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Whirl   /wərl/  /hwərl/   Listen
Whirl

noun
1.
Confused movement.  Synonym: commotion.  "A commotion of people fought for the exits"
2.
The shape of something rotating rapidly.  Synonyms: convolution, swirl, vortex.
3.
A usually brief attempt.  Synonyms: crack, fling, go, offer, pass.  "I gave it a whirl"
4.
The act of rotating rapidly.  Synonyms: spin, twirl, twist, twisting.  "It broke off after much twisting"



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"Whirl" Quotes from Famous Books



... so fiercely that I was scared to see it. I had seen the sea in storm; but then one does not put to sea in a storm. This waterfall tumbled daily, even in a calm. I shuddered to think of small boats, caught in the current above it, being drawn down, slowly at first, then with a whirl, till all was whelmed in the tumble below the arches. I saw how hatefully the back wash seemed to saunter back to the fall along the banks. I thought that if I was not careful I might be caught in the back wash, drawn slowly along it by the undertow, ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield

... the castle hall and found it full of noble ladies and knights, servants, waiting maids, flower girls, all motionless and yet the flush of life on their cheeks. The dancers seemed about to whirl away in the waltz; the musicians bent over their violins; and a servant was in the act of passing cakes to the guests—yet they all held the same fixed position, and had since that day years before when ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... his room and lay staring out at the stars of the summer night, his whole being in a whirl. What was it all? There was a life so different from what he knew it. What was there outside his knowledge, how much? What was this that he had touched? What was he in this new influence? What did everything mean? Where was life, in that which he ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... for a moment in bewilderment. Then she pursed up her lips and shook her stern, brown face in disapproval. But she pushed the little pistol into its hiding-place, all the same, and she rode with her thoughts in a whirl. Could this indeed be she, Eliza Adams, of Boston, whose narrow, happy life had oscillated between the comfortable house in Commonwealth Avenue and the Tremont Presbyterian Church? Here she was, hunched upon a camel, with her hand upon the butt of a pistol, and her mind ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle

... for instance, that he, Jimmie Dale, millionaire clubman, riding here in his limousine, was the Gray Seal, and this great, teeming, though orderly, Fifth Avenue would be transformed like magic into a seething, screaming whirl of madmen, and—he did not care to follow that trend of thought. He was quite ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... still all in a whirl, D'Aguesseau went up to the room of his brother, "M. de Valjouan, a sort of Epicurean (voluptueux) philosopher, with plenty of wit and learning, but altogether one of the oddest creatures." He found him in his dressing-gown, smoking in front of the fire. "Brother," said he, as he entered, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... fleece-like floor By the midnight breezes strewn; And wherever the beat of her unseen feet, Which only the angels hear, May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof, The Stars peep behind her and peer. And I laugh to see them whirl and flee Like a swarm of golden bees, When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,— Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas, Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high, Are each pav'd ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... as if he stood outside of himself and heard others talking of him. He felt himself grasped under the arms, and the pain of being moved was too horrible to be endured. He shrieked in mortal agony, and then in a whirl of dizzying circles seemed to go down in a tide of blackness sparkling with millions of ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates

... shelter of the rock wall. The old man hurtled to the heads of the shivering bronchos, gripping both bridles. A splintering crash that rocketted from crag to crag and rumbled below their feet; and the thing was over quick as it had come. The funnelling whirl of clouds eddied over the Pass behind the Holy Cross Mountain; the opal peak radiant and dazzling above the Valley; the air a burst of yellow sunlight quivering in the smoking rain mist; the red battlement rocks above dripping and bare; ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... Bible. "King James!" cry some, "King Monmouth!" say the peasants. "King Jesus!" says the Fifth Monarchy man. "No King at all!" cry Master Wade and a few others who are for a Commonwealth. Since I set foot on the Helderenbergh at Amsterdam, my head hath been in a whirl with trying to understand what it is that ye desire, for before I have got to the end of one man's tale, and begin to see a little through the finsterniss, another will come with another story, and I am in as evil a case as ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... to be pursued, and, as he foresaw what was coming, in urging the king himself to leave France. All his efforts and all his advice, like those of other intelligent men who kept their heads during the whirl of the Revolution, were ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt

... dismemberments and the deadliest battles and wrecks and the wildest fury of the elements and the power of the sea and the motion of nature and the throes of human desires and dignity and hate and love? It is that something in the soul which says, Rage on, Whirl on, I tread master here and everywhere, Master of the spasms of the sky and of the shatter of the sea, Master of nature and passion and death, And of all ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... meadow which no scythe has shaven, 425 Which rain could never bend, or whirl-blast shake, With the Antarctic constellations paven, Canopus and his crew, lay the Austral lake— There she would build herself a windless haven Out of the clouds whose moving turrets make 430 The bastions ...
— The Witch of Atlas • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... innocent and warm-hearted childhood. He sighed for a finer and a sweeter sympathy than was ever yielded by the roof which he had lately quitted; a habitation, but not a home. He conjured up the picture of his guardian, existing in a whirl of official bustle and social excitement. A dreamy reminiscence of finer impulses stole over the heart of Cadurcis. The dazzling pageant of metropolitan splendour faded away before the bright scene ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli

... good; it is impossible to hear God's voice in a whirl of visits. You must be more or less in the desert, to use the scales of the Sanctuary, to see and weigh the true value of ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill

... supposed to appear sometimes breaking through the earth. Personally, I believed that the ajie was a clever ruse of the Bororo men, in order to keep their women at home when they went on hunting expeditions. Boys were trained to whirl round from the end of a long pole a rectangular, flat piece of wood attached to a long fibre or a string. Its violent rotation round the pole, with the revolutions of the tablet around itself at different speeds, reproduced to perfection the sounds of blowing and snorting of the ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... "What a dizzy whirl! What a succession of breathless shocks! What a strain on both muscles and nerves! By the least negligence or slip, or by the loss of presence of mind for one moment, we should have been thrown ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion

... feeling a desire for solitude and for a last long look at the earth, he crossed the top of the ridge on the slope of which they had camped, and lay down on the farther side. The South wind in the upper air rushed along in the mighty whirl, occasionally carrying filmy clouds across the faces of the moons; but about Ayrault all was still, and he felt a quiet and serene repose. He had every intention of remaining awake, and was pondering on the steadfastness of the human heart and the constancy of love, when his meditations ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor

... Staying the flight, tribune, centurion, From heat of carnage 'neath th' enduring sun Breathe blood, and smell its savour as they shout. With haggard eyes, that count the dead about, Each spearman marks the archers, all undone, Whirl like heaped leaves before Euroclydon. From the brown faces sweat falls ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various

... my coat's powdered chalk, not the dust of the diamond That only last night sparkled there, By the galop's wild whirl shower'd down on my shoulder From turbulent tresses ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.

... attentions which the king was apparently devoting to her were due mainly to his desire to enjoy the society of the beautiful and agreeable Mistress of the Robes. The dauphiness was annoyed. Naturally of a retiring disposition, very fond of books and of music, she soon wearied of the perpetual whirl of fashion and frivolity, and gradually withdrew as much as possible from the society of the court. She imbibed a strong dislike to Madame de Maintenon, which dislike Madame de Montespan did every thing in her power to increase. The dauphiness became ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott

... snorted and whirled against each other, spurs rattled, and leather creaked as the men leaped into their saddles. With a thunder of hoofs, a whirl of white dust, the slapping of quirts and ropes against horses' flanks, the wicked bark of forty-fives, and a series of Comanche-like yells the cowboys dashed out onto the flat. Once more Tex Benton found himself ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx

... Street. It was hard indeed to recognize the unshaven, unwashed, and unkempt "arrival" one met on the principal staircase at night in the scrupulously neat stranger one sat opposite to at breakfast the next morning. In this daily whirl of mutation all identity was swamped, as ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... and full of suggestion, but like all other questions having to do with magnetism, they hold for the present generation the double fascination of insoluble mystery. To be sure, one may readily enough suggest that if magnetism be really a whirl in the ether, this whirl is apparently interfered with by the waves of radiant heat; or, again, that magnetism is presumably due to molecular motions which are apparently interfered with by another kind of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams

... out of the house and closed the door. A whirl of thoughts ran through her brain. For a moment she felt like laughing, and then what there was in her of her father's shrewdness came to her rescue. "Why shouldn't I do it?" she thought. "Here's my chance. This man is excited and upset now, but ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson

... Lawd!" he said, taking her by the arm and giving her a whirl, "we've done foun' your mudder's stifficut in de letters whar she put it an' tied 'em wid her weddin' ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes

... Pendle was enveloped in a whirl of petticoats, as Cargrim's Amazonian escort, prompted by the chaplain, was insisting that he should have his fortune told by Mother Jael. The bishop looked perturbed on hearing that his red-cloaked phantom was so close at hand, but he managed to keep ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... a fascination and witchery which is perfectly irresistible. They generally receive their education at the convents, and go into society at a very early age, very frequently before they have seen sixteen summers, and after this time the whirl of amusement precludes them from giving much time to literary employments. They are by no means deeply read, and few of them play anything more than modern dance music. They dance beautifully, and so great is their passion for this amusement, probably derived from their French ancestors, ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... one. The feet of your madness walk solemnly over you. They kick gravely at a carcass. Lie beneath them and watch Mallare dance away, whirl away with lecherous shadows in his arms. But she will die too. I am thinking of death. Mallare the egoist asks ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht

... the hem of her skirt, and courtesied low, then away in a dreamy whirl she sped, turning to look over her shoulder, and laugh at the ...
— Dorothy Dainty at the Mountains • Amy Brooks

... of girl I thought myself. And I dont know what sort of person you really are, or what sort of person father really is. I wonder what he would say or do if he had an angry brute of a policeman twisting his arm with one hand and rushing him along by the nape of his neck with the other. He couldnt whirl his leg like a windmill and knock a policeman down by a glorious kick on the helmet. Oh, if theyd all fought as we two ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw

... winter, Mrs. Groome having been dead nearly two years. The new floor of the large drawing-room had been laid for dancing, and their friends formed a habit, when there was "nothing on" elsewhere, of telephoning and announcing they were coming up to take a whirl. This led to more telephoning, and some twenty couples would dance in the long-silent old house at least once and ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton

... for centuries either in part or altogether a province. Now and then above the mist we see the whirl of Sarsfield's sword, the red battle-hand of O'Neill, and the points of O'Connor's spears; but 'tis a view through eight hundred years to recognise the Sunburst on a field of liberating victory. Reckoning ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... black eyes would be blazing with excitement. Leaving me to go down to the cellar, he would rush wildly to the barn and begin to send me signals along his experimental wires. If I noticed any improvement in his machine, he would be delighted. He would leap and whirl around in one of his 'war-dances' and then go contentedly to bed. But if the experiment was a failure, he would go back to his workbench ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson

... Eddie Glass. Perry Hale, who played fullback my sophomore year, was a great interferer. He was big, and strong and fast. On a straight buck through tackle, when he would be behind me, if there was not a hole in the proper place, he would whirl me all the way round and shoot me through a hole somewhere else. It would, of course, act as an impromptu delayed play. In one game I remember making a forty yard run to a touchdown ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards

... there is a small grove of trees clustered about the courthouse which is a very busy place during the nights of summer. Here, before the first of July, Purple Martins begin to collect of an evening. In companies of hundreds and thousands, they whirl about over the tops of the houses, alight in the trees, and then almost {67} immediately dash upward and away again. Not till dark do they finally settle to roost. Until late at night a great chorus of voices may be heard among the branches. The multitude increases ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson

... in a whirl of sensations and recollections that made of the Oxford streets an "insubstantial fairy place," where ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... dreams not at what cost 25 The quivering millstones hum and whirl, Nor how for every turn are tost Armfuls ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... to feed them during the bad weather, and it was often a difficult task even before Jack came on the scene to mix himself in my affairs. The Land's End is, I believe, the windiest place in the world, and when I opened the window and threw the scraps out the wind would catch and whirl them away like so many feathers over the garden wall, and I could not see what became of them. It was necessary to go out by the kitchen door at the back (the front door facing the sea being impossible) and scatter the food on the ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... exhausts the terror or pity by an unlimited indulgence of it: grapples with impossibilities in its desperate impatience of restraint: throws us back upon the past, forward into the future: brings every moment of our being or object of nature in startling review before us: and in the rapid whirl of events, lifts us from the depths of woe to the highest contemplations on human life. When Lear says of Edgar, "Nothing but his unkind daughters could have brought him to this", what a bewildered amazement, what a wrench of the imagination, that cannot be brought to conceive ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... spoken of now, except in Lamb's artfully simple phrase "I never saw anything like it," and the final speeches of Flamineo and his sister deserve the same endorsement. Nor is even the proud farewell of the Moor Zanche unworthy. It is impossible to describe the "whirl of spirits" (as the good old-fashioned phrase has it) into which the reading of this play sets the reader, except by saying that the cause of that whirl is the secret of the best Elizabethan writers, and that it is nowhere, out of Shakespere, better exemplified than in the ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... flying in rags and fragments from wave to wave; and finally conceive the surges themselves in their utmost pitch of power, velocity, vastness, and madness, lifting themselves in precipices and peaks, furrowed with their whirl of ascent, through all this chaos; and you will understand that there is indeed no distinction left between the sea and air; that no object, nor horizon, nor any landmark or natural evidence of position is left; that ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various

... shrieking of the stormy wind, came another sound—the loud jingling of sleigh-bells. Dimly through the fluttering whiteness of the snow-storm she saw the sleighs whirl up to the door, and their occupants, in a tumult of laughter, hurrying rapidly into the house. She could hear those merry laughs, those feminine tones, and the pattering of gaitered feet up the stairs. She could hear the deeper ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming

... are you mad?" Paul uttered these words as he sprang to the wheel, which he made whirl with his own hands in the required direction. As for the seaman, he yielded his hold without resistance, and fell like a log, as the wheel flew round. A ball had entered his back, and passed through his heart, and yet he had stood steadily to the spokes, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... Man! Once too—but no—it could not be— 'Twas fancy all—yet once she thought, While yet her fading eyes could see High on the ruined deck she caught A glimpse of that unearthly form, That glory of her soul,—even then, Amid the whirl of wreck and storm, Shining above his fellow-men, As on some black and troublous night The Star of EGYPT,[250] whose proud light Never hath beamed on those who rest In the White Islands of the West, Burns thro' the storm with looks of flame That put Heaven's ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... goal did not look very promising, as he drew near. A pall of smoke hung low over the narrow streets, tall chimneys sent black clouds into the biting air, and there was the clang and whirl of machinery, and the throb of huge hammers going on ...
— Dick Lionheart • Mary Rowles Jarvis

... to think; but he could not think. His faculties were in a whirl—he could by no means command them. He could only wait, inert, while the dance went on. It was an extremely riotous dance. The Duchessa's conversation was reproduced without sequence, without coherence—scattered fragments of it were flashed before ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland

... influence. "When the winds waken, and lift and winnow the immensity of sand, the air itself is a dim sand-air, and dim looming through it, the wonderfullest uncertain colonnades of sand-pillars whirl from this side and from that, like so many spinning dervishes, of a hundred feet of stature, and dance ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... Agatha. And then steadfastly regarding him whom she had tacitly accepted as her husband, the guide and ruler of her whole life—her self-possession failed. A great timidity, almost amounting to terror, came over her. Vaguely she felt the want of something unknown—something which in the whirl of her destiny she could grasp and hold by, sure that she held fast to the right. It was the one emotion, neither regard, liking, honour, or esteem, yet including and surpassing all—the love, strong, pure love, ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)

... his fist full in the face of one of the yelling savages, and in a moment got possession of the spear which he had poised, while the whirl of Hassan's blade cleared our path. I heard the whirr of a spear as it narrowly missed my head and pierced the ground before me. Wrenching it out of the hard ground I followed Hassan and Denviers as they darted up ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... Captain Jonathan Wellsby fidgeted and gnawed his lip, with a telescope at his eye, while he watched the conflict in which he could scarce distinguish friend from foe. He could see Blackbeard charge aft to rally his men and then whirl back to lunge into the melee where towered Colonel Stuart's tall figure. The powder smoke from pistols and muskets drifted in a thin blue haze. Joe Hawkridge was fairly shaking with nervousness as he said ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... 5, '94. Dear Benny—I was intending to answer your letter to-day, but I am away down town, and will simply whirl together a sentence or two for good-fellowship. I have bought photographs of Coquelin and Jane Hading and will ask them to sign them. I shall meet Coquelin tomorrow night, and if Hading is not present I will send her ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... from the saddle, and put my lantern on the ground, and tried to drag him forward, but it was useless. He would not have stirred if I had lighted a fire under him. When he had the instinct to stand still, nothing would make him budge a yard. A very fierce gust came upon me then. The snow seemed to whirl upon me from all sides, so that I got giddy and sick. And then, just at the moment, there were horses and voices all about me, coming from Salcombe way. Somebody called out, "Hullo," and somebody called out "Look out, behind"; and then a lot of horses pulled ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield

... directed against the hired cabriolet, the humble fly, or the rumbling hackney-coach, which enables a man of the poorer class to escape for a few hours from the smoke and dirt, in the midst of which he has been confined throughout the week: while the escutcheoned carriage and the dashing cab, may whirl their wealthy owners to Sunday feasts and private oratorios, setting constables, informers, and penalties, at defiance. Again, in the description of the places of public resort which it is rendered criminal to attend on Sunday, there ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens

... introduction to the Big M Ranch is going to be in a whirl of excitement, fellows. I've noticed that somehow we seem to stir up things wherever we go; not that we mean to have things happen, but they just pick out such a time to play hob," said Jerry, shaking his head as ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen

... a sleight-of-hand trick, it will take very little practice to cause the coin to disappear instantly. Take a quarter of a dollar between the thumb and finger, as shown, and by a rapid twist of the fingers whirl the coin and at the same time close the hand, and the coin will disappear up your coat sleeve. On opening the hand the coin will not be seen. Take three quarters and hold one in the palm of the left hand, place the other two, one between ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... I sat at the breakfast table gazing vacantly around me, my mind was in a state of inexpressible misery; there was a whirl in my brain, probably like that which people feel who are rapidly going mad; this increased to such a degree that I felt giddiness coming upon me. To abate this feeling I no longer permitted my eyes to wander about, but fixed them upon an object on ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... if some strong hand had lifted me out of a whirl of troubled waters, and set me safely upon a rock. I ran down into the salon, where Monsieur Laurentie was seated, as tranquilly as if he had never been away, in his high-backed arm-chair, smiling quietly at Minima's gambols of delight, which ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton

... finally set foot on the land we had been so long trying to reach. Our advent created a great commotion among the myriads of birds that frequent the ledges and cliffs, and the intrusion caused them to whirl about in a motley cloud and scream at each other in ceaseless uproar. A few minutes sufficed to survey the situation, before attempting to ascend at a spot that seemed scarcely to afford footing for a goat. Near the foot of the cliffs were seen on the one hand several detached ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse

... here twenty-four hours. The Princess will put an end to this horrible scandal; for I shall immediately inform her of what has passed. To go out in the night! Re-enter at eight o'clock in the morning! Why, I am all in a whirl! Certainly, if I had not seen it with my own eyes, I could not have believed it! Still, it is only what was to be expected. It will astonish nobody. Assuredly not! All those to whom I am going to relate it, will say, I am quite sure, that it is not at all astonishing! ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... (Dispatch to The London Daily News.)—This week—a week of many significant things—has ended in the wildest whirl of weather imaginable. The rains have been terrific, blinding, tropical in their almost ceaseless roar and fury. Surely only madmen or fiends would fight in such an elemental maelstrom. We may be both, and perhaps we are, ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times

... in a whirl at this sudden, unaccountable change. "Can't I kiss you again?" But Trina was firm now. When it came to his pleading—a mere matter of words—she ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... this he held up an enormous fist covered with freckles. Someone again shouted, "Drink!" and Nejdanov again swallowed a glass of the filthy poison. But this second time was truly awful! Blunt hooks seemed to be tearing him to pieces inside. His head was in a whirl, green circles swam before his eyes. A hubbub arose... Oh horror! a third glass. Was it possible he emptied that too? He seemed to be surrounded by purple noses, dusty heads of hair, tanned necks covered ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev

... compliment—the double-jointed clown to assist the Signora Cavalcanti to her seat upon the celebrated Arabian. How lovely looks the lady, as she vaults to her feet upon the breadth of the yielding saddle! With what inimitable grace does she whirl these tiny banners around her head, as winningly as a Titania performing the sword exercise! How coyly does she dispose her garments and floating drapery to hide the too-maddening symmetry of her limbs! Gods! She is transformed all at once into an Amazon—the ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun

... scene of the opera represents the charmed grotto where Venus gently seeks to beguile the discontented knight, while nymphs, loves, bacchantes, and lovers whirl about in the graceful mazes of the dance, or pose in charming attitudes. Seeing Tannhaeuser's abstraction and evident sadness, Venus artfully questions him, and when he confesses his homesickness, and his intense longing to revisit the earth, she ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber

... drawings and calculations, and I sat by the fire in the barrack room, that is, in their sitting-room, trying to read, but with my head in a whirl of excitement about Arrowfield, when my father came in, laid his hand on my head, ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn

... within him. His importunities had succeeded, he thought. At all events, his opportunity had come; for the telegram informed him of his appointment to the Punjab Commission. He sat for a moment with his thoughts in a whirl. He could hardly believe the good news. He had longed so desperately for this one chance that it had seemed to him of late impossible that he should ever obtain it. Yet here it had come to him, and upon that his neighbour jogged him in ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason

... when she, a happy girl, Had home and parents and a numerous kin; But on an Eastertide, amid a whirl Of pillage, murder, and the savage din Of plundering Kavasses, the Pacha saw Her budding beauty, and ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous

... be in the Bodnick Bay a Whirl-pool, as is related to be in the Sea of Norway, which is commonly call'd the Maal-stroom? And whether there be any Signs, that speak the communication of those Gulphs by subterraneous passages; as the Jesuit Kircher affirms in his ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various

... babe to boy, from boy to youth he grew, But more in grace and knowledge than in years. At play his joyous laugh rang loud and clear, His foot was fleetest in all boyish games, And strong his arm, and steady nerve and eye, To whirl the quoit and send the arrow home; Yet seeming oft to strive, he'd check his speed And miss his mark to let a comrade win. In fullness of young life he climbed the cliffs Where human foot had never trod before. He led the chase, but when ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles

... very severe, and barked and shouted at me and the horse, keeping us doing the same things over and over again, and growing more exacting as we went on. But I hardly noticed him, for my head was all in a whirl, and I was thinking about after lessons, and what would happen then. So occupied was I with my thoughts that I never once felt nervous, but as if all I had to do was to sit still and let the horse obey ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn

... gathered into an immense ring, and dancing round the tall skeleton, who continued beating his drum, and uttering a strange gibbering sound, which was echoed by the others. Each moment the dancers increased the swiftness of their pace, until at last it grew to a giddy whirl, and then, all at once, with a shriek of laughter, the whole ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth

... of the snow-clad range of the Alps—in the hour when for the first time I stood before the cataracts of Niagara, I seemed to see a vision of the fears and hopes of America. It was midnight, the moon was full, and I saw from the Suspension Bridge the ceaseless contortion, confusion, whirl, and chaos, which burst forth in clouds of foam from that immense central chasm which divides the American from the British dominion; and as I looked on that ever-changing movement, and listened to ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... expectancy, while Isagani paused and turned pale. A carriage drawn by a pair of well-known white horses had stopped at the door. It was that of Paulita Gomez, and she had already jumped down, light as a bird, without giving the rascals time to see her foot. With a bewitching whirl of her body and a sweep of her hand she arranged the folds of her skirt, shot a rapid and apparently careless glance toward Isagani, spoke to him and smiled. Dona Victorina descended in her turn, ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal

... let some chosen strain Of HANDEL gently recreate the sense, And give the silent heart to tender joy. Pass on to the hoar cataract,[67] that foams Through the dark fissures of the riven rock; Prone-rushing it descends, and with white whirl, 200 Save where some silent shady pool receives Its dash; thence bursting, with collected sweep, And hollow sound, it hurries, till it falls Foaming in the wild stream that winds below. Dark trees, that to the mountain's height ascend, O'ershade with pendent boughs its ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles

... her way of thinking. Lottie had found Hemstead more interesting than she had expected, and had foolishly and recklessly permitted a mere sentiment for him to develop, which, in her case, would end with the visit, and soon be forgotten in the mad whirl of New York gayety. "But with Mr. Hemstead," concluded Bel, "it will be a very different affair. He is one of the kind that will brood over such a disappointment and wrong to the end ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... dim whirl of pictures swept through my consciousness. I was on the bottom of the ocean. Shadowy shapes swept by silently, and from above, a dim bluish light filtered down on a scene such as mortal eyes have ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various

... have they an adhesion to the firmament, as they who are ignorant of natural philosophy affirm. For the sky, which is thin, transparent, and suffused with an equal heat, does not seem by its nature to have power to whirl about the stars, or to be proper to contain them. The fixed stars, therefore, have their own sphere, separate and free from any conjunction with the sky. Their perpetual courses, with that admirable and incredible regularity of theirs, so plainly declare a divine power ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... people did I find myself sadly dreaming of that grey pongee skirt and the beautiful heart that had understood! Should I ever see that lady? Not, I knew, alas! in the whirl about Poor Jr.! As soon look for a nun at the ...
— The Beautiful Lady • Booth Tarkington

... his mother joined us, long rambles through the woods and meadows which we took alone, little dinners at the numberless shore resorts, all these made a whirl of enjoyment for me unlike anything I ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison

... her own. Sophia had little or no inclination for the excitement and tumult of fashionable pleasures; and therefore she was left much to herself, alone and dependent upon her own resources to beguile her time, while her mother and sister were abroad in the giddy whirl of patrician dissipation. ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn

... alas, even cross,—totally irresponsive to anything but the stitching of jean pantaloons,—the Angel would grow tired of the stuffy room and long for the forbidden dangers and delights of Tenement sidewalks. Then, often, with nothing else to do, she would catch up her tiny skirts and whirl herself into the dance Norma had taught her, in and out among the furniture crowding the room, humming little broken snatches of music for herself, bending, swaying, her bright eyes full of laughter as they met Mary's tired ones, her curls bobbing, until ...
— The Angel of the Tenement • George Madden Martin

... feet high, which make about 1,000 revolutions a minute. These have false interiors of wire gauze, and the mass is forced violently against their sides by centrifugal action, and they let the treacle whirl through, and retain the sugar crystals, which lie in a dry heap ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... again and, while preparing to take another run, repeat the feat, and, if her buoyancy held out, try to whirl around twice, which she had never failed to accomplish on the low rope, she could not resist the temptation of casting a hasty glance at Lienhard; she had never ascended to the steeple without ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... am to pray to Bibi Miriam, and I am a Sahib.' He looked at his boots ruefully. 'No; I am Kim. This is the great world, and I am only Kim. Who is Kim?' He considered his own identity, a thing he had never done before, till his head swam. He was one insignificant person in all this roaring whirl of India, going southward to he knew ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling

... the hall through the lattices of the screen. They saw forty or fifty couples whirling slowly round and round to the irresistible measure; some were stiff and awkward, palpably shy; some with invincible propriety whirled upright and rigid, like toys wound up to whirl; some were abandoned to the measure with madness, with passion, with a corybantic joy. Here and there a girl leaned as if swooning in her lover's arms; her head hung back; her lower lip drooped; her face showed the looseness and blankness of a sensuous stupor. Other faces, ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair

... letter in a whirl of mingled feelings. That Jack Smith had got the situation I could not help being glad. But that I had lost it was simply crushing. Although I had kept reminding myself all along in words that the chances were very remote, I yet discovered how I had at ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... wheel, whirl, revolve, rotate, turn, gyrate, spin, trundle, circumgyrate; inwrap, infold, convolve; wallow, welter; rock, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... how soft they were and warm!—he folded them in his own and drew her closer to himself ... the flowers she held fell from her grasp, and lay in a tumbled fragrant heap between them. His brain was in a whirl—the Past and the Future—the Real and the Unreal— the Finite and the Infinite—seemed all merging into one another without any shade ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... turnpikes, and a whirl Of wheels, and roar of voices, and confusion, Here taverns wooing to a pint of 'purl,' There mails fast flying off, ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... here and there, Whirl'd on each place, as place that vengeance brought, So was her mind continually in fear, Toss'd and tormented with the tedious thought Of those detested crimes which she had wrought; With dreadful cheer, and looks thrown to the sky, Wishing for death, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... whirled above, and swooped among them. They peppered Staines all over like shot. They stuck in his beard, and all over him; they clogged the bushes, carpeted the ground, while the darkened air sang as with the whirl of machinery. Every bird in the air, and beast of the field, granivorous or carnivorous, was gorged with them; and to these animals was added man, for Staines, being famished, and remembering the vrow Bulteel, lighted a fire, and roasted a ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... my brain a whirl, "is what you told me really true: that Osborne has become a victim to the ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux

... her work waiting for her, and she took it up with her usual readiness; but it was hard to settle into the regular school routine after the exciting whirl of that gay fortnight. Cards had come from Floyd and Harold, but the absence of the latter when she left them was not even mentioned. This she could not understand, for she had expected an apology ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd

... right to send her home, thinking that she might be a comfort to his mother. "And not knowing all that was going to happen!" said poor Anne, with an irrepressible sigh, both for her own blighted hopes, and for the whirl into which her ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... high praise bestowed on her by all parties, "which seemed to promise so auspiciously for her reign." But so far from putting himself forward or being thrust forward by their common friends as an aspirant for her hand, while she was yet only on the edge of that strong tide and giddy whirl of imposing power and dazzling adulation which was too likely to sweep her beyond his grasp, it was resolved by King Leopold and the kindred who were most concerned in the relations of the couple, that, to give time for matters to settle down, for the young Queen to know her ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler

... inventors have, it would seem, almost exhausted themselves in producing means for improvement; where think you, would the busy man find himself were it not for the opportunities open at every hand enabling him to keep in the whirl? ...
— Silver Links • Various

... all Jack's assurances, felt terribly anxious lest, after all, something should at the last moment go wrong, looked fearfully at the little craft's stern, expecting every instant to see the foaming whirl of water there which would proclaim that the boat's propeller was working; but, save for a very slight momentary disturbance of the scummy surface, there was no result, and presently a very excited individual was seen ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood

... distance, and entering into combination, took unto themselves the gyratory motion of the subsided vortices, and seemed to form the germ of another more vast. Suddenly—very suddenly—this assumed a distinct and definite existence, in a circle of more than a mile in diameter. The edge of the whirl was represented by a broad belt of gleaming spray; but no particle of this slipped into the mouth of the terrific funnel, whose interior, as far as the eye could fathom it, was a smooth, shining, and jet-black wall of water, inclined to the horizon ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... do? Why, come back to town next year and pick up the threads. My nerves, which seemed a little out of the way, are better than they were when I came here. There's nothing to equal country air. I must have that whirl in my district yet. I don't think the boys have quite forgotten me. Have you noticed the drift at all? I could only judge from the papers. How are things in ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo

... settled, just like that. The rush in which both parties got under way on Monday made Nan's head whirl. Momsey was to buy a few necessary things in New York before she boarded the steamer. Nan had a plentiful supply of warm winter clothing, and she ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr

... WHIRL, OR ROPE-WINCH. Small hooks fastened into cylindrical pieces of wood which communicate by a leather strap with a spoke-wheel, whereby three of them are set in motion at once. Used for spinning yarn for ropes. Now more commonly made ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... one of these obstructions, for the light boats were whirled about like a feather on the torrent, and the paddlers could do but little to guide their course. The very strength of the torrent, however, saved them from destruction, the whirl from the rocks sweeping the boat's head aside when within a few feet of them, and driving it past the danger before they had time to realize that they had escaped wreck. Half an hour of this, and a side ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty

... travel with. What she needs is constant companionship, bright talk, excitement. She has come away from London, where she swims with the crowd; she has no resources of her own, no work, no head, no interests. Accustomed to a whirl of foolish gaieties, she wearies her small brain; thrown back upon herself, she bores herself at once, because she has nothing interesting to tell herself. She absolutely requires somebody else to interest her. ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... old cathedral, which overwhelmed him with astonishment and delight. He would have liked to linger for hours and gaze upon that splendid triumph of architecture, but he needs must go forward with the rest, however reluctantly. The wonderful and unceasing whirl and confusion in the narrow, crowded streets, through which they made their way slowly, and not without difficulty, perplexed and distracted him, accustomed as he had been all his life to the vast solitude of the Landes, and the deathly stillness ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... a cow ranch and all the fripperies of civilization, too. Not very well. I—I guess I am longing for the flesh-pots of Egypt. Perhaps poor dad did, too. Well, I'll give them a whirl. ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe

... find some place to sleep in," cried Knut—but this was more easily said than done. The moment they tried to turn the canoe in towards the shore, it began to whirl round and round; and finally striking against a stone, it upset the two little Bears into the middle of the ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry

... and tide forever run? Will never my winds go sleep in the west? Will never my wheels which whirl the sun And ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various

... over the various details of the plan, and then she took her leave, darting along the passage as swiftly as a greyhound and as silently as a ghost. I sat down to think upon what I had undertaken, but my mind was in a whirl. Strangely enough, I, the victor of a single duel, did not shrink from the idea of killing the two guards—or as many as there might be. Perhaps this was because they were sure to be rascals whose lives one could not value very highly, especially as against that of the Countess. Nor did I feel ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens

... steadily, heavily, drearily. Beat off the fading leaves and flatten them into shapeless patterns on the soaking floor. Fall and slant and flatten, and, if you will, weep. Blow wind, through the creaking branches, blow about the whispering corners; parley there outside my window; whirl and drive the brown leaves into hiding, and if I am sad, sigh ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp

... were at dinner to-day a sudden whirl-wind sprang up and sent a lot of my loose papers, from where I had been writing, careering so wildly into the air, that I was in great consternation lest I should lose several sheets of my journal, and find my imagination put to the test of inventing a new ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... curls of smoke, the bursting fires Climb in tall pyramids above the spires, Concentring all the winds; whose forces, driven With equal rage from every point of heaven, Whirl into conflict, round the scantling pour The twisting flames and thro the rafters roar, Suck up the cinders, send them sailing far, To warn the nations of the raging war, Bend high the blazing vortex, swell'd and curl'd, Careering, brightening o'er the lustred ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... within her welled her misgivings; for the first time she admitted to herself that she was sorry that she had tried to do this thing which Mr. Templeton had told her was madness. She hesitated, sitting her horse at the gate, with half a mind to whirl and ride back whence she had come. And then, with an inward rebuke to her own timidity, she dismounted and hurried along the weed bordered walk, and knocked at ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory

... own way, by saying, "Even so, Father, for so it seemeth good in thy sight." He wrote to Mr. Grierson again, January 5, 1839: "I hope this affliction will be blessed to me. I always feel much need of God's afflicting hand. In the whirl of active labor there is so little time for watching, and for bewailing, and seeking grace to oppose the sins of our ministry, that I always feel it a blessed thing when the Saviour takes me aside from the crowd, as He took the blind man out of the town, and removes ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar

... embrace set to music. Having learned to dance, its fascinations led her an enthusiastic captive. Modesty was crucified, decency outraged, virtue lost its power over her soul, and she spent her days dreaming of the delights of the sensual whirl of the evening. Hardly conscious of the change she had now become as bold as any of the women, and loved the embrace of the charmer. The graduation of the class was, of course, the occasion of ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy

... between these two extremes. Her love, we cannot doubt, was true and intense up to the measure of her capacity; but her nature was, instinctively, less outspoken and truthful than Norbert's, more subtle, more reasoning. At the critical moment she is seized by a whirl of emotions, and, with very feminine but singularly unloverlike instinct, she resolves, as she would phrase it, to sacrifice herself, not seeing that she is insulting her lover by the very notion of his accepting such a sacrifice. Her character has not the ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons

... come up more than once. Miracles? But why miraculous? Infinity of necessity must repeat itself, and then I, sitting here now, will sit here again, sit and doubt the goodness of God, ay, doubt His existence.... How horrible!" He paused in the whirl ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... his bent head. Through it a blinding pain darted. Thousands of beautiful and tiny lights of every color began to quiver, to leap and whirl. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... for an extended development of this idea. What follows is a brief summary of his argument. First, he examines the characteristics of a vortex in a three-dimensional fluid. Then he conceives of what such a vortex would be in a four-dimensional medium of analogous properties. The whirl would be about a plane, and the contour of this plane would correspond to the ends of the axis line in the former vortex; and as before, the vortex would extend to the boundary. Every electric current forms ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... own transit is difficult to achieve. Harry gazed out of the window, and it was to him as if the familiar trees which bordered the sidewalk, the shrubs in the yard, the houses which were within view, were flitting past him in a mad whirl. He was glad when Maria entered with the chocolate, in his own particular cup, and a dainty ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... part of Saul Mr Kenyon said finely that "it reminded him of Homer's shield of Achilles thrown into lyrical whirl and life" (Letters R.B. and E.B.B. ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... every day, where unhappy men and women, who had been worsted in the battle of life, could find a shelter in return for the change remaining from the last five-franc piece. They treat it as the shipwrecked mariner uses the rock upon which he climbs from the whirl of the angry waters, and breathes a deep sigh of relief as he collects his forces for a fresh effort. However wretched existence may be, a protracted sojourn in such a shelter as the Hotel de Perou would be out of the question. The chambers in every floor of the house are ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau

... tilted his head back when the horses first swept in, and the larger leaned to watch when Diaz, the wizard with the lariat, commenced to whirl his rope; but in both cases their interest held no longer than if they had been old vaudevillians watching a series of familiar acts dressed up with ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand

... celebrated by great festivities. The schoolroom was to be decorated, and there was to be a party. The boxes containing the presents were to be opened with great ceremony, and there was to be a glittering feast spread in Miss Minchin's sacred room. When the day arrived the whole house was in a whirl of excitement. How the morning passed nobody quite knew, because there seemed such preparations to be made. The schoolroom was being decked with garlands of holly; the desks had been moved away, and red covers had been put on ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... neither spoke. Nellie looked sterner than ever. Ned was in a whirl of mental excitement. Perhaps if he had been less natural himself the girl's passionate declaration of fellowship with all who are wronged and oppressed—for so he interpreted it by the light of his own thoughts—might have struck him as a little bit stagey. Being natural, ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller

... well might he expect to overtake an express train! No—he was mad indeed! maddened by the suddenness of his bereavement; but not so mad as that; and he started after his flying love in the fierce, blind, passionate instinct of pursuit. A whirl of wild hopes kept him up and urged him on—hopes that they might stop on the road to water the horses, or to refresh themselves, or that they might be delayed at the toll-gate to make change, or that some other possible or impossible thing might ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... Not a moment too soon it seemed, for the tug crew had evidently been watching the vessel they were towing and had not noticed the Fortuna. A whirl of the spokes by the pilot brought the tug on a course away from the motor boat, but the schooner had headway enough so that she came right on. By the narrowest margin she cleared ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson

... you did," said Ben, as she gave him a parting whirl, "an' I wish you'd say so about other things, Polly, if you ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney

... hated Huguenots. Nor did Henry secure without a struggle the crown that was his by right. The Catholics declared for Cardinal Bourbon, an uncle of the king of Navarre, and France was thus kept in the whirl of civil war. Elizabeth of England aided the Protestants, and Philip II. of Spain assisted ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... to twist around like the clouds of pink smoke and the whirl of hot air that tossed the hanging boughs of the trees. The crackle and roar of the fire seemed to be going on in my skull. But I managed to throw my head back and my hands out to ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child

... fell from his horse. Then another dashed forward; while you, on horseback, threw yourself between her and him. There was a terrible clashing of swords; and then he, too, fell. Then you lifted her on to your horse, and for a short time there was a whirl of conflict. Then you rode off with three men, behind one of whom her maid Annette was sitting. That is all she knows of it, except what you ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty

... you overthrow what is firm, O ye men, and whirl about what is heavy, ye pass through the trees of the earth, through the clefts ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller

... strikes; "L'Argent" and money getting and losing in all its branches; "Pot-Bouille" and the cruel squalor of poverty; "La Terre" and the life of the peasant; "Le Debacle" and the decay of imperialism. The largest of these schemes does not extend beyond the periphery described by the centrifugal whirl of its central motive, and the least of the Rougon-Macquart series is of the same epicality as the grandest. Each is bound to a thesis, but reality is bound to no thesis. You cannot say where it begins or where it leaves off; and it will not ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... in a whirl of excitement as she shut the door. She heard her name called softly from above and looking up she saw Miss Carter's face smiling down at her ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett

... in progress, and gathered about the door in excited groups. Inside the house there was a tremendous clatter; dishes rattled, feet ran hither and thither, voices called frantically. Every few moments a woman would dart out of the doorway, sending a startled whirl of chickens before her, deposit something in the back of the vehicle, and ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith

... bowl whirling on the end of a chop-stick. Then tossing the bowl up he caught it inverted on the chop-stick, and made it whirl as rapidly as possible. In this condition he tossed it up ten, then fifteen, then twenty or more feet into the air catching it on the chop-stick ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland

... the calculated course, and at the precisely correct instant he cut his drive and released his largest bomb. Then, so rapidly that it was one blur of speed, he again kicked on his eight G's of drive and started to whirl around as only a speedster or a flitter can whirl. Practically unconscious from the terrific resultant of the linear and angular accelerations, he ejected the two smaller bombs. He did not care ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith

... overshadowing all things else, tinging every other social element with its own sombre hue, is fatal to any movement adverse to it on the part of the non-slaveholder. Everything must drift in the whirl of its powerful eddy, a terrible maelstrom, into which the North was fast floating, when the thunder of the Fort Sumter bombardment awoke it just in time to see its awful peril and strike out, with God's help, into the free ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... o'clock, when she struggled back along Twenty-third Street, the wind had changed, and the storm driving furiously down the long blocks caught her in a whirl of blinding snowflakes. In the swirling whiteness of the distance, the black outlines of the city appeared remote and shadowy, while the waning lights, which shone like dim moons at the crossing, revealed the ghostly figures ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... Venus. It is filled with the nymphs who attend her, and they are singing choruses in her praise, and dancing wonderful, mazy, mad, delirious dances. They whirl about and around alone, in couples, in lines, in circles, and in crowds, their arms waving and their hair streaming in the air. Sometimes while they dance every one is plainly to be seen, and again their garments surround them like clouds, and they ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost

... to strong characters. The granite crag stands unchanging, but the waters at its base lash themselves into a thousand shapes and colors and semblances. Hamilton had in him the firmness of the hills, but Paul's nature was as fluid as the waters that whirl or lilt along the easiest channels, and that turn aside to avoid obstacles. On his table stood a photograph of Loraine Haswell in a gold frame. It was a photograph of which there was no duplicate, and one which her husband had not seen. When it had been taken the sitter had selected a pose of ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... was a murmur in the village streets, a novel and dominant topic in the public-houses, and here and there a messenger, or even an eye-witness of the later occurrences, caused a whirl of excitement, a shouting, and a running to and fro; but for the most part the daily routine of working, eating, drinking, sleeping, went on as it had done for countless years—as though no planet Mars existed in the sky. ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells

... still felt the thrill of the warm, parting pressure of Josephine's hand; he saw the gratitude in her eyes; he heard her voice, low and tremulous, asking him to come again to-morrow evening. His brain was in a strange whirl of excitement, and he laughed—laughed with gladness which he had not felt before in all the days of ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood

... away, and as he trod the Strand his brain was in a confused whirl, and he was oblivious of the frothing life about him. He groped across Waterloo Bridge in the fog, and looked wistfully toward the black river. He did not care to read the letter yet. It was enough for the present to know that his wife had broken her word and returned to London, doubtless ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon

... so various that two adjacent ponds will sometimes be haunted by two distinct sets of species. In the water, among the leaves, little shining whirlwigs wheel round and round, fifty joining in the dance, till, at the slightest alarm, they whirl away to some safer ballroom, and renew the merriment. On every floating log, as we approach it, there is a convention of turtles, sitting in calm debate, like mailed barons, till, as we approach, they plump into the water, and paddle away for some subaqueous Runnymede. Beneath, the shy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... the other votaries of polished profligacy, were it not for one simple consideration—he had neither health nor constitution, nor, to do the early lover of Jane Sinclair justice, heart for the modes and habits of that society, through the vortices of which he now found himself compelled to whirl. He was not, in fact, able to keep pace with the rapid motions of his fashionable wife, and the result in a very short time was, that their hearts were discovered to be anything but congenial—in fact anything ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... scattered rice, through all the wedding whirl A laughing fellow hurries out a certain graceless girl, Unless my hand have lost its strength, unless my eye be dim, I'll lift the shoe, the contract too, and fling ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann

... large skiff with six men in it. Four were rowing with all their power, a fifth sat in the bow and the other in the stern. Quinn, in the saddle, watched through his glass the cottonwoods from which the skiff had emerged at the bottom of a sheltered bay. Now he shifted his gaze to the little whirl of dust across the river, and now he turned to smile at Jim, but his eye lighted on me instead. I risked a knowing look and motioned with my lips, ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable

... all. The impression may be deeper and clearer on your mind than any fact of the next morning will make. You will forget the next day altogether, but the impression of the dream will remain through all the following whirl and storm of what you call facts. Now a conviction may be likened to a deep impression on the judgment or the reason, or both. No one can feel it but the person who is ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald

... at first encouraged them only for show. Every desire is a viper in the bosom, who, while he was chill, was harmless; but when warmth gave him strength, exerted it in poison. You know a gentleman, who, when first he set his foot in the gay world, as he prepared himself to whirl in the vortex of pleasure, imagined a total indifference and universal negligence to be the most agreeable concomitants of youth, and the strongest indication of an airy temper and a quick apprehension. Vacant to every object, and sensible of every impulse, he thought that all appearance of diligence ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... so as to press the lower end of the rod into the hole in the apple wood plank. Round the middle of the rod was looped a bow-string kept taut by a strong bow. By grasping the bow in his right hand and sawing it back and forth, the operator caused the rod to whirl round, first one way and then the other, with great velocity. The friction of its lower end soon heated up the hole in the apple-wood plank, and round that were piled chips of dry apple-wood, which, if the operator was strong and skilled, ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White

... commonwealths out of wild but victorious tribes. The monk could not remain in hiding. He was brother to the roving warrior. The blood in his veins was too active to permit him to stand still amid the mighty whirl of events. Without entirely abandoning his cloistral life, he became a zealous missionary of the church among the barbarians, a patron of letters and of agriculture, in short a stirring participant in ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart

... his talk, Foker, on the other hand, so bland and communicative on most occasions, was entirely mum and melancholy when he danced with Miss Amory. To clasp her slender waist was a rapture, to whirl round the room with her was a delirium; but to speak to her, what could he say that was worthy of her? What pearl of conversation could he bring that was fit for the acceptance of such a Queen of love and wit as Blanche? ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... split the whirl-bone, disjoint the backbone, and split the ribs in the flank. The rump-bone and aitch-bone may be removed before cooking. Place it on the platter with the loin or backbone nearest the carver. Separate the leg from the loin; this is a difficult joint to divide when the ...
— Carving and Serving • Mrs. D. A. Lincoln

... hollows, dissipated almost at once into the thin and invisible air. Sometimes a rush of wind would sweep along like a gigantic arrow, running through the mist, and leaving a rapid track behind it like a pathway. Sometimes again a whirl-blast would sweep round a hill, or rush up from a narrow gorge, carrying round, in wild and fantastic gyrations, large masses of the apparently solid mist, giving thus to the scene such an appearance as would lead the spectator to suppose that some invisible ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... The whirl in which she lived during this period was entered upon without thought, her own inclinations agreeing at the time to every usage sanctioned by custom; but in after years she said that those days of dissipation and excitement appeared ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... Mr. Timothy felt for his art as poets do for theirs, and considered what was best adapted to speaking, purely to speaking. Upon no creature did he look with such contempt as upon Dr. Shrapnel, whose loose disjunct audiences he was conscious he could, giving the doctor any start he liked, whirl away from him and have compact, enchained, at his first flourish; yea, though they were composed of 'the poor man,' with a stomach for the political distillery fit to drain relishingly every private bogside or mountain-side tap in old Ireland in its best days—the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith



Words linked to "Whirl" :   endeavour, attempt, run, move, birling, circumvolve, flow, go around, try, whirler, rotary motion, movement, rotate, vortex, motion, course, gyrate, rotation, logrolling, feed, pirouette, round shape, endeavor, effort, revolve



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