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More "Deuce" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the sense of a, for him, very memorable something that he peered now into the immediate future, and tried, not without compunction, to take that period up where he had, prospectively, left it. But just where the deuce had he left it? The consciousness of dubiety was, for our friend, not, this morning, quite yet clean-cut enough to outline the figures on what she had called his "horizon," between which and himself the twilight was indeed of a quality somewhat intimidating. He had ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... you've something to live for, gentlemen. I've seen her but three times and I don't seem able to shake off the spell. Her sisters, you know—the married ones—are nothing to look at, and the Grand Duke isn't a beauty by any means. How the deuce she happens to produce such a contrast I can't, for the life of me, understand. Nature does some marvellous things, by George, and she certainly spread herself on the Princess Genevra. You've never seen such hair. 'Gad, it's as near like the kind that Henner painted as ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... so well that it makes you fidget and fret and fume all night, and robs you of your rest. Then the sun rises and frightens the mosquitoes away, and you think that's what the sun is for and are thankful; but why the deuce a mosquito should sting you, you can't ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... "At West Point, the deuce you have!" said Aiken. His tone was now one of respect, and he regarded me with marked interest. He was not a gentleman, but he was sharp-witted enough to recognize one in me, and my words and bearing had impressed him. Still his next remark ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... we tried the same manoeuvre with the same result. Now we saw them lowering a buoy from the ship—if we could only reach it we were saved; but we did not reach it. They were not exactly blessings that we poured on those on board. Why the deuce could they not bear down to us when they saw the straits we were in; or why, at any rate, could they not ease up the anchor, and let the ship drift a little in our direction? They saw how little was needed to enable us to reach them. ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... Dry Valley went to the post office. When he came back, like Mother Hubbard he found the deuce to pay. The descendants of Iberian bandits and Hibernian cattle raiders had swooped down upon his strawberry patch. To the outraged vision of Dry Valley there seemed to be a sheep corral full of them; perhaps they numbered five or six. Between the rows of green plants ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... hallucinations, my love. You'll feel better in the morning. Where the deuce did you get such ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... "What the deuce——!" I began. Then I stopped suddenly. A couple of constables in uniform stood at the bedside, and I gathered that it was the voice of the sergeant which had so ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... bigot, you at a ball! Do you know, my girl, this seems to me downright nonsense! You and the hornpipe! Faith, all you need now is to want to get married! A deuce of a want, that! But if you marry, I warn you that I won't keep you—mind that! I've no desire to wait on your brats! Come a little nearer——Oho! why——bless my soul! Mademoiselle Show-all! We're getting to be a bit of a flirt lately, ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... Max. "Cups?" he said in English. "I know we bought something quite unique in the matter of cups, but where the deuce we put them—For the love of God and the honor of the family, boy, tell me ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... preposterous gesture of ecstasy. Then caught her hand, slipped the braided ring over that plain circle of gold which had been on her finger for fifty-four minutes, kissed it—and the palm of her hand—and said, "You never can escape me! Eleanor, your voice played the deuce with me. I rushed home and read every poem in my volume of Blake. Go ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... on the loose, And All the Russias capped in red, And Demos hustling like the deuce, And Tsardom's day as good as dead— When on the Dynasty they dance And with the Imperial Orb play hockey, I feel that LITTLE WILLIE'S chance Looks, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various
... to where the Guards were stationed; the officers—amongst whom I remember Colonel Thomas and Brigade-Major Miller—expressed their astonishment and amazement on seeing me, and exclaimed, "What the deuce brought you here? Why are you not with your battalion in London? Get off your horse, and explain how ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... with his landlord stands deuce high And blocks his board bill off with I O U's, Touching the barkeep lightly for his booze, Sidestepping when a creditor goes by, Soaking his mother's watch-chain on the sly, Haply his ticker, too, haply his shoes, Till Mr. Johnson comes ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum • Wallace Irwin
... my dearest Royal Highness, I had not previously noticed that there was any screw loose under your turban. Your conduct so far had led me, I trust not misled me, to believe that your head was screwed on quite safe. But what the deuce are you up to now, if you will ...
— Turandot, Princess of China - A Chinoiserie in Three Acts • Karl Gustav Vollmoeller
... deuce does a caravan of camels want in Vincent Square?" said Horace, with a sudden qualm for which ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... "The wit of the company, next to the butt of the company," says Mrs. Montagu, "is the meanest person in it. The great duty of conversation is to follow suit, as you do at whist: if the eldest hand plays the deuce of diamonds, let not his next neighbour dash down the king of hearts, because his hand is full of honours. I do not love to see a man of wit win all ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... to come Wednesday," he says, "shall be at the Mansion House, sketching dresses, and on Friday I start for Scotland, so as to be at the opening of the Exhibition on Saturday. It's bound to be all right this time. Where the deuce is that diary! Never mind, I'll make a note of it on this—you can see ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... "The deuce is in it!" said Savarus. "I am attached to you, and I could do a great deal for you, Father! Perhaps we may compound with the Devil. Whatever Monsieur de Watteville's business may be, by engaging Girardet, and prompting him, it will be possible to drag the proceedings out till the elections ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... 'nose.' In Russia it seems something unmentionable means the deuce knows what, one may say the indecent part of the body, and in French it means wedding." And indeed X.'s nose was an ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
... 'A Necessary Explanation,' with the motto, 'Apres moi le deluge!' Oh, deuce take it all! Surely I can never have seriously written such a silly motto as that? Look here, gentlemen, I beg to give notice that all this is very likely terrible nonsense. It is only a few ideas ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... he had been there before them. He appeared to have under his orders a dozen men, four of whom at least certainly belonged to the Rue de Jerusalem. All the detectives had met him; and he had spoken to them. To one, he had said: "What the deuce are you showing this photograph for? In less than no time you will have a crowd of witnesses, who, to earn three francs, will describe some one more like the ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... Occasional showers, however, are just what the farmers want. The Lord was therefore in a fix. Though the Bible says that with him nothing is impossible, he was unable to please both sides; so he favored the one he loved best, gave royalty unlimited sunshine, and played the deuce ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... Deuce take it! Was not this passion for similarity enough to madden one? Must everything be tainted by this damned, regular, grinding drill, this parade-march sort of principle? Must things everywhere run ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... separated them," Hardiman reflected uneasily as he raised and drank his cocktail. "But how the deuce could I without making everybody stare? This party wasn't got up to separate ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... Mabel after she has once seen this. Confound the fellow! Why the deuce couldn't he stay in the sea? It's just ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... plausible and not too grotesque. It would tax his invention, certainly, and I felt, this time, over his real embarrassment, a curious thrill of triumph. It was a sharp trap for the inscrutable! He couldn't play any longer at innocence; so how the deuce would he get out of it? There beat in me indeed, with the passionate throb of this question an equal dumb appeal as to how the deuce I should. I was confronted at last, as never yet, with all the risk attached even now to sounding my ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... rest of the table. He appeared to be kind, she thought, and on his side he was thinking that she was a nice girl, with an attractive face and remarkable eyes. On the whole, he preferred brown eyes, though his wife's were the colour of slate. "Why the deuce did she marry that fool?" he ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... robber, eh? Thought I'd quit a game where I hold all the aces, an' horn in on one where I don't hold even a deuce to draw to? Bitin' off more'n he c'n chaw has choked more'n one feller. Right here in Choteau County they's some several of 'em choked out on the end of a tight one, because they overplayed their hand. I'm a horse-thief—an' a ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... Arno. What course we took I hardly remember, but we roamed slowly about for an hour, my companion delivering by snatches a sort of moon-touched aesthetic lecture. I listened in puzzled fascination, and wondered who the deuce he was. He confessed with a melancholy but all-respectful head-shake to ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... had to nab him, I can tell you, for he was three or four years older than I, and had travelled a good deal, and seen life. But every man has his weak side; and I found his was a sort of a High-Church Radicalism, and that suited me well enough, for I was always a deuce of a radical myself; so I stuck to him like a leech, and stood all his temper, and his pride, and those unpractical, windy visions of his, that made a common-sense fellow like me sick to listen to; but I stood it, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... and in all vital Chaos, there is new Order shaping itself free: but what a faith this, that of all new Orders out of Chaos and Possibility of Man and his Universe, Louis Sixteenth and Two-Chamber Monarchy were precisely the one that would shape itself! It is like undertaking to throw deuce-ace, say only five hundred successive times, and any other throw to be fatal—for Bouille. Rather thank Fortune, and Heaven, always, thou intrepid Bouille; and let contradiction of its way! Civil war, conflagrating universally over France at this moment, might have led ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... said Holmes, staring down the dimly lit street. "Now, I wonder who the deuce that could ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... land of heroisms and heroes. Yet he feels he has been cheated by the fat parson who stole sovereigns from his pocket to keep him out of h——! His spiritual bones fairly ache with the leagues he has travelled, hunting up the throne of God! "Where the deuce," he mutters, "is the showman?" He can't find the lake of fire and ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... ever saw in my life!" he panted. "But, you young scaramouch! what the deuce d'you mean by stopping to chatter ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... impression of a slaggy cliff and on it, in silhouette against menacing clouds, a lone and austere figure. He was dismayed by a sudden contempt for his surest friends. He grasped Louetta Swanson's hand, and found the comfort of human warmth. Habit came, a veteran warrior; and he shook himself. "What the deuce is the matter with me, ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... "I guess she'll have her little sick spells, as they all do, and it'll help wonderfully to have someone to call on. There's her teeth now," anxiously, "they'll be coming through in a few months, and then there'll be the deuce to pay." ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the devil with literature, I am sick of it; who the deuce cares if Gustave Kahn writes well or badly. Yesterday I met a chappie whose views of life coincide with mine. "A ripping good dinner," he says; "get a skinful of champagne inside you, go to bed when it is light, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... now. She liked me until she got tired of me and she died o' drink—not many like that nowadays." He gazed at the photograph whilst his eyes twinkled. "Legs—by Heaven! what legs!" He chuckled. "Wouldn't do for Clare to see that; she was shaking my pillows this mornin' and I was in a deuce of a fright—thought ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... and an infernally daring one,' said Mr Rattenbury; 'in Lealand Cove, not half an hour ago. And the deuce of it is we had warning of it ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... compliments," said the Idiot. "I am sorry I am so young, but I cannot be brought to believe that that is my own fault. One must live to attain age, and how the deuce can one live when ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... man of middle age, clad in the uniform of a colonel in the United States Engineers. Mr. Temple with his wife emerged from the house to greet their guests, and all four were interested spectators of the two concluding games which were bitterly contested, went to deuce a number of times, but finally were ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... the hall, completed the octette. Corporal Smith, the orderly in question, recounted his adventures afterwards. "Never again," quoth he, "shall I jump at a matinee job if there are blind chaps in the party. They're the deuce." ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... passion—passion, clinging and self-devoted, not fierce and possessive—through all the more superficial suggestions of reticence and self-control. 'This little creature is only at the beginning of her life'—he thought, with a kind of pity for her very softness and exquisiteness. 'What the deuce will she have made of it, by the end? Why should ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... his moustache thought-fully. "Now, how the deuce," said he, "am I to include that in ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... "Who the deuce asked you for your opinion?" rapped out the "senor" savagely. "And what are you doing in here, anyhow? If we want the service of a vet., we're quite capable of getting one for ourselves without having him shove his presence upon ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... soon came to himself, and was sure to make them some present or other—some said in proportion to his anger; so that the sexton, who was a bit of a wag (as all sextons are, I think), said that the vicar's saying, "The Devil take you," was worth a shilling any day, whereas "The Deuce" was a shabby sixpenny speech, only fit for ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the most amicable fashion possible. Never did he say outright, "You played the wrong card at such and such a point." No, he always employed some such phrase as, "You permitted yourself to make a slip, and thus afforded me the honour of covering your deuce." Indeed, the better to keep in accord with his antagonists, he kept offering them his silver-enamelled snuff-box (at the bottom of which lay a couple of violets, placed there for the sake of their scent). In particular did the newcomer pay attention to landowners Manilov and Sobakevitch; ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... said, after a perceptible pause. "It plays the deuce with one's nerves. I believe I need a change. This cursed country gets into one's bones if one stays out too long. I've forgotten what England looks like and I've got over the desire to go back there, and so I rot through the rains and the steam and the ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... meanness." But rising somewhat disconcerted—"really, early as it is, I think I must retire; my head," putting up his hand to it, "feels unpleasantly; this confounded elixir of logwood, little as I drank of it, has played the deuce with me." ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... ain't neighborly. Think of the lean years we've known. You can't do it. This war won't last forever—" Mr. Doolittle's voice was tinged with regret—"and it will be time enough to go in for playing the deuce with business when business gets slack again. That's the time for ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... Ah, now I remember. You made my acquaintance several weeks ago.— The deuce! You are in a bad way, if I must say so myself. You certainly do need my help. As I happen to have a few moments' time, ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... which simply said that the bearer, Gulab Lal Singh, would look after me and my belongings. So I paid attention to the man. He was a strapping fellow, handsome as the deuce, with a Roman nose, and the eye ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... you and Elizabeth into a deuce of an unpleasant position. I've told you what a fine woman my mother is, and how she'd welcome Elizabeth with open arms, and now I find I was all wrong. My mother isn't a fine woman; she's an ancestor-worshiping, heartless, ...
— Cupid's Understudy • Edward Salisbury Field
... emanation and an excessive spiritualism ever aiming at the infinite, makes his imagery run mad. Thus we have Immoral Conduct embodied; the God of Death; Science; the Svarga-heaven; Evening; Untimeliness, and the Earth-bride, while the Ace and Deuce of dice are turned into a brace of Demons. There is also that grotesqueness which the French detect even in Shakespeare, e. g. She drank in his ambrosial form with thirsty eyes like partridges (i. 476) and it often results from the comparison of incompatibles, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... retorted Jim; "that's a deduction as they say in the school books. What in the deuce is that ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... told her everything—all sorts of things I haven't even told you, old chap! We used to go for strolls together in the summer evenings—once or twice we motored down to Richmond and went for a walk in the park ... we used to talk about all sorts of things ... women are the very deuce for leading men on to talk. They pretend to be so interested, ask such gentle little questions, are so sympathetic, so kind ... and when it comes to sport, a girl like Vivian can talk as ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... you expect that those poor creatures are to move naturally when the world and their parents have mutilated them so cruelly? As long as a COURT CIRCULAR exists, how the deuce are people whose names are chronicled in it ever to believe themselves the equals of the cringing race which daily reads that abominable trash? I believe that ours is the only country in the world now where ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... regards consequences, or measures accommodation. Who has not experienced that frame of mind; what thrifty wife has not seen and lamented her husband in that condition; when, with rather a heightened colour and a deuce-may-care smile on his face, he comes home and announces that he has asked twenty people to dinner next Saturday? He doesn't know whom exactly; and he does know the dining-room will only hold sixteen. ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Why the deuce should Mrs. Botibol blow me a kiss? I wouldn't kiss her for the world. Why do I grin when I see her, as if I was delighted? Am I? I don't care a straw for Mrs. Botibol. I know what she thinks about me. I know what she said about my last volume of poems (I had it from a dear mutual friend). ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Jimmy. Then Gibson offered to do it, and with a very similar result. With suaviter in modo, sed fortiter in re, I informed him that I did not consider him a sufficiently crack shot to enable him to win a Wimbledon shield; and what the deuce did he—but there, I had to shoot the poor miserable creature, who already had two rifle bullets in his carcass, and I am sure with his last breath he thanked me for that quick relief. There was not sufficient flesh on his bones to cure; but we got a quantity of what there ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... point out one to me, I'll give you a kick or a half-penny, whichever you like. You will find some who have neither husband nor lover. Certain females have a lover and no husband. Ugly women have a husband and no lover. But to meet with a woman who, having one husband and one lover, keeps to the deuce without trying for the trey, there is the miracle, you see, you greenhorns, blockheads, and dolts! Now then, put the true character of this virtuous woman on the tablets of your memory, go your ways, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... benefit of foreigners! Though, to be sure, on the one occasion when Philip had visited the Rhine and Switzerland, he had grumbled most consumedly from Ostend to Grindelwald, at those very decimal coins which the stranger seemed to admire so much, and had wondered why the deuce Belgium, Germany, Holland, and Switzerland could not agree among themselves upon a uniform coinage; it would be so much more convenient to the British tourist. For the British tourist, of ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... me of the 'Searcher' Case, which I have sometimes thought might interest you. It was some time ago, in fact a deuce of a long time ago, that the thing happened; and my experience of what I might term 'curious' things was very ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... "Now why the deuce did she weather-cock round like that?" Lenox wondered, floundering in the quicksands ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... 'Deuce take the man!' exclaimed my aunt. 'Always fishing for motives, when they're on the surface! Why, to make the child happy ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... smiled and stepped toward the tea-table. His head once turned, the smile took on a wry twist. He was no squire of dames, no frequenter of afternoon receptions. Why the deuce had he come to this one? Why had he yielded so readily to the urgings of the professor of mathematics?—himself urged in turn, perhaps, by a wife for whose little affair one extra man at the opening ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... estate. Papa made me promise faithfully to look you up immediately after my arrival. It is merely due to the respect I owe you that I haven't kept my promise. As I know that you won't tell Papa I might as well confess to you that I've scarcely been sober the whole week.—Oh, Berlin is a deuce of ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... a conductor. There was a meeting of the dignitaries some years back; some argued in favour and some against it, and it ended in neither party being persuaded, and nothing being done. I met another Englishman here, to whom the question might so properly be put, "What the deuce are you doing here?" An old worthy, nearly seventy, who, after having passed his fair allowance of life very happily in his own country, must, forsooth, come up the Rhine, without being able to speak a word of French, or any other language but his own. He very ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... eight cards are down in a horizontal row. There are two kings among them, which is auspicious, for kings must be placed sometime at the top. There is a red queen, also auspicious, to be placed on one of the black kings. There is an ace of diamonds and its deuce. Good, again! The ace is placed above the row, beginning a row of aces to be placed there as fast as they fall, and the deuce is placed atop of it, for in that row the suits will be built up, each in its kind. In the lower rows the suits are ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... she was on her head or her heels. . . . All I can tell you, sir, is that me and Battershall"— Battershall is the vicarage gardener, stableman, and factotum—"was waitin' in the stables, wonderin' when in the deuce the Bishop would turn up, when we heard the whistle blown from the kitchen: which was the signal. Out we ran; an' there to be sure was the Bishop comin' down the drive in a hired trap. But between him and the house— slap-bang, as you might say, in the middle of the lawn—was ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... enunciated periods. 'I do mean in reference to Mrs. Tudor's reappearance. By the way, what the deuce are you burning all ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... repeated. "Deuce take me if I had not forgotten! Excuse me," he continued, "necessity compels ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... She therefore prepared a figure which she dressed in her own clothes, and placed on the balcony, under the pretext of being able to watch him better; slipped quickly into the chest, and had the maid put it on the Devil's back. "The deuce!" said he; "this chest is a great deal heavier than the others; and to-day, when she is sitting on the balcony, I shall have so much the less chance to rest." So by dint of the greatest exertions he carried it, without stopping, to his mother-in-law, and then hastened home to breakfast, ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... words," went on the Vere calmly. "Eat 'em up with sauce for dinner. The 'admired actress well known at the Brilliant,' has nothing to do with the Bruce-Errington man,—not she! He's a duffer, a regular stiff one—no go about him anyhow. And what the deuce do you mean by calling me an offending dama. Keep your ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... Jelliffe, slowly. "The other chap will come and undo this thing, and hurt me a lot more. I'm inclined to let things slide. This practice of yours ought to be a great thing for a stout man needing a reducing diet. How the deuce do you keep ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... States thought about English battue-shooting. Seemed to think we shot pheasants perched in the trees, and went on to say that wasn't the sport for him; he liked to go after his game, and find it for himself. Who the deuce cares if he does? If he can't talk better sense than that, no wonder CLEVELAND beat him ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various
... peninsula. They form the ninety-ninth part of the rock in this quarter. It is a most convenient formation, being worked almost as easily as clay, and yet it makes substantial walls. Frost, I presume, would play the deuce with it. But that is a thing not much known here. I have not yet had the pleasure to fix my northern eye on a piece of ice this winter, though there has been a cream thickness of it once or twice. A pitcher frozen over here makes ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... the satisfaction of sitting with M. de Bellegarde; more than any one else, apparently, he had the flattering but inconvenient privilege of exciting him. M. Ledoux, at this, swallowed a glass of wine in silence; he must have been wondering what the deuce Bellegarde found so exciting in ...
— The American • Henry James
... inn, I was not a little surprised to hear the smirking barmaid announce me by my christian and surname, directing the waiter to place candles for Mr. Bernard Blackmantle in the sanctum. How the deuce, thought I, have these people discovered my family nomenclature, or are we here under the same system of espionage as the puerile inhabitants of France, where every hotel-keeper, waiter, and servant, down to the very shoe-black, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... {der tausend!} or {potz tausend!}) According to "Grimm's Wrterbuch," {der tausend} stands for {der Tausendknstige} (the One with thousand tricks), a euphemistic designation of the devil, analog. to English; deuce! Trans., ...
— Eingeschneit - Eine Studentengeschichte • Emil Frommel
... I, or what does any one else care about society? My motto is, Every one for himself, and the deuce take the hindmost. And that's the motto of the ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... that worthy, 'Morris and Levison would never have given you such a deuce of a tick unless they knowed your resources. Trust Morris and Levison for that. You done up, sir! a nob like you, that Morris and Levison have trusted for such a tick! Lord! sir, you don't know nothing about it. I could afford to give them fifteen ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... ez dear'z the deuce, But it wun't leave no lastin' traces, Ez't would to make a sneakin' truce Without no moral specie-basis: Ef green-backs ain't nut jest the cheese, I guess ther' 's evils thet's extremer,— Fer instance,—shinplaster idees Like them put out by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... Newcome for some man of high rank. Old Lady Kew is a monstrous clever woman. Nothing could show a more deplorable ignorance of the world than poor Newcome supposing his son could make such a match as that with his cousin. Is it true that he is going to make his son an artist? I don't know what the deuce the world is coming to. An artist! By Gad, in my time a fellow would as soon have thought of making his son a hairdresser, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... but I can't stop. By the way, have you heard of that air-ship that was over this way this morning? I wonder what the deuce it really is, ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... which Mary Howard has. Of course she'll be all the go. Every thing the Seldens take up is. Ain't I glad Moreland is in New Orleans; for with his notions he wouldn't hesitate to marry her if he liked her, poor as she is. Now if she only had the chink, I'd walk up to her quick. I don't see why the deuce the old man need to have got so involved just now, as to make it necessary for me either to work or have a rich wife. Such eyes too, as Mary's got! Black and fiery one minute, blue and soft the next. Well, any ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... the second kiss from Arthur. Come, better late than never." She knelt before him and put out her forehead instead of her lips. "There," said the general, "that kiss is from Arthur Wardlaw, your intended. Why, who the deuce is this?" ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... she was a kind girl. She's trying to pull old Charlie up a peg or two. He's had the deuce of a ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... be going home for some time to come," said another, a seraphic-faced nudity contemplating his biceps in the small looking-glass that adorned the inside of his chest, "so I shouldn't worry. I say, I'm sweating up a deuce of an arm on me. Shouldn't wonder if I pulled off the Grand Fleet Light-weights next month," he added modestly, "if this sort of thing goes on. I just mention it in case any of you are thinking of putting your names ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... "Why the deuce should I bore you with myself, when you're hot and tired? I've been a confounded fool; if not worse, and the devil's in the luck wherever ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... putting down his saucer without tasting its contents, is laughingly beginning, "Why, what the deuce, Phil—" when he stops, seeing that Phil is ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... not say that this trick produced greater stupefaction than the ones preceding it: at any rate, my spectators, palsied by surprise and terror, looked round in silence, seeming to think, "Where the deuce have ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... to Hendrik, added, "I wish Arend had let the horse go to the deuce. It was not worth following into ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... he, musing; "but the postmark is Plymouth. How the deuce—!" The two first lines of the letter were read, and the old man's countenance fell. Susan, who had been all alive at the mention of McElvina's name, perceived the alteration in her ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... man, and suddenly ran his fingers through his hair with a distraught gesture. "I'm in the deuce of a jam—! Aunt Ocky, ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... did perceive something yesterday evening; what the deuce was his meaning with those stupid questions he put to her? 'Does cousin like this?' or 'Is cousin fond of that?' I don't like that at all myself. Louise is not yet full-grown, and already people come and ask her, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... them.' Of a third it was written that his discourses had some resemblance to an hour-glass, because, the longer time they ran, the shallower they grew. Of yet another orator we read that his reasoning was really deep, his argument profound, 'for deuce a bit could anybody see the ground.' Nor have certain historical personages been able to escape the lash. When Admiral Vernon was appointed to take charge of the ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... looking forward to it," said his friend heartily. "And now, haven't you anything to tell me? Are you alone here? Then, what the deuce do you ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... medal-ribbon was an inch or so too low down. Fixing the man with his eye, the admiral asked: "Did you get that medal for eating, my man?" On the man replying "No, sir," the admiral rapped out: "Then why the deuce do you wear ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... don't suppose Micky cares for that old thing he has married! That was what I was trying to save him from. He'd have had to be the deuce of a lot worse than he is ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... down his saucer without tasting its contents, is laughingly beginning, "Why, what the deuce, Phil—" when he stops, seeing that Phil is counting ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... Louchard. "You are in love, you want to discover the object of your passion; you are getting as yellow as a lettuce without water. Two physicians came to see you yesterday, your man tells me, who think your life is in danger; now, I alone can put you in the hands of a clever fellow.—But the deuce is in it! If your life is not worth a ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... usage is the best, I don't deny, Thou'st fee'd the keeper, and he likes to feed us, But, then the situation I decry, But crying's useless—who the deuce will heed us? Then, reader would you listen to my wail, Come, and but see me, "I'll ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 397, Saturday, November 7, 1829. • Various
... Harry illustrated the idiom, lifting an imaginary glass to his mouth. "Oh, it's notorious. But what the deuce can we do? Kick him out?—not so easy; and, besides, he'd die under a hedge. You're hard on him, Clem. He has his notions of duty. Why"—the Baronet laughed—"I've seen him on the roof with a tar-bucket, caulking the leaks for dear ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... evident that I was looked upon as an interloper, for whom, small as I was, room must be found. I was received with a chorus of exclamations, such as, 'What the deuce does the little fellow want here?' 'Surely there are enough of us crammed into this beastly little hole!' 'Oh, I suppose he is some protege of the captain's,' ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... mightily surprised to hear a civilian walking side by side with the captain of his troop remark, as he passed up the stable, "Why, there's old Smut!" When the officer and civilian had passed out he turned to the next man, and asked who the deuce the bloke was in the brown hat. "Why, that's Captain Baden-Powell," said the man; and then he added with great pride, "I was his batman once." The young soldier had heard of Baden-Powell before, and was furious that he had not looked longer at him as he passed. An odd circumstance, by the way, ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... like the deuce," Blair told her anxiously; and David blurted out, "Elizabeth, you can't walk home; you're a perfect object!" Elizabeth, through the mud trickling over her eyes, flashed ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... little friend on her way back, running like the deuce, to tell the doctor," he said. "I have something under an hour before ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... But the deuce of it is, public opinion says that we must raise a garden. It is no use to hire a man to do it for us. However badly we may do it, patriotism demands that we monkey around with a garden of our own. We may get bitten ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... have you been to-day? Things have been all going to the deuce. Why didn't you hinder these boys from sweein' the ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... and the whole earth Of man the wonderful, and of the stars, And how the deuce they ever could have birth; And then he thought of earthquakes, and of wars, How many miles the moon might have in girth, Of air-balloons, and of the many bars To perfect knowledge of the boundless skies;— And then he thought ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... Engine Go." It took us close on half a day To read through all the guff; The engine goes all right, but don't Keep goin' long enough. It's very good to understand What makes the engine go. But why the deuce the d—- thing stops Is what we want to know. So now we're making this request, While tears and curses drop, Please send along a booklet on What Makes the Engine Stop. The folk around here all await With interest your reply: To them the reasons ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... handsome, grizzled head. Where did he come from—with whom had he studied—what were his plans? Had he ever been abroad? No. Strange! The artists nowadays neglected travel. 'But you go! Beg your way, paint your way—but go! Go before the wife and the babies come! Matrimony is the deuce. Don't you agree with me, Philip?' He laid a familiar hand ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... young man, and suddenly ran his fingers through his hair with a distraught gesture. "I'm in the deuce of a jam—! Aunt Ocky, ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... off on a trip and she'd talked the thing over with all the old women in the neighborhood before I got back." He ran his fingers through his hair. "Explain! Well, she thinks it's a mighty slim story, and the deuce of it is that she's right. Any dam fool could make up a ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... fidgeted, over the prompt and perhaps a trifle incoherent offer of cigars, cordials, ashtrays, over the question of his visitor's hat, stick, fur coat, general best accommodation and ease; and how the deuce, accordingly, had charm, for coming out so on top, Mark wondered, "squared" the other old elements? For the short interval so to have dealt with him what force had it turned on, what patented process, of the portentous ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... the last remark was lost, "will you have the goodness to explain what the deuce you mean by ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... of Watch Committees, live in Garden Cities, and have to account for every half-crown they spent, and every half-hour of their time; the horse, too, would be an extinct animal, brought out once a year at the lord-mayor's show. He hoped—the deuce—he might not be alive to see it. And suddenly he added: "What do you think happens after ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... good sort of man, besides being very well got up), it is an act of obedience to the laws to rid society of a criminal, however virtuous he may be. Once a thief, always a thief. Suppose he were to take it into his head to murder us all? The deuce! We should be guilty of manslaughter, and be the first to fall victims ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... I?" returned Mr. Connor. "I have a picture of myself letting you go. And where the deuce is Jim?" He turned impatiently toward the building across the lawn, then somewhat relaxed his frown. "Oh, well, I can take an orchestra chair," observed Mr. Connor. ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... the deuce is the old boy up to?" he thought to himself. Miss Pierce hesitated. She wanted to go, but something in Peter's voice made it very difficult. "I had no idea he could speak so decidedly. He's not so tractable as I thought. I think Watts ought to do what he asks. Though ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... go!" said the bewildered Dempsey to himself, as he walked towards his bicycle. "Mistake be damned! She was Mrs. Delane, and what's she up to now with my captain? And what the deuce was she ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... nice. What a fool I was! What should I do with a wife I could not kiss? I wonder if Blanche will speak to me again? Maybe all this was a dodge, women have so many; but she looked in earnest. I might have frightened her by being so sudden, but why the deuce should women be frightened at proposals, when they pass their lives in trying to get them? So Mrs. Stunner said. Poor birdie!, what a soft hand she has! Maybe some women are modest: I will ask Hardcash about it. She may not have known what she was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... bye, old man. If you hear of any thing good out your way to drop a couple of hundred thousand in, let me know—better wire me. Politics have played the deuce with my Utahs. Julia sends her love, and wants me to enclose you yards of newspaper clippings about the party. Ha! Ha! Not by a damn sight! It's enough that I was bored to death by it! The "young'un" often speaks of you. She is getting togged out to go with her mother and do the town in the way ...
— The Smart Set - Correspondence & Conversations • Clyde Fitch
... said Sir Terence: 'Haven't I been at my wits' ends for myself or my friends ever since I come to man's estate—to years of discretion, I should say, for the deuce a foot of estate have I! But use has sharpened my wits pretty well for your service; so never be in dread, my good lord for look ye!' cried the reckless knight, sticking his arms akimbo 'look ye ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... employing A deuce of a knout For to bang her about, To a sensitive lover's annoying." Said the bagman, ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... was the answer, as they shook hands. "That wretched climate played the deuce with me, and they graciously gave me a step and allowed me to retire upon it. The very deuce, I assure you, Philip. Beg pardon, ma'am," he added seeing the lady ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... was an unusual request from a native, for his offer to be set down in writing. "You might take a note of this, Hamilton," he said aside, "though why the deuce he wants a note of this made I cannot for the life of me imagine. Go on, messenger," he said more mildly; "for as you see my lord ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... though, she's so consummate filial, and he so bloated up with honour. They'll never wed, I'm clear, unless the governor's by to bless 'em; and as to managing that, and the cutting-adrift scheme too, one kills the other. How the deuce to do it? Eh—do I ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... decent citizenship to try it. It ain't neighborly. Think of the lean years we've known. You can't do it. This war won't last forever—" Mr. Doolittle's voice was tinged with regret—"and it will be time enough to go in for playing the deuce with business when business gets slack again. That's the time for reforms, ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... one in the pincushion on my table," she said; "but I think it's a black one. I dont know where the deuce all the pins go to." Then, casting off the subject, she whistled a long and florid cadenza, and added, by way of instrumental interlude, a remarkably close imitation of a violoncello. Meanwhile the man went into her ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... older man, cordially taking note of Zaidos' sunny smile and fearless eyes, "I'm thinkin' that we need such as you. We can't hope those fellows over there beyond will keep still much longer, and we will have the deuce of a time to hold our position, I believe. Of course we will do it, but it will mean a lot of work for us in here, ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... over and over distastefully. What the deuce did the old chap want now? he wondered. He gave a sigh of resignation, and broke ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... get a nosegay was, she said, her aim; And Nicaise presently her steps pursued, Who, when the turf within the bow'r he viewed, Exclaimed, oh la! how wet it is my dear! Your handsome clothes will be spoiled I fear! A carpet let me instantly provide? Deuce take the clothes! the fair with anger cried; Ne'er think of that: I'll say I had a fall; Such accident a loss I would not call, When Time so clearly on the wing appears, 'Tis right to banish scruples, cares, and fears; Nor think of clothes nor dress, ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... "That's the deuce of it. I should think she got enough of the imps last autumn, when the Riflemen left her at our house; but that's the Injin, especially the Shawnee part of it. If there's any chance to get scalps with long hair, they're bound to do it. However, boys, it ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... entertainment in the world is a lounge in London streets. Theatres, concerts, seances, Albert Halls, museums, galleries, are but set and formal shows; a great weariness, for the most part, and who the deuce would care to go and gaze at them again who could ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... the Captain, turning over the leaves of Juliet's portfolio. "What the deuce does the girl mean? She has scribbled over all the paper. I hope she don't ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... will find some who have neither husband nor lover. Certain females have a lover and no husband. Ugly women have a husband and no lover. But to meet with a woman who, having one husband and one lover, keeps to the deuce without trying for the trey, there is the miracle, you see, you greenhorns, blockheads, and dolts! Now then, put the true character of this virtuous woman on the tablets of your memory, go your ways, and let me ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... thought to see again... The deuce... why reopen old wounds? Life is short. Enjoy it while we can. We must drink, sing, laugh, as we may, ...
— The Tales of Hoffmann - Les contes d'Hoffmann • Book By Jules Barbier; Music By J. Offenbach
... suddenly exclaimed, "D-n me, I must read prayers this morning at All-Souls!" D-n me is an abbreviation of G-d d-n me; which, in England, does not seem to mean more mischief or harm than any of our or their common expletives in conversation, such as O gemini! or, The deuce take me! ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... you know who it is written by? . . . Then Eliot Warburton has written an Oriental Book! Ye Gods! In Shakespeare's day the nuisance was the Monsieur Travellers who had 'swum in a gundello'; but now the bores are those who have smoked tschibouques with a Peshaw! Deuce take it: I say 'tis better ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... in again from the right with a lighted lantern, stops in astonishment). The deuce, Miss Clara! You're up to the business. I do say, the world must come to an end, in grand style! (He puts down ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... for the dramatist, and to deprecate adverse opinion. Originally, indeed, the prologue-speaker was either the author himself in person, or his representative. In his prologue to his farce of "The Deuce is in Him," George Colman, after a lively fashion, points out the distinction between the classical and the ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... talk me into obedience. He wants me to stand for the county—as a Liberal, of course. I intend to stand for the borough as a Conservative, and I have told them so down at Silverbridge. I am very sorry to annoy him, and all that kind of thing. But what the deuce is a fellow to do? If a man has got political convictions of his own, of course, he must stick to them." This the young Lord said with a good deal of self-assurance, as though he, by the light of his own reason, had ascertained on which side the ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... 'Pooh, pooh! Deuce take it, Mr Richard, how dull you are!' cried Brass, relaxing into a smile. 'Did he say anything about ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... a whisper. "He will hear you. Ha!" he continued after a short pause, during which they moved on towards the mess-room, "you begin to find out his amiable military qualities, do you! But tell me, Ronayne, what the deuce has put this Quixotic expedition into your head? What great interest do you take in these fishermen, that you should volunteer to break your shins in the wood, this dark night, for the purpose of ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... tale related duly, And little resembling the fable, truly! Hoarders of farthings, I know, deuce take it. It isn't the story as you would make it! Crook-fingers, big-bellies, what do you say, Who govern ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... which greatly afflicted this previous tribunal. Being assembled the day after its performance, there was a general silence; but the lady, who had first given her favourable suffrage, spoke at length and said—"The piece, however, was not hissed." "How the deuce could it?" replied a stranger, who happened to be present; "people cannot gape and hiss both ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... was in the swim, as they call it, for a year or two. I might have stayed there, I suppose, for I could always tell a story, and I wasn't afraid of the big-wigs. But I couldn't stand it. Dress-clothes are the deuce! And besides, talk now is not what it used to be. The clever men who can say smart things are too clever to say them. Nobody wants 'em! So let's 'cultivate our garden,' my dear, and be thankful. I'm beginning a new picture—and ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... fixed, glazed eyes in silence for a moment, would play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him. There was something very awful, too, in the spectre's being provided with an infernal atmosphere of its own. Scrooge could not feel it himself, but this was clearly the case; for though the Ghost sat ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... one side in bed, with the Memoirs of ——— on the pillow beside him, when Tom, who had only entered a few minutes before, on looking at the walls of the apartment, exclaimed, "What the deuce is this, my lord? Are you aware that your father will be here in a couple of hours from this time?" and he ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... bound to idealise to the extreme limit of nature's sufferance. Such a trick would be hardly honest to Dick Benyon, but Morewood would plead his art with unashamed effrontery, and, if more were needed, tell Dick to take his cheque to the deuce and go ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... believes so. And yet—how the deuce did that sack get where it was? I was standing alongside the McCaskeys when Courteau went up to pay his check, and I'm sure they had no ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... men belonging to these soul-forsaken years: Third-rate canvassers, collectors, journalists and auctioneers. They are never very shabby, they are never very spruce — Going cheerfully and carelessly and smoothly to the deuce. Some are wanderers by profession, 'turning up' and gone as soon, Travelling second-class, or steerage (when it's cheap they go saloon); Free from 'ists' and 'isms', troubled little by belief or doubt — ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... Fortsch [How the deuce did Fortsch teach these things?]; Hermeneutics and Polemics with Walch [editor of—Luther's Works,—I suppose]; Hebraics with Dr. Danz; Homiletics with Dr. Weissenborn; PASTORALE [not Pastoral Poetry, but the Art of Pastorship] and MORALE with Dr. Buddaeus.' [There, your Majesty!—what ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... conscience, my fancy was busy putting together the scraps I had gleaned. The field of speculation was so vast and unbounded that I knew not where to stop. The starting-point was easy. Curiosity began by asking, Why the deuce, Albert Pride was so carefully hiding himself away in the city of Mexico? He must be a fellow-countryman; because an Englishman, no matter how branded at home, by fraud or dishonor, could boldly strut about New-Orleans or New-York, without ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... "Oh, the deuce! I did n't mean to show that one; it 's the other." And Tom took up a second paper, looking half angry, half ashamed at his own mistake. "I don't care, though; every one will know to-morrow; and perhaps you 'll be good enough to keep ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... replied. "You see, we only got the report in from France quite late. I sent your man to watch her while I went to see Froelich. I was sure he was all right, but I wanted to satisfy myself. By the time I reached our place I found the chief in the deuce of a stew. Your man had got back, and reported that she'd gone. They'd kicked up the devil's delight at Headquarters, and the chief was out for blood. He was determined to arrest somebody, and I suggested Ramsey, but he got purple ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... perfectly satisfied. We've killed a lot of Huns and only lost a few kilometres of ground ... You're going to your division? Well, it's up Peronne way, or was last night. Cheyne and Dunthorpe came back from leave and tried to steal a car to get up to it ... Oh, I'm having the deuce of a time. These blighted civilians have got the wind up, and a lot are trying to clear out. The idiots say the Huns will be in Amiens in a week. What's the phrase? "Pourvu que les civils tiennent." 'Fraid I must ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... DIMPLE. The deuce! Has he heard of those bills! Nay, then, all's up with Maria, too; but an affair of this sort can never prejudice me among the ladies; they will rather long to know what the dear creature possesses ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler
... the other day what the President of the United States thought about English battue-shooting. Seemed to think we shot pheasants perched in the trees, and went on to say that wasn't the sport for him; he liked to go after his game, and find it for himself. Who the deuce cares if he does? If he can't talk better sense than that, no wonder CLEVELAND beat him in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various
... successful cartoons of recent years. The topic of the week was the Parish Councils Bill, which was then before the Lords, and was receiving severe handling in that House. In the course of discussion came an "aside" from Mr. Arthur a Beckett, to the effect that "Gladstone is having a deuce of a time." "Like the cockatoo," assented Mr. Lehmann, referring to the story of the unhappy bird which was left for a short while alone with a monkey, and which, when the owner returned to the room and found his bird clean plucked of its feathers by ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... he had better have apprenticed her," added Mr. Childers, "Now, he leaves her without anything to take to. Her father always had it in his head, that she was to be taught the deuce-and-all of education. He has been picking up a bit of reading for her, here—and a bit of writing for her, there—and a bit of ciphering for her, somewhere else—these seven years. When Sissy got into the school here," he pursued, "he was as pleased as Punch. I suppose ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... which appears to me essentially founded upon the soul. For this reason, Priestley's 'Christian Materialism' always struck me as deadly. Believe the resurrection of the body, if you will, but not without a soul. The deuce is in it, if after having had a soul (as, surely, the mind, or whatever you call it, is) in this world, we must part with it in the next, even for an immortal materiality; and I own ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... throughout for the benefit of foreigners! Though, to be sure, on the one occasion when Philip had visited the Rhine and Switzerland, he had grumbled most consumedly from Ostend to Grindelwald, at those very decimal coins which the stranger seemed to admire so much, and had wondered why the deuce Belgium, Germany, Holland, and Switzerland could not agree among themselves upon a uniform coinage; it would be so much more convenient to the British tourist. For the British tourist, of course, is ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... surely, it must be Molly herself, with her dear, soft touch, and her lips ready to kiss, and the sweet smell of her hair mounting to his brain like wine. Something pricked his arm: something that felt like the needle of a syringe; something that . . . But anyway, what the deuce was she doing? Then suddenly he recalled that pin at the back of her dress, where he'd pricked his wrist so badly the first time he'd ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... said Treenail. "But, Splinter, my man, now since the enemy have occupied the dike in front, how the deuce shall we get back into the ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... and I'm married, and I'm in a deuce of a stew because my spuds is drying up on me and no way to get water on 'em without I carry it to 'em in a jug," disclaimed Andy Green hastily. "All I know about punchers I learned from seeing picture shows when I go to town. Now, ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... must explain. I can alter my will yet, let me tell you. I'm of sound mind—can reckon compound interest in my head, and remember every fool's name as well as I could twenty years ago. What the deuce? I'm under eighty. I say, you must contradict ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... by me he prays you (I don't know whether I shall speak to please you), He prays—O bless me! what shall I do now? Hang me if I know what he prays, or how! And 'twas the prettiest prologue as he wrote it! Well, the deuce take me, if I han't forgot it. O Lord, for heav'n's sake excuse the play, Because, you know, if it be damned to-day, I shall be hanged for wanting what to say. For my sake then—but I'm in such confusion, I cannot stay ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... though she earns a sight of it, I know, at that shop of her'n, and keeps Joe like a king. Wine, and all the rest of it, she's got for him, since he was ill. 'There's a knife and fork for ye, whenever ye like to come,' she says to me, in her tart way. But deuce a bit of money will she give. If it weren't for one and another friend giving me an odd sixpence now and then, Master Bywater, I should never ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... I guess there's nothing to prevent.... Boy, you be careful of those boxes! What the deuce do you think you're trying to do? There, that's a little better. Try to show some sense about your work, even if you ain't got any." Edward Pilkings's voice crackled like ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... lady named Jane Who sat on a fence at Schoharie. A rooster came by And crew like the deuce But Jane never ...
— Alice in Blunderland - An Iridescent Dream • John Kendrick Bangs
... turned quickly. "Then it would be a pack, monsieur, in which you would be about equal to the deuce," he said. ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... wanted old snub-nose to carry us off?" said M. Lambert, in his half-joking, half-scolding way. "What the deuce of a hurry we were in! It was necessary to hold you back with both arms ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... examined the mummy, for such it was, and, without any haggling, paid the price he asked. But the next day, a friend of Humboldt, Professor Hirtz, told me the history of this shred of a man, which had been lying around the shop for more than ten years, and never belonged to Humboldt at all. Where the deuce has Gothon stowed it? Ah! Mlle. Clementine is sitting ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... the exports and imports for the current half-year, had prevented the drain of gold, had made all that matter right about the glut of the raw material, and had restored all sorts of balances with which the superseded noblemen and gentlemen had played the deuce - and all this, with wheat at so much a quarter, gold at so much an ounce, and the Bank of England discounting good bills at so much per cent.! He might be asked, he observed in a peroration of great power, what were his principles? His principles were what they always had been. His principles ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... hotfoot. Although his power for a short exertion was great, Steve was in no kind of training, having allowed himself to fatten up, and being an inordinate user of tobacco. Per contra, the deer felt freshened and invigorated by exertion. That's the deuce of it with an animal—he ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... mule more pleased at getting loose from a fastening than was that she-mule Jeanette; and never did a mule make better use of the heels that had been left her. She galloped over the prairie, as if the very deuce had been after her. But if he was not, the javalies were; for on came the whole drove, scores of them, grunting and ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... knows what distant lake. From the grass arose, with measured sweep, a gull, and bathed luxuriously in blue waves of air. And now she has vanished on high, and appears only as a black dot: now she has turned her wings, and shines in the sunlight. Deuce take you, steppes, how ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... too great a deuce of a hurry to satisfy that curiosity, dear man," Poppy put in. "You must contrive to exercise patience for a little while yet, please; always remembering that it is entirely superfluous to run to catch a train which is bound not to start until ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... began to fall. The two occupants of the car watched each other surreptitiously, mutually suspicious, like dogs. Scraps of talk were separated by long intervals. Mr. Prohack wondered what the deuce Softly Bishop had done that Angmering should leave him a hundred thousand pounds. He tried to feel grief for the tragic and untimely death of his old friend Angmering, and failed. No doubt the failure was due to the fact that he had ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... reached her, lo! the Captain, Gallant Kidd,[4] commands the crew; Passengers their berths are clapt in, Some to grumble, some to spew. "Hey day! call you that a cabin? Why't is hardly three feet square! Not enough to stow Queen Mab in— Who the deuce can harbour there?" "Who, sir? plenty— Nobles twenty Did at once my vessel fill."— "Did they? Jesus, How you squeeze us! Would to God they did so still! Then I'd 'scape the heat and racket Of the good ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... nearly a month, and the old man wants to buy a new drag from Calcutta,—solid silver railings and silver lamps, and trifles of that kind. I've tried to make him understand that he has played the deuce with the revenues for the last twenty years and must go slow. He ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... blow'd! if he hadn't put his cloas into bed an hung hissen ovver th' cheer back. Awm sure aw connot tell where all this marchin' is likely to lead us to at last, but aw hooap we shall be all reight, for aw do think ther's plenty o' room to mend even yet, but the deuce on it is,' ther's soa monny different notions abaat what is reight wol aw'm flamigaster'd amang it. Some say drink is the besetting sin; another says 'bacca is man's ruination. One says we're all goin' to the devil becoss we goa to church, an' another says we'st niver goa to heaven if we ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, Second Series - To which is added The Cream of Wit and Humour - from his Popular Writings • John Hartley
... they're having tea," said the First Lieutenant. "But how the deuce they're going to get ashore the Lord knows. I'll have to hoist in the boats if it gets any worse. Keep an eye on the compass and see we aren't dragging." The Captain came ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... bien (very well) but how the deuce can you be funny in the Baltic? Why call it Baltic? For days and nights at sea, sometimes up, more often down, and a sense of inability coming over me in the middle of the boundless deep. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... movement; he had been identified with a gentleman; not for a good deal of money now would he be classed with manufacturers. But his innate distrust of general principles revived. What the deuce was the good of talking about regularity and self-respect? It looked to him as if the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... madame, this precious made-up sheet. But does the waste sheet in which the Duchess forgets her gloves in the arbor belong to the fourth volume? Well, deuce ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... afraid that this wretched war will play the very deuce with our foreign friends. If you Germans do not give that crowned swindler, whose fall I have been looking for ever since the coup d'etat, such a blow as he will never recover from, I will never forgive you. Public opinion in England is not worth much, but at present, it is entirely ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... Peter had explained, "it'll be a very deuce of a time before we'll want everyone to know. There's any number of things to do. So perhaps it's just as well if people ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... have them thrust upon them—I've had this place thrust upon me. I don't know why they want a doctor, but they do. They balked at Rodgers from the village. They want somebody here at night. Mr. Jennings has the gout and there's the deuce to pay. Some ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... like Cairo, was, after all, the only way to keep my name before the public. Now, that brings me to my tip for Lord Ernest. He asks what there is we don't know, and want to know. I'll answer for us all, being used to feel the pulse of crowds. We want to know what the deuce Ancient Egyptians really believed about death and religion. Had they any sense, or ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... "Oh, come. I guess you wouldn't care." His eyes rested for a moment on the fine flare of jewels presented by Flora's clasped hands. "Besides,"—his voice dropped to a graver level—"the deuce of it is—" he paused, they, both rather breathless, looking at him. He had the air of a man about to give information, and then the air of a man who has thought better of it. His voice consciously shook off its gravity. "Well, there'll be such ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... said, leaning back and puffing at his cigar,—"what England wants is a war. (Another whisky and soda, waiter.) We're getting flabby. All this pampering of the poor is playing the very deuce with the country. A bit of a scrap with a foreign power would do us all the good in the world." He disposed of his whisky at a draught. "We're flabby," he repeated. "The lower classes seem to have no ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... know any more than the deuce,' says Mrs Pipchin. 'He never does me the honour to speak to me. He has his meat and drink put in the next room to his own; and what he takes, he comes out and takes when there's nobody there. It's no use asking me. I know no more about him than ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... blackmailed? and was Morris the man to do it? Grave considerations. "It's not that I'm afraid of him," Morris so far condescended to reassure himself; "but I must be very certain of my ground, and the deuce of it is, I see no way. How unlike is life to novels! I wouldn't have even begun this business in a novel, but what I'd have met a dark, slouching fellow in the Oxford Road, who'd have become my accomplice, and known all about how to do it, and probably ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... round of eight and twenty days. Lionella was a lady born, as it were, in the purple. Command sat lightly on her; she had never been disobeyed. She now grew querulous, exacting, suspicious, moody, sometimes petulant, sometimes beseeching. It gave Angioletto the deuce's own time now and then; but he might yet have weathered the rocks—for his tact was only equalled by his good temper—if the Countess had not precipitated matters. There came a day, and an hour of a day, when she spoke to him. She had spoken before; her ambitions had always been verbal—but now ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... "What in the deuce does it matter?" returned Will desperately. "It was the only quiet night I've had for three weeks: I slept like a log straight through until the breakfast-bell. Then I was late, of course, and he threatened to take an hour's time from my day's wages. By the way, ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... card for trumps; if the trump turned up is the same suit as the last, the dealer must give another three cards until a different suit turns up trumps. In playing this game the ace is the highest card and the deuce (the two) is ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... hotly contested deuce set, and ended in favor of Dorothy and Alice just as Katie appeared with tray ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick
... then she's obliged to fight for something?—it's Harry in her. That's why, as I said to George at breakfast, I don't want him to marry her. She's a good girl, and I like her, but who in the deuce wants to marry a fighting wife? Look at that fellow mauling his horse, Ben. It makes me sick to see 'em do it, but it's no business of mine, ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... well of the prior, and to let the world go as it lists. It must go well, for most people are content with it. If I knew history enough, I should prove to you that evil has always come about here below through a few men of genius, but I do not know history, no more than I know anything else. The deuce take me, if I have learnt anything, or if I find myself a pin the worse for not having learnt anything. I was one day at the table of the minister of the King of——, who has brains enough for four, and he showed as plain as one and one make two, that nothing was more useful to people than ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... they had begun to warm to it, and to forget everything else, when a succession of lusty hollos from the Squire brought them suddenly to themselves, and to a dead stop. When they looked round, he was making up to them with choleric strides. "What the deuce do you mean, sir, by having telegrams sent here?" cried Mr Wentworth, pitching at his son Frank an ominous ugly envelope, in blue and red, such as the unsophisticated mind naturally trembles at. "Beg your pardon, Gerald; but I never can keep my temper when I see a telegraph. I daresay it's something ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... that the weaker sex is coming it amazingly strong. The sceptres of three of the first kingdoms in Europe are swayed by female hands. The first writer of young France is a woman. The first astronomer of young England, idem. Mrs Trollope played the Chesterfield and the deuce with the Yankees. Miss Martineau turned the head of the mighty Brougham. Mademoiselle d'Angeville ascended Mont Blanc, and Mademoiselle Rachel has replaced Corneille and Racine on their crumbling pedestals. I might waste hours of your precious time, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... very careful how we use the police, James. It seems simple, but it is not. I can't explain the reasons, but we usually pit spy against spy, and keep very clear of the police. Otherwise," she added, smiling, "there would be the deuce to pay among the embassies and legations." She added: "It's a most depressing situation; I don't exactly know what to do.... I have letters to ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... "Outside? What the deuce—Of course it was outside!" He paused, and seemed to read the priest's thought. "Oh, for God's sake, man—" Hurrying into the passage, and along it to the hall, he called up, "Walter! Walter!" from the foot of the staircase. "There, ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... put down Fenianism with no light hand, preaching, as I have already shown, in the most manly and emphatic style—which could have been emulated with advantage in other Episcopacies in my country. MacCarthy was a bookworm from Maynooth, who played the deuce with the diocese, allowing all the priests to run wild, and by his laxity becoming criminally responsible for much of the terrible condition of Kerry. Higgins was the nominee of a friend of Moriarty, and he worked hard to suppress outrages, by which course he certainly did not add ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... restlessly in his chair. "I don't know," he said. "I don't know what the deuce there is I can do. Certainly father's idea of my going back to college and then to medical school afterward, is just plain, rank nonsense. I'd be a doddering old man before I got through—thirty years old. I should think that even he would see that. It will have to be business, ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... How the deuce do their children look so fat and rosy? By eating dirt-pies, I suppose. I saw a couple making a very nice savory one, and another employed in gravely sticking strips of stick betwixt the pebbles at the house-door, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... on a bed, the neck underneath a plank. The scene then shifted to the infernal regions. The most agile of the troop, wrapped in white sheets, played spectres. There was a young avocat from Bordeaux, a man named Dubosc, short, dark, one-eyed, humpbacked, bandy-legged, the very black deuce in person, who used to come all horned and hoofed, to drag the Pere Longuemare feet first out of his bed, announcing to the culprit that he was condemned to the everlasting flames of hell and doomed past redemption for having made of the Creator of the Universe a jealous ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... "Shrewd the deuce! He's an old blockhead. He has stumbled into the possession of some property which I am ready to pay him a fair price for. He took it for a cow-pasture. It isn't worth anything. It would only be a convenience to us to ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... before," said Holmes staring down the dimly lighted street. "Now, I wonder who the deuce that could have been?" ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... afraid she did not know of what. Certainly not of the man who had been so kind to her, and who she wished was sitting in front of her, instead of the one who did not speak at all, except to ask Sam how the deuce they were to know when they reached ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... increase its number. For the other nine hundred people, being able to pick and choose, are likely to feel a deep indifference to the question of joining any segregation at all. If group No. 2 says, "Come into my crowd, I understand they don't want you in No. 1," the individual replies: "What the deuce do I care about No. 1 or you either? Here are Nos. 4, 5, 6, and 7 all begging for me. If you and No. 1 keep on in your conceit you'll find yourselves left out ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... he looked shrewdly about, with a narrow-eyed, puckered gaze. He was plainly a little flabbergasted. He seemed taken aback by the greatness of Philadelphia's voice. He said something to himself. On his lips it looked like "What the deuce," or something of similar purport. He sat down on a chair beside Governor Sproul. Not more than four feet away, amazed at our own audacity, we peered over the floor of ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... the captain to his mate. "I wonder how the deuce he got to the Bonins and where he came from. He's not a runaway convict, anyway—you can see that by the look in his eye. Seems a decent, quiet sort of a man, too. What d'ye ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... called his car, Best of our battered bunch by far, Branded with many a bullet scar, Yet running so sweet and true. Jerry he loved her, knew her tricks; Swore: "She's the beat of the best big six, And if ever I get in a deuce of a fix Priscilla will pull ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... the niceties of handwriting. He suddenly felt unnerved. "Whom is it from? This hand is familiar to me, very familiar. I must have often read its tracings, yes, very often. But this must have been a long, long time ago. Whom the deuce can it be from? Pooh! it's only somebody ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... very badly off, as far as its doctor is concerned," said Mr. Jelliffe, slowly. "The other chap will come and undo this thing, and hurt me a lot more. I'm inclined to let things slide. This practice of yours ought to be a great thing for a stout man needing a reducing diet. How the deuce do you keep ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... vermilion, crimson, Costlier than diamond or ultramarine— A deuce of a theme to chant lyrics or hymns on, Or rummage for orotund ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, May 6, 1893 • Various
... good and square, yet is it forged longer, vppon the Cater, and Trea, then any other way: And therefore it is called a Langret. Such be also cal'd bard Cater treas, because commonly, the longer end will of his owne sway drawe downewards, and turne vp to the eie, Sixe, Sincke, Deuce or Ace. The principall vse of them is at Nouum, for so longe a paire of Bard cater treas be walking on the bourd, so longe can ye not cast fiue, nor nine, vnles it be by greate chance, that the roughnes of the table, ...
— The Art of Iugling or Legerdemaine • Samuel Rid
... to me more than once, David, and to say the truth, I've liked you none the less for it. But, then, what the deuce should a fellow like you want to do in a pulpit? I respect the cloth as much as any man, I hope, but leaving theory aside, and coming down to practice, aren't there fools and knaves enough in the world to carry on ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... who sometimes when unguarded meet an artful serenader, that is a cloaked bandit, and is provoked by their performances, and knows anthropologically the nature behind the devious show; a sciential rascal; as little to be excluded from our modern circles as Eve's own old deuce from Eden's garden whereupon, opportunity inviting, both the fool and the cunning, the pure donkey princess of insular eulogy, and the sham one, are in a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Benniger such a lecture, and taken the money ad depositum. But, good heaven! that fellow is a wild ferocious beast. He says, it is a bargain; that the receiver is the thief, and not the bidder. He insists on having the patent for the monopoly dispatched; if not, he swears he will play the deuce. ...
— The Lawyers, A Drama in Five Acts • Augustus William Iffland
... kind of Nonconformist business? I think she's the very finest. A fellow'd hold himself up, 'd be a deuce of a swell—and, hang it all, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to strive with Godunov. Or play false with the Jesuits of the Court, Than with a woman. Deuce take them; they're beyond My power. She twists, and coils, and crawls, slips out Of hand, she hisses, threatens, bites. Ah, serpent! Serpent! 'Twas not for nothing that I trembled. She well-nigh ruined me; but I'm resolved; At daybreak I will put my ...
— Boris Godunov - A Drama in Verse • Alexander Pushkin
... has had a look in since," grinned Georgie vacuously. "Even Reggie de la Vere, who is a deuce of a fellah with the girls, could not ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... said he, musing; "but the postmark is Plymouth. How the deuce—!" The two first lines of the letter were read, and the old man's countenance fell. Susan, who had been all alive at the mention of McElvina's name, perceived the alteration in her ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... can be avoided; so why do anything meanwhile to increase the tension? Why send broadcast a story that would only arouse international hatred? That's their method. Ours—I mean our government's—is to give hatred a chance to die down. If our papers got hold of the Bundesrath story they'd make a deuce of a ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... cried Mr. Burt, on the edge of another paroxysm, "what the deuce does that mean? Who ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... as she drew the lone nine of Clubs from the dummy, to place beside Carolyn's Ace, but Penny's fingers were quite steady as she followed with the deuce of Clubs, to which Karen added, with a trace ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... Rose," he began, "I have a deuce of a hard time to get a tete-a-tete with you. This is the first we have had ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the end, she got her way, and they all approached the bungalow together. It was in utter darkness, and the men had to rap loud and long before any response came from within. At last Saxby's voice was heard inquiring who the deuce, and what the deuce, etc., etc., at that time of the night—followed by his appearance in the doorway ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... had an idee," said the half-breed, presently, in a smooth voice that penetrated the mighty vibrations of the falls, "ez how a chap on a log could paddle roun' this yere eddy fer a deuce of a while afore he'd hev to git sucked out ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... fellow, who the deuce is she? You know, or I am much mistaken. I saw you making great play, and coming it rather heavy with her on the night of the ball. I watched you both for some time. You two have met before under different circumstances. I wager my chestnut mare against your bay colt that I am right. ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... "Deuce a bit of it; I have not the cash, and that you know right well. Besides, it would be money thrown clean away, for what would it bring in? Oh! you get up early of a morning to come and ask me to build you a place that would ruin a king, do you? Your name ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... "Well, deuce a much indeed," returned Doctor Mangan, equably, "but it mightn't be so bad as that altogether! I have my little girl out for the first time to-day, Major. I wonder might I ask your man, that's looking after your young ladies, to have an eye to ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... companion's feverish haste to reach safety with her. They would have to stop at a water-hole somewhere, either on Gila Creek, or the old Pima camping-ground, or else at Lone Tree Spring. The most direct route to Noche Buena was by Lone Tree. Harrison was in a deuce of a hurry. Therefore he would choose the shortest way. So Yeager ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... God now and that means war. He wants to enjoy ruling Europe awhile before he dies. He does not get on with the Crown Prince and is not greatly interested in leaving all such glory for him to sport about in. Soon Wilhelm the Deuce will be too old to take part in a military campaign. He has not many years to live at his age. He is not a well man. The longer he puts it off, the shorter will be the ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... taken seats in the front pew, and all the women in the place are craning their necks toward the door. The usual electrical delay ensues. There is something the matter with the bride's train, and the two bridesmaids have a deuce of a time fixing it. Meanwhile the bride's father, in tight pantaloons and tighter gloves, fidgets and fumes in the vestibule, the six ushers crowd about him inanely, and the sexton rushes to and fro like a rat in a trap. Finally, all being ready, with the ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... of men belonging to these soul-forsaken years: Third-rate canvassers, collectors, journalists and auctioneers. They are never very shabby, they are never very spruce — Going cheerfully and carelessly and smoothly to the deuce. Some are wanderers by profession, 'turning up' and gone as soon, Travelling second-class, or steerage (when it's cheap they go saloon); Free from 'ists' and 'isms', troubled little by belief or doubt — Lazy, purposeless, and useless — knocking round and hanging out. They ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... you'll never break your word. You may be tempted more than once to kick the whole stupid game of life to the deuce and go out on a bat like a man, but console yourself with this: you'd be a long sight worse off when you got through than when you started, and you'd either go to smash altogether or spend the rest of your life trying to get back where you were before; and sackcloth hurts. ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... misfortune. But as for giving any opinion on her conduct, saying that she was good or bad, or indifferent, goodness forbid! We have agreed we will not be censorious. Let us have a game at cards—at ecarte, if you please. You deal. I ask for cards. I lead the deuce of clubs.... ...
— English Satires • Various
... by the Brigade Commander. Who the deuce are you, young man, to dispute it?" thundered the ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... and oblong in shape. Ours is very rotten, and has a big hole burnt in the top as well as a large rent at one end. These we have, however, patched up to our satisfaction and comfort. As we are here for the deuce knows how long, the beloved army red tape and routine is coming into ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... you young—" No, I won't say what I told Jimmy. Then Gibson offered to do it, and with a very similar result. With suaviter in modo, sed fortiter in re, I informed him that I did not consider him a sufficiently crack shot to enable him to win a Wimbledon shield; and what the deuce did he—but there, I had to shoot the poor miserable creature, who already had two rifle bullets in his carcass, and I am sure with his last breath he thanked me for that quick relief. There was not sufficient ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... on earth has the prince got to do with it? Who the deuce is the prince?" cried the general, who could conceal ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... present or other—some said in proportion to his anger; so that the sexton, who was a bit of a wag (as all sextons are, I think), said that the vicar's saying, "The Devil take you," was worth a shilling any day, whereas "The Deuce" was a shabby sixpenny speech, only ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... But they carried her out into the air, 'tis said; but when they looked round for Sue she was gone. What a scream that girl gied, poor thing! There were the pa'son in his surplice holding up his hand and saying, 'Sit down, my good people, sit down!' But the deuce a bit would they sit down. O, and what d'ye think I found out, Mrs. Yeobright? The pa'son wears a suit of clothes under his surplice!—I could see his black sleeves when he ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... uttered with closed teeth, and expressed the sentiment, 'Go to the Deuce:' even the gate over which he leant manifested no sympathising movement to the words; and I think that circumstance determined me to accept the invitation: I felt interested in a man who seemed more exaggeratedly reserved ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... got you and Elizabeth into a deuce of an unpleasant position. I've told you what a fine woman my mother is, and how she'd welcome Elizabeth with open arms, and now I find I was all wrong. My mother isn't a fine woman; she's an ancestor-worshiping, heartless, selfish snob. I'm ashamed ...
— Cupid's Understudy • Edward Salisbury Field
... joined them. He was evidently not in the secret, for he looked intensely puzzled when Jim Goodman, who had next shot, hit his bird fairly, but it only hopped about and descended unbroken. "What the deuce!" he said. ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... prosperity. It ain't decent citizenship to try it. It ain't neighborly. Think of the lean years we've known. You can't do it. This war won't last forever—" Mr. Doolittle's voice was tinged with regret—"and it will be time enough to go in for playing the deuce with business when business gets slack again. That's the time for reforms, ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... "all beer and skittles," or the poetic substitutes therefor, for he goes on to say that their principal duties were to picket the beach, their "pleasures and sweet rewards of toil consisting in ague which played dice with our bones, and blue mass pills that played the deuce ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... that the people of Furseborough were devoted to the good cause, but I never expected such enthusiasm as they have displayed to-night;" i.e., Why the deuce don't they cheer all together, instead of clapping here and clapping there? Must ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 12, 1890 • Various
... the tyrant, though?" remarked Walter. "I've just been to walk and am tired as the deuce. What do I wish to go tramping over the country ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... Say, you're a good one, you are? Why didn't you telegraph me at Marion? A deuce of a night ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... letter which simply said that the bearer, Gulab Lal Singh, would look after me and my belongings. So I paid attention to the man. He was a strapping fellow, handsome as the deuce, with a Roman nose, and the eye of ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... said O'Shaughnessy, in a low voice. "Our fellows are at the angle of this trench. Who the deuce can that be, talking ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... amuse, and the deuce is in it, if a little susceptibility will not put forth, now she receives my address; especially if I can manage it so as to be allowed to live under one roof with her. What though the sensibility be at first faint and reluctant, like the appearance of an early spring-flower in frosty ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... frank stare. "You see," he explained diffidently; "you see, I'm just engaged to be married—and though business is fairly good and all that—my being away from the office six or eight weeks is going to cut like the deuce into my commissions—and roses cost such a horrid price last Fall—and there seems to be a game law on diamonds this year; they practically fine you ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... known it anywhere. I think you've caught the likeness most wonderfully!" i.e., "Why the deuce doesn't he tell one ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various
... to grow stout and yet all at odds with my belts, the which trying me sadly for I do pay my tailor as many do not. And the niece a striking fine girl modest and not raising her eyes the which much to my taste and drinking only lambs-wool and at cards knowing not tierce from deuce. H. Nevil making great ado over my new coach did have it out with pride and we to the Country Club for a late supper, the which well-cooked but my vest much tighter and so home ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... in a whisper. "He will hear you. Ha!" he continued after a short pause, during which they moved on towards the mess-room, "you begin to find out his amiable military qualities, do you! But tell me, Ronayne, what the deuce has put this Quixotic expedition into your head? What great interest do you take in these fishermen, that you should volunteer to break your shins in the wood, this dark night, for the purpose of seeking ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... "Oh, to the deuce with your nonsense!" the attorney replied, his cheek flushing as he lighted his cigar. "If you had listened to the twaddle that I have all day, you would be glad to talk to almost any one ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... opera house. When he came back and saw a plaster bust of Shakespeare over the proscenium arch, he waved his cane pompously and exclaimed: 'Take her down! Bill Shakespeare is all right for the effete East, but out here he ain't deuce high with the little corporal of Company B.'" So in Shakespeare's niche is a plaster-cast of a soldier's face with the slouch-cap, the military moustache, and the goatee of great pride, after the picture that once adorned the columns of the Statesman. For a time they ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... continent has had a sad effect upon the young men; they have been ruined by light wines and French quadrilles. "They've nothing," he says, "of the spirit of the old service. There are none of your six-bottle men left, that were the souls of a mess-dinner, and used to play the very deuce ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... whispered nervously, "can't you manage to keep my name out of it? I mean to say, my people will kick up the deuce. ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... some clever escapes, I'll admit, that may not always be his fortune. The pitcher may go to the well once too often. He's a cunning rascal—no doubt knows this riddle—and therefore I begin to fear he has taken himself off,—at least for a long while. He may return again, but how the deuce are we to sustain this constant espionage? It would weary down the devil! It will become as tiresome as the siege of Granada was to the good king Fernando and his warlike spouse of the soiled chemise. Por Dios! ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... now is very pleasant. For a long time after their first baby died on the day they entered a new house, before even the beds were up, it seemed as if Mrs Luscombe, a gentle, delicate woman, 'with the deuce of a will of her own,' Luscombe says, was going to decline and die too. The new baby, which was to have killed her, has put new life into her instead. They are touchingly proud of it, and very happy altogether. I do like to ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... really funny, it was pathetic. Gosh, how doddering the poor old boy was! Skipworth wondered, with a sudden twist at his heart, if the war was playing the deuce with his home people, too. Was his own father going to pieces like this, and had his mother's gay vivacity fallen into that still remoteness of Lady Sherwood's? But of course not! The Carys hadn't suffered as the poor Sherwoods ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... the stunsails; it'll look more ship-shape, and as if we were in a hurry to make the coast and get our cargo aboard, if we happen to be overhauled by anybody in the same line of business, and the deuce of a fear have I now of outsailing any of them that may happen to be in the neighbourhood. Keep a sharp look-out, Mr Pierrepoint, and if anything heaves in sight, either ahead or astern, during your watch, give me a call. I'm going ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... meet this evening," replied the aunt, "you are in such a deuce of a hurry. Is there ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... hadn't, somehow, expected it. I can't find fault with you for a moment—and I don't . . . This is a deuce of a long dance, don't you think? We've been at it twenty minutes if a second, and the figure doesn't allow one much rest. ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... duality, dualism; duplicity; biplicity^, biformity^; polarity. two, deuce, couple, duet, brace, pair, cheeks, twins, Castor and Pollux, gemini, Siamese twins; fellows; yoke, conjugation; dispermy^, doublets, dyad, span. V. pair [unite in pairs], couple, bracket, yoke; conduplicate^; mate, span [U.S.]. Adj. two, twin; dual, dualistic, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... been lost sight of for ten years? She is safe enough in some Sanatorium, depend upon it. And what if she did come? Do you think, my dear good woman, that I—a sensible clear-headed general practitioner, who have found out all I know for myself—would let her play the deuce with me as she did with poor HALVARD? No, general practitioners don't do ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 11, 1893 • Various
... raising in the middle. She gives me two sometimes when the Bill of me has been workin' like the deuce with dad; one for Billy and one for Louise. When I'm twelve, Mommie's goin' to let the Louise of me make cookies all myself and put a raising on top. I'll put two on top of one and bring it over ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... almost shouted it. "Why, then, it's simple enough. I'm in the wrong berth, that's all. My berth is nine. Only—where the deuce is ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... enthusiasm, and holding out both hands]. The deuce she is! I am most uncommonly glad to see you, ma'am, under this roof. [Aside to Susan] She don't look very prosperous, Susan: if there's anything that money can get for her, I'll see she ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... explain. I can alter my will yet, let me tell you. I'm of sound mind—can reckon compound interest in my head, and remember every fool's name as well as I could twenty years ago. What the deuce? I'm under eighty. I say, you must ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... him. He's a convicted man. Here? How do you know he's here? No—I wouldn't let you talk to him if he was. Who are you, anyway? What's that—you threaten him—you threaten me? You'll get us both, will you? Well, I want to tell you, you can go plumb—the deuce! The fellow's cut ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... "How the deuce are you to do it when you never get within hail of the fortress? There is something peculiar about Katherine Liddell I can't quite make out. If she were a commonplace woman, angular, squinting, or generally plain, ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... [peeping]. The deuce! This fellow Is no fool, I see. No greenhorn In his business is this devil. I give him my bond! No, truly, Though my lodgings wanted a tenant For the space of twenty ages, I wouldn't ...
— The Wonder-Working Magician • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... was not certain of it, and the absolute quiet reassured him so that he went up the drive, keeping on the grass border until he reached the garage. This, he told himself, was just like a woman—raising the deuce around so that a man had to sneak into his own place to get his own car out of his own garage. If Foster was up against the kind of deal Bud had been up against, he sure had Bud's sympathy, and he sure would get the best help Bud ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... countenance. Was Michael the man to be blackmailed? and was Morris the man to do it? Grave considerations. "It's not that I'm afraid of him," Morris so far condescended to reassure himself; "but I must be very certain of my ground, and the deuce of it is, I see no way. How unlike is life to novels! I wouldn't have even begun this business in a novel, but what I'd have met a dark, slouching fellow in the Oxford Road, who'd have become my accomplice, and known all about how to do it, and probably broken into Michael's house ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a cup of coffee, sadly regarded his rapidly congealing bacon, and skipped off to the dockyard. "Who is this man of yours whose mother has died at so very inconvenient a moment for us? What the deuce is he doing with a mother in Essex at all? He ought ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... here to get at. The murderers of Telfik Bey, of course. My instructions are to find out secretly, if at all. For if it does get into the newspapers there'll be the very deuce to pay. It isn't desirable that even Telfik Bey's presence here should have been known for reasons which—ah—(here Average Jones remarked the resumption of his friend's official bearing)—which, not being for the public, I ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... lead him on; partly because, out of the corner of his eye, he was aware of the girl's unconcealed suspense. "Go on, please, Mr. Calendar. You throw yourself on a total stranger's mercy because you're in the deuce of ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... that Mr. Woolsey declined this; for, as soon as he was gone, Walker, in a tremendous fury, began cursing his wife for dawdling three hours on the road. "Why the deuce, ma'am, didn't you take a cab?" roared he, when he heard she had walked to Bond Street. "Those writs have only been in half an hour, and I might have been off but ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in studying all the niceties of handwriting. He suddenly felt unnerved. "Whom is it from? This hand is familiar to me, very familiar. I must have often read its tracings, yes, very often. But this must have been a long, long time ago. Whom the deuce can it be from? Pooh! it's only somebody asking ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... listlessly over the child's hair. "The deuce!" he said; "but you have not wasted time. And you are happy, ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... public says scornfully: "Of course, he WOULD. Because Smith went to the Royal College himself, all his heroes have to go there. This isn't art, this is photography." In his next novel Smith sends his hero to Cambridge, and the public says indignantly, "What the deuce does SMITH know about Cambridge? Trying to pretend he is a 'Varsity man, when everybody knows that he went to the Royal College of Science! I suppose he's been mugging it up in a book." Perhaps Brown's young couple honeymoons in Switzerland. "So did Brown," sneer his acquaintances. Or they ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... into the deuce of a mess with your confounded coolness," said the Duke after a pause, during which he had in vain searched all his pockets for his cigar-case. Barker had watched him, and pushed an open box of Havanas across the table. But the Duke was determined to be ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... circles, then asked himself what he would do and say to-morrow if anything happened to Tom—nothing, of course, fatal, but something perhaps so grave that May himself would be unable to explain it. In that case Henry could only state facts exactly as they had occurred. But there would be a deuce of a muddle if he had to make statements and describe the exact sequence of recent incidents. Already he forgot the exact sequence. It seemed ages since he parted from May. He broke off there, rose, drank a glass of water, and lighted a cigarette. He shook himself into ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... Osborne said to his friend's remonstrances, when they quitted the invalid, leaving him under the hands of Doctor Gollop. "What the deuce right has he to give himself his patronizing airs, and make fools of us at Vauxhall? Who's this little schoolgirl that is ogling and making love to him? Hang it, the family's low enough already, without HER. A governess is ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... must be fitting that Cossack strength should be wasted in vain, that a man should disappear like a dog without having done a single good deed, that he should be of no use to his country or to Christianity! Why, then, do we live? What the deuce do we live for? just tell me that. You are a sensible man, you were not chosen as Koschevoi without reason: so just tell me what we ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... Ultra-Toryish acknowledgment, not only of the divine right, but of the divine power of King Morpheus. But an Ultra-Tory we are not—though Ultra-Trimmers try to impose upon themselves that fiction among a thousand others; so we shall smoke a cigar, and let sleep go to the dogs, the deuce, the ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... what the deuce do you know about courts, cousin Deschappelles? You women regard men just as you buy books—you never care about what is in them, but how they are bound and lettered. 'Sdeath, I don't think you would even look at your Bible if it had not a title ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Goat of grass to take her fill, And browse the herbage of a distant hill, She latch'd her door, and bid, With matron care, her Kid; "My daughter, as you live, This portal don't undo To any creature who This watchword does not give: 'Deuce take the Wolf and all his race'!" The Wolf was passing near the place By chance, and heard the words with pleasure, And laid them up as useful treasure; And hardly need we mention, Escaped the Goat's attention. No sooner ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... cries and shakes his head, "I see by every sign, There soon will be the deuce to pay, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... them," said we both in a breath: "Pogson is a commercial traveller, with thirty shillings a week, and how the deuce is he to pay ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Oakes is as discreet a man, in all that relates to the table, as an anchorite; and yet he has a faculty of seeming to drink, that makes him a boon companion for a four-bottle man. How the deuce he does it, is more than I can tell you; but he does it so well, that he does not more thoroughly get the better of the king's enemies, on the high seas, than he floors his friends under the table. Sir Wycherly has begun his libations in honour of the house ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... away, after all, before the coming of the other vehicle? What kept him so long? (He had been gone about half a minute!) Had there been, for once, no carriage in waiting at the livery? or had Harding concluded to go to sleep on the road? And what the deuce did it all mean—the half-dozen persons, and one a woman almost completely stripped, whom he had seen in that moment's glance into that upper chamber? And the red woman!—aye, the red woman!—that bothered Tom Leslie the worst, and as he had himself confessed, ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... with Fortsch [How the deuce did Fortsch teach these things?]; Hermeneutics and Polemics with Walch [editor of—Luther's Works,—I suppose]; Hebraics with Dr. Danz; Homiletics with Dr. Weissenborn; PASTORALE [not Pastoral Poetry, but the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... course the regular cutting for the year is done, year by year. That's as regular as the rents, and the produce is sold by the acre. But she is marking the old oaks. What the deuce can she want ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... the play to be given this evening, and will be forced—if it does not succeed—to leave this marvellous scenery, these rich stuffs at a hundred francs the yard, unpaid for. His fourth failure is staring him in the face. But, deuce take it! our manager has confidence. Success, like all the monsters that feed on man, loves youth; and this unknown author whose name is entirely new on the posters, flatters the ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... The deuce is in it the way women stare. I took off my hat and jacket for a reason to stay there, and hung them up as leisurely as ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... that... lend me your wits, Jack!... The deuce! Can you not stretch your genius to fit a friend's use? Excuses are clothes which, when ask'd unawares, Good Breeding to Naked Necessity spares, You must have ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... unusual request from a native, for his offer to be set down in writing. "You might take a note of this, Hamilton," he said aside, "though why the deuce he wants a note of this made I cannot for the life of me imagine. Go on, messenger," he said more mildly; "for as you see my lord ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... Kurzbold who spoke, as he playfully kicked, not too gently, those of his comrades who lay nearest him. He was answered by groans and imprecations, as one by one the sleeping beauties aroused themselves, and wondered where the deuce they were. ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... isn't that. It is because you act as if you really cared to have me talk about my own affairs. I never met a girl before that did. Now, I want to ask you about that club business. There's going to be the deuce and all to pay in that if I'm not careful. Have you thought it over? What would you do ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the fiend, "not so;—the deuce a bit. He sayeth; but, alas! not meaneth it: Ask him thyself, if thou believ'st not me; Or else be still awhile, ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... very good sort of man, besides being very well got up), it is an act of obedience to the laws to rid society of a criminal, however virtuous he may be. Once a thief, always a thief. Suppose he were to take it into his head to murder us all? The deuce! We should be guilty of manslaughter, and be the first to fall victims ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... of their tight case; but there was nothing to them, except that they were old Thompson's beyond a doubt. If I had thought there might be writing on them there was not so much as the scratch of a pencil. There seemed to be a card missing. I thought it was the deuce of hearts; but I was too sick over Marcia's discovery about Paulette to really examine the things and make sure. I shoved them into my coat pocket beside what was there already, just as Dudley came into ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... crinkle appeared in the silhouette of a cheek, and she said, "I do like to hear you say 'the deuce.' I don't believe Uncle Nicholas ever said 'the ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... dear fellow!" cried I, "can this possibly be you? What the deuce have you been doing with yourself? You look as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... be doing me justice. A patriot? Deuce take it! I pride myself upon being one, and of the first calibre, too! And the proof is—Drink this to the health of the Republic." And he handed a hundred-franc assignat to the postilion who had recommended him to his comrade. Seeing the other looking eagerly at this strip of paper, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... prior, and to let the world go as it lists. It must go well, for most people are content with it. If I knew history enough, I should prove to you that evil has always come about here below through a few men of genius, but I do not know history, no more than I know anything else. The deuce take me, if I have learnt anything, or if I find myself a pin the worse for not having learnt anything. I was one day at the table of the minister of the King of——, who has brains enough for four, and he ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... make me "creep" as if a mouse ran over mine, by the way her eyes watched me: still as a cat's looking into the fire. If we had to shake hands, she used to present me with a limp little bunch of cold fingers, which made me long to ask what the deuce she wanted me to do with them? Now, because I'm Brian's sister, and because I'm human enough to love her love of him, the flower-part of her nature sheds perfume and distils honey for me: the cat-part purrs; the girl-part warms. The creature actually deigns to like me! It could not now conceal ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... knees, and fanning Mrs. Curwen: "There! there! Wake up, Mrs. Curwen. I didn't mean to scold you for joking. I didn't, indeed. I—I—I don't know what the deuce I'm up to." He gathers Mrs. Curwen's inanimate form in his arms, and fans her face where it lies on his shoulder. "I don't know what my ...
— The Elevator • William D. Howells
... from Blandings for a night, because the gov'nor had to come to London; but I've got to go back with him on the three-o'clock train. And, as for money, I can't get a quid out of him. As a matter of fact, I'm in the deuce of a hole; and that's why I've come ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
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