"Contorted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he could never for a single hour shake himself free from the recollection of his father's death; whenever he shut his eyes, his uneasy mind continually conjured up the whole scene with uncanny distinctness; the gloomy room, the contorted face of the dying man, the red flicker of the firelight on the wall—all these things were burnt deep into the tablets of his memory. More and more did he recognize the fact that, even should he live long enough to bury the events of that ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... who with folded arms and head bent forward await the hour of awakening. In their uniform tombs, that, isolated, become nearly transparent, they seem almost like hoary gnomes, lost in deep thought, or legions of virgins whom the folds of the shroud have contorted, who are buried in hexagonal prisms that some inflexible geometrician has multiplied to ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... hauled up frantically. Tom's face was contorted with pain when they finally got him aboard ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... rustic fence, near Elizabethtown, I think, but I am not quite sure. There was more genius in it than in any structure of the kind I have ever seen,—each length being of a special pattern, ramified, reticulated, contorted, as the limbs of the trees had grown. I trust some friend will photograph or stereograph this fence for me, to go with the view of the spires of Frederick already referred to, as mementos ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... deformed by one shoulder being a trifle higher than the other; this malicious suggestion reposed also on the fact that the quasi-hero of "Le Roi s'Amuse" (1832, a tragedy suppressed after one representation, for its reflections on royalty), was also a contorted piece of humanity. This play was followed by "Lucrezia Borgia," "Marie Tudor," and "Angelo," written in a singular poetic prose. Spite of bald translations, their action was sufficiently dramatic to make them successes, and even ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... cried a wild little man, his face contorted with rage and the lust which finds satisfaction in a blow. He went fiercely on, butting his shoulder against every woman he met. Nobody arrested him; nobody cried "shame." "Give 'em hell!" ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... one vacant place in the sophomore section," she informed Mignon. "I think I must have reserved it specially for you." She contorted her face into what she believed to be an ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... out its devotion. He flung off his overcoat, letting it fall upon the floor, and he strode forward almost to the trough of the footlights; and then for a space he stood there on the rounded apron of the platform, staring out into the troubled, tossing pool of contorted faces and tossing arms below him and about him. Demagogue he may have been; demigod he looked in that, his moment of supreme triumph, biding his time to play upon the passions and the prejudices of this multitude as a master organist would ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... unhappy fate of young Prescott recurred to my recollection, and though I could assign no tangible reason for it, a vague, dim fear and distrust of the woman took possession of me. It may be that this was foolish prejudice and superstition upon my part, and that I involuntarily contorted her future doings and sayings to fit into some half-formed wild theory of my own. This has been suggested to me by others as an explanation of my narrative. They are welcome to their opinion if they can reconcile it with the facts which I have ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sweep From some deep cave, and bear To us that gasp in this so meagre air Sweet ministerings And consolations of contorted sound, With agonies profound Of nobly warring and enduring chords That lie, close-bound, Unstirred as yet 'neath thy wide, wakening wings; So that our hearts break not in broken words. O music, that hast power This darkness to devour In vivid ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... ipecacuan of the shops. The plant is met with in the woods of several Brazilian provinces, as Pernambuco, Bahia and Rio Janeiro. It is found growing in moist shady situations, from 8 to 20 degs. south latitude. The roots, which are the officinal part, are contorted, knotty and annulated, and about the thickness of a ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... unreality stole over Mr. Chalk. He began to think that he must be dreaming. He turned and looked at Mr. Duckett, and Mr. Duckett, trying to smile at him, contorted his face so horribly that he shrank back appalled. He looked about him and saw that they were now in open water and drawing gradually away from the land. The stillness and mystery became unbearable, and with an air of resolution he cocked his rifle and proceeded with infinite caution to stalk ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... did Master Headley really love his trusty foreman too well to expose him to such chances, but Tibble knew too well that there were brutal young men to whom his contorted visage would be an incitement to contempt and outrage, and that if racked with rheumatism, he would only be an incumbrance. There was nothing for it but to put Kit Smallbones at the head of the party. His imposing presence would ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... then you would kiss the helpless, staring, blinking, little blanket-framed face; but at first touch of those bristling moustaches a powerful spasm has convulsed the tiny features, and a vehement, plaintive, wailing protest bursts from the contorted lips, and then your son and heir is snatched away, and you stand like convicted felon, while nursey dandles and tosses and condoles and condones and cuddles. "Well, well, well, did it nearly fighten its pessus, pessus life out with its ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... sent her that same evening a goodly bundle of cast-off clothes, over which her eyes grew gleefully bright in her careworn face. At one of the articles included they widened with almost awe. This was an enormous hat made of white fluffy felt, with vast contorted brims, and great blue velvet rosettes and streamers. Its fabric was very stout and substantial, and withal quite new, for its original owner had speedily found it so stiff and heavy that to wear it gave ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... the mere exertion of great muscular effort, coupled with a resolute wish and intention to succeed in some object, has a powerful tendency to brace the energies of the human mind. Ippegoo had not contorted himself and beaten his drum for many minutes when his feeling of warmth and physical power began to increase. The feeling seemed to break on ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... represented, bringing their offerings to Christ when he was newly born. On the upper part is graven the image of our Redeemer holding the world in his hand, and on the other the figure of a serpent marvellously contorted, per-adventure in token of the victory which Jesus atchieved over the enemy of the human race. That noble chess-board, the men whereof were of gold and silver, was also in the Monastery in the days of King Don Alfonso the Wise, but it hath long since been lost, ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... almost too late. Mellon, his face contorted with a mixture of anger and hatred, was standing just behind Jakob von Liegnitz. In one hand was a heavy spanner, which he was bringing down with deadly force on the ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... picture that will not go from me; I wish it would. A native young giant of thirty or thereabouts lay stretched upon the frame on his back, with his wrists and ankles tied to ropes which led over windlasses at either end. There was no color in him; his features were contorted and set, and sweat-drops stood upon his forehead. A priest bent over him on each side; the executioner stood by; guards were on duty; smoking torches stood in sockets along the walls; in a corner crouched a poor young ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... hours they plodded on, a strange procession of muffled figures, leaving in their wake a dark, contorted track, as though some wounded thing had writhed its way ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... the bucket chain began to take up the grain; but it was too late. When the bodies of the men were reached they were contorted in the agony of death. Suffocation had come as a tardy relief ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... especially early environment. Direct preaching can do very little to change impulses, though it can lead people to restrain the direct expression of them, often with the result that the impulses go underground and come to the surface again in some contorted form. When we have discovered what kinds of impulse we desire, we must not rest content with preaching, or with trying to produce the outward manifestation without the inner spring; we must try rather to alter institutions in the way that will, of itself, ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell
... to it alone, which Defoe, Addison, and Swift, each in his several way, worked mightily to supply: and that was a flexible business-like "workaday" prose style. Not merely so long as men aimed at the eccentric and contorted styles of Euphues and the Arcadia, but so long as the old splendid and gorgeous, but cumbrous and complicated pre-Restoration style lasted, romances were possible, but novels were not. You might indeed pick out of Shakespeare—especially from such parts as those of Beatrice, Rosalind, and some ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... direct thickness. We have also evidence that the earliest strata were formed in the presence of a stronger degree of heat than what operated in subsequent stages of the world, for the laminae of the gneiss and of the mica and chlorite schists are contorted in a way which could only be the result of a very high temperature. It appears as if the seas in which these deposits were formed, had been in the troubled state of a caldron of water nearly at boiling heat. Such a condition would probably add not a little to the disintegrating power ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... in alarm. The telegram fluttered to the floor. Harvey was standing in front of her, shaking his fist under her nose, his face contorted by ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... kissed the contorted face and white lips passionately. Dr. Jones prescribed bed and "complete mental and bodily rest". He said he would "send something," and in a cloud of wise words disguised the fact that he did not in the least know what to do. It was not in his experience that a ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... contorted with pain or grief. Big tears rolled down his cheeks and dropped on the table before him. Every little while he was shaken by a sob that ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... stretcher, so covered up that only his face was visible, lay one whom at first I failed to recognize, for the horribly contorted features presented a kind of mottled green appearance ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... little boy was left sitting in the hall, and a few minutes later, while the gentleman was giving W. his instructions, they were both horrified by a piercing shriek and the sound of a fall, and rushing out they found the child lying senseless on the floor, his face contorted with terror. The doctor was immediately summoned, and after some examination he pronounced the child to be suffering form a kind of fit, apparently produced by a sudden shock. The boy was taken to ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... their long faces expressionless, started to hustle the three captives toward the door again. Holaf wrenched free, turned, his face contorted ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... of Vernet, (when not mere views,) we see the imitator of Salvator, or rather copyist of his lines; and these we have in all their angular nakedness, where rocks, trees, and mountains are so jagged, contorted, and tumbled about, that nothing but an explosion could account for their assemblage. They have not the relation which we sometimes find even in a random collocation, as in the accidental pictures of a discolored wall; for the careful hand of the contriver is traced through ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... lady!" And, leaving his host, he crossed the room, bowed, accosted her, and sat down. With Pharisaic delicacy, Shelton refrained from looking. But presently Ferrand came back; the lady rose and left the restaurant; she had been crying. The young foreigner was flushed, his face contorted; he did not ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... things on Friday night. In the centre, sticking into the skin of our old planet Earth like a poisoned dart, was this cylinder. But the poison was scarcely working yet. Around it was a patch of silent common, smouldering in places, and with a few dark, dimly seen objects lying in contorted attitudes here and there. Here and there was a burning bush or tree. Beyond was a fringe of excitement, and farther than that fringe the inflammation had not crept as yet. In the rest of the world the stream of life still flowed as it had flowed for immemorial years. ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... but never got over it. He fell back wounded. Within three days he was back in England again, but with only one leg. Seven months of training, five minutes in action, then crippled for life! The writer saw one young fellow whose face was left contorted by shrapnel, which had carried away one eye and the bridge of his nose. He was a quiet, earnest Christian. He said, "Of course, they cannot send me back again into the line or compel me to go with only one eye, but I am going just the same. I am going ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... unconscious of the deep sobs which issued from her lips; every nerve, every power was concentrated in the one effort to behold to the last possible moment one beloved face. Instinctively Pixie's eyes followed those of the girl's, and beheld a man's face gazing back, haggard, a-quiver, almost contorted with suffering. The story was plain to read. They also were lovers—this man and this girl. They also were facing years of separation, and the moment of parting held for them the bitterness of death. Pixie O'Shaughnessy glanced from one to the other, and then thoughtfully, deliberately along ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... by the cry, and shivering with dread, rushed to the door and gazed in terror at the figure which stood leaning over the bedside. As she watched, it slowly removed the cowl and the napkin and exposed the fell face of Tabitha, so strangely contorted between fear and triumph ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... may be weak, but I never loved persecution. King Francis and I were dragged to behold the executions at Amboise. That was enough for us. His gentle spirit never recovered it, and I—I see their contorted visages and forms still in my restless nights; and if the Spanish dogs should deal with England as with Haarlem or Antwerp, and all through me!—Oh! I should be happier dying within ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in a mental fog groped his way to the door opening on the river steps, bolted it, groped his way back and stood scratching his head. A grin, grotesque in the wavering light, contorted the long lower half of the face for a moment and was gone. ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... stared at him, he coolly turned to the chief and handed him his pistol, butt foremost. Was Roger mad, I wondered? He was the sanest man of all our crew. The chief gravely took the proffered weapon and looked at Blodgett, whose face was contorted with fear, and at the Malay, who by now was sitting up on deck blinking about him in a dazed way. Then he smiled and raised his hand and the ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... neighborhood was infested by "vermin," as they called the Acadians and their Micmac allies. In January four soldiers and a ranger were waylaid not far from the fort, disabled by bullets, and then scalped alive. They were found the next morning on the snow, contorted in the agonies of death, and frozen like marble statues. St. Patrick's Day brought more cheerful excitements. The Irish officers of the garrison gave their comrades a feast, having laid in during the autumn a stock of frozen provisions, that ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... days later, when the fire was subdued and Mr. Field was able to get back to her with the news that her family were all safe and her house unharmed. The story of the rescue of her house from the flames has been curiously contorted by persons who have attempted to write about it without knowing the facts. The real saviors of Mrs. Stevenson's house were her nephews and Mr. Field, and even they might have lost the day had it not been for a providential wind that blew in strongly from the sea ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... wanta do that," said the other with contorted face. "I'll get the five hundred here for' ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... strain proceeded, Allan M'Aulay gradually gave signs of recovering his presence of mind, and attention to the objects around him. The deep-knit furrows of his brow relaxed and smoothed themselves; and the rest of his features, which had seemed contorted with internal agony, relapsed into a more natural state. When he raised his head and sat upright, his countenance, though still deeply melancholy, was divested of its wildness and ferocity; and in its composed state, although by no means handsome, the ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... flatter than cold eggless batter upon a lead platter—as mad as a hatter, and who will relieve me? Can anyone? I tell you it's dreadful to face a whole bedful of spectres and spooks (born of papers and books) with, most horrible looks, limbs contorted in crooks, and bat-wings with big hooks, which haunt all the nooks of tester and curtain, and which, I am certain, will drive me insane if some one can't explain where the mischief we are, 'midst the jumble and jar of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various
... margin) beds of volcanic ash. If he look below the little coloured squares on the margin, he will see figures marking the strike, or direction of the inclination of the beds—inclined, vertical, horizontal, contorted; that the white lines in the map signify faults, i.e. shifts in the strata; the gold lines, lodes of metal—the latter of which I should advise him strongly, in this district at least, not to meddle with: but to button ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... frail bark. The better to preserve the equilibrium of the canoe—a conveyance treacherous at the best—wrapped in a blanket in the bottom of the canoe I laid, looking into the faces of the Indians, contorted by fright, and listened to their peculiar and mournful death wail, "while the gale whistled ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... inches through the volcanic ashes. I descended by the eastern side, and was soon at the base of the great cone. I made my way by tortuous walking round the erupted masses of lava, and also by portions of the lava streams, which, on losing their original fluidity, had become piled up and contorted into gigantic masses. ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... braced his body against the far wall. The strain of his effort, whatever its purpose, was easy to read in the contorted line of his shoulders. Then the wall slid under Loketh's urging, a slow move as if the weight of the slab he strove to handle was almost too great for his slender arms, or else the need for caution ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... he drew her resistlessly toward him, and his other arm went about her and crushed her close; hate, shame, rage, love were in the contorted face above her. She pressed the muzzle of her ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... side were closely packed with spectators; and, betwixt these and the fires, the younger warriors stood in lines, each bearing lighted pine-knots or rolls of birch-bark. The heat, the smoke, the glare of flames, the wild yells, contorted visages, and furious gestures of these human devils, as their victim, goaded by their torches, bounded through the fires again and again, from end to end of the house, transfixed the priests with horror. But when, as day dawned, the last spark ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... he straightened himself to the height of a tall man. The bent contorted limbs became lithe and strong. The cringing humility slipped from him like a garment. He stood upright and faced Ralph Dacre—a man in the prime ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... repeated the word, and when he had done so turned on the other a look that led the Captain to think that he was going to be ill again. Then, "It cost me—it will cost me"—again a spasm contorted the Syndic's face—"I don't know what it will not have cost me before it ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... morning Connor was feeling bitterly envious as he went by the offices. He had already seen seven smugly-similar faces when he came by Room Eight. Suddenly the face of its occupant contorted in agony, then the man got up and paced about as if in a trap. Deciding he had seen more than was good for him, Connor hurried on. But the man in Nine was acting out the same curious drama. He quickly retraced ...
— Cerebrum • Albert Teichner
... slender; branches very irregular or in indistinct whorls, for the most part nearly horizontal; often ending in long spire-like shoots; branchlets numerous, head conical, symmetrical while the tree is young, especially when growing in open swamps; when old extremely variable, occasionally with contorted or drooping limbs; foliage pale green, turning to a dull ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... ladder he may find carrots on the tiles," was the Paduan's reply. The weasel-like face of the Templar contorted ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... he walked more frequently with Mariposa along the banks of the river, by the thickets of young spruce, cedar, and manzanita with its oddly contorted red stems. At times, each vied with the other in bringing back echoes from the lofty granite ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... Museum or the London Library, may coexist with a profound ignorance of all that is really worth knowing. It sounds very intellectual to chatter about the authorship of the Fourth Gospel, or to scoff at St. John's "senile iterations and contorted metaphysics"; but, when a clergyman read St. Paul's eulogy on Charity, instead of an address, at the end of a fashionable wedding, one of his hearers said, "How very appropriate that was! Where did you get it from?" ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... figure of the living Christ the expression of infinite goodness, ready for sacrifice; so in his Crucifixions, instead of following the example of his contemporaries, who depicted Christ already dead, with marks of sorrow on His features, and contorted by the spasm of a violent death; he represented Him living, calm and serene, conscious of the sacrifice He completed, and full of joy ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... and Hildeguard at his feet and herself and Michael and a dishwasher at his head they had managed to get him up the two short flights of stairs. It developed that it would be necessary to remove him in an ambulance later in the day, but for the time being he lay like a contorted Colossus on the fragile-looking cot that constituted his improvised bed of pain: "Like the great grandfather," to quote Michael again, "of all of them Zeus'es and gargoyles, and other cavortin' ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... an effort that contorted every muscle of his body—"oh! but I cannot." While saying these words, he fell upon his knees, but with his mighty hands he clung to the rocks, and raised himself ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... back a corner of the sheet, disclosing the face, contorted and of a peculiar, purplish hue from the congested blood vessels. He bent over and I did so, too. There was an unmistakable odor of tobacco on him. A moment Kennedy studied the face before us, then slowly ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... into serpentine convolutions by yesterday's tropical heat. Both sides are considerably displaced, but they still bear the right relation to each other, and the faithful machine, sniffing and picking her way carefully, glides safely over the contorted path. A short tunnel, with sides of solid masonry and roof-arch of brick, again demands extra care, and it is well that the pace is slowed, for half-way through, a man becomes dimly visible running a trolley off the line. ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... called out suddenly in his richest imitation of the South of Market dialect. With his light step of a dancer, he skipped over to Kate Waddington, whirled her to her feet, and began to waltz about the forward deck, imitating the awkward, contorted, cheek-to-cheek style of the Schuetzen Park picnic. Kate, who fell in at once with every invitation, had laughed as he began to whirl her, but she flushed too. The whole upper deck was craning necks to stare. Mrs. Masters caught her breath and whispered, "Oh, don't!" Dr. French ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... Winchester. While knocking at the door of the house on the opposite side of the Close, she was aware of an elfish visage peering from an upper window. There was the queer mop of dark hair, the squinting light eyes, the contorted grin crooking the mouth, the odd sallow face, making her quite glad to get out of sight of the strange grimaces which grew ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... it looked as though the smooth disc, falling from its place in the sky upon the earth, had rolled to the bottom of that precipice: its ascending movement was like a leisurely rebound; it disengaged itself from the tangle of twigs; the bare contorted limb of some tree, growing on the slope, made a black crack right across its face. It threw its level rays afar as if from a cavern, and in this mournful eclipse-like light the stumps of felled trees uprose very dark, the heavy ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... possible in the vicinity of the Italian frontier, though it lengthened their journey, somewhat mitigated its dreariness, and an hour after noon, after traversing some flinty fields, they observed in the distance an olive-wood, beneath the pale shade of which, and among whose twisted branches and contorted roots, they had contemplated finding a halting-place. But here the advanced guard observed already an encampment, and one of them rode ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... drink, you are mistaken. Either you ought to order another or hook it.' He braved it for several more ages, then paid, and went; and still it was only ten minutes to nine. All mundane phenomena were inexplicably contorted that night. As he was passing the end of the short street which contains the stage-door of Prince's Theatre, a man, standing at the door on the lookout, hailed him loudly. He hesitated, and the man—it ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... the drawback of all sea-side places that half the landscape is unavailable for purposes of human locomotion, being covered by useless water. Mentone is more unfortunate than most of them, for its Hinterland is so cloven and contorted that unless you keep on the main roads, or content yourself with short but pleasant strolls, you will soon find all progress barred by some natural obstruction. And one really cannot walk along the esplanade all day long, though it is worth while, once ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... died. The taut body slumped against the bed and the contorted features relaxed. The eyes remained half open; and when Gefty came around to the side of the bed, they still seemed to be looking up at him, but they no longer moved. A thin trickle of blood started from the side of the slack ...
— The Winds of Time • James H. Schmitz
... and he thrust his head forward and out from his shoulders savagely. In the flickering candle light, with contorted face and snarling lips, he looked again the beast to which she had ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... but held out their pannikins, and into each he poured a three-finger nip of raw overproof rum that would have burnt the palate of Satan himself. They swallowed it neat, in two or three quick gulps. The tears sprang to their eyes, and they contorted their faces into all sorts of shapes; but they disdained ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... to three principal groups, based upon the form of the foliage: (1) Plain varieties, in which the leaves are nearly as they are in nature; (2) moss-curled varieties in which they are curiously and pleasingly contorted; and (3) fern leaved, in which the foliage is not curled, but much divided ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... at last, spent and dusty. There was looking at him only the little red-eyed maid whom he had tried to comfort at some far-off hour in his life. Her face was all contorted with weeping, and she had a great smear of dust ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... malign expression on that cruel white face as it stared in at the window from the outer gloom, and I felt convinced she was right. She had read her man once more. For it was the desperate, contorted face of one appalled to discover that a great crime attempted and successfully carried out has failed, by mere accident, of ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... feet? The cat seemed to be turning round in its basket. There were half a dozen banners instead of one; the lamp was shaking in its bracket; the floor was tilting, everything was becoming hideously contorted and out of place. A shroud of darkness gathered about him, and through that darkness Carrigan staggered blindly toward the divan. He reached it just in time to fall upon ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... and the land-breeze came over them, chill and dank, in palpable currents, through the jalousies, into the heated room; and, had one thrust his head into the moonlight and looked beneath, he would have seen hundreds of the shell-clad vampires, upon their long and contorted legs, moving hideously round, and scrambling horribly over newly-made mounds, each of which contained the still fresh corpse of a warrior, or of the land, or of the ocean. In a small way, your land-crab is a most indefatigable resurrectionist. But there is retribution for their villany. They ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... two or three inches to take the kinks out. Long, leggy, or whip-like shoots need the ends pinched off. If done at an early stage no sap will waste. It is old wood that bleeds when the knife is put into it. I always hesitate to advise re-shaping an old specimen if it is so contorted that over half of the old wood must be cut away. It is a great shock to a growing plant to lose half or more of its wood. It sometimes kills it, particularly if injudiciously watered. If severe cutting is required do it while the pot shrubbery is nearest ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various
... those of the human members. One tree is harsh and crabbed, another mild; one is churlish and illiberal, another exhausts itself with its free-hearted bounties. Even the shapes of apple-trees have great individuality, into such strange postures do they put themselves, and thrust their contorted branches so grotesquely in all directions. And when they have stood around a house for many years, and held converse with successive dynasties of occupants, and gladdened their hearts so often in the fruitful autumn, then it would seem almost ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... a few seconds, and is followed by convulsions. The head turns from side to side, the jaws snap, the eyes roll, saliva and blood mingle as foam on the lips, the face is contorted in frightful grimaces, the arms and legs are twisted and jerked about, the breathing is deep and irregular, the whole body writhes violently, and is bathed ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... like crystal. We passed among myriads of Japanese junks, gliding softly, wafted by imperceptible breezes on the smooth water; their motion could hardly be heard, and their white sails, stretched out on yards, fell languidly in a thousand horizontal folds like window-blinds, their strangely contorted poops, rising up castle-like in the air, reminding one of the towering ships of the Middle Ages. In the midst of the verdure of this wall of mountains, they stood out with a ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... equals the Auteuil Railway Station, where the building, the line, and the railway bridge have all been crumpled up together, as if some giant hand had squeezed them into a shapeless mass. The iron bridge still spans the road, but with rails and girders so contorted and covered with debris that we were afraid to drive under it for fear the slight concussion caused by a carriage passing beneath might bring the tottering mass down on our heads. A little beyond, a sentry is placed to prevent people passing beneath a house which is on the verge ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... In reviewing the work by previous writers on the Moel-Tryfan deposits, Mackintosh refers to Darwin's "very suggestive description of the Moel-Tryfan deposits...Under the drift he saw that the surface of the slate, TO A DEPTH OF SEVERAL FEET, HAD BEEN SHATTERED AND CONTORTED IN A VERY PECULIAR MANNER." The contortion of the slate, which Mackintosh regarded as "the most interesting of the Moel-Tryfan phenomena," had not previously been regarded as "sufficiently striking to arrest attention" by any geologist except Darwin. The Pleistocene ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... valuable, the man straightened the contorted limbs of the dead body and covered it decently with a quilt. Then he stood again ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... lines in his face deepened, and a fine, gleaming sweat started out on his brow. His face contorted in a spasm of voiceless suffering, and he drew a stiff hand down either arm. Howat watched him in a species of strained curiosity, with a suspension of breath. Something, he felt, should be done to relieve the oppression of agony gathering on Felix Winscombe's countenance, but a corresponding ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... among the four of us, and as I marveled and superstitious fear crept upon me there came scream after scream of terror from the direction of the tent; and as I looked, Carfax, barefoot as he had slept, came flying from the tent, his ghastly face contorted with horror, glancing behind him as he ran, and holding out his arms as though to ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... all accounts, was that of the victim of some malignant sorceress; he seemed to have drunk of Circe's cup; beast-like; rags insufficient to hide his nakedness; his befreckled skin blistered by continual exposure to the sun; nose flat; countenance contorted, heavy, earthy; hair and beard unshorn, profuse, and of fiery red. He struck strangers much as if he were a volcanic creature thrown up by the same convulsion which exploded into sight the isle. All bepatched ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... tree while they stalked a near-by buck. Even her natural terror of being left alone in the awful jungle was submerged in a greater horror as she saw the man and the beast spring simultaneously upon their prey and drag it down, as she saw the handsome face of her preserver contorted in a bestial snarl; as she saw his strong, white teeth buried in the soft flesh of ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... prophecies in regard to the man had been fulfilled, she feared him, and one glance at his dark, contorted face as he was led in ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... were sent back at this stage of the game. Then a cry went up from a group of privates standing near the line of contorted figures. "White, Purvis, white! ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... it. Your face is contorted with the anguish of mental stress. Let this be a lesson to you, Comrade Parker, never to embark on any enterprise of which you ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... anxious quest that he did not hear the chuckle of two wagons coming up through the sand to the corral. He did not even hear the footsteps of men approaching the house. He did not hear anything at all except a dismal yowl now and then from the darkness. He contorted his long person that he might peer into the gloom. He pushed the prairie dog in as far as he could reach. "Come, kitty-kitty-kitty!" he coaxed. "Doggone your onery soul, I'm gitting tired of this kinda ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... Lacedaemonians, he will at first find him despicable in conversation; but, when a proper opportunity offers, this same person, like a skilful jaculator, will hurl a sentence worthy of attention, short and contorted, so that he who converses with him will appear to be in no respect superior to a boy." Plato's definition of rhetoric is, "the art of ruling the minds of men." The Koran says, "A mountain may change its place, but a man will not change his disposition";—yet the end of eloquence is,—is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... his features contorted in concentration. Vocational Apt had terminated his schooling at the old grade-school level, and while like all students he had been taught enough so that he could read the necessary advertising commercials, any printed message of this sort provided ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... the time, and, while pronouncing the four last words, absolutely touching the ground with a kind of contorted gesticulation. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... the fact that those two went out, that she followed them almost immediately afterwards through the darkness and, a little later, she came running back to the hotel with that pallid face and the hand clutching her dress over her heart. It can't have been only Bagshawe. Her face was contorted with agony before ever her eyes fell upon me or upon him beside me. But I dare say Bagshawe may have been the determining influence in her suicide. Leonora says that she had that flask, apparently of nitrate of amyl, but actually ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... and bare it rose, unscalable barricade, Beaten and blown against by the generous draught of the trade. Dawn on its fluted brow painted rainbow light, Close on its pinnacled crown trembled the stars at night. Here and there in a cleft clustered contorted trees, Or the silver beard of a stream hung and swung in the breeze, High overhead, with a cry, the torrents leaped for the main, And silently sprinkled below in thin perennial rain. Dark in the staring ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this, they are found every where disturbed in that order more or less; in many places this order and regularity is so disturbed as hardly to be acknowledged; in most places we find those stratified bodies broken, dislocated, and contorted, and this aqueous theory of mineralists has neither the means for attaining that end, were it required in their theory, nor have they any such purpose in their theory, were that end attainable by the means which they employ. Thus blinded by the prejudice of a false analogy, they do not even ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... judge, but I think the language of this piece rather good. Then I must allow the fashionable portraits are not the true thing. I am too much out of the way to see and remark the ridiculous in society. The story is terribly contorted and unnatural, and the catastrophe is melancholy, which should always be avoided. No matter; I have corrected it ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... low-hung, steel-coloured pall was stretched almost entirely across the heavens, except where along the flat horizon a broad stripe of opal atmosphere let the eye wander into space, in search of the pearly gateways of Paradise. On the other side rose the contorted lava mountains, their bleak heads knocking against the solid sky and stained of an inky blackness, which changed into a still more lurid tint where the local reds struggled up through the shadow that lay ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... death. The lips pulled back to reveal the grinning teeth, the eyes bursting from the head, the features swollen and contorted from the deadly poison. A tiny, tufted dart of wood stuck in the brown flesh on ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... was dark; though I tried my best I could not finish dressing quickly. Suddenly I felt a box of matches and a candlestick with a whole candle in it. As soon as the room was lighted up, Liza sprang up, sat up in bed, and with a contorted face, with a half insane smile, looked at me almost senselessly. I sat down beside her and took her hands; she came to herself, made an impulsive movement towards me, would have caught hold of me, but did not dare, and slowly ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... secret, long and intricate consideration. Archaic as it is, primitive still in some respects, full of the primitive youth it celebrates, it is, in fact, a learned work, and suggested to a great analyst of literary style, singular as it may seem, the "elaborate" or "contorted" manner in literature [288] of the later Latin writers, which, however, he finds "laudable" for its purpose. Yet with all its learned involution, thus so oddly characterised by Quintilian, so entirely is this quality subordinated to the proper purpose of the Discobolus as a work of art, ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... entered Anna Pavlovna's bedroom, she fell on her knees near the door. Anna Pavlovna beckoned her to come to her bedside, embraced her, and blessed her son; then turning a face contorted by cruel suffering to her husband she made an ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... dead; I made ready to get him onto my shoulders and find some place to hide him. But to my surprise he started to his feet. I could not see much of him, because of the streams of paint; but I could see enough to realize that his face was contorted with fury. I remembered that gentle, compassionate countenance; never had I dreamed to ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... the midst there lay the body of a man sorely contorted and still twitching. They drew near on tiptoe, turned it on its back and beheld the face of Edward Hyde. He was dressed in clothes far too large for him, clothes of the doctor's bigness; the cords of his face still moved with a ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... the exercise of his duty, to remain for three days and three nights in the middle of the Hall surrounded by that ferocious horde, all clamouring to reach him, and the contemplation of the immense sum which he would gain by so unparalleled a batch of rejections, contorted his faculties of discrimination and sapped the resources of his usually active mind. Whatever cause is accepted, it is agreed that as soon as he returned to his house he summoned Hien and Tsin Lung together and leaving ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... possessed of a very long tongue, unusually large for a human being, and this he shot out, turned down, curled up at the end, and wagged from side to side as a dog would his tail. At the same time he contorted and screwed his face up into the most hideous grimaces, elongating, flattening, and working his countenance as easily as if it had been composed of soft wax, till at times his ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... this awkwardly-constructed stanza, a female, uncomely and ungraceful, is represented as standing in the attitude of a yawn, not indicated by the gaping mouth, but by the contorted person, and arms twisted behind the back. She is close to a stained-glass window, whose gaudy colours are challenged by her own bright blue dress, the object of the artist throughout appearing to be violent opposition, not harmony. The picture, with its violent dislocations, both of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... witnesses competent to form an opinion that Westley's contorted face, his troubled breathing, his manner of stepping back, and the curious writhing of his stout arms, all encouraged a supposition that he might be contemplating immediate violence upon the person of Potts. At all events, this view was taken by the aggrieved and puzzled Colonel, who fled through ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... rode all the monstrous allegories,—one divinity or demon, eternally the same in the repetition of the sculptor, universally visible as though self-multiplied. The huge pillars themselves were symbols, figures, carnalities; the orgiastic spirit of that worship lived and writhed in the contorted bronze of the lamps, the twisted gold of the cups, the ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... rich and the mechanical workmanship fair for the time, but the figure had become paralytic. It shrouded itself in a sack-like brocaded gown, had no feet at times, and instead of standing on the ground hung in the air. Facial expression ran to contorted features, holiness became moroseness, and sadness sulkiness. The flesh was brown, the shadows green-tinted, giving an unhealthy look to the faces. Add to this the gold ground (a Persian inheritance), the ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... saw left me all but stunned. Have you ever seen stark, mad, infinite terror on a human face? That was what I saw in Denise's—inexpressible, unbearable horror, worse than the fear of death could ever be. Her green eyes were widened so that the whites showed around them; her perfect lips were contorted, her whole face strained into ...
— The Ideal • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... details to attract the eye; no gorgeous colour-patterns or pleasing irregularities of form; the frosted beauty of the scene appeals rather to the intelligence. Contrasted with the wanton blaze of green, the contorted trunks and labyrinthine shadow-meanderings of our woodlands, these palm groves, despite their frenzied exuberance, figure forth the idea of reserve and chastity; an impression which is heightened by the ethereal striving of those branchless columns, ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... climbing to the left, emerged suddenly upon a glade, round and level except at the northern side, where a swelling hillock was crowned with a huge oak-tree. It towered above the heath, a giant with contorted arms, beckoning to the host of lesser trees. "Here," cried Winfried, as his eyes flashed and his hand lifted his heavy staff, "here is the Thunder-oak; and here the cross of Christ shall break the hammer of the ...
— The First Christmas Tree - A Story of the Forest • Henry Van Dyke
... Fraser's lips. His eyes glittered red. His whole mad face was contorted with fury. A volley of oaths poured through his twisted mouth. With a gesture of insane rage he pulled the nearest cable to him and slashed ...
— The Floating Island of Madness • Jason Kirby
... a glance at Wethermill. How did he take the theory? Wethermill was leaning against the wall, his eyes closed, his face white and contorted with a spasm of pain. But he had the air of a man silently enduring an outrage rather than struck down by the conviction that the ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... the summons in an exemplary spirit. It is not certain that he did not bite it. He rolled on the floor, and contorted himself in convulsions of vexation; he 'bothered' the Dean, he 'bothered' the Precentor, he 'bothered' the Organist, he 'bothered' Shapcote's sore throat, he 'bothered' Harewood's wool- gathering wits, he 'bothered' his own voice, and thereby ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... inside it seemed to open out. Moreover, there were fish bones at the entrance. The captain, the surgeon, and Congdon, the coxswain, landed. Captain Parkinson reached the spot first. Stooping, he thrust his head in at the orifice. A sharp exclamation broke from him. He rose to his feet, turning a contorted face to the others. ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... and colour mix'd in Hymen's face; And such sweet concord was thought worthy then Of torches, music, feasts, and greatest men: So Hymen look'd, that even the chastest mind He mov'd to join in joys of sacred kind; For only now his chin's first down consorted His head's rich fleece, in golden curls contorted; And as he was so lov'd, he lov'd so too: So should best beauties, bound by nuptials, do. Bright Eucharis, who was by all men said The noblest, fairest, and the richest maid Of all th' Athenian damsels, Hymen lov'd With such transmission, that his heart ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... him!" quoth Dame Elizabeth, and snorked [twisted, contorted] up her mouth, as the comb that instant moment came to a spot where her hair was louked [fastened] together. "Bless the comb!" saith she, and I guess she meant it but little. "Wala wa! Dame Joan, think you 'tis ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... mountains overhanging the Mukondokua river, to the front the western chain of these hills, and to the left the high crab-claw shaped ridge, which, extending from the western chain, circles round conspicuously above the swelling knolls which lie between the two main rocky ridges. Contorted green thorn-trees, "elephant-foot" stumps, and aloes, seem to thrive best here, by their very nature indicating what the country is, a poor stony land. Our camp was pitched by the river Rumuma, where, sheltered from the winds, and enriched by alluvial ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... that will delight, improve, or encourage the reader. On the one hand, the Hebrew Psalms are the only religious poetry on earth; yet they contain sallies that savour rankly of the man of blood. On the other hand, Alfred de Musset had a poisoned and a contorted nature; I am only quoting that generous and frivolous giant, old Dumas, when I accuse him of a bad heart; yet, when the impulse under which he wrote was purely creative, he could give us works like "Carmosine" or "Fantasio," in which the last note of the romantic comedy seems to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... array of dishes suitable for a feast. Shark's fins preceded expensive pickled eggs and followed choice bird's-nest soup. What could the change mean? Simply that his complimentary remark, maimed and contorted beyond recognition by ill-informed or mischievous persons, had travelled to Li's ears, and that he had therefore determined to treat his guest with the greatest ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... these performances. To see a young woman or girl suddenly struck down, speechless, pallid as in death; with muscles rigid, eyeballs fixed or rolled back in their sockets; the stiffened frame either wholly prostrate or drawn up into contorted attitudes and shapes, or vehemently convulsed with racking pains, or dropping with relaxed muscles into a lifeless lump; and to hear dread shrieks of delirious ravings,—must have produced a truly frightful effect upon an excited and deluded assembly. The constables and their assistants would go ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... audience, his expressive young countenance contorted into a grimace of unholy glee, the listener flung aloft his arms and blithely executed a few noiseless steps of an ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... had yet met with. It was no less than sixty-eight feet long, five wide, and three feet six inches high. It had in front a sculpture in relief, of grotesque taste, in which the lines were spiral and the figures strangely contorted. ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... is abroad,—is close to us. I have this very hour seen him afflict two innocent children, as of old he troubled those who were possessed by him in Judea. Hester and Abigail Tappau have been contorted and convulsed by him and his servants into such shapes as I am afeard to think on; and when their father, godly Mr. Tappau, began to exhort and to pray, their howlings were like the wild beasts of the field. Satan is of a truth let loose amongst us. The girls ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... is little but the effort at expression, an effort strange, contorted, self-conscious. You can say your worst about it and laugh at all its failures. Yet they are failures different in kind from the artistic failures of the past, for they are failures of the conscious will, not of mere complacency. And it is such failures ...
— Progress and History • Various
... importance, in the eye of God, than what things of the same nature occur to other organisms of matter; and that the fish of the ancient seas, destroyed by myriads to make room for other species, the contorted shapes in which they are found as fossils testifying to their agonies; the coral insects, the animals and birds and vermin slain by man, have as much right as he to clamor at the injustice of the dispensations of God, and to demand an immortality of life in a new universe, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... truth the opening picture was effective. Sixteen black-robed, long-bearded Netherland envoys stalking away, discomfited and indignant upon one side; Catharine de' Medici on the other, regarding them with a sneer, painfully contorted into a pathetic smile; Henry the King, robed in a sack of penitence, trembling and hesitating, leaning on the arm of Epergnon, but quailing even under the protection of that mighty swordsman; Mucio, careering, truncheon in hand, in ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... my tent, going over some village accounts with the village putwarrie, and my gomasta. A posse of villagers were grouped under the grateful shade of a gnarled old mango tree, whose contorted limbs bore evidence to the violence of many a tufan, or tempest, which it had weathered. The usual confused clamour of tongues was rising from this group, and the sub; ect of debate was the eternal 'pice.' Behind the bank, and in ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... all of them three or four black lines across them. What sort of leaf texture is supposed to be represented by these? The stones in the foreground of Turner's Llanthony received from the artist the powdery texture of sandstone; the engraver covered them with contorted lines and turned them into ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... master. It had all happened, perhaps, within the space of three breaths. Now Marianne leaned out of the window and screamed her warning, for the faded chestnut was on the very heels of the Mexican. He raised his contorted face at her cry, then threw up both his arms to her in a gesture she could ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... at this moment as a man may laugh in hell. He reeled. His lean face momentarily contorted, and ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... went on deck and saw the people she called "Anglo-Indians" (more than two-thirds Scots, Irish, Cornish, and Welsh, with a negligible fraction of possible Angles) all lying like dead men in rows, with no side or show about them as they lay; some in contorted positions, with here and there a powerful limb or well rounded northern head showing in the half dark. Rulers of the Indian Empire, by Odin! or Jove! damp and hot, and in the dark, in a strong draught, without a pick of gold lace, prostrate, sweating uncomfortably, sleeping; and ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... mountaineer's face was contorted into a spasm of pain and his labored breathing demanded a respite of silence. Then slowly he declared with the unvarnished candor of the backwoods: "Joe's got all ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... small lamp on the table, dimly lighted, which threw a faint glow upon the circle of countenances round, into which came wondering the burly big Copperhead, holding fast by the shoulder of Mr. May, whose ghastly face, contorted with wild anxiety, glanced at Tozer over the lamp. But the old man was so much absorbed at first that he scarcely saw who ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... lips, the first thing she saw was the sweetest, calmest, most motherly of faces bent over her, one arm round her, the other giving her the spoon of some cordial. She looked up and even smiled, though it was a sad contorted smile, which brought a tear into the good sister's eyes; but then she fell asleep, and only half awoke when the Countess came up to see her for the last time, and bade her farewell with a kiss on her forehead, and a charge ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... shine; and fire did not flame; and by no means did the Vedas of the twice-born once shine. And, O Janamejaya, the creatures peopling the interior of the earth, on being afflicted, rose and surrounded the Pandava, trembling with joined hands and contorted countenances. And being burnt by those weapons, they besought Dhananjaya (for their lives). Then the Brahmarshis, and the Siddhas, and the Maharshis and the mobile beings—all these appeared (on the scene). And ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... contain a larger proportion of silica. In another part of the island, there are layers of pearlstone and pitchstone, which in many respects resemble those of Ascension. The zones in the columnar trachyte are generally contorted; they extend uninterruptedly for a great length in a vertical direction, and apparently parallel to the walls of the dike-like mass. Von Buch ("Description des Iles Canaries" page 184.) has described at Teneriffe, a stream of lava containing innumerable ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... quote many other forms of experiment, some old and some new, in which induction in curved or contorted lines takes place, but think it unnecessary after the preceding results; I shall therefore mention but two. If a conductor A, (fig. 111.) be electrified, and an uninsulated metallic ball B, or even a plate, provided the edges be not ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... down half a tumblerful of raw spirits hastily procured by Brett. Again he attempted to shake off the torpid state that was slowly mastering him. He lifted his eyes feebly to Brett's face, and his face contorted in ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... labour in relation to the Renaissance must form the subject of a separate chapter. For the present it is enough to observe that his immediate scholars, Raffaello da Montelupo, and Gian Angelo Montorsoli, caught little from their master but the mannerism of contorted form and agitated action. This mannerism, a blemish even in the strong work of Buonarroti, became ridiculous when adopted by men of feeble powers and passionless imagination. By straining the art of sculpture to its utmost limits, Michael Angelo expressed vehement emotions in marble; ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... famous for its princely hospitality,—the prison cot is not now his bequest: but it is all the world has left him on which to yield up his life. "Oh, uncle! uncle! uncle!" exclaims Franconia, who has been bathing his contorted face with her tears, "would that God had taken me too-buried our troubles in one grave! There is no trouble in that world to which he has gone: joy, virtue, and peace, reign triumphant there," she speaks, sighing, as she raises her bosom from off ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... so she revealed the fact that, besides having contorted her face into an unrecognisable shape, she had soiled it in several places with ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... he sought no longer to dissemble his concern, walking to and fro in the room with a contorted face, and passing his hand ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... back as he lay asleep. The lips covered with a bloody froth were drawn back tightly over the white teeth clenched in agony, and red foam lay on the black beard. Out of the sweat-bathed, ghastly face the eyes glared in frenzy. The features were contorted with pain. Again and again the wild shrieks like the howl of a mad thing rang through the long room and out ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... Hungry Bill, in their groveling way, seemed to share the low ideals of their father. They were tall and sturdy girls, clad in breezy calico dresses and with their hair down over their eyes; and as they gazed out from beneath their bangs a guilty smile contorted their lips, a smile ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... S. Antonio the trail ascended to a height of 3,100 ft. (41/2 kil. from the village), and we were then in a rich forest region, where the acaju—of the Terebinthaceae family—was plentiful, with its huge leaves and contorted branches. The acaju produced a refreshing fruit, either of a bright red or else of a yellow colour, not unlike a large pepper, outside of which was strongly attached a seed possessing highly caustic qualities. Many gordinha trees were also to be seen. It was interesting to see how those zones of ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... a garden about the place, but there was a little lawn amongst the pines, in the midst of which stood a huge old patriarch, with red stem and grotesquely contorted branches: beneath it was a bench, and there, after their return from their two hours' ride, the ladies sat, while the sun was at its warmest, on the mornings of their first and second readings: Malcolm sat on a wheelbarrow. After lunch on the second day, which they had agreed from the ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... bedroom, in my turn, and saw a man lying half-dressed on the carpet, with his legs drawn up under him, his arms contorted and his face quite white, an emaciated, fleshless face, with the eyes still staring in terror and the mouth twisted into a ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc |
