"Acrobat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that the other may slide; he thrusts the short, strong stock between the log and the skid, allowing it to be overrun; he stops the roll with a sudden sure grasp applied at just the right moment to be effective. Sometimes he allows himself to be carried up bodily, clinging to the cant-hook like an acrobat to a bar, until the log has rolled once; when, his weapon loosened, he drops lightly, easily to the ground. And it is exciting to pile the logs on the sleigh, first a layer of five, say; then one of six smaller; of but three; of two; until, at the very apex, the last is dragged slowly up the skids, ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... acrobat came somersaulting in. He did all sorts of strange things, such as balancing himself upside down on the broad shoulders of Mr. Brooks, and tying himself into a kind of knot and so entangling his limbs that it became impossible to tell the legs from ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... interposed Moon, with a sardonic mildness, "that your games are already sufficiently interesting. Are you, may I ask, a professional acrobat on a tour, or a travelling advertisement of Sunny Jim? How and why do you display all this energy for clearing walls and climbing trees in our melancholy, but at least ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... old Leotard, for instance. Somehow he had come to be sadly neglected of late years—and yet how exactly he always responded to certain moods! He was an acrobat, this Leotard, who lived in a glass-fronted box. His loose-jointed limbs were cardboard, cardboard his slender trunk; and his hands eternally grasped the bar of a trapeze. You turned the box round swiftly ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... into which a tired man could look. He never said that there would not be much to choose between good and evil if he lost her. He never said that one touch of her lips would electrify a paralytic into an acrobat. He never swore that he would commit suicide and dive to deep perdition if she threw him over—none of these things. It is possible that she did not wish him to say or do such extravagances, but he had not played the game, and, knowing that something was ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... brown stream. As in the rivers of Guinea, the llianas form fibrous chains, varying in size from a packthread to a cable; now straight, then twisted; investing the trees with an endless variety of folds and embraces, and connecting neighbours by graceful arches like the sag of an acrobat's rope. Here and there a grotesque calabash contrasted with the graceful palms towering in air for warmth and light, or bending over water like Prince of Wales's feathers. The unvarying green was enlivened by yew-like trees with scarlet ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... coldly to inform her. "Do you not know what von Bulow said: If I miss my practising for one day I notice it; if for two days my friends notice it; if I miss it for three days the public notices it. The artist is like an acrobat, juggling always, intent always on his three golden balls kept flying in the air. That is what it is like. Every atom of their strength is used. People, like my guardian, literally give their ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... said he. 'I know that every word is true, for you have hardly said a word which I did not know. No one but an acrobat or a sailor could have got up to that bell-rope from the bracket, and no one but a sailor could have made the knots with which the cord was fastened to the chair. Only once had this lady been brought into contact with sailors, and that was on her voyage, and it was someone of her own class of ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... where his sisters and their girl friends were chatting together. "Papa says we are going back for sure, in just a few weeks, too! Isn't that jolly?" and he manifested his delight in a series of handsprings that would have charmed the heart of an acrobat. ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... loose-jointed wooden boy clinging with both hands to a string stretched between two bamboo sticks, which are curiously rigged together in the shape of an open pair of scissors. Press the ends of the sticks at the bottom; and the acrobat tosses his legs over the string, seats himself upon it, and finally turns a somersault. Price, one-sixth ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... that in the ages past men believed the body to be the individual, and they endeavored through care of the body to build up mental as well as physical power. In those days the acrobat and the sage were found working side by side in the gymnasium, the one to gain physical strength, the other to increase his mental ability, and ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... to ward off the dull agony, the killing depression, and manias generally. Fortunately I was of a very active disposition, and as a pastime I took to gymnastics, even as I had at Montreux. I became a most proficient tumbler and acrobat, and could turn two or three somersaults on dashing down from the sloping roof of my pearl-shell hut; besides, I became a splendid high jumper, with and without the pole. Another thing I interested myself in was the ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... any of the other arts. We talk of a man picking out notes arranged in ivory on a wooden piano "with much feeling," or of his pouring out his soul by scraping on cat-gut after a training as careful as an acrobat's. But we are still haunted with a prejudice that verbal form and verbal effect must somehow be hypocritical when they are the link between things so living as a man and a mob. We doubt the feeling of the old-fashioned orator, because his periods are ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... disdainful manner of smiling at the public, as if he had been working like an artist, who loves his profession, and who is amused at danger, rather than like an acrobat who is paid to amuse people after dinner; and during his most difficult feats he often uttered a shrill cry, like that of some wild beast which defies the sportsman, as it falls on its prey. But that sportsman is always on ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... white duck trousers, the gift probably of some departing American, and somebody's discarded bathing shirt in cherry and black stripes. He had cut off the trousers legs at the thighs, and, with bare arms and legs glistening, was as imposing an acrobat as one ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... leave the yacht, permitted Tagg and Royson to accept the proffered civility. They passed a pleasant evening, and saw the female acrobat negotiate a thirty-feet jump, head downward, taken through space by the automobile. Then they elected to walk to No. 3. Basin, a distance of a mile and a half. It was about eleven o'clock and a fine night. The docks road, a thoroughfare cut ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... dexterity in the combination of words"; and this developed into "a power of pouring forth, with endless facility, perfectly modulated sentences of perfectly chosen language, which as far surpassed the reach of a normal intellect as the feats of an acrobat exceed the capacities ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... all before in the days when, under his father's guidance, he had seen everything—the juggler, the acrobat, the step-dancer, the comic singer, the tableaus, and the living picture. He felt tired and ashamed, yet, he could not bring himself to go away. As the evening advanced he thought: "How foolish! What madness it was to think of such a thing!" He was easier ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... his story. Stella Starr laughed merrily at his mild escapades. Marco's big eyes opened widely as Andy made plain the fact that he was a very fair amateur acrobat. ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... mortal doesn't wish to be reminded of. Some day—if I don't turn stoker or acrobat beforehand, and give up peddling in the emotions—some day I shall write music to it. That would be a melodrama ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... arisen through an unscientific economic system, and that Man, faulty as he is, no more intended to establish any such ordered disorder than a moth intends to be burnt when it flies into a candle flame. He can shew that the difference between the grace and strength of the acrobat and the bent back of the rheumatic field laborer is a difference produced by conditions, not by nature. He can shew that many of the most detestable human vices are not radical, but are mere reactions ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... stoutness &c. adj.; lustihood[obs3], stamina, nerve, muscle, sinew, thews and sinews, physique; pith, pithiness; virtility, vitality. athletics, athleticism[obs3]; gymnastics, feats of strength. adamant, steel, iron, oak, heart of oak; iron grip; grit, bone. athlete, gymnast, acrobat; superman, Atlas, Hercules, Antaeus[obs3], Samson, Cyclops, Goliath; tower of strength; giant refreshed. strengthening &c. v.; invigoration, refreshment, refocillation[obs3]. [Science of forces] dynamics, statics. V. be strong &c. adj., be stronger; overmatch. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... moment the bearded man continued: "You may not know it, but she is a dancer of some repute, a circumstance which she owes entirely to me. I picked her up, a mere child in the streets of London, turning cart-wheels for a living. I took her and trained her as an acrobat. She was known on the stage as Toby the Tumbler. Everyone took her for a boy. Later, she developed a talent for dancing. It was then that I decided to marry her. She desired the marriage even more than I did." Again he smiled ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... wonder of his contemporaries; his accomplishments must have dazzled them into admiration, for he possessed all the attributes of a Crichton. Beautiful in aspect, symmetrical in proportions, graceful in carriage, capacious in intellect, erudite as a Benedictine, agile as an Acrobat, daring as Scaevola, persuasive as Alcibiades, skilled in all manly pastimes, familiar with the philosophies of the scholar and the worldling, an orator, a musician, a courtier, a linguist,—such was the celebrated Cagliostro. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... impudent masses of satins, laces, artificial hair, paper flowers, and paste jewels. The scent of moist earth mingled oddly with the perfumed odours of the garments heaped on the grass. Here and there high circles of lights threw a strong, steady glare upon the half-clad figure of a robust acrobat, or the thin, drooping shoulders of a less stalwart sister. Temporary ropes stretched from one pole to another, were laden with bright-coloured stockings, gaudy, spangled gowns, or dusty street clothes, discarded by ...
— Polly of the Circus • Margaret Mayo
... rassle with th' man that bates me carpets, ayether,' I says, 'f'r fifty cints overcharge or good govermint,' I says. An' I pike off to what Hogan calls th' effete monarchies iv Europe an' no wan walks on me toes, an' ivry man I give a dollar to becomes an acrobat an' I live comfortably an' die a markess! Th' divvle ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... steeds dashing on to death. As she approached I was electrified. Something told me she was Bob's fiancee. A moment and I was charging the hunter under that tree. Jumping up out of the saddle, I clasped the solitary branch with both hands, and turning as an acrobat would on a trapeze, I hung by my legs, hands downwards, calling to the lady to clasp them. The fiery steeds and the oscillating carriage dashed under me—our hands met. With a superhuman effort I raised the fainting fairy form out ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... Americans rejoined them, the lift had returned and ascended with another covey of fancy costumes, including a man with a nose a foot long and a girl with bright green hair, dressed as an acrobat. On its next journey the lift held Tommy and Nick's party, and it held ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... become extinct, so we took to shooting trout in a quiet little meadow stream. Having buried an arrow in the far bank, with a short run and a leap Young cleared the brook and landed on the greensward beyond. The succulent turf slipped beneath his feet and, like an acrobat, the archer turned a back somersault into the cold mountain water. Bow, clattering arrows, camera, field glasses and man, all sank beneath the limpid surface. With a shout of laughter he clambered to the bank, his faithful bow ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... experience of centuries shows that gymnastics exist for the soul as well as for the body. But what the soul's gymnastics are is our secret. What is it that gives to the sailor the sight of an eagle, that endows the acrobat with the skill of a monkey, and the wrestler with muscles of iron? Practice and habit. Then why should not we suppose the same possibilities in the soul of the man as well as in his body? Perhaps on the grounds of modern science—which ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... dignified ways of life. A sailor, a shepherd, a schoolmaster - to a less degree, a soldier - and (I don't know why, upon my soul, except as a sort of schoolmaster's unofficial assistant, and a kind of acrobat in tights) an ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... between them. At the time the boys entered, one had climbed upon the other's shoulders, and was standing erect with folded arms. This was, of course, easy, but the next act was more difficult. By a quick movement he lowered his head, and grasping the uplifted hands of the lower acrobat, raised his feet and poised himself aloft, with his feet up in the air, sustained by the muscular arms of ...
— The Young Acrobat of the Great North American Circus • Horatio Alger Jr.
... hanging under-jaw, and a love-sick expression. She wore a dress of red-and-white check, and when she turned head over heels it caused, as might be expected, some disturbance of her costume. The figure, one could see, had originally been an acrobat, but these ingenious Polar explorers had transformed it into this hideous shape. When the experiment was repeated, and I understood the situation, I could not help roaring, too, but Lindstrom was so deeply occupied that he did not hear me. After ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... wonder and mirth. It darts madly at nothing at all, and then, as though suddenly checked in the pursuit, prances sideways on its hind legs with ridiculous agility and zeal. It makes a vast pretence of climbing the rounds of a chair, and swings by the curtains like an acrobat. It scrambles up a table leg, and is seized with comic horror at finding itself full two feet from the floor. If you hasten to its rescue, it clutches you nervously, its little heart thumping against its furry sides, while its soft paws ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... I cry in my sleep when I dream about a muffin! I thought at first that getting out of bed before my eyes are fairly open, and turning myself into a circus acrobat by doing every kind of overhand, foot, arm and leg contortion that the mind of cruel man could invent to torture a human being with, would kill me before I had been at it a week, but when I read on page sixteen that as soon ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... to learn the whereabouts of a certain girl acrobat who lived about five or six years ago in a lodging-house of this vicinity, or in ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... can be made to stand on its head will be well received in the latter attitude by the public. Some such thought as this must have been in the mind of the man who conceived the idea of riding a bicycle on the ceiling instead of on the floor. The "trick" originated with the Swiss acrobat Di Batta, who, being too old to undertake such a performance himself, trained two of his pupils to do it, and they appeared with their wheel in Busch Circus in Berlin. The wheel, of course, ran on a track from which it was suspended in such a way that it could not fall, and the man who operated ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... the guide, "the fly is such a little acrobat it can crawl up the steepest and most slippery wall and walk upside down or right side up with the greatest ease. Perhaps some day you can make a fly keep still long enough so that you can look at its ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... the same with your speech. A play or a novel is often robbed of much of its interest if you know the plot beforehand. We like to keep guessing as to the outcome. The ability to create suspense is part of woman's power to hold the other sex. The circus acrobat employs this principle when he fails purposely in several attempts to perform a feat, and then achieves it. Even the deliberate manner in which he arranges the preliminaries increases our expectation—we ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... then, just for the joy of the season that he played in the air, or was there, after all, someone besides himself to be pleased with the sport? Who knows whether the little acrobat was showing his mate what a splendid fellow he was, how strong of wing and skillful in the tricks of flight? Be that as it may, the mate of Mis was satisfied in some way or other, and went with him on a voyage of discovery one afternoon, when the sky was nicely cloudy ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... bathers the bath was arranged in that way; you had to undress, and then go down to the cellar to let on the wet.) No sooner did the kitten remark the unfamiliar sensation, than he departed thence with a willingness quite creditable in one who was not a professional acrobat, and met his mother on ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... Sometimes anger carries off the arrested current; and so prevents laughter. An instance of this was lately furnished me by a friend who had been witnessing the feats at Franconi's. A tremendous leap had just been made by an acrobat over a number of horses. The clown, seemingly envious of this success, made ostentatious preparations for doing the like; and then, taking the preliminary run with immense energy, stopped short on reaching the first horse, and pretended to wipe some dust from its haunches. ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... bed, or the sofa, taking her in his arms. Between them they had invented a great game. The ex-engineer, his boots removed, his huge legs in the air, hoisted the little tad on the soles of his stockinged feet like a circus acrobat, dandling her there, pretending he was about to let her fall. Sidney, choking with delight, held on nervously, with little screams and chirps of excitement, while he shifted her gingerly from one foot to another, and thence, the final act, the great gallery play, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... such super-physical equipment to the strenuous work of the movies. Fairbanks, in addition to being blessed with a strong, lithe body, has developed it by expert devotion to every form of athletic sport. He swims well, is a crack boxer, a good polo player, a splendid wrestler, a skilful acrobat, a fast runner, and an ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... Ramblin' Kid replied without moving from where he stood, "—he's sufferin' some, but he ain't chokin'. He's got quite a lot of wind yet an' is gettin' some valuable experience. That cat's what I call a genuine acrobat!" he mused as the terrified creature leaped frantically in the air and somersaulted backward, striking and clawing desperately to free itself of the can tightly wedged ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... truculence, which was the first and most alarming trait to intrude itself upon the observer's attention, the outstanding characteristic of Chief Inspector Kerry was his compact neatness. Of no more than medium height but with shoulders like an acrobat, he had slim, straight legs and the feet of a dancing master. His attire, from the square-pointed collar down to the neat black brogues, was spotless. His reefer jacket fitted him faultlessly, but his trousers were cut so unfashionably narrow that the protuberant ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... around acrobat, was on hand to watch their work and to offer suggestions. He had taken a keen interest in Phil Forrest, seeing in the lad the making of ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... we're fond of the kid," said Ben Flint. "He's free from vice and as clever as paint. He's a born acrobat. Might as well try to teach a duck to swim. It comes natural. Heredity of course. There's nothing he won't be able to do when I'm finished with him. Yet there are some things which lick me altogether. He's an ugly son of a gun. His father and mother, by the way, were a damn good-looking ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... crubeens to the best Limerick flitches. There's a conglomeration of smells," I continued, "that would shame the City on the Bosphorus; and there are some nice visitors there now in the shape of two Amazons who are going to give selections from 'Maritana' in the school-house this evening; and a drunken acrobat, the ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... astonish the reader to know that the funambulist or rope-dancer was very expert with the Greeks, as also was the acrobat between knives and swords. Animals were also taught to ...
— The Dance (by An Antiquary) - Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D. • Anonymous
... that the Calico Clown was almost as good an acrobat, or jumper, as ever. When punched in the chest, the Clown would bang his cymbals together. And when the strings were pulled, out shot the arms and legs like those of a Jumping Jack, only ...
— The Story of Calico Clown • Laura Lee Hope
... print), and subsiding into the arm-chair she would suck back again the soul of the moment; or, for sometimes she was restless, would pull out book after book and swing across the whole space of her life like an acrobat from bar to bar. She had had her moments. Meanwhile, the great clock on the landing ticked and Sandra would hear time accumulating, and ask herself, ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... to take his place that Jim Tracy wants me?" mused Joe, as he turned aside. "I guess Jim put up with this fellow as long as he could. Poor chap! He was a good acrobat, too—one of the best in the country." Joe knew ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum
... I came upon the old Patriarch. He was standing with his back to the wall, facing out and back, for here the ledge he had been following pinched out, and even he, champion acrobat of the cliffs, could neither climb up nor find a way down. For several minutes we faced each other, ten yards apart. I had heard that mountain sheep never attack men, and that even the big leaders never use their massive, battering ram heads to injure anyone. With this in ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... crumb of consolation for me, for I saw at last a chat baby. He was a quiet, well-behaved little fellow, with streaks on throat and breast, and dull yellow underparts. His manners were subdued, and gave no hint of the bumptious acrobat he might live ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... the grass now, his legs in the air like an acrobat about to balance a globe, the water pouring from his wading boots, soaking the rest of him, all three of us tugging away—I at his head, the Sculptor at his feet. How Marie ever helped him squirm out of this diving-suit was more than I ...
— The Man In The High-Water Boots - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the men had to trust to their nimble legs for safety. Sometimes a horse got jammed in the centre of the swaying mass, and could neither advance nor retreat. Then the savage rider leaped upon the buffaloes' backs, and springing from one to another, like an acrobat, gained the outer edge of the circle; not failing, however, in his strange flight, to pierce with his lance several of the fattest of his stepping-stones as he ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... they played a stupid but obscene vaudeville piece, and vicious topical songs were sung (a thunder of applause); an animated chansonnette-singer screeched and pulled about with her naked, excessively whitened shoulders, and winked with her exaggeratedly painted eyes; a woman acrobat, raising her legs, attired in pink tights, above her head, was dancing ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... had a glorious gallop after 'Starlight' and his gang, When they bolted from Sylvester's on the flat; How the sun-dried reed-beds crackled, how the flint-strewn ranges rang To the strokes of 'Mountaineer' and 'Acrobat'; Hard behind them in the timber, harder still across the heath, Close behind them through the tea-tree scrub we dashed; And the golden-tinted fern leaves, how they rustled underneath! And the honeysuckle osiers, ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... to something far less agreeable and infinitely more strenuous, the breaking-in of the dances under the supervision of the famous Johnson Miller. Johnson Miller was a little man with snow-white hair and the india-rubber physique of a juvenile acrobat. Nobody knew actually how old he was, but he certainly looked much too advanced in years to be capable of the feats of endurance which he performed daily. He had the untiring enthusiasm of a fox-terrier, and had bullied and scolded more companies along the rocky road that leads ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... any one seriously—a sad state of mind for those who write or teach! How lightly must one hold his readers and hearers to approach them in such an attitude! To him who has preserved enough honesty, nothing is more repugnant than the careless irony of an acrobat of the tongue or pen, who tries to dupe honest and ingenuous men. On one side openness, sincerity, the desire to be enlightened; on the other, chicanery making game of the public! But he knows not, the liar, how far he is misleading himself. The capital on which he lives is confidence, and ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... puny. He weighed nearly one hundred and eighty pounds and never met his match except in his brothers. William could outlift him, David could out-run him and outleap him, but he was more, agile than either—was indeed a skilled acrobat. ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... you've given him plenty of reason to think it. You can't bring your crate in to the base without stunting around and showing off and risking your damn neck. That's why he sent me along with you this trip. Just to see that you act like a pilot—instead of circus acrobat." ...
— Larson's Luck • Gerald Vance
... at running streams, and endeavours in vain, finds it brimming the moment one tear of true penitence falls into the vessel. Most exquisite in its feeling is the tale of the Tombeur de Notre-Dame—a poor acrobat—a jongleur turned monk—who knows not even the Pater noster or the Credo, and can only offer before our Lady's altar his tumbler's feats; he is observed, and as he sinks worn-out and faint before the shrine, the Virgin is seen to descend, with her angelic ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... ordinary individual, yes. But then, you see, this was not an ordinary individual. He was—let us suppose—an acrobat, a man of great nerve and courage, accustomed to trapeze work and the use of the ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... boldest and most seemingly reckless feats were to him no more than the every-day work of a man of a strong mind, of a stout heart, and of a perfectly trained body, who had so completely mastered every detail of his profession as gymnast, acrobat, and aeronaut, that he had come to have absolute faith in himself, downright abiding certainty that within his sphere of work not only must he succeed, but that, in the very nature of things it was quite impossible for him ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... Egyptians, Bohemians, and other wandering troupes who stole the holy things from the Church of St. Martin, and in the place and exact situation of Madam the Virgin, left by way of insult and mockery to our Holy Faith, an abandoned pretty little girl, about the age of an old dog, stark naked, an acrobat, and of Moorish descent like themselves. For this almost nameless crime it was equally decided by the king, people, and the churchmen that the Mooress, to pay for all, should be burned and cooked alive in the square near the fountain where the herb market is. Then the good man Bruyn ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... comedian, genteel comedian, low comedian; walking gentleman, amoroso[obs3], heavy father, ingenue[French], jeune veuve[French]. mummer, guiser[obs3], guisard[obs3], gysart |, masque. mountebank, Jack Pudding; tumbler, posture master, acrobat; contortionist; ballet dancer, ballet girl; chorus singer; coryphee danseuse[Fr]. property man, costumier, machinist; prompter, call boy; manager; director, stage manager, acting manager. producer, entrepreneur, impresario; backer, investor, angel[fig]. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... (to Lady R.). ROSE, you, at least, have not changed? Tell me you will love me still—even on the precarious summit of an acrobat's pole! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various
... prolonged scientific practice, undertaken with every possible regard to safety, on soaring and gliding machines, the Wrights became master pilots and conquerors of the air. Their success had in it no element of luck; it was earned, as an acrobat earns his skill. So confident did they become that to the end their machines were all machines of an unstable equilibrium, dependent for their safety on the skill and quickness of the pilot. Their triumph ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... instructions, in anticipation of the contest on which he was embarking against you and against Daubrecq, at whose house he did the same thing. He had under his orders a sort of acrobat, an extraordinarily thin dwarf, who was able to wriggle through those apertures and who thus detected all your correspondence and all your secrets. That is what his two friends revealed to me. I at once conceived the idea of ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... tension is evident in the arm that should be at rest while the other arm is acting; and if this want of equilibrium in exercise is so strikingly noticeable in the limbs themselves, how much worse it must be all through the less prominent muscles! To guide the body in trapeze work, every well-trained acrobat knows he must have a quiet mind, a clear head, and obedient muscles. I recall a woman who stands high in gymnastic work, whose agility on the triple bars is excellent, but the nervous strain shown in the drawn lines of her face before she begins, leaves one ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... artless inquisitiveness than fear, this lively little acrobat stops his hammering or hatcheting at your approach, and stretching himself out from the tree until it would seem he must fall off, he peers down at you, head downward, straight into your upturned opera-glasses. If there is too much snow on the upper ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... this was impossible, we offered a large reward to this member if he were proven right. We sent to the theater and found the acrobat in question. He had just finished his act and ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... Acrobat! The Most Marvellous Aeronaut of the Age! Little Boy-Butterfly, and Bambo ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... The man was short, long-armed, vastly broad at the shoulders, deep-chested: flashy in dress, dull and kind of feature—handsome enough, withal. He was an acrobat. Even in the dim light, he carried the impression of great muscular strength—of grace and agility. For a moment the woman's eyes ran over his stocky body: then, spasmodically clenching her hands, she turned quickly to the boy on the bed; and she moved ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... the authors have chosen a poetic style of commentary, while others content themselves with matter-of-fact prose. A well-known signature is here and there recognisable among these cosmopolitan productions. A famous Italian opera star has rhymed in her native lingo; a popular French acrobat—possibly one of a company of strolling equestrians—has immortalised himself in Parisian heroics. M. Pianatowsky, the Polish fiddler, has scrawled something incomprehensible in Russian or Arabic—no matter which; while Mein Herr Van Trinkenfeld comes out strong in double ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... resourceful fellows. The General Staff also supplied them with new machines of war. One of the finest was the Japanese bomb-thrower, an instrument which threw a great, big bomb like a well-filled melon. This went tumbling over and over, like an acrobat doing a somersault, then burst in the most startling way. The explosion was terrific and destruction amazing. Parapets, trenches, men and Maxims were all destroyed if near the point of contact. "Some bomb!" ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... poor creature heard its master's voice and saw his form—for his features must have been invisible against the strong light—the scowl vanished from its little visage. With a shriek of joy it sprang like an acrobat from a spring-board and plunged into the hermit's bosom—to the alarm of the Malay, who thought this was a furious attack. We need not say that Van der Kemp received his faithful little servant kindly, and it was quite touching to observe the monkey's intense affection ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... Grammont amounted to very little. In private life, before the war broke out, he had been an acrobat in the streets of Paris, and after that he became a hotel boy in some little fifth-rate hotel over behind the Gare St. Lazare. That had proved his undoing, for even the fifth-rate French travelling salesmen and sharpers and adventurers who patronized ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte
... be disguised. I repeat, the world of novel-readers constitute a huge hippodrome, where, if you can succeed in amusing your spectators or make them gasp in amazement at your rhetorical legerdemain, they will applaud vociferously, and pet you, as they would a graceful danseuse, or a dexterous acrobat, or a daring equestrian; but if you attempt to educate or lecture them, you will either declaim to empty benches or be hissed down. They expect you to help them ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... a sense; though not in that in which the word has been so often misused. I don't see the artist as a performing acrobat nor as an anarchist in ethics, either. I think that art is one of the big aspects of life and that through it one gets hold of a ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Imperial Consolidated Circus!" cried Pepper. "The one and only aggregation of stupendous wonders on the face of the globe! The marvelous twisting and death-defying acrobat! Walk up and see the blood-curdling exhibition! It will cost you but the small sum of a dime, ten cents; children double price, and no grandfathers unaccompanied by their parents admitted. Line will form on the left and everybody will please have his cash ready. ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... overcoat, olive green, nor his cloak with its morocco collar, nor the striped blue cotton shirt. In this queer figure—so original that we cannot rub it out—how many divers personalities we come across! In the first place, what an acrobat, what a circus, what a battery, all in one, is the man himself, his vocation, and his tongue! Intrepid mariner, he plunges in, armed with a few phrases, to catch five or six thousand francs in the frozen seas, in the domain of the red Indians who inhabit the interior of France. ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... patience with this blanky new fangled style o' fightin',' he said. 'A man ought to toe the scratch an' take his gruel like a man. With those Johnnie-jump-ups it's all cut an' run, an' I admit it licks me. I ain't neither a foot-racer nor a acrobat, an' Done gave me as much ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... my fault that I should have reopened my wound—bad luck to it!—in attempting to get down that damned ladder?" he asked her. "Is it my fault that I am neither an ape nor an acrobat? Tremayne should have come up at once to assist me, instead of waiting until he had to come up to help me bandage my leg again. Then time would not have been lost, and very likely my life with it." He ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... census—and I will not conceal from you that more than once they have touched upon the expediency of a change in the Professorship of Moral Culture. The coarsely sarcastic editorial in yesterday's Alta, headed Give the Moral Acrobat a Rest—has brought things to a crisis, and I am charged with the unpleasant duty of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... crashed forward on his face, a great brown hulk like an overturned bronze statue. Shane stooped down for either the half-Nelson and hammer-lock, or full Nelson.... An instant too long of hesitation. Light as a lightweight acrobat Ahmet Ali had rolled aside, put palm to ground, sprung to his feet. His face was bloody, his right knee shook. With the back of his hand he wiped the blood from his eyes. There was a twitter from the Syrians. ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... lord's grace to buy this day? A skilled horseman from Dacia?... I have one.... A pearl.... He can mount an untamed steed and drive a chariot in treble harness through the narrowest streets of Rome.... He can ... What—no?—not a horseman to-day?... then mayhap a hunchback acrobat from Pannonia, bronzed as the tanned hide of an ox, with arms so long that his finger-nails will scrape the ground as he runs; he can turn a back somersault, walk the tight-rope, or ... Here, Pipus the hunchback, show thine ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... few words with his father, the little harlequin went through still another trick: erect upon a galloping horse, he appeared in four characters—as a pilgrim, a sailor, a soldier, and an acrobat; and every time that he passed near me, he looked at me. And when he dismounted, he began to make the tour of the circus, with his harlequin's cap in his hand, and everybody threw soldi or sugar-plums into it. I had two soldi ready; but when he got in ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... to run quietly along some boards laid over the loft ceiling, and, making a jump that would not have disgraced an acrobat, he caught at a rope, pendent from the highest portion of the rafters, twisted his legs about it, and swung ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... is a mere male thing that rides the machine. He is not so accomplished an acrobat as is the lady; but simple tricks, such as standing on the saddle and waving flags, drinking beer or beef-tea while riding, he can and does perform. Something, one supposes, he must do to occupy his ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... told you you were the Champion Acrobat of the World, and you began to strike foolish attitudes, and turn great clumsy somersaults all over the stage, and you always came down on the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various
... said. "You are the Countess de Vassart. A man is what he makes himself. I have made myself—with both eyes open; and I am now an acrobat and a tamer of beasts. I understand your goodness, your impulse to help those less fortunate than yourself. I also understand that I have placed myself where I am, and that, having done so deliberately, I cannot meet ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... baboon from Farther India, and the red-eyed sandhill crane from Maddygasker, I think it was, and the sacred Jack-rabbit from Scandihoovia, and the lop-eared layme from South America. Then there was the female acrobat with her hair tied up with red ribbon. It's funny about them acrobat wimmen. They get big pay, but they never buy cloze with their money. Now, the idea of a woman that gets $2 or $3 a day, for all ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... longer. "Look here, Harry," I said, "if you must know it, she looks upon you as an acrobat—a ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... we see a man swallowing a sword, or walking through fire, while hard by an acrobat is bending backward and drinking from cups arranged ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... else be the Moon," declared Gladys, when she had been restored to the perpendicular, viewing the shaky stool with disfavor. "Let Sahwah be it, she's more of an acrobat." ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... man is made the most of. Look at an acrobat or a boxer: there is what your limbs might have been made for strength and agility: that is the potential which is in human nature in these respects. I never witnessed a prize-fight, and assuredly I never will witness one: but I am told, that, when the champions appear in the ring, stripped ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... way!... Once closed on the person concealed within, the chair looked empty. A most ingenious hide-hole! Juve now knew the answer to the riddle of the bandit's disappearance. Within an ace of arrest, he had seized the chance offered by Juve's interchange of glances with the king, and with an acrobat's agility had slipped inside this chair! No sooner was the chair abandoned in the gallery than de Naarboveck-Fantomas had slipped out and away. When leaving his magnificent house forever, and all ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... doesn't get dizzy!" a voice was saying and Laura for the first time noticed that a boy was scaling the wall. Favored by the thick vines and uneven stones up he went with the agility of an acrobat. He was bareheaded and the sun shone on his face, reddened with exertion, and on his sandy hair and Laura recognized him as one of the Stony Road boys, the one she had talked ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... orders for an advance!" said several, and one man remarked that "that feller was the most reckless rider he had ever beheld." The crisis came at length: a wagon had stopped the way; my horse in turning it, stepped upon a stake, and slipping rolled heavily upon his side, tossing me like an acrobat, over his head, but without further injury than a terrible nervous shock and a ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... to have only light gymnastics and folk dancing from this on," announced Helen. "There is to be a new gym instructor; a young man. He is a physical culture expert and an acrobat. He is to teach bar and ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... the swimmer; how was it with the agile and dexterous skater; how with the acrobat, and what but practice has just enabled WESTON to walk one hundred and twelve miles in twenty-four hours, and four hundred ...
— A Project for Flying - In Earnest at Last! • Robert Hardley
... principles—that is to say, a scheme of jurisprudence, a summing-up, and a verdict. The critic is then a magistrate of ideas, the censor of his time; he fulfils a sacred function; while in the former case he is but an acrobat who turns somersaults for a living so long as he had a leg to stand on. Between Claude Vignon and Lousteau lay the gulf that divides ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... place was taken by a young man who wore pale blue instead of white, and got very little applause. But after the two days Horace appeared again, and those who sat close to the stage remarked an expression of beatific happiness on that young acrobat's face even when he was twisting breathlessly in the air an the middle of his amazing and original shoulder swing. After that performance he laughed at the elevator man and dashed up the stairs to the flat five steps at a time—and then tiptoed ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Emerson was also a dignified skater, but with a shorter stroke, and stopping occasionally to take breath, or look about him, as he did in his lectures. Thoreau came sometimes and performed rare glacial exploits, interesting to watch, but rather in the line of the professional acrobat. What a transfiguration of Hawthorne, to think of him skating alone amid the reflections of a brilliant ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... speech). Whist! Was that a shillin' he gave ye? That makes ten ye have now, thin. Bun like a hare an' put ut on Acrobat at the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 21, 1920 • Various
... out an air of fine unconscious health which made her good to see, although her face was too broad to be pretty. She smiled easily, and her teeth were white and even. Her hand he noticed was as strong as steel and brown as leather. Her neck rose from her shoulders like that of an acrobat, and she walked with the sense of security which comes ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... and stood aghast in the doorway at the spectacle of Mr. Gunnill, with his clenched fists held tightly by his side, bounding into the air with all the grace of a trained acrobat, while Mr. Drill encouraged him from an easy-chair. Mr. Gunnill smiled broadly as he met their astonished gaze, and with a final bound kicked something along the floor and subsided into ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... his hand, to shake, but Tommy, in an excess of stage-fright at the unwonted ceremonial, nimbly turned his back; and the next instant he slipped over the rail like an acrobat and dropped into the waiting dinghy. Safely there, he glanced tentatively upward; but seeing that the tall man above was still standing at the rail and was smiling down upon him, looked tactfully away again. And Varney heard him ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... swing light and agile as a young monkey, Lydia let herself down, landing with a spring of which an acrobat might have boasted, beside ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... arrived here. A long placard made its appearance on the door of the restaurant, informing the most respected public that the above-mentioned marvellous conjurer, acrobat, chemist, and optician would have the honour to give a magnificent performance on the present day at eight o'clock in the evening, in the saloon of the Nobles' Club (in other words, the restaurant); tickets—two rubles and a ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... stages of half a dozen rapid strokes, catching flies by the way, and crying peent-peent, the acrobat climbs until I look a mere lump on the roof; then ceasing his whimpering peent, he turns on bowed wings and falls—shoots roofward with fearful speed. ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... Desmond, suddenly, "if, when old O'Connor revisits the earth at the witching hour, he comes in the attitude so graphically described by Kelly? In acrobat fashion, I mean." ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... tight clothes—who cut the most amazing somersaults, and seemed to regard no object as too great to be leaped over. They brought in the horses, and stood ever so many of them together, backed up by the elephant, and the leading acrobat jumped over them all without any apparent effort. After which all the horses galloped off of their own accord, and "put themselves away" without giving anyone any trouble. Then the acrobats were hauled up into the top of the tent, ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... sight of whom he quickened his pace. He knew the general aspect of the man's figure though he could not see his face, and this welcome new excitement made the heart jump up again in Geoff's breast. He hurried along in a sudden cloud of dust, and threw himself off the pony like a little acrobat. "Mr. Cavendish!" cried Geoff, "have you come back?" with a glow of pleasure which drove all ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant |
