. Could anything on ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... lump of ice!" Irene Paul often said, putting her own plump arms about Adelle's thin little body; and while Adelle tried to wriggle out of the embrace she teased her by assuming the ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... "I hope not, my dear child," she said, but Molly detected the fun through the solemnity. She gave a wriggle. ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... so if you knew as much about it as I do," answered Ben, with a sudden frown and wriggle, as if he still felt the smart of the blows he had received. "We don't call it splendid; do we, Sancho?" he added, making a queer noise, which caused the poodle to growl and bang the floor irefully with his tail, as he lay close to his master's ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... Dick was acting. No sooner did he see the watchman called off guard than he began to wriggle like an eel across the turf towards the beech, keeping the trunk of the tree between himself and the poachers. His keen knife made short work of Chippy's bonds, gag included, and the Raven was free. The latter slipped round ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... "cover" got lower and lower, and to the north I heard the mate. He would presently succeed in setting off my game. It was imperative to get on quickly, but there was no longer cover enough for me to advance on hands and knees. My only chance was to wriggle forward like a snake on my stomach. But in this soft clay—in the bed of the stream? Yes—meat is too precious on board, and the beast of prey is too strong in a man. My clothes must be sacrificed; on I crept on my stomach ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... and saw Lovelace Peyton, I began to shudder too. He was hanging half in and half out of a little window high up in the shed like a skylight, and the big bottle was slowly slipping as he tried to wriggle either in or out. There was no ladder in sight, and neither of us was near tall enough to reach him. He was beginning to whimper and be scared himself, and I could see the heavy bottle start to slip faster from his arm. We had less ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... indeed!" she said; "and pray, of what use is it going to be to him that he knows how to stick a pin through a butterfly and leave the poor thing to wriggle ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... is there to go wrong? I've got a big day in court to-morrow and I've struck a snag, and I've got to wriggle out of it somehow, before I quit. It's nothing for you to worry about. Go to your dinner and ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... felt himself fingering in his pocket for a dime, and heard himself say, "That's all right, I don't want the stuff. Take it in to that little chap in a striped suit, in the next car,—dirty little beggar, wriggled like an eel all day. This will probably make him wriggle all night. ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... mar the mutual love, That now unites us eye to eye, If, superficially, we seem to shove Our fingers in your Irish pie— An action which, if you should so behave, Would make old MONROE wriggle in his grave. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... so about—Father. You're for ever talking about him," said Will uneasily, trying to wriggle himself ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... the snake were wearing it down. Though the lizard seemed to have lost none of its spirit, the flesh was becoming weak. While it panted, its eyes twinkled with inane ferocity, and the snake, with that peculiar fearsome, gliding movement—neither wriggle nor squirm—typical of the species, slowly edged its victim under the shadow of a tussock. There both reposed, the snake calm in craft and design, the lizard waiting for the one chance of its life. Swallowing the ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... strain, moving upward and inward upon its hinges, disclosing an oblong gap above the jamb. With a splendid wriggle the fugitive vaulted up, thrusting his person into the clear space thus provided. Balanced across the opening upon his stomach, half in and half out, for one moment he remained there, his legs kicking wildly as though for a purchase against something more solid than air. Then convulsive ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... before, Pippity showed considerable anxiety, calmly remarking, however, as I translated his jargon, that he would, as on the previous day, hold fast to my shoulder with his bill. He made Grilly get down below at the same time and hold on to my feet; and when I began to crawl and wriggle along the best way I could, I was assisted very materially by the parrot above and ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... are married," said he, "I'll keep a hand on you, my lady, that you won't be able to wriggle away from. If you are slippery, and faith you are, why I'm tough, and so you'll find it." "Get rid of your kinks before you marry," said he. "I've no use for a wife with one eye on me, and it a dubious one, and the other one squinting into a parlour two streets ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... all up with thee and us!" And, in truth, the horse's tail was already singed to a coal, for the serpent was hard behind them, blazing like fire. The horse perceived that he could do no more, so he gave one last wriggle and died; but they, poor things, were left alive. "Whom have you been listening to?" said the serpent as he flew up to them. "Don't you know that I only am your father and tsar, and have the right ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... great rock rose straight up in the middle of the road. Instantly the Serpent uncoiled itself from his neck, and, as it touched the damp earth, it resumed the shape of the lovely damsel. Pointing to the rock, she showed him an opening just big enough for a man to wriggle through. Passing into it, they entered a long underground passage, which led out on to a wide field, above which spread a blue sky. In the middle of the field stood a magnificent castle, built out of porphyry, with a roof of gold and with glittering ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... who plainly saw that Ola was trying to wriggle out of his difficulty, but were anxious not to lose an exciting scene, screamed with laughter again; but this time at the bully's expense. The blood mounted to his head, and his anger got the better of his natural ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... small tradesmen's houses, such as the crockery-shop and the harness-maker, had a Cyclops window in the middle of the gable, within an inch or two of its apex, suggesting that some forlorn rural Prentice must wriggle himself into that apartment horizontally, when he retired to rest, after the manner of the worm. So bountiful in its abundance was the surrounding country, and so lean and scant the village, that one might have thought the village had sown and planted everything it once possessed, ...
— Tom Tiddler's Ground • Charles Dickens
... suggestion, but offered to take my own tiller and lend him Grue. He couldn't wriggle out of it, seeing that his alleged motive had been the overcrowding of my boat, but he looked rather sick when Grue went aboard ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... creek from the ocean and the finest ones found their way into the pool, and on Friday the cook and his men supplied the tables with fresh fish. How many times have I seen those fine fish, caught on the prongs of a spear, writhe and wriggle to get off. At first I could not taste them, I felt so sorry to see them killed in that way. I would not go out on Friday until after the fishing was done. The lamper eels crawled up the stream and the men gathered them by the barrels full and made ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... I never have!" said Aunt Agatha with considerable decision. "And it's not at all likely I ever shall. There are bugs and things," she added vaguely, "and snakes that wriggle about." ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... for though they were strong enough to have pulled away the rocks that blocked the entrance, they could not stand fire. As I had any amount of rope, I used to soak it in rock-oil, set it on fire, and shove it out of the entrance. Twice small bears managed to wriggle up the passage, but I had sharpened the boat-hook and managed to kill them both. One skin made me a whole suit, and the other a first-rate blanket. Not that it was ever unpleasantly cold, for a couple of my big candles, and the ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... sit right straight down in that chair and read your poem over slowly, while I whip into my own clothes, and then we'll go along together. Fred can't come until a little later anyway. Sit still now, and don't wriggle around and ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... your neck! Have you ever felt a mustache on your neck? It intoxicates you, makes you feel creepy, goes to the tips of your fingers. You wriggle, shake your shoulders, toss back your head. You wish to get away and at the same time to remain there; it is delightful, but irritating. But how good ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... to grace Its brow, and no ear for my song; Hush'd the caves of its breath, and the finger of death The raised features hath flatten'd along. The eyes' wonted beam, and the eyelids' quick gleam— The intelligent sight, are no more; But the worms of the soil, as they wriggle and coil, Come hither their dwellings to bore. No lineament here is left to declare If monarch or chief art thou; Alexander the Brave, as the portionless slave That on dunghill expires, is as low. Thou delver ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the very help of Prussia unacceptable to Austria was the circumstance of Prussia's using that opportunity of Austria's need to wriggle herself to the military headship of the Confederation. Austria would rather have lost Lombardy (and more) than have accepted such a disadvantage. Hence the coldness, the cause of which is scarcely avowable. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... break it. Take salt only with a clean knife. Dip not the meat in the same. Hold not thy knife upright but sloping, and lay it down at the right hand of plate with blade on plate. Look not earnestly at any other that is eating. When moderately satisfied leave the table. Sing not, hum not, wriggle not.... Smell not of thy Meat; make not a noise with thy Tongue, Mouth, Lips, or Breath in Thy Eating and Drinking.... When any speak to thee, stand up. Say not I have heard it before. Never endeavour to help him out if he tell it ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... tactics of the snake were wearing it down. Though the lizard seemed to have lost none of its spirit, the flesh was becoming weak. While it panted, its eyes twinkled with inane ferocity, and the snake, with that peculiar fearsome, gliding movement—neither wriggle nor squirm—typical of the species, slowly edged its victim under the shadow of a tussock. There both reposed, the snake calm in craft and design, the lizard waiting for the one chance of its life. ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... wasn't looking, and before I knew where I was half of her would be gleaming in the sun like satin. Directly I noticed it I used to frown, and then she would pretend to be ashamed of herself, hang her head, and wriggle her frock up to its place again. However, I never could teach her to keep her skirts about her knees. She was as innocent as a baby about that sort ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... Florence felt very uneasy. She tried to wriggle away from her companion, who held her arm firmly. "To ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... you wouldn't talk so about—Father. You're for ever talking about him," said Will uneasily, trying to wriggle himself out of his ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... girl was uncomplaining. She clung doggedly to the Earth man's hand when they were able to walk erect: followed swiftly and unquestioningly when they were compelled to crawl or wriggle through an ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... making a tremendous commotion. I was much struck also by the singular appearance presented by certain diving birds having very long and snaky necks (the Plotus Anhinga). Occasionally a long serpentine form would suddenly wriggle itself to a height of a foot and a half above the glassy surface of the water, producing such a deceptive imitation of a snake that at first I had some difficulty in believing it to be the neck of a bird; it did not remain long ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... complete almost to the royal-mast, though the yards were gone; and to his left, just above the battered fore-top, five men were lashed, dead and drowned. Most of them had their eyes wide open, and seemed to stare at Zeb and wriggle about in the stir of the sea as if they lived. Spent and wretched as he was, it lifted his hair. He almost called out to them at first, and then he dragged his gaze off them, and turned it to the right. The survivor still clung here, and Zeb—who had ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sullen silence. The man was a study for me, and I observed every change in his fleeting moods. Generally his condition was that of miserable despair, which he attempted bravely to conceal. Even the boon of suicide had been denied him, for when he would wriggle into an erect position the rail of his pen was a foot above his head, so that he could not clamber over and break his skull on the stone floor beneath; and when he had tried to starve himself the attendants forced food down his throat; so that he abandoned ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... you had that kid around all the time," grunted Short and Long, as Jess finally allowed him to wriggle loose. "I think he's more of a terror than he is ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... atrocities is like turning over a huge stone in the meadow in springtime, that has been a hiding-place for bugs and worms that nest away in the dark. As soon as the hot, searching sunlight finds them, they will wriggle and squirm in agony until they can crawl under cover again. So I do not wonder that, when the hideous cruelty of the tenement-house sweat-shop is brought to light, the sweater and all his friends wriggle and squirm in an agony of fright and shame. Neither am I alarmed that ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... A young Armenian named Hackatur related the story of his escape from a well in which the bodies of the dead had been crammed. He had fallen with the others and was flung into the well, but he managed to wriggle through the bodies lying on top of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... worked. He was used not only to wriggle around the line inside of ends and to squirm through difficult outlets, but to charge the line as well, a feat of which his height and strong legs rendered him well capable. He proved a consistant ground-gainer, and with Blair, who worked like a hero, and Kingdon, who won laurels for himself ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... like to show it) were to say to you: 'He's the one, in this country, whom they consider the most perfect, isn't he?' Is it success to be the occasion of a young Englishman's having to stammer as you would have to stammer at such a moment for old England? No, no; success is to have made people wriggle to another tune. ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... with me now, Molly," he suggested at last. Then he turned to Chris, who was watching him with almost no expression. "You can wriggle your chair to the phone in half an hour, I guess. Knock the phone off and yell for help. It's better than you deserve, unless you really did ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... generous Hogboom was he blundered into the story of the time Hoggy bet all of his money on a baseball game at Muggledorfer, and of how he walked home with his chum and carried the latter's coat and grip all the way. That made the Faculty wriggle, I can tell you. He illustrated the pluck of the deceased by telling how Hogboom, as a Freshman, dug all night alone to rescue a man imprisoned in a sewer, spurred on by his cries—though Rogers ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... with their long filaments sticking out like the whips of four-horse stage-coaches; motionless, slug-like creatures, young larvae, perhaps more horrible in their pulpy stillness than even in the infernal wriggle of maturity! But no sooner is the stone turned and the wholesome light of day let upon this compressed and blinded community of creeping things, than all of them which enjoy the luxury of legs—and some of them have a good many—rush round wildly, butting each other and everything in ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... beggars one at a time—go for them, throttle them, wring their necks, jump on them; and if they wriggle, stamp!" ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... the 2nd December the hole in the engine room bulkhead was cut completely. I climbed through it, followed by Bowers, the carpenter, and Teddy Nelson, and when we got into the hold there was just enough room to wriggle along to the pump-well over the coal. We tore down a couple of planks to get access to the shaft and then I went down to the bottom to find out how matters stood. Bowers came next with an electric torch, which he shone downwards whilst I got into the water, hanging on to the bottom rungs of the ladder ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... rushing into a clinch, and Tad found himself gripped in those arms of steel. Wriggle and twist as be would he could not free himself from their embrace. His adversary, on the other hand, found himself fully occupied in holding on to his slippery young antagonist, giving him neither time nor opportunity effectually to ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... your foot on him in some sort of agreement, and kept it there. Why, of course! Any man can be held. But don't let Pinney have room to wriggle." ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... Hayley, Doctor Paley, Arthur Murphy, Tommy Durfey, Mrs. Trimmer's little Primer, Buckram binding, touch and try— Nothing bid—who'll buy, who'll buy? Here's Colley Cibber, Bruce the fibber, Plays of Cherry, ditto Merry, Tickle, Mickle, When I bow and when I wriggle, With a simper and a giggle, Ears regaling, bidders nailing, Ladies utter in a flutter— "Mister Smatter, how you chatter, Dear, how clever! well, I never Heard so ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... profession by supposing such a thing. There is not, in or out of an attorney's office in the county of Erie, or elsewhere, one who could raise a doubt, or a particle of a doubt, about the meaning of this provision of the Constitution. He may act as witnesses do, sometimes, on the stand. He may wriggle, and twist, and say he cannot tell, or cannot remember. I have seen many such efforts in my time, on the part of witnesses, to falsify and deny the truth. But there is no man who can read these words of the Constitution of the United States, and ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... she had found her breath, and taken one quick look round as if to satisfy herself she was unobserved, suddenly cast herself down, in her turn, upon the damp earth, and inserting her head beneath the prickly barricade of the holly leaves, begin to crawl and wriggle forward until she had completely disappeared under it. What in the world could she ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... gone back to the Giant Suttung with the tale of how he had seen the mysterious serving-man change into a snake and wriggle through a hole in the mountain; and Suttung at once guessed that they had to deal with Odin himself. So he hurried to the hole and sat there to watch for the return ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... we'll do it," said Thorny, breaking a long silence as Betty composed herself with an irrepressible wriggle of delight after one of these refreshing peeps. "We'll keep Sanch hidden, and smuggle him into Ben's old room at your house. Then I'll drive on to the barn, and not say a word, but send Ben to get something ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... You can hold a stick up to your mouth, and wriggle your fingers, and whistle. No one will know that you are not playing a fife. It will sound just the same. And the music will be just as sweet." Mr. Fox smiled at Billy. And Billy ...
— The Tale of Billy Woodchuck • Arthur Scott Bailey
... tickles me immensely to behold a plethoric commonplace Briton roar himself purple with impassioned platitude at a political meeting; but I perceive that all my neighbours take him with the utmost seriousness. Again, your literary journalist professes to wriggle in his chair over the humour of Jane Austen; to me she is the dullest lady that ever faithfully photographed the trivial. Years ago I happened to be crossing Putney Bridge, in a frock-coat and silk hat, when a ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... hussy actually beginning to gain her point, and steal from her the heart of her son? Was it in the girl's blood to wrong her? The father of her had wronged her: she would take care his daughter should not! She had taken a viper to her bosom! Who was she, to wriggle herself into an old family and property? Had she been born to such things? She would teach her who she was! When dependents began to presume, it was time ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... But without paying the least homage to the image of the 'Lo' spirit, he simply kept his eyes fixed intently on it; for albeit made of clay, it actually seemed, nevertheless, to flutter as does a terror-stricken swan, and to wriggle as a dragon in motion. It looked like a lotus, peeping its head out of the green stream, or like the sun, pouring its rays upon the russet clouds in the early morn. Pao-yue's tears unwittingly ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... of confusion and smoke, he could not for an instant think where he was; but it did not take long for him to open his eyes, recollect the happenings of the previous day, smile with satisfaction, and hurriedly wriggle into ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... "American society and the United States Government are demoralized and overthrown, it will come from the voracious desire of office—this wriggle to live without toil, from which I am not free myself." These words ought to be written up in the largest characters in every schoolroom in the United States. The confession with which they conclude is as true as the rest. Mr. Lincoln, we are told, took no part in the promotion of local ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... read the dressmaking periodicals. She never heard of the Wednesday matinee. When she takes the air she rides in a carriage that has a sheltering hood, and she is veiled up to the eyes, and she must never lean out to wriggle her little finger-tips at men lolling in front of the cafes. She must not see the men. She may look at them, but she must not see them. No wonder the sisters in Michigan are organizing to batter down the walls of tradition, and bring to her ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... vessel was tied up at the end of a stone wharf, obviously awaiting them, and the captives were tied hand and foot and tossed into the hold. Jason managed to wriggle around until he could get his eye to a crack between two badly fitting planks and recited a running travelogue of the cruise, apparently for the edification of his companions, but really for his own benefit since the sound of his own voice ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... he gave a wriggle, and it flashed through her: 'He must think me an awful enfant terrible!' His face peered round at her, queer and pale and puffy, with nice, straight eyes; and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Lord don't deliver nobody, without they wriggle for themselves pretty consider'ble well fust. This a'n't the newest news to me; I've been expectin' on't a long spell, an' I've talked consider'ble with Westbury folks about it; and there a'n't nobody much, round about here, but what'll stand out agin the Britishers, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... his instructions, in anticipation of the contest on which he was embarking against you and against Daubrecq, at whose house he did the same thing. He had under his orders a sort of acrobat, an extraordinarily thin dwarf, who was able to wriggle through those apertures and who thus detected all your correspondence and all your secrets. That is what his two friends revealed to me. I at once conceived the idea of saving my elder son by making use of his brother, ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... in its young state, and having just entered upon its terrestrial life, is a small creature, which could, with the utmost ease, wriggle into crevices and crannies of a size which would almost preclude such apertures being noticed at all. Gaining access to a roomier crevice or nook within, and finding there a due supply of air, along with a dietary consisting chiefly of insects, the animal ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... around the place, and no suspected person can get away?" muttered the submarine boy. "Well, that's it should be. I wonder if there are any more of this strange crew—men or women spies that don't happen to have suspected so far? If there are, I don't believe they'll wriggle through the meshes of old Uncle Sam's Secret ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... should not be tempted to borrow two or three days more, having never seen her; yet my lilacs pull hard, and I have not a farthing left in the world. Be sure you do not leave a cranny open for George Grenville to wriggle it), till I have got all my things out of ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... came; then he dropped her like a hot brick. By the Eternal, Rollins, he hasn't gotten off with that old love yet, you mark my words. There's Indian blood in her veins, and a look in her eye that makes me wriggle, sometimes. I watched her last night at parade when she drove out here with that copper-faced old squaw, her mother. For all her French and Italian education and her years in New York and Paris, that girl's got a wild streak in her somewhere. She sat there watching him as the officers marched ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... mean his securing, but another of us must put a lance in the contorting curves and with quick and dexterous motion lift him to the bank where his struggles might be ended with knife or rock. The release of him for a second might permit him to wriggle ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... at him blankly. Wally gave an expressive wriggle in his chair, and Jim sat up suddenly, with a flush on his ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... comfort in it. I would mutely complain of the world to her. It would give me satisfaction to denounce the whole town to her. "Ah, I have got you!" I seemed to say to the people of Antomir. "The ghost of my mother and the whole Other World see you in all your heartlessness. You can't wriggle out of it." This was my revenge. ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... kolerega. Wreath garlando. Wreathe plekti, girlandi. Wreck (ship) sxippereo. Wreckage derompajxo. Wren regolo. Wrench ektiregi. Wrest tiregi. Wrestle barakti. Wrestler baraktisto. Wretch malbonulo, krimulo. Wretched mizera. Wriggle tordi, tordeti. Wring (twist) tordi, premegi. Wring (the hand) premi. Wrinkle sulkigi. Wrinkle (facial) sulko. Wrist manradiko. Write skribi. Writer (author) verkisto. Writer skribisto. Writing skribajxo. Writing-table skribotablo. Wrong malpraveco. Wrong malprava. Wrongfully ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... are able to command the attention and the confidence of your buyers, you've got to be up and dressed all day to hold what trade is yours, and twisting and turning all night to wriggle into some of the other fellow's. When business is good, that is the time to force it, because it will come easy; and when it is bad, that is the time to force it, too, because we ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... to give me much as a pound a day. Some days he used to give me much as five pounds." Then Eddy Carroll, after delivering himself of this statement, could not get his young, black eyes away from the fixed regard of the man's keen, blue ones, and he began to wriggle as to his body, with his eyes held firm by that unswerving gaze. "What you looking at me that way for?" he stammered. "I don't think you're ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Tom, as the other boys tried to wriggle out from under the tent. "We've got to get wet now, anyway; but perhaps, if we stay as we are, we can manage to keep ...
— Harper's Young People, June 29, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... angle, and presently I came in sight of the village church, sitting solitary within its circle of elms. From forth the vestry window projected two small legs, gyrating, hungry for foothold, with larceny—not to say sacrilege—in their every wriggle: a godless sight for a supporter of the Establishment. Though the rest was hidden, I knew the legs well enough; they were usually attached to the body of Bill Saunders, the peerless bad boy of the village. Bill's ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... looked and saw Lovelace Peyton, I began to shudder too. He was hanging half in and half out of a little window high up in the shed like a skylight, and the big bottle was slowly slipping as he tried to wriggle either in or out. There was no ladder in sight, and neither of us was near tall enough to reach him. He was beginning to whimper and be scared himself, and I could see the heavy bottle start to slip faster from his arm. We had less ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... fur somethin' good fur beatin' out brains, an' dar lays my ax. I grabs it up, now ready fur a cleaver, an' no mistake. Big Injun ain't, though; he ain't ready fur any sich a thing. Up he comes wid a whirl, an' down I goes wid a fling, my ax a-flyin' way out yander. But in de wriggle uf a buck's tail comes up nigger ag'in; goes down Injun ag'in. Yes, an' a leetle mo' dan dat: nigger an' Injun clean ober de turn uf de hill, an' now a-slidin', slidin' down whar it ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... Academy is a kind of hospital and infirmary for the obliquities of taste and ingenuity—a receptacle where enthusiasm and originality stop and stagnate, and spread their influence no farther, instead of being a school founded for genius, or a temple built to fame. The generality of those who wriggle, or fawn, or beg their way to a seat there, live on their certificate of merit to a good old age, and are seldom heard of afterwards. If a man of sterling capacity gets among them, and minds his own business he is nobody; he makes no figure in council, in voting, in resolutions or speeches. ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... search of his hat, which is being very unceremoniously transformed into a muff beneath their entangled extremes, he turns over quietly, saying, "There's something very strange about the floor of this establishment,—it don't seem solid; 'pears how there's ups and downs in it." They wriggle and twist in a curious pile; endeavour to bring their knees out of "a fix"—to free themselves from the angles which they are most unmathematically working on the floor. Working and twisting,—now staggering, and again giving utterance to the coarsest language,—one of the gentry—they belong ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... hundred eggs on the surface of wounds. The larvae which in a few hours hatch from these make their way directly into the wound where they feed on the surrounding tissue until full grown when they wriggle out and drop to the ground where they transform to the pupa and later to the adult fly. Of course their presence in the wounds is very distressing to the infected animal, and great suffering results. Slight scratches that might otherwise quickly heal often become serious ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane
... all right!" laughed the old man, trying to wriggle out of his son's grasp; "only not just yet a whiles. I'm agoin' in here to drink your good health, Adam lad, and all here's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... abused. Miss Overmore had up to now rarely deviated from a decent reserve, but the day came when she expressed herself with a vividness not inferior to Beale's own on the subject of the lady who had fled to the Continent to wriggle out of her job. It would serve this lady right, Maisie gathered, if that contract, in the shape of an overgrown and underdressed daughter, should be shipped straight out to her and landed at her feet in the ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... closer to the question of which of the alien objects presented to his choice it would cost him least to profess to handle. What he had already paid, a spectator would easily have gathered from the long, the suppressed wriggle that had ended in his falling back, was some sacrifice of his habit of not privately depreciating those to whom he was publicly civil. It was plain, however, that when he presently spoke his thought had taken a stretch. "I'm sure I've fully ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... not always an illusion; was it because she rendered the spirit of M. Offenbach's operas so perfectly, that we liked her so much? "Ah, that movement!" cried an enthusiast, "that swing, that—that—wriggle!" She was undoubtedly a great actress, full of subtle surprises, and with an audacious appearance of unconsciousness in those exigencies where consciousness would summon the police—or should; she was so near, yet so far from, the worst that could be intended; in tones, in gestures, in attitudes, ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... excitement was a playful habit the Chink had contracted of picking up a rusty rifle and a salvaged clip of cartridges, pointing the gun anywhere and pulling the trigger to make it say Bang! I often found myself doin' the old B.E.F. tummy-wriggle when ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... the warriors was returning. First come the Judge, tougher than rawhide, half walking and half flying, his wings spread out, 'cree-ing' to himself about bulldogs and their ways; next come Bobby, still sputtering and swearing, and behind ambled Thomas at a lively wriggle, a coy, large ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... again, as my second gun native (we had never expected the tiger to be where we found him, and were on our way home) had seated himself on another tree. In a low tone he said to me "Load, load!" but the moment I took my eye off the tiger to do so he began to wriggle into the jungle, and I only got a snap shot at his hind leg. Now when the tiger roared, which he did as he approached me, and he lay watching me, I felt no sensation of the heart, though I felt a distinct flutter when loading and when the tiger was wriggling away. On the following ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... up the river and had caught a tremendous eel. An eel can hold out to wriggle a very long time. He has no vitals. Even with talon-tipped claws he is slippery and more than a clawful; so the old hawk took a short cut home across the railroad-track and the corner of the woods where ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... bit of a chit, sir, to show it's all right," said the policeman, when they had lifted her into the front seat, pale and rigid now. "And if you take my advice," he whispered, "you'll keep an eye on her; she can wriggle like an eel, and if she grabs the steering-wheel when you're moving, she'll break all your bloomin' ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... dead mixed with the living, the wounded untended, without dressings, food, or water, and harassed by the fire from both sides and from our artillery. It was a very painful thing to watch these poor fellows moving about feebly and trying to wriggle themselves into some position of safety, and it reminded me of the wounded Dervishes after Omdurman—only these were ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... wealth. Excited women-bareheaded likely-gaze again upon the strong, controlled face of Columbus, and thank God for this missionary to the Grand Khan-only the dark sea will surely be his destruction before he gets there! Children wriggle through the throng and stare at the men who are soon to find out what becomes of the sun when it sets, and to know for themselves whether or no it hisses and makes the water boil. The sailors make their way toward the ships through a running fire of conversation and hand-clasps, ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... I mean, so don't wriggle. You met Simmonds when he was in trouble, and just offered to take his place for a day or so, thereby doing him a good ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... he warned Trevison. "I'll blow a hole through you if you wriggle a finger!" Watching Trevison, he spoke to Braman: "You got a back ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the witchcraft of rebellion Transform'd t' a feeble state-camelion, 370 By giving aim from side to side, He never fail'd to save his tide, But got the start of ev'ry state, And at a change ne'er came too late; Cou'd turn his word, and oath, and faith, 375 As many ways as in a lath; By turning, wriggle, like a screw, Int' highest trust, and out, for new. For when h' had happily incurr'd, Instead of hemp, to be preferr'd, 380 And pass'd upon a government, He pay'd his trick, and out he went But, being out, and out of hopes To mount his ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... an honest forester," said Gefroi, and groaned again. "The favour of a lord is a slippery thing—much like an eel—quick to wriggle away. An hour agone my lord Duke held me in much esteem, while now? And he struck me! On the face, here!" Slowly Gefroi got him upon his feet, and having donned cap and pourpoint, shook his head and sighed; ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... My papa often says so and he knows all about it," replied Alfred with an involuntary wriggle suggestive of painful memories. Then, as if anxious to change the conversation from its somewhat personal channel, he asked, pointing to a row of grinning heads above the wall, "Do you ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... want to," said Polly. "But why don't you be the kangaroo, then, Joe, and let Davie be something else? Give him the snake, then he won't have to jump, and it's easier to wriggle." ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... master, astounded. He represses a wriggle of healthful satisfaction on the part of his pupils by a significant lift of his ferule, then moves ponderously up the stairs for a personal visit to the chamber of the culprit. The maid had given true report; there was no one there. Never had he been met with such barefaced ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... was acting. No sooner did he see the watchman called off guard than he began to wriggle like an eel across the turf towards the beech, keeping the trunk of the tree between himself and the poachers. His keen knife made short work of Chippy's bonds, gag included, and the Raven was free. The latter slipped ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... didn't know about snakes would have filled a book, but when I saw this one I knew it was a bargain. It was the blamedest biggest snake that ever gave a wriggle, and the only reason its owners had not made a fortune was because it was never properly advertised. I used to know just how much he weighed and how long he was, but my brain got so tired figuring up the money we made out of him that I've had ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... blackness of night comes, then will come, also, those who make war from behind the trees of the forest. In the darkness, how is the young white and his friends to tell enemies from friends? The jackals will wriggle through and over the wall of trees like snakes through tall grass. After what they have seen, can my white friends expect mercy at hands already ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... let it mar the mutual love, That now unites us eye to eye, If, superficially, we seem to shove Our fingers in your Irish pie— An action which, if you should so behave, Would make old MONROE wriggle in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... accruing to some parts of his being and strange deprivations in others, and upon whom the unhappy realization begins to be borne in, that his is no particular case, and that he of all the world is not to be spared, but, like his forbears, must inevitably wriggle in the disguising crucible of time. And, though men accept it with apparently patient humor, the first realization that people do grow old, and that they do it before they have had time to be young, is apt to ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... is made to Ben Jonson:—'Horace did not screw and wriggle himselfe into great Mens famyliarity, impudentlie as ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... standing under a gas-light and looking over the elevated road at the moon, was a man. A long man he was, dressed decent, with a segar between his teeth, and I saw that his nose made two twists from bridge to end, like the wriggle of a snake. Tobin saw it at the same time, and I heard him breathe hard like a horse when you take the saddle off. He went straight up to the man, and I ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... to effect any change in the position of the tugboat, while it stuck to the submerged bank, like a bull ramming its head against a stone wall. Instead of staying motionless the stern swung slowly to the right and then to the left, as if trying to wriggle its nose out of the mud. This caused the muzzle of the cannon to wabble, sometimes being directed straight at the sailboat, and sometimes to one side of it. But the gun was so easily shifted that the American could readily perfect the aim whenever he chose, and that would be done the instant the ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... Samuel's Sentimental Side; and I think you will agree that it was a lot of title for twopence. Day after day, as I fumbled among the old books in the Twopenny Bin of the little secondhand bookseller's shop, that volume would wriggle itself forward and worm its way into my hands; and I would clench my teeth and thrust it to the remotest depths ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various
... was by means of an aperture so low that we had to lie flat on the ground, and so narrow that even I found it hard work to wriggle through. ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... get ourselves free?" Tom demanded: "I've been trying to wriggle my hands out, but I'll admit that ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... fuming; it only makes things worse. When we are restless under little troubles, God sends us greater ones; and if our impatience continues, he sends us greater still. And there is no remedy. An eel may wriggle itself "out of the frying-pan, into the fire;" but it cannot wriggle itself back again out of the fire, even into the frying-pan. And so it is with us. We may wriggle ourselves out of one little trouble, into two greater ones; but we cannot wriggle ourselves ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... the wayside cobra, hears the careless foot of man, He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can; But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail, For the female of the species is more deadly ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... climb over the first stile, and, cutting off the corner, had been coolly awaiting my arrival. On the whole, I think that being in his grasp was almost preferable to the feeling that he was dogging my steps. His left hand gripped the collar of my jacket and flannel shirt, and instantly I began to wriggle, twisting my leg about his own in an attempt to bring him to the ground; but the man was of enormous strength, and, freeing himself, he shook me as a terrier shakes a rat, until I felt there was little breath ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... had a wide net spread around him — wide of mesh too, perhaps; and it was through a mesh he meant to wriggle, but the net was intact ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... to woman. On this he rose up in his place and cried: "Wata[n] Thanks! I'm glad some of them will die, for they are getting so thick that they tread on me." He fairly shook with joy at the thought, so that he fell over backward and could not get on his feet again, but had to wriggle off on his back, as the Grubworm ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... say you wanted to do? Congratulate me? What on? My splendid defence of the Hindenburg line? Now, look here. As one German General to another do you mean to tell me you believe in the Hindenburg line? No, of course you don't. You thought I believed in it? Was that what you said? Come, don't wriggle, though you are a dead man. Yes, that was what you said. Well, then understand henceforth that there is no Hindenburg line and there never was anything of the sort. Why am I retreating then? Because I must. That's the whole secret. Why did you retreat after your famous ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 30, 1917 • Various
... choke him to assure silence?" Phil hurriedly asked himself, and instinctively made to put his hands to the man's neck. But the body under him began to wriggle, to kick out with its legs, and to ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... afford to stay here until daylight," he whispered. "We must wriggle out of here until we come to the edge of the road. Then we must make a ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... rulers of rural England throughout recent centuries. Our esquires did not win their estates till they had given up any particular fancy for winning their spurs. Esquire does not mean squire, and esq. does not mean anything. But it remains on our letters a little wriggle in pen and ink and an indecipherable hieroglyph twisted by the strange turns of our history, which have turned a military discipline into a pacific oligarchy, and that into a mere plutocracy at last. And there are similar historic riddles to be unpicked ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... mist fell upon the waters or blew away over the meadows, and it was cold. Mr. Gabriel wrapped the cloak about Faith and fastened it, and tied her bonnet. Just now Dan was so busy handling the boat—and it's rather risky, you have to wriggle up the creek so—that he took little notice of us. Then Mr. Gabriel stood up, as if to change his position; and taking off his hat, he held it aloft, while he passed the other hand across his forehead. And leaning against the mast, he stood so, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... Cornelius. How the latter had managed to exist through the troubled times I can't say. As Stein's agent, after all, he must have had Doramin's protection in a measure; and in one way or another he had managed to wriggle through all the deadly complications, while I have no doubt that his conduct, whatever line he was forced to take, was marked by that abjectness which was like the stamp of the man. That was his characteristic; he was fundamentally and outwardly abject, as other men are markedly of ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... she said gayly. "I pity you, Mr. Bower. You cannot wriggle out of your difficulty. The snow will soon be a foot deep in the valley. Goodness only knows what would have become of us up there ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... Children are wilted into silence and slumberous nonentity; boys do not bathe to-day—they welter, hour after hour, in the dark water near the shaded rock. Even they and the tadpoles can hardly be seen to wriggle. The cow has found a shade, and, preferring repose to munching, lies contented under the one great elm mercifully left in the middle of ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... thud as they let down a burden, which I knew must be a sack of gold. I lay quiet for a minute, and then began to wriggle through the brush to get a glimpse of them, and, in case it proved to be the camp, learn what might be the most advantageous ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... to bed alone, with no one to talk to about the events of the day! What does the horrid old money matter? We always have been poor, and we always shall be. As long as I can remember mother has been in despair about the bills; but we wriggle through somehow, and we shall go on wriggling. It's horrid of you to talk of going ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... comfortable little wriggle under her coat. "Isn't it nice Mamsie makes me get my lessons the first thing, before I play!" she said to herself ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... not be snapped up. We would wriggle away. We were very sorry, but we must start at once to pursue ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... you will never be able to cane if you hold it like that. You should hold it like this, Miss Phoebe, and give it a wriggle like that. ...
— Quality Street - A Comedy • J. M. Barrie
... made of it, he and his two brown, ragged boys. Large fish and small, pink fish, blue, yellow, orange, striped fish and mottled, wriggled together, and flapped their tails in the well of the little boat. There were even too many to lie there and wriggle. The bottom of the boat was well covered with them, and, if she had not shipped waves enough to keep them cool, the boy Battista had bailed a plenty on them. Father and son hurried on shore, and Battista on board began to fling the scaly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... to watch them wriggle! I wanted to take them, one by one, and strip off their shams! Take that fellow Rutherford, the steel man! Or Plimpton, the coal baron, casting his eyes up to heaven, and singing psalms through his nose! The instant I laid eyes on ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair
... of ice!" Irene Paul often said, putting her own plump arms about Adelle's thin little body; and while Adelle tried to wriggle out of the embrace she teased her by assuming the ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... firmly together. "Now then, Ralph, do the same with her wrists. That's right now. Wrap that shawl of hers three or four times tightly round her mouth. That's it; let her breathe through her nose. Now you keep a sharp watch over her, and see she doesn't wriggle out of these things. If you see any one coming clap your hand over her mouth, and see she doesn't make a sound. When he comes up you can let go and help me if necessary; it won't matter her giving a bit of a ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
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