"Gesticulation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Graceful attitudes and gesticulation were the general style of their dance; but, as in other countries, the taste of the performance varied according to the rank of the person by whom they were employed, or their own skill; and the dance at the house of a priest differed from that among the uncouth peasantry, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... best representative of the older school in either branch of Congress, gave a page of his diary to one of Douglas's early speeches. "His face was convulsed,"—so the merciless diary runs,—"his gesticulation frantic, and he lashed himself into such a heat that if his body had been made of combustible matter it would have burnt out. In the midst of his roaring, to save himself from choking, he stripped and cast away his ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... eloquent effort delivered with much gesticulation. The Yemassee braves set in a circle and grunted approval. They liked the sound and fury of it. Jack hurled scraps of Homer and Virgil at them when at a loss for resounding periods. The chief nodded his understanding of such words as pirates and gold and actually smiled when Jack's pantomime ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... that it is necessary for the pupil to receive training in a technical system of gesticulation before he commences his exercises in declamation. If the student designs to qualify himself to be a professor of elocution, he will need to study the laws of gesture in "Austin's Chironomia," and be instructed in their application ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... in the pure Shawnee tongue, and were accompanied by gesticulation too pointed and significant for Hans to mistake the spirit in which they were given. Although it is the invariable custom among the North American Indians for the husband to rule the wife, and impose all burdens upon her, ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... change of uniform to pass in an Athenian crowd. Spare and dapper officials, presiding in seats of authority over Kurds and Arabs, reminded one of Greek journalists. Osmanli journalists themselves treated one to rhodomontades punctuated with restless gesticulation, which revived memories of Athenian cafes in war-time. It was the Byzantine triumphing over the Asiatic; and the most Asiatic elements in the empire were the least likely to meet with the appreciation or sympathy of ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... insurgents as though they were deliverers. The men embraced them, while the women brought them food. Old men were to be seen weeping at the doors. And the joyousness was of an essentially Southern character, pouring forth in clamorous fashion, in singing, dancing, and gesticulation. As Miette passed along she was carried away by a farandole[*] which spread whirling all round the Grand' Place. Silvere followed her. His thoughts of death and his discouragement were now far away. He wanted ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... exclaimed, with vivacity of voice and gesticulation, "the Signor does not come to hear the parrot talk; he is engaged to come that he may hear the nightingale sing. A drop of honey attracts the fly more ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and their different significance. She listened with her capped head a little on one side like an attentive bird, and her arms unconsciously imitating the signs. Certainly, for all that she SPOKE like an American, her gesticulation was Italian. ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... with a bodkin and a piece of string—revised them, wrote all the titles and honours by which he was personally distinguished at the head of the first page, and then read the manuscript to me with loud theatrical emphasis and profuse theatrical gesticulation. The reader will have an opportunity, ere long, of forming his own opinion of the document. It will be sufficient to mention here that it answered ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... conversation. Occasionally, one of the white-robed men would glance towards him. He strained his ears in vain. The gesticulation of two of the speakers became animated. He glanced from them to the passive faces of his attendants.... When he looked again Howard was extending his hands and moving his head like a man who protests. He was interrupted, it seemed, by one of the white-robed ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... stood on the other side. From there I could not hear Comrade Trotzky, but studied his movements and gesticulation, his manner of scratching his nose, of quickly turning his head in a derby, and the nervous shrugging of his shoulders. The mob applauded him after every phrase, making his speech a series of separate sentences and thus ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... advice, and were preparing to go, when another candidate comes forward, and, with suitable gesticulation, so placed his hands that we could not help saying, "Liver, eh?" "Eccelenza, si!" "Dopo una febbre?" "Illustrissimo, si!"—Folk now beginning to wink approvingly at our sagacity, we were looking exceeding grave, when a pair of Sicilian eyes set in a female head put us ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... speed, kept the horn going almost continuously. People in wagons and buggies, or on foot, drawn out along the roadside, cupped hands to lips and yelled startled inquiries. Johnnie bent above the steering-wheel and paid no attention. Uncle Pros tried to answer with gesticulation or a shouted word, and sometimes those he replied to turned and ran, calling to others. But it was black Jim, riding on Roan Sultan, out with the searchers, who saw and understood. He looked down across the great two-mile turn beyond the Gap, and sighted the climbing car. Where ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... man from among the new arrivals, with nothing heroic about him, either in face, or mien, or stature, jumped on his legs, and with great volubility and much gesticulation, ...
— The French Prisoners of Norman Cross - A Tale • Arthur Brown
... Paris. More than once in the course of our drive, half-naked Indians produced from their waist-cloths rubies, sapphires, and emeralds for which they asked from one to four thousand rupees, and gratefully took fourpence, after a long run with the carriage, and much vociferation and gesticulation. After table-d'hote dinner at the hotel we went off to the yacht in a pilot boat; the buoys were all illuminated, and boats with four or five men in them, provided with torches, were in readiness to show us the right way out. By ten o'clock ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... misses the mark of the artist, which is, after all, to show such things as he deals with as they truly are, and to seize upon their inwardness. We do not ask for a slavering flux of sentiment, or an acrobat's display in gesticulation. But, from a gentleman whose corns when trodden on are probably as painful as his neighbours', we are content with something less than a godlike indifference to the emotions of humanity. Let us suppose, ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... suffer, and a small proportion feel acute pain; but where—in streets and in houses—do you see people tearing about, leaping up, and clutching at their heads? Suffering ought to be expressed as it is expressed in life—that is, not by the arms and legs, but by the tone and expression; not by gesticulation, but by grace. Subtle emotions of the soul in educated people must be subtly expressed in an external way. You will say—stage conditions. No ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... glittered, countering his searching glance, as she stood over him, her body flung a little forward from the waist, her arms busy with their quick, angular gesticulation. ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... arm), antibrachium (forearm); (bones of the arm) humerus, radius, ulna, epipodiale. Associated Words: akimbo, solen, cradle, triceps, chevron, brassard, pinion, discriminal, gesticulate, gesticulation, gesture, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... "that the shorter of the two masked men was prone to gesticulation and that he had a fashion of holding his arms close to his body, as if tied at the elbows, and with hands fully open, fingers apart, thumbs extended, and palms upward, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... room where there is not the slightest appearance of any preparation for food, nothing but half-a-dozen old deal-tables, with forms beside them, on the side of the room, and one large table in the middle. They pass away the time in vehement gesticulation, and talking in a loud tone; so much of what they say is in argot, that the stranger will not find it easy to comprehend them. He would think they were talking crime or politics—not a bit of it; their talk is altogether about their mistresses. Love and ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... formed our band, being by this time sufficiently drunk, played after a fashion of their own, which by one of those strange sympathies of our nature, imparted its influence to our legs, and a country dance was performed in a style of free and easy gesticulation that defies description. At the end of eighteen couple, tired of my exertions—and they were not slight —I leaned my back against the wall of the room, which I now, for the first time, perceived was covered ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... much gesticulation Terence succeeded. The names of the officers were written down on a paper and it was then fastened on ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... immense dome, sonorous only under the two vaults of the entrance and the exit, faces take on there an astonishing intensity, a relief of movement and animation concentrated especially in the huge, dark bay where refreshments are served, crowded to overflowing and full of gesticulation, the brightly coloured hats of the women and the white aprons of the waiters gleaming against the background of dark clothes, and in the great space in the middle where the oval swarming with visitors makes a singular contrast with the immobility of the exhibited statues, producing ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... Iglesias's sitting-room immediately opposite stood open. In the doorway Frederick indulged in explanatory gesticulation. While, slowly ascending the last treads of the stairs, was a lady of unmistakable elegance, arrayed in a large black hat with drooping plumes to it, a sable cape—the price of which, Eliza felt assured, ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... own part, I was moved beyond description; but my faculties seemed spell-bound, and when I strove to speak, my tongue cleaved to my mouth. The delirium of poor Anne continued for some time to find utterance, either by convulsive gesticulation, half-uttered expressions, and, occasionally, loud and vehement imprecations. At length, quite exhausted with her violence, which required all the efforts of her brother to subdue by positive force, she sunk ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... them, being at the Consulate. Towards evening it drizzled, and the assemblage melted away gradually; and when the band marched down to the pier, there were few to follow, although one man went dancing before the musicians, flinging out his arms, and footing it with great energy and gesticulation. Some young women along the road likewise began to dance as the ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... have been preserved, but his contemporaries all agree as to their singular ability and power. He seemed absolutely at home in a court-room; his great stature did not encumber him there; it seemed like a natural symbol of superiority. His bearing and gesticulation had no awkwardness about them; they were simply striking and original. He assumed at the start a frank and friendly relation with the jury which was extremely effective. He usually began, as the phrase ran, by ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... after a momentary halt at the Customs Station, crept past the Castello a Mare, and amidst much gesticulation, accompanied by a torrent of volcanic Italian, she was tied up to a wharf in the Cala—the small inner ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... French manners from excess in the degree, had been softened down by age or affliction; and all that is delightful in the kind, alacrity and delicacy in little attentions, etc., remained, and without bustle, gesticulation, or disproportionate eagerness. His demeanour exhibited the minute philanthropy of a polished Frenchman, tempered by the sobriety of the English character disunited from its reserve. There is something strangely attractive in the character ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... in my life. He had been speaking smoothly, evenly, calmly, and without gesticulation. With the questions, his body was bent as though for a leap; his hands flung forward. These questions left him like bullets. It was as though that great hall had been in blackest darkness, and with a sudden movement the speaker had switched on ten thousand electric lights. ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... painstakingly trained his reading-classes in the Art of Gesticulation in Public Speaking, and Miss Margaret found the results of his labors so entertaining that she had never been able to bring herself ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... more similar are the speeches of the madmen with their horrible words, and those of fools with their mirthless puns. So that in Shakespeare there is no language of living individuals—that language which in the drama is the chief means of setting forth character. If gesticulation be also a means of expressing character, as in ballets, this is only a secondary means. Moreover, if the characters speak at random and in a random way, and all in one and the same diction, as is the case in Shakespeare's work, then even the action of gesticulation ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... in that ear." Meanwhile the conversation, not as at American tables a low hum, but rather the rattle of artillery, fires away, across the table, along its whole length, anywhere and everywhere, much sounding, little meaning, amid infinite ado of demonstration and gesticulation. The next course was the nearest approach to pie I saw at any German table,—apfeltochter,—a browned and frosted crust, nearly eighteen inches in diameter, between the parts of which was cooked ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... room looked as if it were set for a scene in a modern society comedy. In the bay window, a bower of verdure, an extremely slender and diminutive lady was discoursing eloquently with the superabundant gesticulation of the successful society amateur; she was dilating upon the latest production of a minor poet whose bubble reputation was at that moment resplendent with local rainbows. Her chief listener was a languid beauty of literary aspirations, who, in a striking pose, was fit audience for ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... them, illuminating him in a pitiless glare. Thorn waved his arms frantically. He had nothing with which to signal save his body. He flung his arms wide, and up, and wide again, in an improvised adaption of the telegraphic alphabet to gesticulation. He sent the watch ...
— Invasion • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... conscious art. I noted some devices constantly employed. A sudden change would be introduced (I think of key) with no break of the measure, but emphasised by a sudden heightening of the voice and a swinging, general gesticulation. The voices of the soloists would begin far apart in a rude discord, and gradually draw together to a unison; which, when they had reached, they were joined and drowned by the full chorus. The ordinary, hurried, barking, unmelodious movement of the voices would at times be broken and glorified ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... matter; you shall be an aristocratic Sicilian, they are often quite well dressed. And as for the dialect and the gesticulation, it is now the fashion among the upper classes to speak Tuscan and not to gesticulate. It is considered more—I cannot remember the word, I saw it in the Giornale di Sicilia, it is ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... has one good effect,' interrupted Caper; 'the forcible gesticulation of the Italians, which we all admire so much, arises from the necessity they have to do so—in order to keep warm. I have, however, an idea to better the condition of the wood sawyers in the Papal States, by introducing a saw buck or saw horse: as it is, they hold the wood in their hands, ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... was peculiar, abrupt, and conversational; and often when he indulged in episodes and anecdotes he convulsed his class with laughter, especially when he used to enforce his descriptions by earnest gesticulation. Frequently, while lecturing, he would descend from his high stool, on which he sat with his legs dangling, to exhibit to his class some peculiar attitudes and movements illustrative of the results of different casualties and disorders; so that a stranger ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 530, January 21, 1832 • Various
... the pulpit was the reward of his upbringing. At ten he had entered the university. Before he was in his teens he was practising the art of gesticulation in his father's gallery pew. From distant congregations people came to marvel at him. He was never more than comparatively young. So long as the pulpit trappings of the kirk at Thrums lasted he could be seen, once he was fairly under way with ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... and held a long discussion about something, with considerable argument and gesticulation. Klarnood, observing Verkan Vall's impatience, leaned close ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... is abundant ornament in style—if you were cooler you might probably think some of it carried to the verge of good taste; there is a great amount and variety of the most expressive, apt, and seemingly unstudied gesticulation; it is rather as though you were listening to the impulsive Italian speaking from head to foot, than to the cool and unexcitable Scot. After two or three such climaxes, with pauses between, after the manner of Dr. Chalmers, the preacher gathers ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... and sputtered broken excuses for keeping his preserver waiting. Shelby shook both his grimy hands, and smilingly supposed that Kiska had made up his mind how he should vote. Kiska's English was uncertain, but there was no misreading his gesticulation. ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... ground, with two or three of his disciples. He soon got engaged in argument in the very thick of the throng, above which I could hear his voice, and now and then see his meagre hand, half a mile out of the sleeve, elevated in the air in violent gesticulation, and flourishing a pamphlet by way of truncheon. He was decrying these idle nonsensical amusements in times of public distress, when it was every one's business to think of other matters, and to be miserable. ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... dying day I shall remember one of these occasions. The debate, so celebrated, between the great Carolinian Hayne and our own Webster was the feature of the entertainment. Behind the curtain sat Professor Khayme, prompter and general manager. A boy with mighty lungs and violent gesticulation recited an ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... vocabulary, was the name of an actor, who did not, as formerly, throw out alternately artless and unpolished verses like the Fescennine at random, but represented medleys complete with metre, the music being regularly adjusted for the musician, and with appropriate gesticulation. Livius, who several years after, giving up medleys, was the first who ventured to digest a story with a regular plot, (the same being, forsooth, as all were at that time, the actor of his own pieces,) after having broken his voice from having been too repeatedly called on, and after ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... was singularly strong and clear, and had peculiar tones and shades in it which gave indescribable meaning to passages of anger, of pity, or of contempt. His manner was quiet, composed, serene. He indulged in little or no gesticulation, he had a rich gift of genuine Saxon humor. These two men, one belonging to the middle class of the North, one sprung from the yeomanry of Southern England, had as a colleague Charles Villiers, a man ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... girls, all engaged in a perfect storm of conversation, of which we were of course the one only theme, whilst our recent guides were fully occupied in answering the innumerable questions which every one put to them. Nothing can exceed the fierce gesticulation of these people when animated in conversation, and on this occasion they gave loose to all their natural vivacity, shouting and dancing about in a manner ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... gate, where his grandfather spent his life collecting dues, was still standing, though it was soon to vanish; and the house of the Red and White Lion on the Bruehl, where Richard was born, was now in the very heart of the Jew quarter. The costumes, speech and gesticulation of these strange animals left an indelible impression on him, and were, perhaps, incidentally responsible for the notorious Judaism in Music of 1850, and all the fallacies contained in that deplorable ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... heaven had struck the Moslems dumb. The angry tumult died; the vast hush that rose to Nissr was like a blow in the face, so striking was its contrast with the previous uproar. Most of the furious gesticulation ceased, also. All those brown-faced fanatics remained staring upward, silent in a kind ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... Instantly they crowded round her, pointing and gesticulating; but whether they understood, and what they meant, Marjorie could not imagine. She remembered the name of the ship's agents, and spoke that aloud several times, and there were more cries and more crowding and gesticulation. Each man seemed struggling to get possession of her, and Marjorie grew so frightened at the strange sounds, and the fierce faces—as they seemed to her—and the gathering darkness, that she completely lost her head. She looked wildly round her, gave a little ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... Another object of interest to him was the general and his staff, who had established themselves at the Converserie, a farm on the edge of the plateau. There seemed to be a heated discussion going on; officers were going and coming and the conversation was carried on with much gesticulation. What could they be waiting for? nothing was coming that way. The plateau formed a sort of amphitheater, broad expanses of stubble that were commanded to the north and east by wooded heights; to the south were thick woods, while to the west an opening afforded a glimpse ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... man could be brought into bodily communication with demons, I felt the terror and the wild excitement with which, in the Gothic ages, a traveller might have persuaded himself that he witnessed a 'sabbat' of fiends and witches. I have a vague recollection of having attempted with vehement gesticulation, and forms of exorcism, and loud incoherent words, to repel my courteous and indulgent host; of his mild endeavors to calm and soothe me; of his intelligent conjecture that my fright and bewilderment were occasioned by the difference of form and movement between ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... his side, and the child snugly-bedded in his own corn-hopper at their feet. Thus did they go statelily, with his great black horse drawing them. It would have been equally pleasant to see him set down his charge at the door of Hans's house, and behold with wonder that merry mannikin, all smiles and gesticulation, come forth to receive them. The contrast between Hans and his brother-in-law was truly amusing. He, a shadow-like homunculus, so light and dry, that any wind threatened to blow him before it; the bergman, with a countenance like the rising sun, the stature of a giant, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... divining rod; detector. sign, symbol; index, indice|, indicator; point, pointer; exponent, note, token, symptom; dollar sign, dollar mark. type, figure, emblem, cipher, device; representation &c. 554; epigraph, motto, posy. gesture, gesticulation; pantomime; wink, glance, leer; nod, shrug, beck; touch, nudge; dactylology[obs3], dactylonomy[obs3]; freemasonry, telegraphy, chirology[Med], byplay, dumb show; cue; hint &c. 527; clue, clew, key, scent. signal, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the French colony some 150 miles south of Madras. M. Bayol was a typical "Marius," or Marseillais: short, bald, bearded and rotund of stomach. It is unnecessary to add that he talked twenty to the dozen, with an immense amount of gesticulation, and that he could work himself into a frantic state of excitement over anything in two minutes. I heard on board that he had the reputation of being the shrewdest business man in Southern India. He was most capital company, ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... the Florentine Bruno Casini, who died of the plague in 1348. With the practical purpose of fitting his countrymen to speak with ease and effect in public, he treated, after the pattern of the ancients, invention, declamation, bearing, and gesticulation, each in its proper connection. Elsewhere too we read of an oratorical training directed solely to practical application. No accomplishment was more highly esteemed than the power of elegant improvisation in Latin. The growing study of Cicero's speeches and theoretical writings, of ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... motion one brilliant solitary star—a star of such surpassing brightness that he involuntarily joined in the wild cry of joy and greeting with which the Men of the East now prostrated themselves with their faces to the earth. He could not understand the language in which, with noisy clamour and gesticulation, they broke their former profound and patient silence, and greeted the portent for which they had watched. But he knew now that these were the Wise Men of the Epiphany, and that this was the Star of Bethlehem. In his ears rang the energetic simplicity of the Gospel narrative, ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... their resolve to make me see that nightmare of a bridge. If one had taken breath while the other spoke, or rather shouted, I should have suffered less; but they both shouted together, and their struggle to get the better of one another by force of lung, gesticulation, and frenzied rolling of the eyes became a duel, whereby the solitary witness was the only person harmed. What a relief to me if they had gone down to the river bank and fought it out there! No such luck, however. Had there been no listener, ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... thousand and odd times—is one of the few languages which is unaccompanied with gesticulation. Your veritable Englishman, in his discourse, is as chary as your genuine Frenchman is prodigal, of action. The one speaks like an oracle, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 17, 1841 • Various
... garnished with a good deal more gesticulation than usual, and throughout his speech the ironic smile on Sweeny's face was a ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... her into Miss Burgoyne's room, where he found Mlle. Girond only too ready to throw away the French novel she was reading. Nina had to disappear into the dressing-room; but this small boy-officer in the gay uniform, with his or her pretty gesticulation and charm of broken English, was quite willing to entertain Mr. Moore, though at times she would forget all about him and walk across to the full-length mirror and twist her small moustache. She chatted to him now and again; she returned to the mirror to touch her eyebrows and adjust ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... waves were breaking, and where a cluster of men, women and children stood gazing at the steamer. It gave me pleasure to find the place so small and primitive. In no hurry to land, I watched the unloading of merchandise (with a great deal of shouting and gesticulation) into boats which had rowed out for the purpose; speculated on the resources of Paola in the matter of food (for I was hungry); and at moments cast an eye towards the mountain barrier which it was ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... and the order and regularity with which these were kept, as they moved in a large semicircle, in the softening light of the fire, produced a striking effect; and in connection with the wild and inspiriting song, which gave an impulse to their gesticulation, led me almost to believe that the scene ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... down over the irregular pavements, and through the narrow lanes towards the pier from whence we were to embark, was the rude music of the snake-charmer; and the last impressive sight was that of a public story-teller, in one of the little squares, in earnest gesticulation, as with a high-pitched, shrill voice he related to a group of women, who were squatted in their white haiks, and men of the desert in their hooded gehabs, what the guide told us was a chapter from the "Thousand and One Nights!" We embarked once more on board the little Leon Belge ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... for that." This audacious and cruel answer silenced the King, who said no more until his arrival at Paris. Potion held the little Dauphin upon his knees, and amused himself with curling the beautiful light hair of the interesting child round his fingers; and, as he spoke with much gesticulation, he pulled his locks hard enough to make the Dauphin cry out. "Give me my son," said the Queen to him; "he is accustomed to tenderness and delicacy, which render him little fit ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... conscious social control—a cathartic for the soul; and this by a quite intelligible transition. Gesture, of which the dance is merely a pervasive use, is an incipient action. It is conduct in the groping stage, before it has lit on its purpose, as can be seen unmistakably in all the gesticulation of love and defiance. In this way the dance is attached to life initially by its physiological origin. Being an incipient act, it naturally leads to its own completion and may arouse in others the beginnings of an appropriate response. Gesture is only less catching and less eloquent ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... nat, the Prakrit or vernacular form of the Sanskrit nrit, "to dance." Hence scholars are of opinion that the Sanskrit drama has developed out of dancing. The representations of dramas of early times were attended with dancing and gesticulation. There were rude performances without the contrivances of stage and scenic arrangements, dancing and music forming a considerable part. The addition of dialogue was the last step in the development, which was thus much the same in India and Greece. This primitive stage is represented by ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... fingers, the meaning of which was universally recognised and familiar to all classes, and the practice itself reduced to a regular system, as it remains at the present time amongst the populace of Naples, who will carry on a long conversation between themselves by mere gesticulation, and without pronouncing a word." That many of these signs are similar to those used by the Ancients, is proved by the same author, who copies from an antique vase a scene which he explains by the action of the ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... turning when she reached the window, saw William with his hand raised in gesticulation and his mouth open, as if ready to speak the moment ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... gown. But, oh, when she stood before her grandmother and me and a concourse of slaves all in a ferment of awe and admiration, with flashings of white teeth and upheavals of eyes and flingings aloft of hands in half-savage gesticulation, and courtesied and turned herself about in innocent delight at her own loveliness, and yet with the sweetest modesty and apology that she was knowing to it! That stuff which had been sent to my Lady Culpeper and which had been intercepted ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... within. She had fully made up her mind that wherever he was, even were it behind the sentinels and bars of the guard-house, she would demand that she be taken to his side. He had handed out a chair, but she would not sit. They saw her looking up into his face as he talked, and noted the eager gesticulation, so characteristic of his Creole blood, that seemed to accompany his rapid words. They saw her bending towards him, looking eagerly up in his eyes, and occasionally casting indignant glances over towards the group at the office, as though she would annihilate ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... narrow path and entered the cottage. Reappearing in about a quarter of an hour, they came out and seated themselves in the open air, the weaver having brought a couple of chairs. Here they engaged in an animated conversation, if much gesticulation is any indication. The talk lasted fully an hour, Bismarck seeming to do most of it, but at last he arose, saluted the Emperor, and strode down the path toward his horse. Seeing me standing near the gate, he joined me for a moment, and ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... good deal of vanity and gesticulation in all this, but it is the vanity and gesticulation of a man of genius. As we cannot have the genius of Mr. Yeats without the gestures, we may as well take ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... and lane a noisy crowd Had rolled together like a summer cloud, And told the story of the wretched beast In five-and-twenty different ways at least, With much gesticulation and appeal To heathen gods, in their excessive zeal. The Knight was called and questioned; in reply Did not confess the ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... if the word had struck him a blow: so terrible did it make his mother's communication with the man appear. Cavalletto dropped on one knee, and implored him, with a redundancy of gesticulation, to hear what had brought himself ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... reputation having been discovered, their father and Mr. Du Pre set upon them with horsewhips, whereupon the graceless but agile youths ran to a neighbouring house and swarmed to the top of a stack of chimneys, whence partly by word and partly by gesticulation they arranged ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... thought of her ugliness. You noticed then that her hair, though sprinkled with white, was pretty, and that her figure was exceedingly neat. She had good hands, very white and admirably formed, which she waved continually in the fervour of her gesticulation. Now that her means were adequate she took great pains with her dress, and her clothes, though they cost much more than she could afford, were always beautiful. Her taste was so great, her tact so sure, that she was ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... half open, and the hands in the pockets. Now, when you address a foreigner in his own tongue, speak with much noise and vociferation, opening your mouth wide and using much action. The ideas you cannot convey in words, you must communicate by gesticulation, the more emphatic ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... after the accident, completely recovered; but the forearm had had to be amputated. The question now was whether a famous mechanician, who had promised to make him a perfect substitute for the lost limb even in the matter of free gesticulation, would be able to carry out his task. He succeeded fairly well, as I saw with my own eyes some time later, when I witnessed Roger act in a benefit performance which the Grand Opera had given him, ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... unless we go in together," Milton said with emphatic gesticulation. Milton was a natural politician. His words found quick response in the erratic Hobkirk, who had good ideas but whose temperament made all his words jagged shot. He irritated where he meant ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... elaborate and dangerous looking; under Haddick, with near 10,000 of the "Austrian-auxiliary" sort: to whom the old Commandant—judging Wedell, the late Anti-Swedish Wedell, to be now near—rushed out with "300 men and one big gun;" and made such a firing and gesticulation as was quite extraordinary, as if Wedell were here already: till Wedell's self did come in sight; and the overpowering Reichs Detachment made its best speed else-whither. [Tempelhof, &c.; "Letter from a Prussian Officer," ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... in their height, in their walk, in their features, and in their voices. Both with the same colored hair and the same beardless faces. Oscar's smile exactly reflected on Nugent's lips. Oscar's odd little semi-foreign tricks of gesticulation with his hands, exactly reproduced in the hands of Nugent. And, to crown it all, there was the complexion which Oscar had lost for ever (just a shade darker perhaps) found again on Nugent's cheeks! The one difference which made it possible to distinguish ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... a faint flush is apparent on his cheek-bones. His face expresses a profound reverence for my fame and my learning, but from his eyes I can see he feels a contempt for my voice, my pitiful figure, and my nervous gesticulation. I impress him in my ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the bogs which lie on the other side of the Shannon from Killaloe, he had practised the sort of address which he would make to the House. He would be short,—always short; and he would eschew all action and gesticulation; Mr. Monk had been very urgent in his instructions to him on that head; but he would be especially careful that no words should escape him which had not in them some purpose. He might be wrong in his purpose, but purpose there should be. He had been twitted more than once ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... Mademoiselle Therese was enjoying herself thoroughly, recounting the adventure to her own household and to the widower and his sons whom she had called in to add to her audience. She described the whole scene most graphically and with much gesticulation, perhaps ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... evangelist starts in with the song "Where is My Wandering Boy Tonight," then follows the picture of mother, which is painted with sobs of blood. Then follows mother's death-bed scene until the audience is in tears. Gesticulation, mimicry, acting, sensationalism, slang and weepy stories follow, until the ferment of excitement is developed into a high state and droves flock to the altar to be made over on the instant ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... fun than the colored stones. They made a few experimental shapes, then dismantled them and began on a single large design. Several times they tore it down, entirely or in part, and began over again, usually with considerable yeeking and gesticulation. ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... the valley, they could withdraw from their captive. Here they consulted together. We could follow from their gestures what they were saying, for as they did not wish their prisoner to hear, their gesticulation was enlightening to us as to each other. Our people, like all mountaineers, have good eyes, and the Gospodar is himself an eagle in this as in other ways. Three men stood back from the rest. They stacked their rifles ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... oratory. He, too, was perspiring with his ideas. He had a marvellous staccato method of question and answer. He would shoot a question like a rifle bullet at the heads of his audience, and then stiffen back like a wary boxer, both clenched hands poised in a tremulous gesticulation, and before any one could answer his bullet-like question, he was answering it himself. As I edged my way nearer to him I discovered that he, also, had a little pile of books at his feet which a keen-eyed assistant was busily selling. How ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... severely at them. Russian officers and high officials always expect you to tremble when they administer a rebuke. Needless to say, the reception was harsh. There was a good deal of long stride, prancing from one end of the room to the other, vehement talk in Russian, and wild gesticulation. The Maltese told the somewhat callous captains that the Admiral declared the next Englishman that attempted such a thing, if he were not blown up, would have to be shot. An example must be made. The genial ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... a general movement, as well as general clamour of voices and much gesticulation. All, old and young, with the exception of the girl, gather round the woman in the red cloak, and seem to be urging her to do something that she does not like to do. They point to the girl, and the appeal ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... terms of disgusting and impious familiarity not to be described. He begins his oration in a drawling tone, and his hearers listen with silent attention. He grows warmer as he proceeds with his subject, and his gesticulation becomes proportionately violent. He clenches his fists, beats the book upon the desk before him, and swings his arms wildly about his head. The congregation murmur their acquiescence in his doctrines: and a short groan, occasionally bears testimony to the moving nature of his ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... daintily and pledge each other in sake almost as graciously as men of a better class. Likewise they seem to treat their girls very kindly. It is quite pleasant to watch them feasting across the street. Perhaps their laughter is somewhat more boisterous and their gesticulation a little more vehement than those of the common citizens; but there is nothing resembling real roughness—much less rudeness. All become motionless and silent as statues—fifteen fine bronzes ranged along the wall of the zashiki, [2] -when some pretty geisha ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... you feel you must collapse or cry, mama," she adjured her parent with a touch of the scorn the younger generation felt for elders accustomed, in that day, to meet all crises with tears and faints, or at the least wild gesticulation—"if you must, do it now, and here; so that when they come you can be calm ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... this account, sociable, endowed like the bee and the beaver with an instinct for living in groups, and moreover an imitator like the monkey, but more intelligent, capable of passing by degrees from the language of gesticulation to that of articulation, beginning with a monosyllabic idiom which gradually increases in richness, precision and subtlety.[3117] How many centuries are requisite to attain to this primitive language! How many centuries more to the discovery of the most necessary ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Mr. Brodereque again wipes the perspiration from his forehead, and orders a glass of water, to loosen his oratorical organs. He drinks the water, seems to increase in his own greatness; his red face glows redder, he makes a theatrical gesticulation with his right hand, crumples his hair into curious points, and proceeds:—"The lucky man what gets the gal prize is to treat the crowd!" This is seconded and carried by ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... which General Belch did business. It had the atmosphere of Law. But, above all, it was the spot where, with one leg swinging over the edge of the table and one hand waving in earnest gesticulation, General Belch could say to every body who came, and especially to his poorer fellow-citizens, "I ask no office; I am content with my moderate practice. It is enough for me, in this glorious country, to be ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... in no gesticulation. If he had been addressing a bench of judges he would not have been more impassive in his manner. He was an animate, but not an animated, bean-pole. He poured out a steady flow of words—three to Douglas's two—in a simple and semi-conversational tone. He attempted no ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... of affectation[89]. Talking of old Mr. Langton, of whom he said, "Sir, you will seldom see such a gentleman, such are his stores of literature, such his knowledge in divinity, and such his exemplary life;" he added, "and Sir, he has no grimace, no gesticulation, no bursts of admiration on trivial occasions; he never embraces ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... the actor disappeared, only the dancer remaining upon the stage. The words of the play were relegated to a chorus, while the character, actions, and emotions of the person represented by the words of the chorus were set forth by the dress, gesticulation, and dancing of the pantomimus. How the various scenes were connected is uncertain; but it is almost a necessary inference that the connexion was provided by the chorus or, as in modern oratorio, by recitative. To us the mimetic ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... written in a style which is the man—for Buffon's saying, seldom true, applies here to the letter. It is written as Carlyle wrote, not merely with the brain, but with the whole soul and the whole body of the man, and in such a vivid manner that one can without much effort imagine the eager gesticulation which now and then underlines, interprets, despises, argues, denies, and above all asserts. In his absolute subservience to the matter in hand this manner of writing has its great precedent in ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... discharge she burst in again, huffy head, furs and gesticulation as before. "I come from Paris this morning, I bring you money." I was not present, but I had previously warned my assistant not to receive any money. The gay Parisian was informed that no money could be received, but ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... an affecting sight to see the poor old fat gentleman, looking wistfully over the water as the boat now came up, and her eight seamen, with great noise, energy, and gesticulation laid her by the steamer. The steamer steps were let down; his Lordship's servant, in blue and yellow livery (like the Edinburgh Review), cast over the episcopal luggage into the boat, along with his own bundle and the jack-boots with which he rides postilion ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray |
