|
|
|
More "Deuce" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... whisper. "He will hear you. Ha!" he continued after a short pause, during which they moved on towards the mess-room, "you begin to find out his amiable military qualities, do you! But tell me, Ronayne, what the deuce has put this Quixotic expedition into your head? What great interest do you take in these fishermen, that you should volunteer to break your shins in the wood, this dark night, for the purpose of seeking them, and that on ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... that the values are all right," he was careful to explain; "it's just that they are all right makes it so trying. If a fellow had a little capital now, he could do wonders. The deuce of a chap like me is that he hasn't any capital unless there's ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... Woolsey declined this; for, as soon as he was gone, Walker, in a tremendous fury, began cursing his wife for dawdling three hours on the road. "Why the deuce, ma'am, didn't you take a cab?" roared he, when he heard she had walked to Bond Street. "Those writs have only been in half an hour, and I might have ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... ruffled up his neck feathers, repeating "Rubberneck, I'm cold as the deuce; what's the matter with Hannah; let 'em all ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... "What the deuce do I care for the usual price, you—you—you perfect prodigy of patches? There, for the Lord's sake, go get yourself a decent suit of clothes! Drive on, cabman!" roared Old Hurricane, flinging an eagle upon the sidewalk and rolling off in ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... thus: 'It has been truly said that those whom the gods love die young!' and then on it went, dragging in memories of Chatterton and Shelley and Keats, till I found myself yawning and wondering what the deuce the writer was driving at. Presently, about the end of the second column, I came to the assertion that 'the posthumous poem of "Nourhalma" must be admitted as one of the most glorious productions in the English language.' This woke me up considerably, and I read ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... great a deuce of a hurry to satisfy that curiosity, dear man," Poppy put in. "You must contrive to exercise patience for a little while yet, please; always remembering that it is entirely superfluous to run to catch a train ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... got you and Elizabeth into a deuce of an unpleasant position. I've told you what a fine woman my mother is, and how she'd welcome Elizabeth with open arms, and now I find I was all wrong. My mother isn't a fine woman; she's an ancestor-worshiping, heartless, ...
— Cupid's Understudy • Edward Salisbury Field
... was! What should I do with a wife I could not kiss? I wonder if Blanche will speak to me again? Maybe all this was a dodge, women have so many; but she looked in earnest. I might have frightened her by being so sudden, but why the deuce should women be frightened at proposals, when they pass their lives in trying to get them? So Mrs. Stunner said. Poor birdie!, what a soft hand she has! Maybe some women are modest: I will ask Hardcash about it. She may not have ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... what the deuce was the matter with you this evening on the Elysium road?" The suddenness of the question wrenched an answer from me ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... the Mansion House, and rain began to fall. The two occupants of the car watched each other surreptitiously, mutually suspicious, like dogs. Scraps of talk were separated by long intervals. Mr. Prohack wondered what the deuce Softly Bishop had done that Angmering should leave him a hundred thousand pounds. He tried to feel grief for the tragic and untimely death of his old friend Angmering, and failed. No doubt the failure ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... fiery tempers, and vastly prefer peaceable people. I do not care to beat for fear of being beaten; a gentle disposition was always my predominant virtue: But my honour tells me that it is absolutely necessary I should avenge such an outrage as this. Let honour say whatever it likes, the deuce take him who listens. Suppose now I should play the hero, and receive for my pains an ugly thrust with a piece of cold steel quite through my stomach; when the news of my death spreads through the whole town, tell me then, my honour, shall you ...
— Sganarelle - or The Self-Deceived Husband • Moliere
... escape than from small-pox; and which attacks every one of us, from the first duke in the Peerage down to Jack Ketch inclusive: which has no respect for rank, virtue, or roguery in man, but sets each in his turn in a fever; which breaks out the deuce knows how or why, and, raging its appointed time, fills each individual of the one sex with a blind fury and longing for some one of the other (who may be pure, gentle, blue-eyed, beautiful, and good; or vile, shrewish, squinting, hunchbacked, and hideous, according to circumstances and ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fighting is detestable chiefly because you cannot see your enemy until you are on top of him. Our centre cantered in extended order up an avenue flanked by dense bush. We were laughing and asking where the deuce the rebels were, when a hail of rifle fire at short range greeted us. Our fellows were out of their saddles in a second, and advanced to the attack through the bush. Meantime, the South African Police extreme left had swept round to the head of the spruit ...
— With Botha in the Field • Eric Moore Ritchie
... anything that I don't know about till he goes to bed," Fred promised. "But how the deuce did he know that you had ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... amusing to watch the manly coolness with which the announcement was taken. Nothing was heard more energetic than, "Deuce he has!" ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... nations through civilization to the establishment of the perfect city of God. An indifferent statesman is a contradiction in terms; and a statesman who is indifferent on principle, a Laisser-faire or Muddle-Through doctrinaire, plays the deuce with us in the long run. Our statesmen must get a religion by hook or crook; and as we are committed to Adult Suffrage it must be a religion capable of vulgarization. The thought first put into words by the Mills when they said 'There is no God; but this is a family secret,' ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... soul has been equal to the occasion, and I have been able to acquit myself in a way not to attract attention to my deficiencies. But now my heart has gone back on me; a pair of eyes have confused my vision, and a little hand has knocked me out on the first round. I am in a deuce of a fix, surely." So ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... the town or in the neighborhood. Shall I meet her again, I wonder? I will stay here a week or a month if—What nonsense! I must have distinguished myself, staring at her like a gawk. When she said she was the Queen of Sheba, I ought instantly to have replied—what in the deuce is it I ought to have replied? How can a man be witty with a ton of sole-leather ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... have each scored three points in a game, or five games in a set; to win the game or set two points or games must then be won consecutively. The earliest instances in English of the use of the slang expression "the deuce," in exclamations and the like, date from the middle of the 17th century. The meaning was similar to that of "plague" or "mischief" in such phrases as "plague on you," "mischief take you" and the like. The use of the word as an euphemism for "the devil" is later. According to the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... the spot, because your map says something like, 'Through the Sunken Valley to Witch's Caldron, four points N. by N. E. to Gallows Hill where the shadow falls at sunrise, fifty fathoms west, fifty paces north as the crow flies, to the Seven Wells'? How the deuce," I demanded, "is any one going to point to ...
— My Buried Treasure • Richard Harding Davis
... it would be a relief to get away from his son-in-law: "If the fellow would only speak!" he exclaimed when he was alone with his wife. "What the deuce he's always ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... at the mercy of our unknown informant," said Burns. "Why the deuce was he so mysterious about it?" He tugged at his gray mustache as ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... Trysdale, what the deuce is the matter with you? You look unhappy as if you yourself had been married instead of having acted merely as an accomplice. Look at me, another accessory, come two thousand miles on a garlicky, cockroachy banana steamer all the way from South America to connive at the sacrifice—please ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... little magnifying glass which he used in studying all the niceties of handwriting. He suddenly felt unnerved. "Whom is it from? This hand is familiar to me, very familiar. I must have often read its tracings, yes, very often. But this must have been a long, long time ago. Whom the deuce can it be from? Pooh! it's only somebody asking ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... reached her, lo! the Captain, Gallant Kidd,[4] commands the crew; Passengers their berths are clapt in, Some to grumble, some to spew. "Hey day! call you that a cabin? Why't is hardly three feet square! Not enough to stow Queen Mab in— Who the deuce can harbour there?" "Who, sir? plenty— Nobles twenty Did at once my vessel fill."— "Did they? Jesus, How you squeeze us! Would to God they did so still! Then I'd 'scape the heat and racket Of the good ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... to-day, as it's getting latish. But oh, deuce take their cursed, envenomed tongues!' I muttered, in ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... Henchard more than he had expected. The lugubrious harmony of the spot with his domestic situation was too perfect for him, impatient of effects scenes, and adumbrations. It reduced his heartburning to melancholy, and he exclaimed, "Why the deuce did I come here!" He went on past the cottage in which the old local hangman had lived and died, in times before that calling was monopolized over all England by a single gentleman; and climbed up by a steep back ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... alone; for at last You drove her to give you good reason, Divorced her, and so it's all passed. For you, I mean; she has to bear it— Poor child—the reproach and the shame; I'm your friend—but come, hang it, old fellow, I swear you were somewhat to blame. 'What the deuce do I mean?' Well, I'll tell you, Though it's none of my business. Here! Just light a cigar, and keep quiet— You started wrong, Charley Leclear. You weren't in love when you married— 'Nor she!'—well, I know, but she tried To keep it ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... one night to stop under the window of Bernardone Kurz, a director of a theatre and the leading clown of Vienna. Down rushed Kurz very excitedly. "Who are you?" he shrieked. "Joseph Haydn." "Whose music is it?" "Mine." "The deuce it is! And at your age, too!" "Why, I must begin ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... the deuce is there to stagger under in the circumstance of a Belgian schoolmistress marrying a French schoolmaster? The progeny will doubtless be a strange hybrid race; but that's ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... serious, but inconvenient. Pierre, the cook for the outfit, suddenly decided to leave to-day, and did. He said he thought it was time he got married again, and has gone in quest of a bride, I suppose. The deuce of it is, we're so short-handed. ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... wished a round score of men—in case of natives, buccaneers, or the odious French—and I had the worry of the deuce itself to find so much as half a dozen, till the most remarkable stroke of fortune brought me the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... suddenly exclaimed. "We are having the deuce of a time at the school. Right in our quarters, ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb
... wish no excuses, and I will add that unless an attempt is made on my life before ten o'clock to- night, you lose your place. The French people must be kept interested in this performance, and how the deuce it is to be done without advertising I don't know. Go, and remember that I shall be at home to assassins on Thursdays of alternate weeks until ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... out upon the Arno. What course we took I hardly remember, but we roamed slowly about for an hour, my companion delivering by snatches a sort of moon-touched aesthetic lecture. I listened in puzzled fascination, and wondered who the deuce he was. He confessed with a melancholy but all-respectful ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... and possibly being put out of commission. But an Outsider, a government official, I think, who was on his way to Nome as a passenger with the Mail Team, was pretty sore about it. Said 'it was a deuce of a country where the dogs slept in beds and the men ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... his heels in a preposterous gesture of ecstasy. Then caught her hand, slipped the braided ring over that plain circle of gold which had been on her finger for fifty-four minutes, kissed it—and the palm of her hand—and said, "You never can escape me! Eleanor, your voice played the deuce with me. I rushed home and read every poem in my volume of Blake. Go on; ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... he said. "I guess she'll have her little sick spells, as they all do, and it'll help wonderfully to have someone to call on. There's her teeth now," anxiously, "they'll be coming through in a few months, and then there'll be the deuce ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... given by the Brigade Commander. Who the deuce are you, young man, to dispute it?" thundered ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... to be come a plutocrat and gentleman of landed estate. And also how I, who never did a stroke of work in my life, am overburdened with wealth; whilst the children of the men who made that wealth are slaving as their fathers slaved, or starving, or in the workhouse, or on the streets, or the deuce knows where. What do you think of that, ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... players and then turn up the next card for trumps; if the trump turned up is the same suit as the last, the dealer must give another three cards until a different suit turns up trumps. In playing this game the ace is the highest card and the deuce ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... wooer cam down the lang glen, And sair wi' his love he did deave me: I said there was naething I hated like men; The deuce gae wi'm to believe me, believe me, The deuce gae ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... colonel Tamper, and the plighted hnsband of Mdlle. Florival.—G. Colman, sen., The Deuce ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... "And who the deuce is Mr. Hudson?" asked Rowland. But he was absorbed; he lost her immediate reply. The statuette, in bronze, something less than two feet high, represented a naked youth drinking from a gourd. The attitude was perfectly simple. The lad was squarely planted on his ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... nothing to him, had no proper business in his mind. He tried to think of the other women whom he had loved and remembered, or of the more numerous ones still whom he had loved only to forget. Well, he had lived a man's life, and the deuce of it was that women should have come into it at all. He had never wanted sentiment in the abstract, he told himself half angrily; he was bored to death by the deadly routine of what in his own mind he alluded to as "the business of love." It ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... too hard when ye come on deck in the middle watch ye may give her the stunsails; it'll look more ship-shape, and as if we were in a hurry to make the coast and get our cargo aboard, if we happen to be overhauled by anybody in the same line of business, and the deuce of a fear have I now of outsailing any of them that may happen to be in the neighbourhood. Keep a sharp look-out, Mr Pierrepoint, and if anything heaves in sight, either ahead or astern, during your watch, give me a call. I'm going below to ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... of the first water received a sad downfall when we were first asked by a kind friend, what the deuce we came home for? We had a good many becauses ready, but he overturned them altogether; so we had resort to the usual resource of men in such a position: we said, "There was a barrier of ice across Wellington ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... while they're having tea," said the First Lieutenant. "But how the deuce they're going to get ashore the Lord knows. I'll have to hoist in the boats if it gets any worse. Keep an eye on the compass and see we aren't dragging." The Captain came ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... said, with knitted brow, as he perused the document; and, after a pause, "Then what the deuce has become of William? What kind of ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... universally felt that the stoppage was an unusual one, and windows went down with a clatter along the carriages while heads were put out inquiringly. Every kind of voice demanded to be told where they were, and why they were stopping, and what the deuce the Company meant by it—inquiries met by a guard, who walked slowly along the line, with the diplomatic evasiveness which marks the official dislike to admit any ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... said Sir Langham, "and I'm in it every night this voyage, for I've knocked off morphia and opiates—they were playing the deuce with my constitution, and I've strength of mind for anything when I fairly take hold. But it's awful. When d'you suppose ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... he, "King of Dublin, you are in luck. There's the Danes moidhering us to no end. Deuce run to Lusk wid 'em! and if any one can save us from 'em, it is this gentleman with the goat-skin. There is a flail hangin' on the collar-beam, in hell, and neither Dane nor ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... "I wish Arend had let the horse go to the deuce. It was not worth following into a place ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... that voice before," said Holmes staring down the dimly lighted street. "Now, I wonder who the deuce that could have been?" ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... years his senior! Did she really believe that he, according to her own estimation a man in the prime of life, had no other claims upon existence than to possess a home, in other words to have a housekeeper, who would make him soups, and a nurse who would wrap his rheumatic limbs in cotton wool. Deuce take it, he was by no means such an invalid. He was still sailing erect, before the wind, with swelling canvas and fluttering streamers. He was no hulk of which wreckers might take possession. If he no longer desired to remain on the high seas, at least he could freely ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... out both hands]. The deuce she is! I am most uncommonly glad to see you, ma'am, under this roof. [Aside to Susan] She don't look very prosperous, Susan: if there's anything that money can get for her, I'll see she has it; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... leave, my dearest Royal Highness, I had not previously noticed that there was any screw loose under your turban. Your conduct so far had led me, I trust not misled me, to believe that your head was screwed on quite safe. But what the deuce are you up to now, if you will allow me ...
— Turandot, Princess of China - A Chinoiserie in Three Acts • Karl Gustav Vollmoeller
... who the Deuce you are?" said Chaffery, suddenly tilting his head back so as to look through his glasses instead of over them, and laughing genially. "For thoroughgoing Cheek, I'm inclined to think you take the Cake. Are you the Mr. Lewisham to whom this ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... an hung hissen ovver th' cheer back. Awm sure aw connot tell where all this marchin' is likely to lead us to at last, but aw hooap we shall be all reight, for aw do think ther's plenty o' room to mend even yet, but the deuce on it is,' ther's soa monny different notions abaat what is reight wol aw'm flamigaster'd amang it. Some say drink is the besetting sin; another says 'bacca is man's ruination. One says we're all goin' to the devil becoss we goa to church, an' another says we'st niver goa to heaven ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, Second Series - To which is added The Cream of Wit and Humour - from his Popular Writings • John Hartley
... devil. I don't mind saying it to you, because you understand the kind of devil she'd be. But Lord! I don't care. It's just her way. She's told me to go to the deuce half a dozen times, but she knows I won't till she comes with me. ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... is all a mass of steam." What in the world does that mean? The man has gone out — if not out on to the Barrier, then certainly into it — into snow-ice, and then he comes back and says that it is all a mass of steam. It seems ridiculous — absurd. I send Sherlock Holmes to the deuce, and watch Hassel with increasing excitement; if he takes any more off — I felt I was blushing, and half turned my head, but there he stopped. Then he picked up a towel, and away we went: out through the pent-house door — it was all I could do to follow him — along the snow tunnel ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... his stock company was swallowed up, he is staking his little all on the play to be given this evening, and will be forced—if it does not succeed—to leave this marvellous scenery, these rich stuffs at a hundred francs the yard, unpaid for. His fourth failure is staring him in the face. But, deuce take it! our manager has confidence. Success, like all the monsters that feed on man, loves youth; and this unknown author whose name is entirely new on the ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... British army not to be seen on the surface. There had been private dramas in private drawing-rooms. Some of the older men had been "churned up," as they would say, because this sudden war had meant a leave-taking from women, who would be in a deuce of a fix if anything happened to certain captains and certain majors. Love affairs which had been somewhat complicated were simplified too abruptly by a rapid farewell, and a "God bless you, old girl. ... ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... "Why do I whisper? Deuce take it!" cried Dmitri at the top of his voice. "You see what silly tricks nature plays one. I am here in secret, and on the watch. I'll explain later on, but, knowing it's a secret, I began whispering like a fool, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... remain at home cleaning and pounding seed; they are both getting weaker every day; the cold plays the deuce with us, from the small amount of clothing we have: my wardrobe consists of a wide-awake, a merino shirt, a regatta shirt without sleeves, the remains of a pair of flannel trousers, two pairs of socks in rags, and a waistcoat, of which I have managed to keep ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... nothing more except some butter that we hadn't the nerve to tackle single-handed, and some salt and a bottle of ketchup and the toothpicks. We went at the toothpicks again; until Frosty got a splinter stuck between his teeth, and had a deuce of a ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... you a kick or a half-penny, whichever you like. You will find some who have neither husband nor lover. Certain females have a lover and no husband. Ugly women have a husband and no lover. But to meet with a woman who, having one husband and one lover, keeps to the deuce without trying for the trey, there is the miracle, you see, you greenhorns, blockheads, and dolts! Now then, put the true character of this virtuous woman on the tablets of your memory, go your ways, and let me ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... imports for the current half-year, had prevented the drain of gold, had made all that matter right about the glut of the raw material, and had restored all sorts of balances with which the superseded noblemen and gentlemen had played the deuce - and all this, with wheat at so much a quarter, gold at so much an ounce, and the Bank of England discounting good bills at so much per cent.! He might be asked, he observed in a peroration of great power, what were his principles? His principles were what they always ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... "The deuce you can!" said the jockey, taking his pipe out of his mouth, and staring at me through ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... conclusion, "but her father is inclined to be a little old-fogyish, thinks we are too young for any definite engagement, and wants me to be permanently established in some business before we are married, and all that; when I can't see what in the deuce is the difference so long as I have plenty of stuff. So the upshot of it all was that he and his wife took Grace to Europe, and they're not coming back until the holidays, and if, by that time, we have neither of us changed our minds, and I am ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... right, Skipper. We have. I guess we'll just have to grit our teeth and wait—gee—three years, anyway, till I'm twenty-one! That's the deuce of a long time, isn't it? Lord, why wasn't I born five years before you? Then it would be O. K. Loads of girls are ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... atomic structures are so juggled that they are no longer affected by the gun, all the forces of magnetism, which usually are immune to the atomic stream, are rendered liable to disruption by it. We could not destroy Leider's cable, but we could play the deuce with its ...
— The Winged Men of Orcon - A Complete Novelette • David R. Sparks
... studied—what were his plans? Had he ever been abroad? No. Strange! The artists nowadays neglected travel. 'But you go! Beg your way, paint your way—but go! Go before the wife and the babies come! Matrimony is the deuce. Don't you agree with me, Philip?' He laid a familiar ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... corner before he turned. Mr. Wynne was idling along, half a block away, without the slightest apparent interest in what was happening behind. Inevitably Mr. Birnes' eyes were drawn to the water-plug across the street. A tag end of white paper gleamed tantalizingly. Now what the deuce did it mean? ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
... he cried, "what a fool I am to be sure! I ought to have cut John, not Jack. However, it don't signify. Nobody ever called me John, that I recollect. So I dare say I was christened Jack. Deuce take it! I was very near spelling my name with ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... "Deuce take the Witch of Endor and you also. There's a shilling. Go and drink yourself into a more cheery ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... "where the mischief have you been for the last two days, and what have you been doing with yourself? I heard that you got back from Point Levi—though how the deuce you did it I can't imagine—and that you'd gone off on horseback nobody knew where. I've been here fifty times since I saw you last. Tell you what, Macrorie, it wasn't fair to me to give me the slip this ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... Flamby's hand more firmly under his arm. "You would have made a deuce of a boy," he said. "I wonder if we should have ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... repeated Tom, puffing unconsciously. "Pickle was a good fellow, but he had the deuce of an eye for a girl. Do you remember—" He stopped short, and saw the man and the photograph looking at each other. Too late, he unhappily remembered that he had meant, and forgotten, to take that photograph out of the room ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... Deuce take the foolish woman with her dreams! Was anything so preposterous ever heard of? I must go and ask the help of ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... people of Baalbek, is food enough for tattle, and cause enough for persecution. Potent are the ruffles of the Church! But why, we can almost hear the anxious Reader asking, if the camels are ready, why the deuce don't they get on and get them gone? But did we not say once that Khalid is slow, even slower than the law itself? Nevertheless, if this were a Novel, an elopement would be in order, but we must repeat, it is not. We are faithful transcribers of the truth as we find ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... am tired to death of it: I have heard nothing this morning but Arenta's wedding. Why the deuce! should my house be turned upside down and inside out for Arenta's wedding? Women have been married before Arenta Van Ariens, and women will be married after her. What is ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... Only, I'm in a deuce of a mess," frankly and directly. "Innocently enough, I've stuck my head into ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... or what does any one else care about society? My motto is, Every one for himself, and the deuce take the hindmost. And that's the ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... game, and when we had played nine more deuces I communicated the intelligence to Joan. Meanwhile, the other sets had all finished, and the players came up to see why we were still hard at it. At the twenty-fourth deuce the Tournament secretary remarked: "Last game, I suppose? Hurry up, we can't get on." I explained to him that this was only the first game of the set, and that similar prolongations were likely to recur when my partner served in the third game and I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 147, August 12, 1914 • Various
... "Now what the deuce can it mean," he asked, vexedly. "Not only what did the fellow mean who did this, but what did he mean," pointing at the dead man, "by having so many portraits ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... "Why the deuce, then, didn't you put your head under the grate, and burn that too? You have burnt the will, that's clear: the will which would have made you the richest woman in Maryland. With those 'records of the past,' which my old ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... had come the thunderbolt. And then, while he was still dazed and furious, his grandfather had tried to convince him that he had done him a deuce of a good turn ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... hundred pounds, I couldn't fancy what the deuce and all he meant by such prattle. I was half afraid he might be having me on, as I have known him do now and again when he fancied he could get me. I fearfully wanted to ask questions. Again I saw the dark, absorbed face of the gipsy ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... 'What the deuce do you want?' I began angrily; then, as he raised his weak, watery eyes to mine, and I saw that his grey hairs were as wet as his boots, I relented. Perhaps he was someone who knew my wife or her people, and wanted to condole with her over the death of her baby. He looked ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... alludes to the story of the times:—a contemporary wit has recorded this literary injury, by repeating it.[342] And Swift, who once exclaimed to Pope, "The deuce take party!" was himself the greatest sinner of them all. He, once the familiar friend of Steele till party divided them, not only emptied his shaft of quivers against his literary character, but raised the horrid yell of the war-whoop in his inhuman ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... much, for he soon came to himself, and was sure to make them some present or other—some said in proportion to his anger; so that the sexton, who was a bit of a wag (as all sextons are, I think), said that the vicar's saying, "The Devil take you," was worth a shilling any day, whereas "The Deuce" was a shabby sixpenny speech, only fit for ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... deuce he does!—but I want to get at his views in relation to the present state of the Ottoman Empire. Tell him the Houses of Parliament have met, and that there has been a speech from the throne, pledging England to preserve the ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... de Longueville had for some time been an honored prisoner at the English court, held as a hostage from Louis XII, but de Longueville was a blockhead, who could not keep his little black eyes off our fair ladies, who hated him, long enough to tell the deuce of spades from the ace of hearts. So Brandon was taken from his duties, such as they were, and placed at the card table. This was fortunate at first; for being the best player the king always chose him as his partner, and, as in every other game, the king always won. If he lost there would soon ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... regular customers of the Baker Street to Victoria route, and when they recognized him he became purple with content. A short youth was making notes near a tank in the corner. Mr. Trew, nudging Gertie, went to him and, in a gruff voice, asked what the deuce he was doing there; the youth turned to give ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... small and oblong in shape. Ours is very rotten, and has a big hole burnt in the top as well as a large rent at one end. These we have, however, patched up to our satisfaction and comfort. As we are here for the deuce knows how long, the beloved army red tape and routine is coming into ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... should have known it anywhere. I think you've caught the likeness most wonderfully!" i.e., "Why the deuce doesn't he tell one whom ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various
... class of men belonging to these soul-forsaken years: Third-rate canvassers, collectors, journalists and auctioneers. They are never very shabby, they are never very spruce — Going cheerfully and carelessly and smoothly to the deuce. Some are wanderers by profession, 'turning up' and gone as soon, Travelling second-class, or steerage (when it's cheap they go saloon); Free from 'ists' and 'isms', troubled little by belief or doubt — Lazy, purposeless, and useless — knocking ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... yelling down conscription, by millions of units belonging to the civilized nations of such social and racial divergence that the mind is staggered by the conception of them all fighting under one banner. But are we sure they are all fighting for the same thing? If they're not, there will be the deuce to pay all over the terrestrial globe, even with a crushed ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... offering a brown hand to Colin Whitford, who took it reluctantly, with the same wariness a boxer does that of his opponent in the ring. His eyes said plainly, "What the deuce are you doing here, sitting in my favorite chair, smoking one of my imported cigars, wearing my clothes, ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... had an idee," said the half-breed, presently, in a smooth voice that penetrated the mighty vibrations of the falls, "ez how a chap on a log could paddle roun' this yere eddy fer a deuce of a while afore he'd hev to git sucked out ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... repeated. "Deuce take me if I had not forgotten! Excuse me," he continued, "necessity compels me to make ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... I ever saw in my life!" he panted. "But, you young scaramouch! what the deuce d'you mean by stopping ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... her? Well, you've something to live for, gentlemen. I've seen her but three times and I don't seem able to shake off the spell. Her sisters, you know—the married ones—are nothing to look at, and the Grand Duke isn't a beauty by any means. How the deuce she happens to produce such a contrast I can't, for the life of me, understand. Nature does some marvellous things, by George, and she certainly spread herself on the Princess Genevra. You've never seen such hair. 'Gad, it's as near like the kind that Henner painted ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... groan over the wire. "Hang Josie!" says he. "See here, McCabe, I've had a deuce of a time with that case. Must have been something wrong with the address, ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... Oberville? John Oberville? Here? To-day at five o'clock? Let me see—let me look at the list. Are you sure you're not mistaken? Why, she never said a word! Why the deuce didn't you tell me? ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... carefully, and suggests that he has some mischievous weapon of liberty stowed away somewhere. He presses and presses his hands to his skirts and bosom. And now he knew he was not mistaken, for he feels something solid in the bosom of his shirt, which is not his heart, although that thing makes a deuce of a fluttering. Mr. M'Fadden's anxiety increases as he squeezes his hands over its shapes, and watches the changes of Harry's countenance. "Book, ha'h!" he exclaims, drawing the osnaburg tight over the square with his left hand, while, with his right, he suddenly grasps Harry firmly ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... have you been to-day? Things have been all going to the deuce. Why didn't you hinder these boys from sweein' the gate off ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... the—what the deuce!" he protested, impatiently. "Don't interrupt me now! Well, I went on down the street. The members of the Stock Exchange were coming out of 'the house,' and making up little groups on the pavement. They do business inside, ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... my supper, dear mother?" said Agricola, gayly. "The deuce! you won't excuse me for keeping the nice little supper waiting that you get ready for me, for fear ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... 'Now, deuce take him that first good prologue writ: He left a kind of rent-charge upon wit, Which, if succeeding poets fail to pay, They forfeit all they're worth, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... to try it. It ain't neighborly. Think of the lean years we've known. You can't do it. This war won't last forever—" Mr. Doolittle's voice was tinged with regret—"and it will be time enough to go in for playing the deuce with business when business gets slack again. That's the time for ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... necessary to my plan, and as conveniently admissible in this place as afterwards;—namely, the account of the manner in which Scott—whom we shall always find, as aforesaid, to be in salient and palpable elements of character, of the World, worldly, as Burns is of the Flesh, fleshly, and Byron of the Deuce, damnable,—spent his Sunday. ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... doesn't it—a kind of Nonconformist business? I think she's the very finest. A fellow'd hold himself up, 'd be a deuce of a swell—and, hang it all, I ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... young men; they have been ruined by light wines and French quadrilles. "They've nothing," he says, "of the spirit of the old service. There are none of your six-bottle men left, that were the souls of a mess-dinner, and used to play the very deuce among the women." ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... you she was a kind girl. She's trying to pull old Charlie up a peg or two. He's had the deuce of a facer, ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... are the deuce—" he began; when suddenly the great bell of the Castle started to ring furiously, and a loud shout ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... consummate filial, and he so bloated up with honour. They'll never wed, I'm clear, unless the governor's by to bless 'em; and as to managing that, and the cutting-adrift scheme too, one kills the other. How the deuce to do it? Eh—do I see ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... my dear fellow!" cried I, "can this possibly be you? What the deuce have you been doing with yourself? You look as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... that you are! How the deuce was I to get one? "Opportunity makes the thief." I find myself surprised by the hunt in the middle of the forest; I go and hide in that cursed Gazeau Tower; I see my turtle-doves coming; I overhear a conversation that might make one die of laughing, and ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... "Yes—deuce take it! I have no other alternative." He walked to the fireplace and warmed himself, humming the fag end of a tune in a rich convivial bass voice. "What does your side say?" he went on; "now pray tell me—what does your ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... never saw such rubbish in your life. And then"—he went on, plaintively enough—"I lose the things, you know; put 'em into a drawer, or with a lot of other manuscripts and papers, and I can't lay my hands on 'em when they are sent for, and then, oh, goodness! there's the deuce and all to pay; for I can assure you that no mother thinks more of her first-born baby than a young author thinks of his first play, and if you are not of the same opinion he regards you as the biggest idiot in the world." "Well, but," I ventured to remark—"why ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... "I don't care a deuce of a lot what you say or what you don't say, nor even what you think," he flung at them angrily, with his hand on the knob. "I have my own row to hoe. I'm going to hoe it my own style. And that's all there is to it. If ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... he promptly rejoined. "This sea air give; one the very deuce of an appetite; and I confess to feeling ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the dizzy limit," Lawanne observed, when the tea and some excellent sandwiches presently appeared. "He bought another rifle the other day—paid forty-five bones for it. That makes four he has now. And they have to manage like the deuce to keep themselves in grub from one remittance day to the next. He's a study. You seldom run across such a combination of physical perfection and child-like irresponsibility. He was complaining about his limited income the other ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... I think, Rafael? You're young and you're handsome, and you've been abroad. Why don't you make a try for her, if only to prick the bubble of her conceit and show her there are people here, too. They say she's mighty good-looking, and, what the deuce! It wouldn't be so hard. When she finds out ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... sort o' horrible, that catches at the breath, To visualize some two score babes most foully done to death; To see their fright, their struggles—to watch their lips turn blue— There ain't no use denyin', it will raise the deuce with you. O yes, God bless the President—he's an awful row to hoe, An' God grant, too, that peace with honor hand in hand may go, But let's not call men "rotters," 'cause, while we are standing pat, They lose their calm serenity, an' ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... does," he chuckled, once more raising the glasses. "You've put on seventeen pounds, too,—besides a special chunk of 120, or thereabouts, which you gained the night of the rescue. That's some record, boy! See here," he asked quickly, "who the deuce are those people, anyway! One has a mighty familiar look!" And I could hardly keep from laughing as ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... 'The deuce you did,' said Vandeloup, in surprise, taking a seat, 'then he was the liveliest dead man I ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... Fairfax, suddenly uncomfortable. "Why, he's lost in the wood. He's alone on a desert isle. What the deuce is he doing here?" ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... right in one situation would be wrong in another. Possessing a pair-royal, it is generally advisable to lay out the other cards for crib, unless it belongs to the adversary. Avoid giving him two fives, a deuce and a trois, five and six, seven and eight, five and any other tenth card. When he does not thereby materially injure his hand, the player should for his own crib lay out close cards, in hope of making a sequence; or two of a suit, in expectation ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... to fetch and carry like a dog. Like as not, if the mate sends him after his quadrant, on the way he is met by the captain, who orders him to pick some oakum; and while he is hunting up a bit of rope, a sailor comes along and wants to know what the deuce he's after, and bids him be off to ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... as they went towards the carriage. "How extraordinary!" he said. "She couldn't have it from Peter. He tells nothing. Where the deuce did she get it, and is it so?" Then he said: "Senator Van Brunt Pell," with a roll on all the r's. "That sounds well. I wonder if ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... I am not Methusaleh," I replied; "but if you mean that you are falling in love with Heda, why the deuce don't you say so, instead of wasting my ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... Sea Puss is found, Cat-like, forever chasing round and round. She has no claws, but crouching sly and low She stealthily puts out her undertow. And when an old seadog comes in her way I'll warrant you there is the deuce ...
— A Phenomenal Fauna • Carolyn Wells
... the world go as it lists. It must go well, for most people are content with it. If I knew history enough, I should prove to you that evil has always come about here below through a few men of genius, but I do not know history, no more than I know anything else. The deuce take me, if I have learnt anything, or if I find myself a pin the worse for not having learnt anything. I was one day at the table of the minister of the King of——, who has brains enough for four, and he showed as plain as one and one make two, that nothing ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... into the room in a hurry. He was not in the best of humors; why the deuce couldn't Fraser manage without dragging him there? He had carte blanche as to ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... lawyer was but just disbarred for some malpractice; and the discovery added excessively to my disquiet. Here was a rascal without money or the means of making it, thrust out of the doors of his own trade, publicly shamed, and doubtless in a deuce of a bad temper with the universe. Here, on the other hand, was a man with a secret; rich, terrified, practically in hiding; who had been willing to pay ten thousand pounds for the bones of the Flying Scud. I slipped insensibly into a mental ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... advance no pretension to compete with the claim of that "literary man" who became immortal by dint of one dinner with a bishop, and in right of that last glass poured out for him in sign of amity by "Sylvester Blougram, styled in partibus Episcopus, necnon the deuce knows what." I do not propose to prove my perception of any point in the character of Hamlet "unseized by the Germans yet." I can only determine, as the Church Catechism was long since wont to bid me, ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... got a great surprise. His brother-partner turned up with a draft of men and found himself posted to the battalion. The brothers met, as only brothers can, with the words, "What the deuce are you doing here?" Highly elated, Cook told him about the application for business leave and gloated over his chances of being home first, and on full pay too. His brother was intensely amused, and they both laughed heartily, when he told us ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 29, 1919 • Various
... Lord, I've been working like the deuce all day till my room got so cold I thought I'd get pneumonia. Darn landlady economizing on coal came up when I yelled over the stairs for her for half an hour. Began explaining why and all. God! First she drove me crazy, then I began to think she was sort of a character, ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Slosh diminished my lead by fifteen. The Renshaw Slam brought the score to Deuce. Then I got in a really fine serve, which beat him. 'Vantage in. Another Slosh. Deuce. Another Slam. 'Vantage out. It was an awesome moment. There is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood—I served. Fault. I served again—a beauty. ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... small-pox; and which attacks every one of us, from the first duke in the Peerage down to Jack Ketch inclusive: which has no respect for rank, virtue, or roguery in man, but sets each in his turn in a fever; which breaks out the deuce knows how or why, and, raging its appointed time, fills each individual of the one sex with a blind fury and longing for some one of the other (who may be pure, gentle, blue-eyed, beautiful, and good; or vile, shrewish, squinting, ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... you'll stow those shore-going togs and get into working rig before you tackle him.' Merritt was arrayed in all his finery, and if you'd ever seen him you'd know that that meant a lot, for when he was flush he could make Solomon in all his glory, or any other swell dresser look like a dirty deuce in a new deck. He had on a light suit with checks which were so loud they drowned the music of the orchestra, and a shirt which would make a summer sunset hide its head in disappointment. Patent leather shoes with yellow tops and a white plug hat with a black band around it completed his costume, ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... he would go to the deuce with it, he will leave it to a hospital. Is that what you ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... not shoes. There is your little Tom, just ten, ordering the great, large, quiet, orderly young man about—shrieking calls for hot water—bullying Jeames because the boots are not varnished enough, or ordering him to go to the stables, and ask Jenkins why the deuce Tomkins hasn't brought his pony round—or what you will. There is mamma rapping the knuckles of Pincot the lady's-maid, and little Miss scolding Martha, who waits up five pair of stairs in the nursery. Little Miss, Tommy, papa, mamma, you all expect from Martha, from Pincot, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... you have. How the deuce did you know she would be here? All right, but she won't get away from me so easy this time. I see the old man's with her, and the idea of supposing that he could have been her husband ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... Leven, stopping short behind Aldous, who was alone conscious of the lad's indignant astonishment; "what the deuce is he ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and courteous individual called Billali, spoke of her as "She-who-is-everlasting." What the deuce could he mean by that, I wondered? Probably that she was very old and therefore disagreeable to look on, which I confessed to ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... big proposition to offer you. One that will beat Mascola's like an ace beats a deuce. Because this one ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... and went afar to find the witch, and pay her severely for all her wickedness. And on that very [true] day the lady Trinali heard how Merlin was [is] a great, powerful wizard, and said, "What sort of a man is this? I will punish him or he shall kill me, deuce help me! I will bewitch him. Let us see who has the most cleverness and who is the most knowing." And then Merlin went on the road all day alone, always in sunshine; and Trinali went in the forest, ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... "I haven't. Why the deuce should I? Is he gun-running, or threatening to vote against the Government, or likely to ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... pincushion on my table," she said; "but I think it's a black one. I dont know where the deuce all the pins go to." Then, casting off the subject, she whistled a long and florid cadenza, and added, by way of instrumental interlude, a remarkably close imitation of a violoncello. Meanwhile the man went into her room for the pin. On his ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... to Valre). Thither no coxcomb comes. (Valre again bows to him). What the deuce!... (He turns and sees Ergaste bowing on the other side). Another? What ...
— The School for Husbands • Moliere
... DIMPLE. The deuce! Has he heard of those bills! Nay, then, all's up with Maria, too; but an affair of this sort can never prejudice me among the ladies; they will rather long to know what the dear creature possesses to make ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler
... units belonging to the civilized nations of such social and racial divergence that the mind is staggered by the conception of them all fighting under one banner. But are we sure they are all fighting for the same thing? If they're not, there will be the deuce to pay all over the terrestrial globe, even with ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... unspeakable vanity of the race. It was the death-blow to private judgment. At least, it ought to have been. But, alas! human vanity and presumption are eternal and indestructible. From the corner-boy here at my window, who asks indignantly, "Why the deuce did not Gladstone push his Bill through the House of Lords, and then force the Commons to accept it?" to the flushed statesman, whose dream is Imperialism; from the little manikin critic, who swells out his chest, and demands summary vengeance on that idiot of an author who has had the daring presumption ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... growled. "Mr. Robert an' the ol' man didn't hit off, an' there was a deuce of a row between 'em the other day, Saturday it was. My niece, Mary, was a-dustin' the banisters when the two kem out from breakfast, an' she heerd the Gov'nor say: 'That's my last word on the subjec'. I mean to be ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... is a hard thing for me to say. I know it will sound heartless. But I am bound to say so. It is for your sake. I can't hurt myself. It does me no harm that everybody knows that I am philandering after you; but it is the very deuce for you." She was silent for a moment. Then he said again ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... loud and clear, And his tones are sweet, yet his terms are dear! The glove won't fit! The deuce a bit. I shall give ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... lists. It must go well, for most people are content with it. If I knew history enough, I should prove to you that evil has always come about here below through a few men of genius, but I do not know history, no more than I know anything else. The deuce take me, if I have learnt anything, or if I find myself a pin the worse for not having learnt anything. I was one day at the table of the minister of the King of——, who has brains enough for four, and ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... earth has the prince got to do with it? Who the deuce is the prince?" cried the general, who could ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... sides have each scored three points in a game, or five games in a set; to win the game or set two points or games must then be won consecutively. The earliest instances in English of the use of the slang expression "the deuce," in exclamations and the like, date from the middle of the 17th century. The meaning was similar to that of "plague" or "mischief" in such phrases as "plague on you," "mischief take you" and the like. The use of the word as an euphemism ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... in bitter self-apostrophe. "Why didn't I jump in after Forbes? Now I am out of the hunt! I wonder what the deuce Furneaux ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... Spanish, thought Luck, why the deuce hadn't he done it at first? But there is no fathoming the reticence of an Indian—and Luck, by a sudden impulse, hid his own knowledge of the language. He stood up and turned toward the rocks, cupped his hands around his lips and called for the Native Son. "And leave your rifle at home," he added ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... anything about law? He's a classic winner, the very deuce of a top-notcher. He's been hung over and over again. You can't teach him anything about ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... tyrant, though?" remarked Walter. "I've just been to walk and am tired as the deuce. What do I wish to go tramping ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... Rocksworth. "Stop this beastly noise! What the deuce do you mean, sir, permitting these scoundrels to raise the dead like this? Confound 'em, I stopped them once. Here! You! Let up on ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... By jings, the devil has his own way about half the time, and his influence is mighty powerful the other half. Now, we're gittin' at it. I reckon we'd better go on to breakfast, though. I almost forgot that you had to go to your school. Why, man, what the deuce is the matter with you ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... hear him groan over the wire. "Hang Josie!" says he. "See here, McCabe, I've had a deuce of a time with that case. Must have been something wrong with the address, ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... "You see," he explained diffidently; "you see, I'm just engaged to be married—and though business is fairly good and all that—my being away from the office six or eight weeks is going to cut like the deuce into my commissions—and roses cost such a horrid price last Fall—and there seems to be a game law on diamonds this year; they practically fine ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... which circumstance greatly elated him. Dobbin, who was a friend of the general commanding the division in which their regiment was, came laughing one day to Mrs. Osborne, and displayed a similar invitation; which made Jos envious, and George wonder how the deuce he should be getting into society. Mr. and Mrs. Rawdon, finally, were of course invited, as became the friends of a general commanding a ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... is never swift (Shells are a deuce of a weight to lift); When they are ready to open shop, Where they are planted, there they stop, The grey guns, The gay guns, That know what they're about, To wait at fifteen hundred yards and clear ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various
... send a missionary up here to marry us. I don't figure that two days of savage rites constitutes a marriage—but I'm going to have a deuce of a time trying to explain it ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... don't know where I am," he said, "but I expect we shall all be in the deuce of a mess before long. About Mrs. Halton running after me, that is absolutely all rot. What brutes women are to each other! And they say, to use your expression, that I've been walking out ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... is frightened out of her wits—that is all. These Yankee horses of yours have been playing the very deuce. Clear the ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... halfway between supreme content and violent anger. At last he delivered himself. "Let's duck him... hey?... Let's duck him!" He spoke with a sort of benevolent chuckle, then raised his voice and called, "Tinsley! Tinsley! Where the deuce is Tinsley?" ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... weaker sex is coming it amazingly strong. The sceptres of three of the first kingdoms in Europe are swayed by female hands. The first writer of young France is a woman. The first astronomer of young England, idem. Mrs Trollope played the Chesterfield and the deuce with the Yankees. Miss Martineau turned the head of the mighty Brougham. Mademoiselle d'Angeville ascended Mont Blanc, and Mademoiselle Rachel has replaced Corneille and Racine on their crumbling pedestals. I might waste hours of your precious time, sir, in perusing a list ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... strange fancy; "but there's only one about, and it seems a deuce of a long way off—however, I'll try;" and, with that, I reached my arm up in the direction of the solitary planet, which lay in the vast obscure like a small silver candlestick, with a greenish tinge in its icy sparkling, mirrored far below in the indigo flood of the abysmal ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... in my time, and I've played the deuce with men! I'm speaking of ten years past—I was barely sixty then: My cheeks were mellow and soft, and my eyes were large and sweet, POLL PINEAPPLE'S eyes were the standing toast ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... pretty well proved it last night, and I've always known she disliked me—since she grew up, that is. To be perfectly frank, aside from the fact that I don't care for young girls, she always irritates me like the deuce, and I've never made any secret of it. Night before last I couldn't well have made myself more disagreeable if ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... turned up a corner of the table-cloth, and were playing at dice. The good-natured A—came in. He laid down his hat when he saw me, approached me, and said in a low tone, "You have met with a disagreeable adventure." "I!" I exclaimed. "The count obliged you to withdraw from the assembly!" "Deuce take the assembly!" said I. "I was very glad to be gone." "I am delighted," he added, "that you take it so lightly. I am only sorry that it is already so much spoken of." The circumstance then began to pain me. I fancied that every ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... whom you mean—but, deuce take her, I can't hit off her name either—paints, d'ye say? Why she lays it on with a trowel. Then she has a great beard that bristles through it, and makes her look as if she was plastered with lime and ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... all into the deuce of a mess with your confounded coolness," said the Duke after a pause, during which he had in vain searched all his pockets for his cigar-case. Barker had watched him, and pushed an open box of Havanas across the ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... drizzle so thick, one can't see the ship's bows; but we ought to make Largo Light soon, if I am not far out in my reckoning. But you can't tell, in these chop seas, where you are. The wind drives you ahead and the current pulls you back, and the first thing you know you're on the rocks, and the deuce and all to pay," remarked the captain, his sharp, gray eyes still searching the rainy darkness. "I estimate our speed at fourteen knots—what ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... I may hunt a Molly Cotton-tail," he grumbled, bringing his horse's gait down to an amble. "There ought to be good hounds about, judging from the hang-dog look of the natives. Why in thunder did the old boy want to bury himself and his heirs forever in this god-forsaken land's end, and what in the deuce have mother and Aunt Kesiah done with themselves down here for the last twenty years? Two thousand acres? Damn it! I'd rather have six feet on the good English soil! Came to get rid of one woman, did he?—and tumbled ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... turned quickly. "Then it would be a pack, monsieur, in which you would be about equal to the deuce," he said. ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... "That's the deuce of it!" replied Tomsky, "she had four sons, one of whom was my father; all four were determined gamblers, and yet not to one of them did she ever reveal her secret, although it would not have been a bad thing ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... African War afterwards assured me it was the hottest corner he had ever been in. Bush-country fighting is detestable chiefly because you cannot see your enemy until you are on top of him. Our centre cantered in extended order up an avenue flanked by dense bush. We were laughing and asking where the deuce the rebels were, when a hail of rifle fire at short range greeted us. Our fellows were out of their saddles in a second, and advanced to the attack through the bush. Meantime, the South African Police ...
— With Botha in the Field • Eric Moore Ritchie
... you and Elizabeth into a deuce of an unpleasant position. I've told you what a fine woman my mother is, and how she'd welcome Elizabeth with open arms, and now I find I was all wrong. My mother isn't a fine woman; she's an ancestor-worshiping, heartless, selfish snob. I'm ashamed of her, Tom. ...
— Cupid's Understudy • Edward Salisbury Field
... inclined to be a little old-fogyish, thinks we are too young for any definite engagement, and wants me to be permanently established in some business before we are married, and all that; when I can't see what in the deuce is the difference so long as I have plenty of stuff. So the upshot of it all was that he and his wife took Grace to Europe, and they're not coming back until the holidays, and if, by that time, we have neither of us ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... of my heart; some massacre of liberty. I behold here a pair of eyes that seem to be very naughty boys, that insult liberty, and use a heart most barbarously. Why the deuce do they put themselves on their guard, in order to kill any one who comes near them? Upon my word! I mistrust them; I shall either scamper away, or expect very good security that they do ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... and oblong in shape. Ours is very rotten, and has a big hole burnt in the top as well as a large rent at one end. These we have, however, patched up to our satisfaction and comfort. As we are here for the deuce knows how long, the beloved army red tape and routine is coming ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... who write of loves that are loose, (Those little perversionist scribes of the Deuce!) Laughter of lies lilting lewd at their lips, Their souls and brains both in a maudlin eclipse; Their bosoms as bare as their stories and songs; These coaxers of dogs with their ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... make six," muttered Mr. Nabley; "six and four are ten. Why, I could have sworn that there were eleven. Yes, certainly there was another. Where the deuce ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... friend of mine. I ain't more than deuce-high in the district as far as influence goes, but Mike's as good a friend to a little man, or a poor man as he is to a big one. I met him to-day on the Bowery, and what do you think he does? Comes up and shakes hands. 'Andy,' ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... the question! Very likely he hasn't one at all. It seems to me there's a good many young fellows in that case nowadays. They have education, they have money, and they don't know what the deuce to do with either one or the other. They're a cut above you, Mr. Jack; it isn't enough for them to live and enjoy themselves. So they get it into their heads that they're called upon to reform the ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... very best." Her looks did not worry him. Water pouring over marble runs off as smoothly. "You want to be judged as men—you never will be till you can cut your hair short and dress the part. Clothes have the deuce of a lot to do with it. I can love a woman, but, my God, ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... me you found out every thing, though how the deuce you contrived it is more than I can ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... the head of A18 was mightily surprised to hear a civilian walking side by side with the captain of his troop remark, as he passed up the stable, "Why, there's old Smut!" When the officer and civilian had passed out he turned to the next man, and asked who the deuce the bloke was in the brown hat. "Why, that's Captain Baden-Powell," said the man; and then he added with great pride, "I was his batman once." The young soldier had heard of Baden-Powell before, and was furious that he had not looked longer at him as he passed. An odd circumstance, by the way, concerning ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... silence for a while. Then came the verdict, delivered from rolling clouds: 'If you were only a mass of blathering vanity, Dick, I wouldn't mind,—I'd let you go to the deuce on your own mahl-stick; but when I consider what you are to me, and when I find that to vanity you add the twopenny-halfpenny pique of a twelve-year-old girl, then I bestir myself ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... "What in the deuce does it matter?" returned Will desperately. "It was the only quiet night I've had for three weeks: I slept like a log straight through until the breakfast-bell. Then I was late, of course, and he threatened to take an hour's time from my day's wages. ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... That day, at five of the afternoon, it was one hundred and twenty degrees in the shade. And we, through necessity of reaching the next water, journeyed over the alkali at noon. Then the Desert came close on us and looked us fair in the eyes, concealing nothing. She killed poor Deuce, the beautiful setter who had traveled the wild countries so long; she struck Wes and the Tenderfoot from their horses when finally they had reached a long-legged water tank; she even staggered the horses themselves. And I, lying under ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... and stepped toward the tea-table. His head once turned, the smile took on a wry twist. He was no squire of dames, no frequenter of afternoon receptions. Why the deuce had he come to this one? Why had he yielded so readily to the urgings of the professor of mathematics?—himself urged in turn, perhaps, by a wife for whose little affair one extra man at the opening of the fall season counted, and counted hugely. Why must he now expose ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... May a braw wooer cam down the lang glen, And sair wi' his love he did deave me: I said there was naething I hated like men; The deuce gae wi'm to believe me, believe me, The deuce gae ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... groaned, "he sits up all night, and then his conscience smites him and his head aches, and he thinks the college is going to the deuce and is to be saved from perdition by his being rude. What you want, old chap, is a sedlitz powder; go and have one, and you won't be so gloomy, you may even smile when you see our eight ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... "'The deuce!... How amusing you are! And with what a face you say all these things! Just like the priest of ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Well, if I must, I must. We cleaned out the second trench line, bomb and bayonet thrust; And on we went to the third one, quite calloused to crumping by now; And some of our fellows who'd passed us were making a deuce of a row; And my chaps—well, I just couldn't hold 'em; (It's strange how it is with gore; In some ways it's just like whiskey: if you taste it you must have more.) Their eyes were like beacons of battle; by gad, sir! they COULDN'T be calmed, So I headed 'em bang for the bomb-belt, racing like ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... the rummiest go!" said the bewildered Dempsey to himself, as he walked towards his bicycle. "Mistake be damned! She was Mrs. Delane, and what's she up to now with my captain? And what the deuce was she doing ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... What the deuce were they at? and what was a "tink-an"? I dragged the filly nearer, and discovered that a hound puppy was the central point of the tumult, and was being contended for, like the body of Moses, by Miss Trinder and ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... come from—with whom had he studied—what were his plans? Had he ever been abroad? No. Strange! The artists nowadays neglected travel. 'But you go! Beg your way, paint your way—but go! Go before the wife and the babies come! Matrimony is the deuce. Don't you agree with me, Philip?' He laid a familiar hand on ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... possess more than their share of good looks; but 'beauties' are rare, and the sun plays the deuce with complexions. The commonest type is the jolly girl who, though she has large hands and feet, no features and no figure, yet has a taking little face, which makes you say: 'By Jove, she is not half bad-looking!' Brunettes are, ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... staring at those fixed, glazed eyes in silence for a moment, would play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him. There was something very awful, too, in the spectre's being provided with an infernal atmosphere of its own. Scrooge could not feel it himself, but this was clearly the case; for though the Ghost ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... suddenly exclaimed, "D-n me, I must read prayers this morning at All-Souls!" D-n me is an abbreviation of G-d d-n me; which, in England, does not seem to mean more mischief or harm than any of our or their common expletives in conversation, such as O gemini! or, The deuce take me! ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... followed next would have appeared unbelievable to any who have not over and over watched the inexplicable happenings of a gaming table. Kendric made his second throw and lifted his eyebrows quizzically at the result. He had turned out the deuce, the lowest number possible. A little eagerly, while men began to mutter in their excitement, Rios snatched up cup and die and threw. Once already he had counted ten thousand as good as won; now he made the same mistake. For the ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... like that nowadays." He gazed at the photograph whilst his eyes twinkled. "Legs—by Heaven! what legs!" He chuckled. "Wouldn't do for Clare to see that; she was shaking my pillows this mornin' and I was in a deuce of a fright—thought the ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... that was the deuce of it. Waterproof it was not, no more than a sponge. Indeed, with such recklessness had I bequilted my jacket, that in a rain-storm I became a universal absorber; swabbing bone-dry the very bulwarks I leaned against. ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... forbid! and keep me from being so silly as to go and make myself lean with any such grief. Your heart guarantees your fidelity; besides, I have too good an opinion of myself to believe that any other could please you after me. Where the deuce could you find any one ...
— The Love-Tiff • Moliere
... state of affairs when Johnny Behind the Deuce brought matters to a crisis by killing an engineer from ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... a long and hotly contested deuce set, and ended in favor of Dorothy and Alice just as Katie ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick
... Now, who the deuce was Bibi? She might be a baby. Or—who could tell?—she might be a poodle? On this point, however, I was left uninformed; for my unknown friend, who, luckily, seemed fond of talking and had a great deal to say, launched off into another ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... them for Dolcino," I said: surprised a moment afterwards at being in a position—thanks to Miss Ambient—to be so explanatory; and surprised even now that Mark should n't have shown visibly that he wondered what the deuce I knew about it But he did n't; he simply exclaimed, with a tenderness that ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... to judge for yourself. Tuesday the 12th was the day fixed; and we were to start at five in the morning—sharp. I turned out at four; shaved and dressed; got some bread and milk; and, throwing up the window, looked down into the street. Deuce a coach was there, nor did anybody seem to be stirring in the house. I waited until half-past five; but no preparations being visible even then, I left Mr. Q. to look out, and lay down upon the bed again. ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... I'm a Dutchman!" said Tommy to himself. "And running the show darned systematically too—as they always do. Lucky I didn't roll in. I'd have given the wrong number, and there would have been the deuce to pay. No, this is the place for me. ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... added, "I wish Arend had let the horse go to the deuce. It was not worth following into a place ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... play the deuce with us, though," I replied. "Now what do you suppose they intend ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... end of a week that the ship which Barny had hitherto kept ahead of him showed symptoms of bearing down upon him, as he thought, and, sure enough, she did; and Barny began to conjecture what the deuce the ship could want with him, and commenced inventing answers to the questions he thought it possible might be put to him in case the ship spoke him. He was soon put out of suspense by being hailed and ordered to run under her lee, ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... still your idea of the furnace. But look here, deuce take it! you have not had one cold since ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... spare him?" Osborne said to his friend's remonstrances, when they quitted the invalid, leaving him under the hands of Doctor Gollop. "What the deuce right has he to give himself his patronizing airs, and make fools of us at Vauxhall? Who's this little schoolgirl that is ogling and making love to him? Hang it, the family's low enough already, without ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the best, I don't deny, Thou'st fee'd the keeper, and he likes to feed us, But, then the situation I decry, But crying's useless—who the deuce will heed us? Then, reader would you listen to my wail, Come, and but see me, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 397, Saturday, November 7, 1829. • Various
... place as afterwards;—namely, the account of the manner in which Scott—whom we shall always find, as aforesaid, to be in salient and palpable elements of character, of the World, worldly, as Burns is of the Flesh, fleshly, and Byron of the Deuce, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... important that Gresson should not see this, but it was the deuce of a business to shake him off. I went for a walk in the afternoon along the shore and passed the telegraph office, but the confounded fellow was with me all the time. My only chance was just before we sailed, when he had ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... explain. I can alter my will yet, let me tell you. I'm of sound mind—can reckon compound interest in my head, and remember every fool's name as well as I could twenty years ago. What the deuce? I'm under eighty. I say, you ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... should think so; how the deuce should they be forgotten, when one is bored with them morning, noon, and night, for everlasting, by old Sam, and all the other pastors and masters in the kingdom? Hang me, if I can read this trash; the only poetry that ever was written ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... brother! Why the deuce should I? Do you think I belong to the rag, tag, and bobtail, that'll mix with the very scum of society so long as there's money about? Do you think I'd lower myself to associate ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... my trespasses, Abjured but not disowned. I'll not accuse Determinism, nor, as the Master {26} says, Charge even "the poor Deuce." ...
— A Father of Women - and other poems • Alice Meynell
... the thing along the road, and then two loutish men who made game of him and sent him here to get his car fixed. There had been a man, a queer man who gave him bread and butter instead of wine—he remembered that—and he had failed to get his car fixed, but how the deuce did he get landed on this couch with a world of books about him and a thin muslin curtain blowing into the room, and fanning the cheeks of a lovely rose in a long stemmed clear glass vase? Did he try to start and have a smash up? No, he remembered going down the steps with the intention ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... been the matter here?" asked Jack. "As we were coming along, we heard a dreadful row outside, and saw a large body of troops bolting off in a deuce of a hurry." ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... that Semple had a just cause of anger; "but then," he argued, "Neil is a proud, pompous fellow, for whom I never assumed a friendship. His father's hospitality I regret in any way to have abused; but who the deuce could have suspected that Neil Semple was in love with the adorable Katherine? In faith, I did not at the first, and now 'tis too late. I would not resign the girl for my life; for I am sensible that life, if she is another's, will be a very tedious ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... implied Inflates me with legitimate pride, It nevertheless can't be denied That it has its inconvenient side. For I'm not so old, and not so plain, And I'm quite prepared to marry again, But there'd be the deuce to pay in the Lords If I fell in love with one of my Wards: Which rather tries my temper, for I'm SUCH a ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... Elizabeth, a Catherine de' Medici. She sits enthroned behind the counter all day long and takes the money and counts the saucers and smiles on rich clients, and if a waiter in a far corner gives a bit of sugar to a dog she spots it, and the waiter has a deuce of a time. That woman is worth her weight in thousand-franc notes. She goes to bed every night at one, and gets up in the morning at five. And virtuous! Didn't Solomon say that a virtuous woman was more precious ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... "No! The deuce! We should have to explain everything to him. He knows what's what, and would find the idea too good, and want a share of the spoil. No! Sign that, and don't be alarmed. The sheep will be back in the fold before the shepherd ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... see what's against a decent clean-up and breakfast at the club. It doesn't much matter when I report, and the club's handy for your show. I know the A.C.G.'s office, because it's in the same house as the Base Cashier, and the club's just at the bottom of the street. But it's the deuce of a way from the station. If we can get a taxi, I vote ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... faithless and sadly failed in its duty of support,—gazed distractedly at the speaker. Visions of Jewish money-lenders, of ladies more fair and kind than wise, of guinea points at whist, of the prize ring of Baden-Baden, of Newmarket and Doncaster, arose confusedly before him. What the deuce,—he did not like bad language, but really,—what the dickens, had all these to do with his ewe-lamb, innocent little Constance, her virgin-white body and soul, and her ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... my right hand to ride, only it wouldn't carry him. I can't make horses. Harry brought home that brown mare on Tuesday with an overreach that she won't get over this season. What the deuce they do with their horses to knock them about so, I can't understand. I've killed horses in my time, and ridden them to a stand-still, but I never bruised them and battered them about ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... about your empty houses? Your Parliament House? Bah! It's a bauble shop. While your members are fighting amongst themselves like cats and dogs, the country is going to the deuce." ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... say that this trick produced greater stupefaction than the ones preceding it: at any rate, my spectators, palsied by surprise and terror, looked round in silence, seeming to think, "Where the deuce have we ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... guns are the dandy things to put the Hun to rout If he tries to regain his land. So just keep the clips a-comin', and we'll give her all the juice As we speed along our glorious way: And Von Hindenburg and Ludendorff will beat it like the deuce When the little old ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... get a nosegay was, she said, her aim; And Nicaise presently her steps pursued, Who, when the turf within the bow'r he viewed, Exclaimed, oh la! how wet it is my dear! Your handsome clothes will be spoiled I fear! A carpet let me instantly provide? Deuce take the clothes! the fair with anger cried; Ne'er think of that: I'll say I had a fall; Such accident a loss I would not call, When Time so clearly on the wing appears, 'Tis right to banish scruples, cares, and fears; Nor think of clothes nor dress, however fine, ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... with a conductor. There was a meeting of the dignitaries some years back; some argued in favour and some against it, and it ended in neither party being persuaded, and nothing being done. I met another Englishman here, to whom the question might so properly be put, "What the deuce are you doing here?" An old worthy, nearly seventy, who, after having passed his fair allowance of life very happily in his own country, must, forsooth, come up the Rhine, without being able to speak a word of French, or any other language but his own. He very ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... weather has been playing the deuce with us all. Only think of little puss being attacked with your complaint, the very day you were here suffering so much from it, and my getting ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... best—at one time I thought they were not nice. What a fool I was! What should I do with a wife I could not kiss? I wonder if Blanche will speak to me again? Maybe all this was a dodge, women have so many; but she looked in earnest. I might have frightened her by being so sudden, but why the deuce should women be frightened at proposals, when they pass their lives in trying to get them? So Mrs. Stunner said. Poor birdie!, what a soft hand she has! Maybe some women are modest: I will ask Hardcash about it. She may ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... him on; partly because, out of the corner of his eye, he was aware of the girl's unconcealed suspense. "Go on, please, Mr. Calendar. You throw yourself on a total stranger's mercy because you're in the deuce of a hole; and—?" ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... to return and plough the land with him. I then tried to paint pictures on religious subjects which proved bad business. As I could plainly see that I was going to die of hunger, I sent art to the deuce and sought employment. My father will die one of these days, and I am waiting for that event to ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... [peeping]. The deuce! This fellow Is no fool, I see. No greenhorn In his business is this devil. I give him my bond! No, truly, Though my lodgings wanted a tenant For the space of twenty ages, I ...
— The Wonder-Working Magician • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... are in our rear, everywhere. The railroad is torn up, the viaducts smashed, the wires cut, and general deuce to pay. I ran into an Uhlan or two—you notice it perhaps," he added, with a grim smile. "Could you drive me to Morteyn? Do you think the vicomte would ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... aches! It feels as though it were made of lead!... I have a fire in my veins and such a thirst! Here and now I make a firm resolution never to give way again to such dissipation. Never again will I drink champagne in such quantities. But, where the deuce am I?... It's still pitch dark!... Ah, I remember ... it's outrageous! ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... Kurzbold who spoke, as he playfully kicked, not too gently, those of his comrades who lay nearest him. He was answered by groans and imprecations, as one by one the sleeping beauties aroused themselves, and wondered where the deuce they were. ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... to take them to the hall, completed the octette. Corporal Smith, the orderly in question, recounted his adventures afterwards. "Never again," quoth he, "shall I jump at a matinee job if there are blind chaps in the party. They're the deuce." ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... Professor Cutter?" So Cutter was sent for, and when he had seen her he sent for me, and told me that my sister-in-law was in a lucid state, but that it would be just as well not to excite her. If she chose to leave her room she might, he said, but she ought to be watched. "The deuce!" said I, "this is most extraordinary!" "Exactly," ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... "How the deuce did all this occur so early? Where could it originate? I certainly had no sexual ideas for years afterward, and yet my misery, my love for that girl, were so violent, that I sometimes doubt if I have ever been really attached since. Be that as it may, ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... to the gunsmith's, of course. Why? For guns. Yes—there's only one shop. Get eight guns! Rifles. Not elephant guns—no! Too big. Not army rifles—too small. Say it's to kill—kill a bull. Say it's to shoot buffalo! See? Eh? Rats? No! How the deuce are they to understand that? Because we want eight. Get a lot of ammunition. Don't get guns without ammunition—No! Take the lot in a cab to—where's the place? Urshot? Charing Cross, then. There's ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... and Exegetics with Fortsch [How the deuce did Fortsch teach these things?]; Hermeneutics and Polemics with Walch [editor of—Luther's Works,—I suppose]; Hebraics with Dr. Danz; Homiletics with Dr. Weissenborn; PASTORALE [not Pastoral Poetry, but the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... the hundred pounds, I couldn't fancy what the deuce and all he meant by such prattle. I was half afraid he might be having me on, as I have known him do now and again when he fancied he could get me. I fearfully wanted to ask questions. Again I saw the dark, absorbed face of the gipsy as he studied ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... peninsula. They form the ninety-ninth part of the rock in this quarter. It is a most convenient formation, being worked almost as easily as clay, and yet it makes substantial walls. Frost, I presume, would play the deuce with it. But that is a thing not much known here. I have not yet had the pleasure to fix my northern eye on a piece of ice this winter, though there has been a cream thickness of it once or twice. A pitcher ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... braw wooer cam down the lang glen, And sair wi' his love he did deave me: I said there was naething I hated like men; The deuce gae wi'm to believe me, believe me, The deuce gae ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... industries. How could wigs be made unless there were bald heads. And how wrong it was to divert any class of persons, under the shallow pretence of making them wiser and better, from the making of bald heads. There would be the deuce toupee if this kind of thing were to be encouraged, and their tonsorial constituents would bring them to the Scratch on this question. He was proud to say that he was an Old Wig. Others might hold with the hair on this question. He would run with the Shampooers ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... "what a fool I am to be sure! I ought to have cut John, not Jack. However, it don't signify. Nobody ever called me John, that I recollect. So I dare say I was christened Jack. Deuce take it! I was very near spelling my name with ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... 'Now, the deuce is in it,' muttered Pancks, tracing out a line in her hand with his clumsy finger, 'if this isn't me in the corner here! What do I want ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... humouring his strange fancy; "but there's only one about, and it seems a deuce of a long way off—however, I'll try;" and, with that, I reached my arm up in the direction of the solitary planet, which lay in the vast obscure like a small silver candlestick, with a greenish tinge in its icy sparkling, mirrored far below in the indigo flood of the abysmal ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... dreams, my better part stayed by the fitful vision of things unseen. Such an exquisite wild-goose-chase has never man undertaken before or since the dear Knight of La Mancha. And now I come to think of it, I don't know what the deuce I have been after, save that instead of pursuing I have all ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... you like the deuce!" I replied, cordially, holding out my hand as if welcoming him back, whereat he frowned suspiciously. "Now that I'm reconciled to your system, and know that there is no possible escape for me, I don't seem to feel so badly. How have you been, and ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... "At West Point, the deuce you have!" said Aiken. His tone was now one of respect, and he regarded me with marked interest. He was not a gentleman, but he was sharp-witted enough to recognize one in me, and my words and bearing had impressed him. Still his next remark ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... the same stain. I've had that book long enough to know it by heart. Now what the deuce would that lunatic want to have it ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... laughed the other. "I'm glad we don't have to mess from your galley. But you're right about the weather. It's all right to go hunting for derelicts, but I don't know how the deuce anybody can be expected to find one in a ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... how matters stood between her and Noel d'Arnaye; the host of the Crowned Ox had been garrulous that evening. But it was Francois whom she loved. She was well-to-do. Here for the asking was a competence, love, an ingleside of his own. The deuce of it was ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... has followed me so far—I hope that a short recapitulation will not terrify thee, and I have traveled on under the impression that thou, like me, hast kept saying to thyself, "Where the deuce are we going?" ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... enthusiasm, and holding out both hands]. The deuce she is! I am most uncommonly glad to see you, ma'am, under this roof. [Aside to Susan] She don't look very prosperous, Susan: if there's anything that money can get for her, I'll see ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... mysteriously from the deuce knows where, and we staggered to the dancing-house somehow, and struggled in, blinded, our faces scored, our clothes heavy with sand, our pockets, our very boots, weighed ...
— Desert Air - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... the Knight of the Lawn, At the throne of the lady who loves him bows low: He fears not the fight, for his racket is drawn, And he spurs his great steed as he charges the foe. And the sound of his war-cry is heard in the din, "Fifteen, thirty, forty, deuce, vantage, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various
... was three or four years older than I, and had travelled a good deal, and seen life. But every man has his weak side; and I found his was a sort of a High-Church Radicalism, and that suited me well enough, for I was always a deuce of a radical myself; so I stuck to him like a leech, and stood all his temper, and his pride, and those unpractical, windy visions of his, that made a common-sense fellow like me sick to listen to; but I stood ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... for Pflastersticken, the court-surgeon, and addressed him to the following effect: "Pflastersticken," says I, "there has been an accident at court of which you will hear. You will send in leeches, pills, and the deuce knows what, and you will say that I have dislocated my leg: for some days you will state that I am in considerable danger. You are a good fellow and a man of courage I know, for which very reason you can appreciate those qualities ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the lass is not right!" grunted the squire, when he had got on his glasses. "What the deuce do they here?" ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... unfair. Who made me what I am but Fernhurst? Two years ago I came here as innocent as Caruthers there; never knew anything. Fernhurst taught me everything; Fernhurst made me worship games, and think that they alone mattered, and everything else could go to the deuce. I heard men say about bloods whose lives were an open scandal, 'Oh, it's all right, they can play football.' I thought it was all right too. Fernhurst made me think it was. And now Fernhurst, that has made me what I am, turns round ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... once forthcoming. "What the deuce are they going to take you away for?" he said. "Is your ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... to one of the large towns on the lake, I'll find myself no worse off than the travellers my master used to talk about. Why shouldn't I work my way out of the scrape as well as they did? Some of them got back home again. Come, then! the deuce! Cheer up, my boy!" ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... for no man knew of his secret project) and grinned with a sort of amused tolerance for the sentimental side of his nature. "I'm a silly ass to have even dreamed of finding her as I passed along, and if I had found her what the deuce could I have done about it anyway? This isn't the day for mediaeval lady-snatching. I dare say I'm just as well off for not having found her. I still have the zest for hunting farther, and there's a lot in that." Then aloud: "Hobbs, are we ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... concerned," said Mr. Jelliffe, slowly. "The other chap will come and undo this thing, and hurt me a lot more. I'm inclined to let things slide. This practice of yours ought to be a great thing for a stout man needing a reducing diet. How the deuce do you ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... was a visitor here years ago. To go to his house now is very pleasant. For a long time after their first baby died on the day they entered a new house, before even the beds were up, it seemed as if Mrs Luscombe, a gentle, delicate woman, 'with the deuce of a will of her own,' Luscombe says, was going to decline and die too. The new baby, which was to have killed her, has put new life into her instead. They are touchingly proud of it, and very happy altogether. I do like to ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... Slim!" he cried, and spurred swiftly toward the mouth of the gully. "What the deuce is the matter?" he asked anxiously. "What's happened ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... Faith, I fancied you had in mind even deeper play for the future. A vastly interesting game, this of politics. You stake your head that you can turn a king and zounds! you play the deuce instead." ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... rigging and so still that the helmsman over there at the other end of the poop might have (and he probably did) suspect him of being criminally asleep on duty, he tried to "get hold of that thing" by some side which would fit in with his simple notions of psychology. "What the deuce are they worrying about?" he asked himself in a dazed and contemptuous impatience. But all the same "jailer" was a funny name to give a man; unkind, unfriendly, nasty. He was sorry that Mr Smith was guilty ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... He picked up a handful of dirt and smeared it over his face. With the help of the tears it was very effective. "I'm jest as bad as bad can be. I know a whole string of cuss words an' I can say them as fast as now-I-lay-me. Doggone, devil, deuce, dam, da—" ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... it is a hard thing for me to say. I know it will sound heartless. But I am bound to say so. It is for your sake. I can't hurt myself. It does me no harm that everybody knows that I am philandering after you; but it is the very deuce for you." She was silent for a moment. Then he said again emphatically, ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... was, my child. Now I've got to tell you again that I am Priam Farll. Honestly I wish I wasn't, but I am. The deuce of it is that that fellow that came here this morning has found it out, and there's going to be trouble. At least there has been trouble, and there ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... horizontal row. There are two kings among them, which is auspicious, for kings must be placed sometime at the top. There is a red queen, also auspicious, to be placed on one of the black kings. There is an ace of diamonds and its deuce. Good, again! The ace is placed above the row, beginning a row of aces to be placed there as fast as they fall, and the deuce is placed atop of it, for in that row the suits will be built up, each in its ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... Lady Jane be not at this moment giving his conge to some disappointed swain. She slowly raised her long, black fringed eyelids, and looked into my face, with an expression at once so tender and so plaintive, that I felt a struggle within myself whether to press her to my heart, or—what the deuce was the alternative. I hope my reader knows, for I really do not. And after all, thought I, if we are to marry, I am only anticipating a little; and if not, why then a "chaste salute," as Winifred ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... Mr. Harley's alone, about some business of importance; but there were two or three gentlemen there. Mr. Secretary and I went together from his office to Mr. Harley's, and thought to have been very wise; but the deuce a bit: the company stayed, and more came, and Harley went away at seven, and the secretary and I stayed with the rest of the company till eleven; I would then have had him come away, but he was in for it; and though he swore he would come away at that flask, there I left him. I wonder at the ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... broadest—no one else's hat would fit him- -was now one of the highest, that is to say, he had lost all his hair, except a ragged lock over each ear and a thin fringe behind. He was beginning also to lose his teeth, which were strong though small, and blackened by tobacco; and now, instead of "deuce take it" he said ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... he said. "I can smell in the air something has gone wrong: what the deuce is it? There's always something getting out of gear in this ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... another cools off, and before she brings any one on 'em to the right weldin' heat, the coal is gone and the fire is out. Then she may blow and blow till she's tired; she may blow up a dust, but the deuce of a flame can she blow up agin, to save her soul alive. I never see a clever lookin' gal in danger of that, I don't long to whisper in her ear, You dear little critter, you, take care! you have too many irons in the fire; some on 'em will get stone cold, and t'other ones ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... of you! Deuce a bit am I afeard of you! You may glare till your eyes drop out, but you'll not scare me! And you may be the Markiss of Arondelle and the Duke of Hereward, too, for aught I know, or care either! But you were just plain Mr. John Scott ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... no sign yet; when she frowns I must kiss. So stands the matter. I must go hence to pray her to walk in the woods with me. She will flush and flutter, but, poor child, she will come. What I ask she will not and must not refuse. But, deuce take it, I ask so little! There's the rub! I hear your upbraiding voice, 'Pooh, man, catch her up and kiss her!' Ah, my dear Varvilliers, you suffer under a confusion. She is a duty; and who is impelled by duty to these sudden cuttings ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... the dumb carcasses of beasts, could scarce covet shelter in the commonplace human form. No Gytrash was this,—only a traveller taking the short cut to Millcote. He passed, and I went on; a few steps, and I turned: a sliding sound and an exclamation of "What the deuce is to do now?" and a clattering tumble, arrested my attention. Man and horse were down; they had slipped on the sheet of ice which glazed the causeway. The dog came bounding back, and seeing his master in a predicament, ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... dear old Gussie broke off short, rose from his seat, and sprang with indescribable vim at an extraordinarily stout chappie who had suddenly appeared. There was the deuce of a rush for him, but Gussie had got away to a good start, and the rest of the singers, dancers, jugglers, acrobats, and refined sketch teams seemed to recognize that he had won the trick, for they ebbed ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... it while they're having tea," said the First Lieutenant. "But how the deuce they're going to get ashore the Lord knows. I'll have to hoist in the boats if it gets any worse. Keep an eye on the compass and see we aren't dragging." The Captain ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... now with Liberty on the loose, And All the Russias capped in red, And Demos hustling like the deuce, And Tsardom's day as good as dead— When on the Dynasty they dance And with the Imperial Orb play hockey, I feel that LITTLE WILLIE'S chance Looks, at the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various
... but Cedric's manner was decidedly embarrassed, and he seemed unwilling to look Malcolm in the face. "But I must tell you, Herrick, that I strongly object to the way you are questioning me. I don't want to quarrel with you, but what the deuce can it matter to you if I choose to keep my private affairs to myself for a week or two! I have reasons of my own for not wishing my sisters to hear of my engagement for a fortnight or so. I—I," hesitating and floundering in his sentence, "meant to tell them myself, ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... be comic in a tragedy. What the deuce else can you do? I wish this language of yours had a wider scope. I suppose we could not extend it from the fingers to the toes? That would involve pulling off our boots and socks during the conversation, which however ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... it out," said Jack, reaching for another cigarette. "My part of it, I mean. It's that that's raising the deuce with you two, so you just cut me out of it. I'll make out all right." As an afterthought he added indifferently, "I killed a bear the other day. I was going to bring you down a chunk. It isn't half bad; change from deer meat and ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... Hounslow Heath I point, and Banstead Down; Thence comes your mutton, and these chicks my own, From yon old walnut tree a show'r shall fall, And grapes, long lingering on my only wall, And figs from standard and espalier join— The deuce is in you ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... passed down before the statued arcade of the Uffizi, and came out upon the Arno. What course we took I hardly remember, but we roamed slowly about for an hour, my companion delivering by snatches a sort of moon-touched aesthetic lecture. I listened in puzzled fascination, and wondered who the deuce he was. He confessed with a melancholy but all-respectful ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... the Boers named the place where they died 'Weenen', or the 'Place of Weeping'; and so it is called to this day, and always will be called. And many an elephant have I shot with that old gun. She always took a handful of black powder and a three-ounce ball, and kicked like the very deuce. ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... continued Stubby, confidentially. "Usually it's pretty dull here, and all we can do is ride and hunt—play cards and quarrel. But your coming has created no end of excitement and this dance will be our red-letter day for a long time to come. The deuce of if is, however, that there are only two girls to dance with thirteen men. We limit our community to fifteen, you know; but little Ford and old Rutledge have backed down and won't have anything to do with this enterprise. I don't know why," ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... one belonging to the school, and one that belongs to a fellow from Toronto. It is a peach, and he thinks he can beat me in a race. We are going to try it out some day if we can ever get up without an instructor. They are awful strict here. I will have a deuce of a time if ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb
... just it. What the deuce is a fellow to do when a woman goes on in that way? She told me down there, upon the old race-course, you know, that matrimonial bonds were made for fools and slaves. What was I to suppose that she meant by that? But, to make all sure, I asked her what sort of a fellow the general was. 'Dear old ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... play to be given this evening, and will be forced—if it does not succeed—to leave this marvellous scenery, these rich stuffs at a hundred francs the yard, unpaid for. His fourth failure is staring him in the face. But, deuce take it! our manager has confidence. Success, like all the monsters that feed on man, loves youth; and this unknown author whose name is entirely new on the posters, ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... I be? It was as the very deuce I pounced on you. But don't let it trouble you, for everything but the very deuce—at our age—is a bore and a delusion, and even he himself, after all, but half a joy." With which, on a single sweep of her wing, she resumed. "You assist her to expiate—which is rather hard ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... allowance of Three Pints of Water a day for each man; judging it best to be Economical, although we had a good stock of water aboard (taken in at Juan Fernandez); but Captain Blokes' reason was, to be able to keep at Sea for some time longer, and take some Prizes to keep the Deuce out of our pockets, without being discovered by Watering; for our South-Sea Pilot told us that the timorous people of these Latitudes once smelling an Enemy hovering about, will put to sea with nothing of value ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... an unpleasant thought seemed to strike him, for his face flushed, and he gave a long, low whistle. "Phew! I never thought of that! Why! I shall never have an hour with Valmai with this confounded wrangler at my heels! Deuce anwl! how shall I manage it? one thing only I know, no power on earth—not even an ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... rather think," said he, musing; "but the postmark is Plymouth. How the deuce—!" The two first lines of the letter were read, and the old man's countenance fell. Susan, who had been all alive at the mention of McElvina's name, perceived the alteration ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... her, and she was almost in love with you; you jilted her for money, she got a man to shoot your hand off in revenge: no more dice-boxes, now, Deuceace; no more sauter la coupe. I can't think how the deuce you will ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... eh? Thought I'd quit a game where I hold all the aces, an' horn in on one where I don't hold even a deuce to draw to? Bitin' off more'n he c'n chaw has choked more'n one feller. Right here in Choteau County they's some several of 'em choked out on the end of a tight one, because they overplayed their hand. I'm a horse-thief—an' ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... it back. Ace-of-trumps may it prove to you, Captain Paul; may it be impossible for you ever to be taken. But for me—poor deuce, a trey, that comes in your wake—any king or knave may take me, as before ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... whatever warmth of color she wished into his regrets and into his advice that they should consult a lawyer. It was not business-like; if it were generally known it might be criticised; but in the last resort, with a thing like that, Hilary felt that he could always tell his critics to go to the deuce, and fall back upon a ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... and looked over my way. He gave one glance at me, and then started to run inshore with short, jumpy little steps. Something seemed to have struck him all of a sudden, and I was just beginning to wonder what the deuce it could be when, out of the corner of my eyes, I caught sight of a pile of neatly folded clothes thrust into the cleft of the rock a little above my head. I began to understand then. I looked more disreputable ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... his prison now, and the pressing business is to keep him from going altogether to the deuce. I want him to have a good meal of meat three or four times a week, and light garden-work—all he is fit for now. And then we shall see ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... voice to a whisper. "I say, haven't we had almost enough?" he asked. "A fortnight's a deuce of a time! She's all very well, but it's jollier when we're alone, Luce. I want us ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... may go to the well once too often. He's a cunning rascal—no doubt knows this riddle—and therefore I begin to fear he has taken himself off,—at least for a long while. He may return again, but how the deuce are we to sustain this constant espionage? It would weary down the devil! It will become as tiresome as the siege of Granada was to the good king Fernando and his warlike spouse of the soiled chemise. Por Dios! I'm sick ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... comes to that,' said Monk, 'so have you. We've got as much business here as you. What the deuce are you doing here?' ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... or there's something wrong with the bells. When the housekeeper touches the button in her room to ring for the cook or the upstairs girl, the bell rings in Mr. Thorne's room. It starts ringing and it keeps up with a deuce of a noise. Fortunately the ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... "Now, who the deuce do I know?" asked the drummer reflectively, scratching his rosy ear. "I don't know any one that ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... But the deuce of it is, public opinion says that we must raise a garden. It is no use to hire a man to do it for us. However badly we may do it, patriotism demands that we monkey around with a garden of our own. We may get bitten by a snapping ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... one day, after hearing Mobray through his lines in "The Deuce is in Him," "I'd give a finger ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... his usual ramble. "Strikes me," he said musingly, "that I ought to do something handsome for Thwicket now—I really ought. My profit is $113,000. I doubt if his will reach even $500. That doesn't look quite fair, seeing that he did the business all on his own money. The deuce of it is, though, that it's demoralizing to make presents to your brokers. After all, business ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... bothered me. "Do you want to crab the whole game?" Now what the deuce did Boston mean? What game were these two worthies up to? Undoubtedly, it was that "rich lay" they had spoken to Newman about. But what had I to do with it? How could I crab their game? I began to think there was something besides loose talk in these ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... the gulch, on one of the largest pine trees, they found the deuce of clubs pinned to the bark with a bowie knife. It bore the following, written in ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... is," he said, with a smile, "that I shall go on living just as if nothing had happened, and shall probably live for a long, long time. My body is so confoundedly healthy. How the deuce did you have the courage to go on living?" he demanded, enviously. "You loved her and you lost her. I'd have thought you would ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... farmer, and I'm married, and I'm in a deuce of a stew because my spuds is drying up on me and no way to get water on 'em without I carry it to 'em in a jug," disclaimed Andy Green hastily. "All I know about punchers I learned from seeing picture shows when I go to ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... Brutus. "He has reasons to hate and fear the Americans. That is why he desires the death of our prisoner. He has said, time and again, over the wire that King will in some way escape and play the deuce with our plans. It does not seem possible, however. We have him absolutely secure, and Olga—well, you know ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... surprising, and tried to get on to safer ground, such as bibs and general intelligence, but the painter fellow was so willing to let me have my say, and knew so much more about babies than is fitting for men to know, that I paled before him and wondered why the deuce he was listening to ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... But there's no room for difference. She's a wild, headstrong, dissatisfied, foolish little filly. The deuce couldn't ride her—she'd shy at her own shadow—"Carmencita." Oh, very well then, I'll wager you—and I'll give you odds too—"Decorum" will come in first, and I'll lay three to one he'll beat Carmencita by five lengths! ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell
... shakes his head, "I see by every sign, There soon will be the deuce to pay, With this ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... would have to stop at a water-hole somewhere, either on Gila Creek, or the old Pima camping-ground, or else at Lone Tree Spring. The most direct route to Noche Buena was by Lone Tree. Harrison was in a deuce of a hurry. Therefore he would choose the shortest way. ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... everybody. 'The latest Parisian success. La petite Maison du Roi. Music by M. de Jongleur. Mr. Faulkner has the honor to announce that an adaptation by Mr. Cribbs of M. de Jongleur's opera bouffe La petite Maison du Roi, entitled King Lewis on the lewis'—what the deuce does that mean?" ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... left but five nights for other philanthropists to handle; and had they done their part as well, this wicked city might have become a vast Arcadian dormitory where all might snooze and snore the happy hours away, letting problem plays and the rent man and business go to the deuce. ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... F., pulling up his collar. "Listen to it! It's going to play the very deuce with these broken roofs and things if it blows hard. Going to be a beastly night, and a forty-mile drive in front of us. Listen to that ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... the boy's hand and wrung it hard. "You plucky young idiot, you've got sand in your craw. What the deuce did ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... we heard that there was a deuce of a row going on at the Ha-ta Gate, because it was still locked and the key was gone. It now transpired that a party of volunteers, led by the Swiss hotel-keeper of the place and his wife, had marched down to the gate after the Boxers had rushed in, had locked ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... extraordinary?—how many centuries have been necessary before man could pass from the brutal state to his present condition, or how many ages will be required ere we may pass from the state of man to the state of angels? What the deuce is the use of chronology or philosophy? We were beasts, and we can't tell when our tails dropped off: we shall be angels; but when our wings are to begin to sprout, who knows? In the meantime, O man of genius, follow our counsel: lead an easy life, don't stick at ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was an inch or so too low down. Fixing the man with his eye, the admiral asked: "Did you get that medal for eating, my man?" On the man replying "No, sir," the admiral rapped out: "Then why the deuce do you wear it ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... never do!" he exclaimed, falling into his own peculiar habit of communing with himself. "I say it won't do, Phil Steele; deuce take it if it will! You're getting nervous, sentimental, almost homesick. Ugh, what ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... Cournet to the Custom House officer, "you are an Inspector of Customs, I am an Inspector of Railways. Inspectors do not eat inspectors. The deuce take it! Some worthy Belgians have taken fright and sent me to you between four gendarmes. Why, I know not. I am sent by the Northern Company to relay the ballast of a bridge somewhere about here which is not firm. I come to ask you to allow me to continue my ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... he spoke Spanish, thought Luck, why the deuce hadn't he done it at first? But there is no fathoming the reticence of an Indian—and Luck, by a sudden impulse, hid his own knowledge of the language. He stood up and turned toward the rocks, cupped his hands around his lips and called for the Native Son. "And leave your rifle at home," ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... understand my purpose. The rude brute kept rolling his head, and turning first to one side and then to the other, shifting himself upon his legs, and twirling his enormous moustachios; then he drew his cap down over his eyes and roared out: "Zounds! deuce take it! I can make nothing of this rigmarole." At last the animal became so tiresome that I said: "Leave it then to me, who do understand it," and turned my shoulders to go about my business. At this he began to threaten me with his head, and, setting his left hand on ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... says Mr. Robert. "Of course I know him; but not so well as you do, Dicky. I wasn't one of the coaches, you know, and I haven't kept the run of the team for the last year or two. But I'm glad to see the Great Skid. How the deuce does he happen to ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... you please. Get angry if you like, or call me names, if you prefer it; but, the deuce is in it. I know ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... something on the Popish and Protestant affray. I think I could do some good, and I have the sincere wish to do it. I heard the merry birds sing, reviewed my dogs, and was cheerful. I also unpacked books. Deuce take arrangement! I think it the most complete bore in the world; but I will try a little of it. I afterwards went out and walked till dinner-time. I read Reginald Heber's Journal[272] after dinner. I spent some merry days with him at Oxford when ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... as to a variety of solids and liquids; and the man shook his head, intimating that he could go a deuce of a way, but that there were bounds even to ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... meekly for good comradery; he let it add, apparently, to his burden of gratitude, rather than lessen it. Staniford smoked with him, and told him stories; he walked up and down with him, and made a point of parading their good understanding, but his spirits seemed to sink the lower. "Deuce take him!" mused his benefactor; "he's in love with her!" But he now had the satisfaction, such as it was, of seeing that if he was in love he was quite without hope. Lydia had never relented in her abhorrence of Hicks since the day of his disgrace. There seemed no scorn ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... the Dunk Whittaker that's been raising merry hell around here! And talks about sending for the sheriff, huh? I've always heard that a lot uh gall is the best disguise a man can hide under, but, by gracious, this beats the deuce!" He turned to the astounded Happy Family with ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... way out of your disgrace of duncehood, like Mike Lambourne on forgetting his part in the Kenilworth pageant. "For your part, you can do very well without book-learning. You've got Shakspeare, and if with that a nation can't face the literature of Europe, the deuce is in it! With Cocker's arithmetic and Shakspeare, any public that knows what it's about, may snap ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... he is talking a lot about God now and that means war. He wants to enjoy ruling Europe awhile before he dies. He does not get on with the Crown Prince and is not greatly interested in leaving all such glory for him to sport about in. Soon Wilhelm the Deuce will be too old to take part in a military campaign. He has not many years to live at his age. He is not a well man. The longer he puts it off, the shorter will be the triumph ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
Copyright © 2025 e-Free Translation.com
|
|
|
