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Deviltry   Listen
noun
Deviltry  n.  (pl. deviltries)  Diabolical conduct; malignant mischief; devilry.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Deviltry" Quotes from Famous Books



... visits; of strolls in the dusk of evenings on unfrequented streets; of little suppers after the opera; of all the small things that deviltry can suggest and malignity distort. Wickersham cared little for having his name associated with that of any one, and he was certainly not going to be more careful for another's name than for his own. He had grown more reckless since his ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page

... the Baron pretending that he was drunk and thus excusing himself, I do not believe one word of it; he drank nothing but water. There were times this evening when he appeared very strange indeed! There is some deviltry underneath all this; Monsieur de Carrier, rest assured there is some deviltry underneath ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard

... with shouts of laughter, during the continuance of which Mr. Pat Kegan stood before the inspector, with hat in hand, and a face as demure as though no deviltry was at work within ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... right, Tom; Deveaux is a brute," said John. "His deviltry came near being the end of us. When we get home, we must see to it that he is punished as he deserves. But we must keep it out of the papers now, as it will look, in case we get beat, as if we wanted ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser

... other tribe of Indians this side of the Rocky Mountains would not have left one of you to have told the tale, and it is just such darned fools as that man that stir up the Indians, to do so much deviltry." ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan

... all out of him before he'd finished with the Black. Ha, ha, ha, ha! I can hear him still, with the sweat running off his face like oats spilling from a feed bag. I says to Paddy, 'Rub his nose a bit,' for I could see it was more nervousness with the horse than sheer deviltry. 'With what?' says Paddy, 'the hammer? Be gor! You're right, though,' says he, and with that he tries to put a twister on Diablo's nose. Holy mother! Diablo reached for him, and lifted the shirt clean off his back. Say, ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... a vivid description of these festivals as practised by the Hos in January, when the granaries are full of wheat and the natives "full of deviltry:" ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... for me to put down the gesture, the grace of language, the lightness of touch, the deliberate choice of one word over another, with which this talk was flowered; but I can, at least, state that it had to me a living kind of deviltry in it that raised me out of my surroundings, as a play or great music might have done, or the clash of some ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane

... chair. It was not altogether an affectation, not altogether a piece of skilful acting now, for though the sheriff had told him all that happened he had not had a chance to feel the truth; but now it swept over him, all her tricks, all her deviltry, all that long companionship. ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand

... the dim gallery of youthful memories. What was it? It flashed upon her with the suddenness of a forgotten word. She remembered it plainly now—that treasured, highly colored lithograph of a brigand holding up a coach in a mountain pass! There was in this face the same mocking deviltry; his figure had the same lithe grace; he needed only the big hoop ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart

... deviltry to children and then punish them for it." Instance after instance of such cruelty could be cited. Why should parents expect their children to be ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley

... to look like it," responded Alfred. "There is some sort of deviltry around wherever we have happened to be ever since the ...
— The Boy Volunteers with the Submarine Fleet • Kenneth Ward

... ejaculated, holding Jose's arm and starting down the gangplank. "What new deviltry is the rogue ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... absolute safety, when conditions were just right, and necessity required a quick descent. On a few occasions Frank had even been known to hazard what is known as the "death dip;" but it was only when there happened to be a good reason for taking such chances, and not merely in a spirit of dare-deviltry, such as many show aviators employ, just to send a shiver of dread through the spectators, and then laugh recklessly at the fears ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy

... turned on him. She was evidently in a prostitute's tantrum of malicious deviltry. Presently she would begin to lash herself into a ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers

... He was not a coward as men go; but he was feeling horribly afraid just then. The deviltry of the scene he had just witnessed had fairly unmanned him. The red and black setting of the room had a suggestion of Oriental cruelty in its very garishness. Desmond looked from Strangwise, cool and ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams

... smiling, and tearing the paper in small pieces; "it is true, she is a diavolezza, but one of the most amiable and charming sort, and perhaps ere long I shall, notwithstanding her deviltry, consider her an angel, and believe her charming comedy to be entirely true and sincere. But this is no time for thinking of such things. The grave affairs of life require our exclusive attention. Kockeritz, then, has ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach

... but for the most part it was harmless. One rather grave incident, shortly before my entry, derived its humor mainly from the way in which it was treated by the superintendent. One of the out-buildings of the Academy, either because offensive or out of sheer deviltry, was set on fire and destroyed. The perpetrator of this startling practical joke was Alexander F. Crosman, of the '51 Date, whom many of us yet living remember well. Small in stature, with something of the "chip-on-the-shoulder" ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... took beer to begin with, knocking the necks from the bottles as if that act alone lent the necessary air of deviltry to the whole proceedings. A small, very black Nyamwesi came with brush and pan and groped on the floor all night for the splinters of glass, sleeping between times in a corner until a fresh volley of breaking bottle necks ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... that? Don't we jug sons every day for some deviltry or other? Do you suppose you are the only father whose son is going to ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon

... dead silence. That big youth—the terror of Linley School—was now red and dumb with amazement. His deviltry had begun, but how had the teacher seen it with ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller

... kind. Singly, they were appalling enough to any one in those days when the supernatural still thrilled the strongest minds, but taken altogether for steady reading, the book was a perfect Sabbat of deviltry and dramatic horrors. The tales were well told, or translated in very simple but vigorous English, and I pored over the collection and got it by heart, and borrowed it, and took it to Dedham in the holidays, and into ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... be late in origin. By analogy, in a nature-religion such as was that of India, the practice of demonology, witchcraft, etc., must have been an early factor. But, while this is true, it is clearly impossible to postulate therefrom that the hymns recording all this array of cursing, deviltry, and witchcraft are themselves early. The further forward one advances into the labyrinth of Hindu religions the more superstitions, the more devils, demons, magic, witchcraft, and uncanny things generally, does he find. ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... much! Ain't we been ridin' in an' out every little eel grass cove along the shore just for the sheer deviltry of seein' if we could get snagged?" piped Captain Benjamin. "There'll be no more rockin' in the channel for us. My ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett

... factory steps,—you recall, M'sieu,—she came to you,—I saw her in the dusk as she turned at the corner, a rod away, saw her and knew with some touch of deviltry the sudden way of keeping you from her, your arms from about her, your lips from hers! Oh, that I could not bear, M'sieu! Not though I died for it! So I threw my own arms about your throat—you remember, M'sieu—and whispered that ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe

... traces have to be unloosened and extricated from the most abominable tangle that it is possible to conceive. This comes from a habit the dogs have of constantly running under and over the other traces to avoid the whip, or in some cases merely from a spirit of pure deviltry. ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder

... so fellers—he wouldn't to they was Greasers—breakin' through the shrubbery to the back of the house. That was while Stewart was ridin' out to the mesa. Then this lad seen your servants all runnin' down the hill toward the village. Now, heah's the way Gene figgers. There sure was some deviltry down along the railroad, an' Pat Hawe trailed bandits up to the ranch. He hunts hard an' then all to onct he quits. Stewart says Pat Hawe wasn't scared, but he discovered signs or somethin', or got ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey

... emotion particularly inflammable. Other emotions also may be unwisely stimulated by art. In times of international friction, war-songs, "patriotic" speeches, or martial processions may arouse an unreasoning jingo spirit. The love of deviltry is fostered in boys by many of the penny novels, by sensational "movies" and newspaper "stories"; a famous detective has said that seventy per cent of the crimes committed by boys under twenty are traceable to "suggestions" received from these sources. Should ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... his desk all day long, not even to eat, and then he'd grab up a piece of bread and go off for a long tearing tramp that'd last 'most all night. You know what a tremendous physique all the Gridley men have had. Well, Uncle Grid turned into work all the energy the rest of them spent in deviltry. Aunt Amelia said he'd go on like that day after day for a month, and then he'd bring out one of those essays folks are so crazy about. She said she never could bear to look at his books ... seemed to her they were written in his blood. She told him ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield

... called together his men for a conference. He suspected some cunning deviltry on part of ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... is a little round hut of bark in a dark corner of the Egyptian enclosure. Mahomet Ali sits at the receipt of custom exchanging pleasantries with dusky flower girls whose home is by the orange market beyond the Kase el Nil, who know more French than English, and more deviltry than either; who sing "Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay," and know how to solicit backsheesh to perfection. The theatricals here are simplicity brought to perfection. It is said their language consists of only a hundred words. If you were to paint ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')

... all you do know yet. One bitter cold night I was going my rounds for the last time, when, as I turned a corner, I saw there was a trifle of work to be done. It was a bad part of the city, full of dirt and deviltry; one of the streets led to a ferry, and at the corner an old woman had an apple-stall. The poor soul had dropped asleep, worn out with the cold, and there were her goods left with no one to watch 'em. Somebody was watching 'em. however; a girl, with a ragged shawl over her head, stood ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott

... appalled at the issue. His cousin's influence had been strong enough to lead him into the affair of the letter; he was aghast to think how Rupert's reckless dare-deviltry had led on from stage to stage till the death of a king seemed but an incident in his schemes. He sprang ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope

... the baths, I fell in with the woman who called herself Madame Welstoke. She was an evil woman, and of the worst of such, because she was one who never seemed bad at first, and then, little by little, as she showed herself, you could get used to her deviltry and for each step you could find an apology or excuse, until at last the thing she had done yesterday seemed all right to-day and you were ready for some new invention of ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child

... He said: "By Thine eternal law Of growth, maturity, decay, These all must quickly pass away And leave untenanted the earth Unless Thou dost establish birth"— Then tucked his head beneath his wing To laugh—he had no sleeve—the thing With deviltry did so accord, That he'd suggested to the Lord. The Master pondered this advice, Then shook and threw the fateful dice Wherewith all matters here below Are ordered, and observed the throw; Then bent His head in awful state, Confirming the decree of Fate. From every part ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... to Dan Storran's appearance upon the scene. But even when she smiled and talked, playing the men off one against the other with a deft skill that was inimitable, there seemed a curious new hardness underlying it all—a certain reckless deviltry for which Gillian was at a ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler

... false mustaches, confetti, balloons and all the noise-swelling devices ever bred of deviltry, hawked their wares along the curbs, and the furs of women glittered ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... enabled me to establish the proportion of fourteen saloons out of a total of twenty frame buildings. I descanted craftily on the character of the woodsman out of the woods and in the right frame of mind for deviltry. I related how Jack Boyd, irritated beyond endurance at the annoyances of a stranger, finally with the flat of his hand boxed the man's head so mightily that he whirled around twice ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White

... bitterly of Ramsey Burr, but his mother pleaded with him, telling him it was his only chance, and that the deviltry ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various

... his long-sword. The girl stole a quick glance at his face. She saw the smile upon his lips, and it was as wine to sick nerves; for even upon warlike Barsoom where all men are brave, woman reacts quickly to quiet indifference to danger—to dare-deviltry that ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... whether he was surprised or whether he was shocked, and it seemed to him that he was neither surprised nor shocked. He wondered whether he had really expected something of the kind, sooner or later, or whether he was not always so apprehensive of some deviltry in Durgin that nothing he did could quite take him unawares. At last he said: "I suppose it's true—even though you say it. It's probably ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... interior, like small rooms or closets, evidently added by the Chinamen tenants. My companion stopped before a long, very narrow entrance, a mere longitudinal slit in the brick wall, and with a wink of infantine deviltry motioned me to look inside. I did so, and saw a room, really a cell, of fair height but scarcely six feet square, and barely able to contain a rude, slanting couch of stone covered with matting, on which lay, at a painful angle, a richly dressed Chinaman. A single ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte

... whine thanks, but the man above would have none of them, "I'm giving you this chance for your sister's sake. You won't make anything of it. You're born for meanness and deviltry. I know your kind from El Paso to Dawson. But she's game and she's white clear through, even if she is your sister and a plumb little fool. Can you walk to the ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine

... see," I interrupted. "I see this—that they are here, that there are a dozen or more of them, and that they are ready for any deviltry. What more can we find out ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott

... command, a veteran officer and most upright and manly in character. Campbell went, was made prisoner, and subsequently was foully and hideously murdered. Pontiac neglected no expedient known to Indian perfidy, cruelty, or deviltry. He surpassed his race in all the detestable elements of their nature. His conduct from first to last was only calculated to create distrust, contempt, and loathing. His warriors murdered the British settlers in the vicinity of the Fort, burned their huts, robbed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... one, he's drunk!" said Tonsard, "and when he is, he is twice as full of deviltry; he has his own ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac

... jubilant at his own temerity. "What deviltry are you up to now, Peek? Back streets and ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry

... the two boys were about five years old. They were as thick as thieves, and two greater scamps and greater cronies never tramped together over a Virginia plantation. In the matter of deviltry they were remarkably precocious, and it was really wonderful what an amount of mischief those two could do. As was natural, the white boy planned the deeds, and the black one was his willing ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... Calhoun, after whom were sent the daring words about the sessions and the assizes, was a year or two older than his friend, and, as Michael Clones, his servant and friend, said, "the worst and best scamp of them all"—just up to any harmless deviltry. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... Window-Hopping for an hour. After making Mind Purchases of about $8000 worth of washable Finery edged with Lace, a spirit of Deviltry seized them. ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade

... about to burst into tears. He took her by the arm. "We're going to the lounge and you're going to tell me all about this—what's been going on." He drew her toward the ladder, calling over his shoulder. "Clean up what you can, Nicko. See what other deviltry they arranged." ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis

... ever strung up in the Valley of Jehoshaphat began a kind of mewling cry, such as a rat would make in a trap. This did not satisfy us and we went for Cocash; we wanted "blood!" or at least an imitation of crime and deviltry. Ali consulted with the Bedouins and came back with a smiling solution of our difficulty. ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne

... the men came tumbling down the stairs, ripe for deviltry; but for the moment here was wine to be had for the taking, everything else ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner

... fine gang of youngsters, all about thirteen years, wise in boys' deviltry. What we didn't know about killing cats, breaking window-panes in barns, stealing coal from freight-cars, and borrowing eggs from neighboring hencoops without consent of the hens, wasn't worth ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... comforting inducement to sleep and pleasant dreams. But somewhere there was a wrong note in his anticipations tonight. Stampede Smith slipped away from him, and Rossland took his place. And Keok, laughing, changed into Mary Standish with tantalizing deviltry. It was like Keok, Alan thought drowsily—she was always ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood

... all, and more particularly at these remote points; and the class of white men who are to be found around native villages, many of whom "fear not God neither regard man," pursue their debauchery and deviltry long time unwhipped. ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... s'pose I kin prove anything 'clusive," resumed Perkins, "en I don't s'pose it ud be best ef I could. Ef she was up ter such deviltry, of co'se you don't want hit gen'ly known. Bigger ossifers 'n you ud have ter notice it. Ef I was in yu shoes howsomever, in huntin' shy game, I could use sech a clar s'picion agin her en be mo' on ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe

... of Tautira, from Ori-a-Ori to Matatini, had the fullest confidence that Tufetufetu had shown them a miracle, and that it was not evil; but to the American and European missionaries the Umuti was deviltry, the magic of Simon Magus and his successors, This was shown clearly in the statement of Deacon Taumihau of Raiatea, which I give in Tahitian ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... old eyes looked curiously at her. "I believe you've got some deviltry in your head, Sissy. Now, you mind me and let your sister alone. There! I'm all right now. I can go all right the rest of the way when I'm once started down your infernal stairs. I ought to charge your father ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson

... a little spice of deviltry lends not an unpleasantly titillating twang to the great mass of respectable flour that goes to make up the pudding of our modern civilization? And pertinent to this question another—Why is it that the pirate ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle

... mild-mannered horse, standing by a crooked corral post and flicking his ears at the flies. "Do you know that roan?" he asked Andy, in the tone which brings truthful answer. Andy had one good point: he never lied except in an irresponsible mood of pure deviltry. For instance, he never had lied seriously, ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower

... lady's hair; whose paradise was a score of dangerous intrigues, and whose seventh heaven was a duel with an infuriated husband; incorrigibly lazy, but with the Italian laziness, as of the panther who sleeps in the sun, and with such episodes of romance, mischief, love, and deviltry in his twenty-five years of existence as would leave behind them all the invention ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... man's devil is only more of a devil than another's; and be bedeviled as much as you will; yet, may you perform the most bedeviled of actions with impunity, so long as you only bedevil yourself. For it is only when your deviltry injures another, that the other devils conspire to confine yours for a mad one. That is to say, if you be easily handled. For there are many bedeviled Bedlamites in Mardi, doing an infinity of mischief, who are too brawny in the ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... them plotting some fresh deviltry," he answered, rising to his feet, and facing me. "We never have much to disturb us upon this side, as it overhangs the river and is not easy of approach; but the guard on the south wall is kept pretty busy these last ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish

... private theater, where he used to invite the favored children of Calvin to witness the drama. Voltaire being a playwright and without prejudice in the matter, had even suggested a municipal theater for Geneva. This brought forth from Jean Jacques a scorching pamphlet on the seductive deviltry of the drama, wherein it was pointed out that the downfall of every nation that had gone by the boards had begun its slide to Avernus in its love of the play. In this essay Rousseau expressed the view of orthodox Geneva, where the traditions of Calvin still survived. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard

... less-refined woman. It was one of the maids—it was the maid Huldah, the one from whom he had hoped to win some light on this affair. Was she locked in, too? Her frenzy and mad looking behind and below her seemed to argue that she was. What deviltry! and, ah! what a confession of guilt on the part of the vile man who had planned this abominable end for the two persons whose evidence he dreaded. Helpless with horror, he became a man again in his indignation. Such villainy should not succeed. He would ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green

... in its reckless dare-deviltry and wanton lawlessness about one hundred and fifty years ago, its most productive operations being confined to the Spanish Main, over whose vast paths the newly discovered wealth and hidden treasures of ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann

... What deviltry are yu up to now?" he asked. Buck leaped from his mount, followed by the others, and shoved his sombrero back on his head as he started ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford

... deviltry he braved; 'N' scores an' scores of white men's lives he saved. Just for that, his name should be engraved. But it won't be! U. S. gov'ment dreads Men who're taller 'n ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop

... think, is the sole motive to pains and hazard, deception and deviltry, in this world. How much money did the devil make by ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... crowing in announcement of the coming dawn, when Simon mounted the intractable Bunch. Both were in high spirits: our hero at the idea of unrestrained license in future; and Bunch from a mesmerical transmission to himself of a portion of his master's deviltry. Simon raised himself in the stirrups, yelled a tolerably fair imitation of the Creek ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various

... her side her astute kinsmen, the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine, who were as clever as they were unscrupulous. With these powerful uncles near her, Mary was in a position to outwit the wily Catherine, between whom and the Guise faction little love was lost. Only when some scheme of deviltry joined them together in common interests, as the massacre of the Huguenots at Amboise, were Catherine and the Guise brothers at one, and this triumvirate even Queen ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton

... monstrous, this thing that he had read; it plumbed the dregs of human deviltry—but for once the Tocsin was at fault. Of the plot that had been hatched, of those details that she described, there could be no doubt, there was no question there, and there the Tocsin, he knew, had made no mistake; ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... frequent couriers and trains, but they don't keep a lookout for pony tracks. The chances are that their crossing would not be discovered for twenty-four hours or so, and as to the news being wired to us here, those reds would never give us a chance. The first news we got of their deviltry would be that they had cut the line ten or twelve miles this side of Laramie as they came ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King

... forlorn and indistinguishable look to everything. A spark of ruddy light glowed deep in the valley. The rocking outlines of the hills were lost in rushing darkness. At his back sounded the pathetic clatter of a dead spruce against its living neighbor, bespeaking the deviltry of woodland demons.—It was the hour which makes all that man can do seem as nothing in the mournful darkness, causing his works to vanish and be as if they ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... still some of the volumes he loved; he liked the low ceiling and the big fireplace, and always wrote here—it was his library, really. There opens the old drawing-room and next to it is Felicia's den, where she concocts most of her deviltry, and the dining-room beyond—and that's all there is on this floor, except the kitchen, which ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith

... so I hear 'em tarm you—This is plain English, enough, though spoken in Iroquois. I understand all you mean, now, and must say it out-devils even Mingo deviltry! No doubt, 'twould be easy enough to go back and tell the Muskrat that I had got away from you, and gain some credit, too, by ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... yet, the patient, ingenious deviltry of those fiends. It was they, at the time the new will was drawn, who offered to buy out my real uncle's sheep ranch in that lonely, unsettled district in Australia, and offered him that new position in New Zealand. My uncle never reached New ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... Clayton had abandoned the Magdalen in utter disgust, Miss Marston persisted in the early morning sittings. She made herself useful in preparing his coffee and in getting his canvas ready. They rarely talked. Sometimes Clayton, in a spirit of deviltry, would tease his mentor about their peculiar relationship, about herself, or, worse than all, would run himself and say very true things about his own imperfections. Then, on detecting the tears that would rise in the tired, faded eyes of the woman he tortured, he would throw ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick

... greatest freedom an immoral and grotesque act is related in which the innocent husband is left out and takes no step to have just punishment meted, and the saint with his cloak commits a deviltry only fit for urchins ...
— The Legacy of Ignorantism • T.H. Pardo de Tavera

... came while the debate was still on. He soon noted that something was at work in Josh's mind to make him so silent and glum, so different from his usual voluble, flamboyant self. "What's up, Josh? What deviltry are you plotting now to add to ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips

... Such aldermen as proved unfaithful to the great trust imposed on them should be smoked out, followed back to the wards which had elected them, and exposed to the people who were behind them. Their names should be pilloried in the public press. The customary hints as to Cowperwood's deviltry and trickery should ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... of the horses from their hocks to their silk noses, and every stitch of our riding gear, to be sure that no deviltry had been done. But we found nothing. Evidently Marks was merely spying out the land. Then we led the horses out for the journey. El Mahdi had to duck his head to get under the low doorway. It was good to see him sniff the cool air, his coat shining like a maid's ribbons, and then rise on ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post

... down, before Brackton's place, and riders lounging at the rail and step. Some of these men had been pleasant to Slone on earlier occasions. This day they seemed not to see him. Slone was tingling all over when he went into the store. Some deviltry was afoot! He had an angry thought that these riders could not have minds of their own. Just inside the door Slone encountered Wetherby, the young rancher from Durango. Slone spoke, but Wetherby only replied with ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey

... "how can you be such a combination of bigness and petty deviltry? You are a monster of self-indulgence. It's a God's mercy there aren't more men with ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips

... he said earnestly. "An' I've had a mighty hard time provin' my right to wear it. There's men that will tempt you out of pure deviltry, an' others that will try to shoot such a fancy out of your system. But I didn't wear the 'Square' because I wanted to—folks hung it onto me without me askin'. That's one reason I left Tombstone; I'd got tired of ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer

... acquainted with these rough youths to know that some deviltry was preparing, and, already furious with his bride and distrustful of the future, his self-command at last gave way. Drawing Fan away from the crowd he ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland

... and that I do all the deviltry and Henri gets sent to depot for it." He had called for something to eat, and looked up from ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray

... to keep from falling all over himself, and where she looks up fondly into his eyes and as though telling him to squeeze just as hard as it seemed necessary for his convenience, we should not wonder so much at the synod hauling him over the coals for cruelty to himself, but a cold quadrille has no deviltry in it. ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck

... like to know what especial kind of deviltry you young fry are up to this time," said Uncle Roger one evening, as he passed through the orchard with his gun on his ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... wink at a feller, but they do it because it's bad and not because it's sanctimonious, you bet. Then there are other girls who'd cut your throat with a razor while you're asleep. You bet they wouldn't be doing that if it was considered good. All men have got deviltry in 'em, and all women mischief. The women like the men for the deviltry, and it's the mischief in women that plays the devil with the men. It don't appear on the surface, but ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon

... case, but I think more often the bird, like my nighthawk, does it to please himself. There was no mate in sight when this nighthawk did his sky coasting, nor did any appear afterward. It was after the mating season and I think the bird did it in just pure joy in his own dare-deviltry. He liked to see how near he could come to breaking his neck without actually doing it. In the same way a male woodcock will keep up his shadow-dancing antics long after the nesting season is over, and ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... did not entirely participate in this roseate view it may have been because Enriquez, although a few years my senior, was much younger-looking, and with his demure deviltry of eye, and his upper lip close shaven for this occasion, he suggested a depraved acolyte rather than a responsible member of a family. Consuelo had also confided to me that her father—possibly owing to some rumors of our previous escapade—had forbidden any ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... "you're a plain bad one, Riley. You like deviltry for the sake of the deviltry itself. You ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand

... hardest to forget all about God, and to persuade myself that there ain't no such Person, but I can't manage it. The remembrance of my poor old mother's teaching sticks to me in spite of all I can do. I've tried," he continued with growing passion, "to drive it all out of my head by sheer deviltry and wickedness; I've done worse things than e'er another man on this here island, ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood

... It's rank. What,' he broke out violently again, 'what was he doing there in a cemetery after dark? Do you think that beastly Frenchman would have played such a trick on Craik here? Would he have tried his little game on me? Deviltry be it, if you prefer the word, and all deference to you, Mrs Lawford. But I know this—a couple of hundred years ago they would have burnt a man at the stake for less than a tenth of this. Ask Craik here. I don't know how, and I don't know when: his mother, I've ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare

... she observed. "I'd have a train o' beaux and macaronis at my heels, I warrant you! The foppier, the more it would please me. Think, cousin—ranks of them all a-simper, ogling me through a hundred quizzing-glasses! Heigho! There's doubtless some deviltry in ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers

... agin the world for shrewd deviltry," exclaimed Hardynge, unable to suppress his admiration even in the moment which told him of his own increased personal danger. "By some hook or crook, the Old Boy only knows what, they've found out my ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne

... the lumber business. Whereupon Mr. J. Augustus Redell, of the West Coast Trading Company, discovered the unprotected condition of the Ricks Lumber & Logging Company and promptly, in sheer wanton deviltry, proceeded to sew Cappy Ricks up on an order for a ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... his Saturday in town, Jack concocted a piece of deviltry which was as dangerous as it was foolish. The result was that an explosion took place, and the author of the gun-powder plot had all the skin on both hands blistered. Burnett, in escaping, fell and broke his collarbone and two ribs. The ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner

... cursed villain, I'll make you pay for your deviltry. You brought all this trouble upon me, ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody

... don't know whether all places is like these hyar mountings er not, but I knows thet the Lord didn't 'low fer men ter live blind, not seein' no beauty in nothin'; ner not feelin' nothin' but hate an' meanness—ner studyin' 'bout nothin' but deviltry. There hain't no better folks nowhar then my folks, an' thar hain't no meaner folks nowhar then them damned Hollmans, but thar's times when hit 'pears ter me thet the Lord Almighty hain't plumb tickled ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... comes to deviltry, Don Felipe has yet to meet his match. But as I was about to say: Six months after the marriage, Don Felipe deserted Pepita, then the child was born, and knowing that he would unhesitatingly make way with it should he learn of its existence, Joaquin and I took ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... our fellows, Lord; we are but weak and human men. When our devils do deviltry, curse Thou the doer and the deed,—curse them as we curse them, do to them all and more than ever they have done to innocence and ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois

... said Samson, as they were driving away on the Lake Road next morning. "The lake and river boatmen are the roughest fellers in the West, and they're not half as bad as they look an' talk. Their deviltry is all on the outside. They tell me that there isn't one o' those boys who wouldn't give his life to help a woman, ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller

... it was some deviltry," he muttered. "Oh, Lord! oh, Lord! would that I had made the oxen trample them into thousand pieces! They ought never to ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida

... doubt that a regularly organized system of child-stealing prevails in this country, and there are at this hour hundreds of mothers and fathers separated from their beloved offspring through the deviltry of these kidnappers. ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis

... mighty well that Carter would not concoct anything as crude as that, and wondered what deviltry ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley

... renegade, with sundry emphatic nods of the head, "I'm a sight more of a rascal than you ever dreamed on! and this snapping of you up by Injun deviltry, that you think so hard of, is but a small part of my misdoings: I've been slaving agin you this sixteen years, more of less, slaving (that's the word, for I made a niggur of myself) to rob you of these here very lands that I'm now thinking of helping you to! You don't believe me, captain! Well, ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird

... most of them. Eight hundred criminals, herded beneath one roof to be cured of their crimes by indifferent or threatening and hostile task-masters and irresponsible discipline-mongers, and by association with one another—a regimen of hell to extirpate deviltry! The twentieth century solution of the problem of evil, unaltered in ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... untiring energy with which the riders followed their course. Unfortunately, a majority of the red men were not always content to watch the Express in simple wonder. They were too frequently bent upon committing deviltry to refrain from doing harm ...
— The Story of the Pony Express • Glenn D. Bradley

... stock-market sub-cellars and rat-holes of State, Broad, and Wall streets crept those wriggling, slimy snakes of bastard rumors which, seemingly fatherless and motherless, have in reality multi-parents who beget them with a deviltry of intention: "George Westinghouse had mismanaged his companies"; "George Westinghouse, because of gross extravagance, had spread himself and his companies until they were involved beyond extrication unless by consolidation ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... should it be but Pepe the rash, Pepe the personification of Figaro: a character impossible for northern people to place outside of a madhouse, yet daily to be found in southern Europe. Rash, headstrong, full of deviltry, splendid appetite, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... of malignant deviltry, born of spite and alcohol, bobbed up in Joses's heart. He ducked behind the hedge, opened his umbrella suddenly, ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant

... be entirely too long. It is safe to say, however, that no one could possibly fail to be carried along by the torrent of fiery narration which marks these wonderful tales.... Never was the marvelous deviltry of the Jesuits so portrayed. Never were the horrors of war painted in ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl

... the other hand, was not so philosophical. As he strolled down the valley, his mind was deeply agitated. It seemed clear to him that a grave question had been propounded at the council, and it could only have originated through some deviltry on the part of the evil spirits of the Turquoise clan, Tyope and the old Naua. This made him very angry, and he vowed within himself that when the time came he would take a very ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... once. I cared so much for him that when he died I couldn't bear the thought of ever getting another in his place. He was a friend—you understand? The Captain's only a pal. I'm fond of the Captain—all the fonder because of the spice of deviltry there is in all cats. But I loved my dog. There isn't any devil in a good dog. That's why they're more lovable than cats—but I'm ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... to. There wasn't a loophole left open to me. There wasn't a single point at which I could bring attack against Brokaw and the others. They were six veritable Bismarcks of deviltry and shrewdness. They hadn't over-stepped the law. They had sold a million and a quarter of stock on a hundred-thousand-dollar investment, but Brokaw only laughed when I raged at this. 'Why, Philip,' he said, 'we value our license alone at over a million!' ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood

... brule had mentioned the name of the drunken lumber-jack who had baited her Pierre to his death, and in the old woman's brain the name of Moncrossen was the symbol of all black deviltry. ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx

... will rage for months to come. To go south is equally suicidal, since it would take us into the heart of the insurrection. I repeat that there is but one thing to be done: that is to push northward, as I said, until we reach a people too far removed to be affected by this deviltry." ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis



Words linked to "Deviltry" :   blaze, immorality, misdeed, wickedness, roguishness, monkey business, devilment, mischief-making, devil, hell, devilry



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