"Circus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... otherwise whetting their wit upon him. He acquitted himself very creditably, however, and when the bull began to pull against him, he leant over on the other side, as if he had been galloping round a circus; and the bull could not move him an inch. It was quite evident that it was not his first experiment. In the mean time Don Juan had dropped the noose of my lazo just before the bull's nose, and presently that animal incautiously put his foot into it, when ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... P. Henry in the characters of seseshers! As well fancy John Bunyan and Dr. Watts in spangled tites, doin the trapeze in a one-horse circus. ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... it did not then exist in Egypt, otherwise Aristotle, who travelled there, must have known about it. In the year 708 of Rome, Julius Caesar brought one to Europe, and the Roman emperors afterwards exhibited them at Rome, either for the games in the circus, or in their triumphs over the African princes. Albertus Magnus, in his Treatise de Animalibus, is the first modern author who speaks of the Giraffe. In 1486, one of the Medici family possessed one at Florence, where it ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various
... lesson in psychology, we dropped the last vestige of pride and tried a circus sideshow. ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby
... we don't care much for him - starve him out, in fact. We take more kindly to wax-work, especially if it moves; in which case it keeps much clearer of the second commandment than when it is still. Cooke's Circus (Mr. Cooke is my friend, and always leaves a good name behind him) gives us only a night in passing through. Nor does the travelling menagerie think us worth a longer visit. It gave us a look-in the other day, bringing with it the residentiary van with the stained glass windows, ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... I crossed Piccadilly Circus with a brisker step. It was no use worrying over questions which could not be examined scientifically. The only really important question in life was ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... rushed hitherward seeking gold were gone; be the explanation where it might, shacks stood with doors flung wide; tents had been torn down, outworn articles discarded, dumped helter-skelter into the road. The atmosphere was like that of a circus grounds when the circus was moving on, only a few things left for the last crew to ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... had been a raftsman and farmer about Lake Champlain until in 1841 when on the ground of his talent with the fiddle two strangers offered him employment in a circus which they said was then at Washington. Going thither with them, he was drugged, shackled, despoiled of his free papers, and delivered to a slave trader who shipped him to New Orleans. Then followed a checkered experience as a plantation hand on the Red River, lasting for a dozen years ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... good reason, I assure you, capteen, for the capture," was the reply. "Give the man of God sometheen to eat. He must pray for us this eveneen. It'll be as good as a circus to listen to him. It's been so long since we ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... with a horsewhip. He speculated on the kind of horsewhip that would be necessary. A hunting crop with no lash would not be more effective than an ordinary walking stick. With a lash it would be cumbrous, unless he kept at an undignified distance and flicked at his victim as the ring-master in the circus flicks at the clown. Perhaps horsewhips for this particular purpose could be obtained from the Army and Navy Stores. It should be about three feet long, flexible and tapering to a point. Unconsciously his inventive faculty began to work. When he had devised an adequate instrument, made of fine steel ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... like snow somewhere unseen, never has there appeared one with such a subject as this. Weak, feeble, mosaic, gimcrack, coloured tiles, and far-fetched compound monsters, artificial as the graining on a deal front door, they cannot be compared; it is the gingerbread gilt on a circus car to the column of a Greek temple. This is pure open air, grand as Nature herself, because it is Nature with, as I say, the ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... route, owing to a kind of backwash of the surging people, Ralph Bastin and the Secretary of the Church had become separated. At Picadilly circus they came suddenly ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... a moderate pace, we came to an open knoll in the forest. Here in the ferns our pack circled about us as if the cat had been doing a circus stunt, and they seemed confused. Later on we found that our feline friend had been experimenting with a porcupine and learned ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... has been long enough away from the centre of things almost to forget what it is like, a walk along Pall Mall yesterday brought some curious reflections. From the Circus to Hyde Park Corner not a single luxurious private motor-car or horse-drawn carriage was to be seen. It was not the Pall Mall ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various
... London, so to speak, in order to take in cargo, also visited the theatre towards the end of the run of the piece. He waited, by arrangement, for Paul outside the stage door, and Paul, coming out, linked arms and took him to a blazing bar in Piccadilly Circus and ministered to his ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... who, although beyond ear-shot, must have been enabled by the generous breadth of Italian gesture to follow the tangled thread of the piece. It was all deliciously Italian—the mixture of old life and new, the mountebank's booth (it was hardly more) grafted on the antique circus, the dominant presence of a mighty architecture, the loungers and idlers beneath the kindly sky and upon the sun- warmed stones. I never felt more keenly the difference between the background to life in very old and very new civilisations. There are other things in Verona ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... from five to twenty miles of battlefields. Nothing in the way of habitation is left. Everything has been beaten into pulp by hurricanes of shell-fire. First you come to a metropolis of horse-lines, which makes you think that a mammoth circus has arrived. Then you come to plank roads and little light railways, running out like veins across the mud. Far away there's a ridge and a row of charred trees, which stand out gloomily etched against the sky. The sky is grey ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... to me whether we halt or scorch," said Dick. "I've got more time than anything else. This is your circus; I'm only the 'prisoner's best friend,' as they say in a court-martial. But if we should go to Burgos, I've got an errand to do, ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... well-pleased audience were preparing to leave when Barnes, in a drab jacket and trunks, trimmed with green ribbon bows, came forward like the clown in the circus and ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... distinct that he started and looked round. Then he laughed. "I'll be seeing circus parades next!" His laughter fled, for, louder than the ringing in his ears, unmistakably came the strains of a far-away brass band which had no existence on land or sea or in the ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... ball-ground; the marshy stretch that made skating in winter, or, in spring, a fascinating place to catch cold by wading; the grassy common where "shinny" was played by day and "Yellow Horn" by night; the enchanted spot where the circus built airy castles of canvas, and where, on the day after, one might plant one's feet squarely in the magic ring, on the veritable spot, perchance, where the clown had superhumanly ridden the difficult trick-mule after local volunteers had failed ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... stable afterward with many grins. "It weren't no trouble to put HIM up. An' a old un wouldn't ha' sat any straighter when he WERE up. He ses—ses he to me, 'Wilkins,' he ses, 'am I sitting up straight? They sit up straight at the circus,' ses he. An' I ses, 'As straight as a arrer, your lordship!'—an' he laughs, as pleased as could be, an' he ses, 'That's right,' he ses, 'you tell me if I ...
— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a number one, tip-top minin' expert, all right all right," the dog-musher delivered himself oracularly, "but you missed the chance of your life when you was a boy an' didn't run off an' join a circus." ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... "Better than a circus," declared Baldwin. "Wouldn't miss it. Since old man Harkness died, I ain't heard cussing to match up with Larrimer's. Didn't know that he had ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... two it costs—the price of an ordinary animal—is a big sum of money to him. And once in his life he got an old trained sheep-dog for nothing. He was young then, and acting as under-shepherd in his native village, when the report came one day that a great circus and menagerie which had been exhibiting in the west was on its way to Salisbury, and would be coming past the village about six o'clock on the following morning. The turnpike was a little over a mile away, and thither Caleb went with ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... when you pretend you can have anything you see in any window, leaves one just as rich, but unsatisfied. So the advice of the war correspondent to seek out German spies came to Jimmie like a day at the circus, like a week at the Danbury Fair. It not only was a call to arms, to protect his flag and home, but a chance to play in earnest the game in which he most delighted. No longer need he pretend. No longer need he waste his energies in watching, unobserved, a greedy rabbit ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... as he halted in front of the ruined house, and looked carefully at the ornamented stones still left, 'when Saint Peter's church shall be a circus, this house ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... games were celebrated, in the manner of the ancients, in a circus rivalling the Roman amphitheatres in size. This was the occasion of a dithyrambic outburst inserted in the Moniteur: "The Italians have just offered Napoleon the same spectacle that their ancestors offered Marcus Aurelius and Trajan; but the ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... in my case—it merely happened so; a matter, perhaps of personal taste, perhaps because of lack of opportunity; and there is a remote possibility that belated loyalty to a friend I once betrayed may have kept me personally chaste in this rotting circus circle you have driven me around in, harnessed to your vicious caprice, dragging the ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... amusements which experience has shown to be so exciting, and connected with so many temptations, as to be pernicious in tendency, both to the individual and to the community. It is on this ground, that horse-racing and circus-riding have been excluded. Not because there is any thing positively wrong in having men and horses run and perform feats of agility, or in persons looking on for the diversion: but because experience has shown so many evils connected with these recreations, ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the least—and he was having some difficulty in maintaining his dignity on this doleful morning, it may be said. "It would have done your heart good, Force, if you could have been here this morning—say at half-past six—and seen the circus we had. Well, ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... [U.S.]; ghetto. street, place, terrace, parade, esplanade, alameda^, board walk, embankment, road, row, lane, alley, court, quadrangle, quad, wynd [Scot.], close [Scot.], yard, passage, rents, buildings, mews. square, polygon, circus, crescent, mall, piazza, arcade, colonnade, peristyle, cloister; gardens, grove, residences; block of buildings, market place, place, plaza. anchorage, roadstead, roads; dock, basin, wharf, quay, port, harbor. quarter, parish &c (region) 181. assembly room, meetinghouse, pump room, spa, watering ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... soul, the brandy-and-soda soul, of the young men, delightful and elegant in black and white, who are so vociferously cheering him, "Will you stand me a cab-fare, ducky, I am feeling so awfully queer?" The soul, the spirit, the entity of Piccadilly Circus is in the words, and the scene the comedian's eyes—each look is full of suggestion; it is irritating, it is magnetic, it is ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... other creditors was Mr. Wainwright. He, however, was not one of the hostile party, but was very well-disposed towards Mr. Smith. One day, in the month of June, Mr. Wainwright received an anonymous letter, requesting him to meet the writer at a small public-house near the "Olympic Circus," which was a temporary place of amusement erected in Christian-street, then beginning to be built upon (the Adelphi Theatre in Christian-street succeeded the Circus—in fact, this place of amusement was called "the Circus" for ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... and you and they sufficiently good friends to bear the fun of pantomime and the gaiety of hilarity, asking several boys, as they walk across the room before the children, to imitate some animals they had seen at a circus, and getting the children to guess the animal represented until they hit upon the elephant, would put certain children in a spirit of fun that would be exactly the wide-awake brightness and good humor needed to receive the story of The Elephant's Child. You can get children best into the ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... from the smaller houses in which the serious drama is produced—as the "Alhambra," in Leicester Square; the "Empire Theatre of Varieties," also in Leicester Square; the "Palace Theatre of Varieties" on Cambridge Circus in Shaftesbury Avenue; the "London Pavilion" in Piccadilly; and the "Hippodrome" at the corner of Cranbourn Street and Charing Cross Road. Let us inspect their vaudeville offerings. Let us snoop into their wares. ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... "tramp" switchmen and travelling trainmen, made reckless by idleness, as men are sometimes made desperate by hunger, with an alarmingly large representation of real criminals, who follow strikes as "grafters" follow a circus. If a striker lost his temper and talked as he ought not to talk, this latter specimen was always ready to encourage him; for whatever promised trouble for others promised profitable pastime for the criminal. If the real workers could ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman
... must do. But with Molly arrested we shall be compelled to be very careful," said Benton, as they turned toward Piccadilly Circus. "I don't see how we dare move until Molly is either free or convicted. If she knew our game she might give us away. Remember that if we bring off the Henfrey affair Molly has to have a share in the spoils. ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... the shops, passing up Regent Street, across the Circus and down Oxford Street toward the City, laughing and talking nonsense all the time. Once when they made a little purchase at a shop the shopwoman looked astonished at the freedom with which they carried themselves, and after that they felt ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... as long as he dared. Then when it seemed that he would glide right into the frogmen, he twisted sideways and bent backward like a circus acrobat, flippers moving in powerful thrusts. It was an excellent underwater imitation of a wingover, the plane maneuver that reversed direction by diving and turning. He planed downward until he touched bottom, then thrust himself with ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... of the doubles are men, even for the women stars, like Kitty Carson always carries one who used to be a circus acrobat. She couldn't hardly do one of the things you see her doing, but when old Dan gets on her blonde transformation and a few of her clothes, he's her to the life in a long shot, or even in mediums, if he keeps ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... which is, perhaps, without a parallel in the annals of travelling. Each of them led six or seven horses besides the one he rode; and by 15 shifting from one to the other (like the ancient Desultors of the Roman circus), so as never to burden the same horse for more than half an hour at a time, they continued to advance at the rate of 200 miles in the twenty-four hours for three days consecutively. After that time, 20 considering themselves beyond pursuit, they proceeded less rapidly; ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... if you are willing," he avowed, earnestly. "You can take the water with you." Visions of a tank lady in the "Greatest Circus on Earth" came ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... disposing of whatever was to be disposed of, from a tin can to a stove-pipe hat. He could judge accurately the nature and disposition of his audience,—knew just what to say and when to say it, and had the faculty of making people bid whether they wanted to or not. To hear him was as good as a circus, his friends said, and when it became known that he was to auction off the goods remaining from the sale, many who had left came back, filling the rooms again nearly as full as they were early in ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... "Even to oblige you I simply can't drive along the streets in a thing like the band-chariot of a travelling circus." ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... herself again under her own coverlet. "Did you forsooth go out," She Yueeh remarked, "in this smart dress of a circus-performer?" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... no answer, and they walked on till they readied Piccadilly Circus. Then Charlie suddenly ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... we went ashore, and dispersed in different directions, to meet again at the hotel for luncheon. Then we all again separated, the children going to the circus, whilst I took a drive, with a pair of black and white Hakodadi ponies, to the foot of the hills behind ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... away" the thing at school, and was quite a hero. But some of the boys had crawled under a circus tent. And a ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... tone of contrition. 'Well, you see, I forgot you weren't a man. I won't do it again. So your father thinks I'd better come out flat-footed with a statement to the press. Now, I'll tell you. I'd do so, if I didn't feel sure that all this circus about me isn't the real thing yet. It's been got up with an object, and until I can make out what's coming I think I'd best keep still. Whoever's at the root of this is counting on my losing my temper and hitting out, and saying ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... dressed in our trapping suits. They followed us, and as we went along the crowd increased so that when we got to Crum. Lloyd's tavern the door was full of boys' heads looking at us as if we were a circus. Here we were heartily welcomed, and every body was glad to see us, as they were about to start a company to go in search of their reported murdered friends. It seems a missionary got lost on his way to Prairie La Crosse and had come across ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... sure I don't want to," answered Margery stretching out comfortably with her hands supporting her head. "I'm no circus performer." ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge
... front seemed to know that we were about. The soldiers we met along the roads welcomed us gladly, but they were no longer, after the first day or two, surprised to see us. They acted, rather, as if they had been expecting us. Our advent was like that of a circus, coming to a country town for a long heralded and advertised engagement. Yet all the puffing that we got was by word ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... visage, and unsteady eyes. For some years past this aged person had been wandering about among the hills, inquiring of all travellers whom he met for his daughter. The girl, it seemed, had gone off with a company of circus performers; and occasionally tidings of her came to the village, and fine stories were told of her glittering appearance as she rode on horseback in the ring, or performed marvellous ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... earth would he groan-like?" wondered Shuey to himself. "He does that, sir," he continued aloud; "didn't Mrs. Ellis ever tell you about the time at the circus? She was there herself, with three children she borrowed and an unreasonable gyurl, with a terrible big screech in her and no sense. Yes, sir, Mr. Lossing he is mighty cliver with his hands! There come a yell of 'Lion loose! lion loose!' at ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... brilliantly. Her elegant house, filled with "furniture of the most costly description,"—says the "New Orleans Bee" of a date which we shall come to,—stood central in the swirl of "downtown" gayety, public and private. From Royal into Hospital street, across Circus street—rue de la Cirque—that was a good way to get into Bayou Road, white, almost as snow, with its smooth, silent pavement of powdered shells. This road followed the slow, clear meanderings of Bayou St. Jean, from red-roofed ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... times with white stones, there would have been enough to build a wall all around the little cabin by the end of the summer. There were two days especially that he remembered with deepest satisfaction: one was the Saturday when Mars' Nat took him to the circus, and the other was the Fourth of July, when all the family went to the ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston
... underlying likeness. When all the world was piteously crying out that never in its life had it heard of such an affair as this of May Gaston's, Mrs. Baxter dived into her treasure-chest and serenely produced the case of the Nonconformist Minister's daughter and the Circus Proprietor. Set this affair side by side with the Quisante business, and a complete sum in double proportion at once made its appearance. The audacity of the man, the headlong folly of the girl, the hopeless mixing of ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... subdivided: the first into a book on Pontifices, one on Augurs, one on Quindecimviri Sacrorum; the second into books on shrines, temples, and sacred spots, respectively; the third into those on festivals and holidays, the games of the circus, and theatrical spectacles; the fourth treats of consecrations, private rites, and public sacrifices, while the fifth has one treatise on gods that certainly exist, one on gods that are doubtful, and one on ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... good they were themselves, and a boy might think of himself at the head of a solemn procession, carrying a banner and riding a white horse. And then, if there were some jubilant passages in the music, he'd think of a circus." ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... that she had no sense at all of acting Spanish prince disguised as page. Nor had she an idea that she was making her friend Wilfrid's heart perform to her lightest words and actions, like any trained milk-white steed in a circus. Sunlight, as well as Wilfrid's braided cap, had some magical influence on her. He assured her that she looked a charming boy, and she said, "Do I?" just ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and counteract the effect of her low relations, to say nothing of paying all her expenses and taking her the tour of Europe. "But, mark my words," said Mrs. Luna, "she will give Olive the greatest cut she has ever had in her life. She will run off with some lion-tamer; she will marry a circus-man!" And Mrs. Luna added that it would serve Olive Chancellor right. But she would take it hard; ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... no grief. Then back he raced, washed, combed and fed the little, old soldier, helping him to think the gruel a "swell puddin'," and the service Buckle's best. After that there was a short trip to Madison Square Garden where, despite all facts to the contrary, a colossal circus had moved in. Johnnie summoned lions before the wheel chair, and tigers, camels, Arab steeds and elephants, Cis's room serving admirably as the cage which contained these various quadrupeds. And, naturally, there was a deal of growling and roaring and ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... he could not resist telling all his friends about it. He would stop them in the street and act out the scenes. Yet it required the most stupendous courage and confidence to put on a play that, from the manuscript, sounded like a combination of circus and extravaganza; a play in which children flew in and out of rooms, crocodiles swallowed alarm-clocks, a man exchanged places with his dog in its kennel, and various other seemingly absurd ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... visit. It was a remote village in Virginia where there was a girls' seminary, the catalogue of which set forth among advantages of location this: that the town was one to which the traveling lecturer and the circus never came. The Bibliotaph said, 'I should go there. For I am the one when I am on the platform, and by the unanimous testimony of all my friends I am the other when I ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... away from a circus," began Ben, but got no further, for Bab and Betty gave a simultaneous bounce of delight, and both ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... said the Clown, and he made a polite bow to the Plush Bear and the Wax Doll. "Sidney, the boy who owns me, was playing circus with me. His brother, who owns the Monkey on a Stick, was trying to make me jump over the Monkey, when my cap caught on the stick and was ripped off. So they brought me here to have Mr. Mugg make me a new one. But did you hear about how I burned my ...
— The Story of a Plush Bear • Laura Lee Hope
... rather cynical personality; Shaw loves to laugh at people, he is inclined to make fun of the martyrs. They were possibly quite mistaken in their enthusiasm, but at least they were consistent. I do not feel convinced that Shaw would stand in the middle of Piccadilly Circus and keep his ideals if he knew that it would involve being eaten by lions that came up Regent Street, as the martyrs faced them centuries ago in Rome, but I have little doubt that Chesterton would remain in Piccadilly Circus if he knew that ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... has spent thirty thousand clam-shells a year on bottled grape-juice, and run up bills against her husband's account at the diamond-quarries for two or three hundred thousand tons of wampum, and if she chooses to go joy-riding on a Diplodocus with a gentleman from the Circus, it is Zebulon Zebedee's business, not mine, and a newspaper that insisted upon dumping this unsavory mess on my breakfast-table every morning would sooner or later become an unmitigated ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... himself. It would be impossible here to give a list of the innumerable works which he executed. In London, of course, the Adelphi stands pre-eminent; the screen and gate of the Admiralty and part of Fitzroy Square are by him, Portland Place, and much of the older portion of Finsbury Circus, besides whole streets of houses in the west end. There are the famous country houses of Lord Mansfield at Caen Wood, Highgate and Luton Hoo, and decorations and additions to ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the "wonderful calf with five legs and a huming head," and "the philosophical lung-tester," were there. Then there was the Flying Circus and any number of other ingenious contrivances to relieve young ladies and gentlemen from the rural districts ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne
... stepped from the express into the Pennsylvania Station he wondered for a moment if there was a circus or a frontier-day show in town. The shouts of the porters, the rush of men and women toward the gates, the whirl and eddy of a vast life all about him, took him back to the few hours ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... men, an' men only smoke because they've got up the 'abit an' can't 'elp it. W'y, sir, you may git up any 'abit. You may git the 'abit of walkin' on your 'ands an' shakin' your legs in the hair if you was to persevere long enough, but that would only prove you a fool fit for a circus or a lunatic asylum. You never see the hanimals smokin'. They knows better. Just fancy! what would you think if you saw the cab 'osses all a-settin' on their tails in the rank smokin' pipes an' cigars! What would you think of a 'oss w'en 'is cabby cried, "Gee-up, there's ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... frequented the cafes, the public bars, the theatres, the churches. He had been to the Velodrome. He had sat by the hour in the Jardin d'Essai. At night he had strolled in the fairs and hung about the circus. Yet nowhere had he been able to perceive anything but the most innocent pleasure, the simple merriment of a gay and guileless population to whom the idea of crime seemed as foreign as the idea of singing the English ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... to comment, with more or less spite, on the sudden friendship between their first selectman and Hiram Look, since Look—once owner of a road circus—had retired from the road, had married his old love, and had settled down on the Snell farm. Considering the fact that the selectman and showman had bristled at each other like game-cocks the first time they met, Smyrna wondered at the sudden effusion of affection that now kept them trotting ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... anything else that is objectionable—and it was plain that she enjoyed her life. Is it in the least likely that any sane manager would ill-treat a little child that was required to be pleasing? One or two acrobats have been known to be stern with their apprentices; but the rudest circus-man would not venture to exhibit a pupil who looked unhappy. The rascally "Arabs" who entrapped so many boys in years gone by were fiends who met with very appropriate retribution; but such villains are ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... their looks to heaven. I should be surprised if mysticism did not soon make some advance amongst a people solely engaged in promoting its own worldly welfare. It is said that the deserts of the Thebaid were peopled by the persecutions of the emperors and the massacres of the Circus; I should rather say that it was by the luxuries of Rome and the Epicurean philosophy of Greece. If their social condition, their present circumstances, and their laws did not confine the minds ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... popularity. Differences of opinion as to the merits of an individual actor may culminate in the partisans' coming to blows.[50] Horace (Ep. II. I. 200 ff.) comments on the turbulence of the audiences of his day too; while under the Empire factions for and against particular actors grew up, as in the circus.[51] Late-comers of course often disturbed the Prologus in his lines. The continual reiteration that we find in such prologues as the Amph., Cap. and Poen. was naturally designed as a safeguard against such disturbance. Yet these prologues were undoubtedly ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... rapidly. "It's this way—I figure that the frogs grow rather large where she lives, and they're a bit different too. Well, Lakla's got a lot of 'em trained. Carry spears and clubs and all that junk—just like trained seals or monkeys or so on in the circus. Probably a custom of the place. Nothing queer about that, Olaf. Why people have all kinds of pets—armadillos and snakes and rabbits, kangaroos ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... circus band," vouchsafed the guide, a sudden eagerness in his voice. "Van Slye's Great and ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... the new fad of photographing wild animals as well as shooting them. An escaped circus chimpanzee and an escaped lion add to ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... be miserable if they couldn't go to the circus, said Nellie. 'I'm very glad Grandfather heard them. Now he knows what they are like, and Tom will have to ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... in the gardens of the Palais Royal, that place of shops and puppet-shows, of circus and cafes, of gaming houses and brothels, that universal rendezvous, on that Sunday morning when the news of Necker's dismissal spread, carrying with it dismay and fury. Into Necker's dismissal the people read the triumph of the party hostile to themselves. It sounded the knell of all ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... The Clark Mills (that turns out equestrian statues as the Stark Mills do calico-patterns) has pocketed fifty thousand dollars for making a very dead bronze horse stand on his hind-legs. For twenty-five cents I have seen a man at the circus do something more wonderful,—make a very living bay horse dance a redowa round the amphitheatre on his (it occurs to me that hind-legs is indelicate) posterior extremities to the wayward music of an out-of-town (Scotice, out-o'-toon) band. Now, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... to state that Benotti's Original Circus, one of the oldest established and most complete in the kingdom, will give two performances daily at Bounders Green during ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... car, a new forty six-cylinder "Napier" that we had purchased only a week before, to drive to Barnack, an old-world Northamptonshire village near Stamford, where I had to meet the audacious rascal Count Bindo. From Piccadilly Circus, I started forth upon my hundred-mile run with a light heart, in keen anticipation of a merry time. The Houghs, with whom Bindo was staying, always had gay house-parties, for the Major, his wife, and Marigold, his daughter, were keen on hunting, and we usually went to the meets ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... defects, and whose splendid abilities were the glory of his countrymen, could not restore the simplicities of former times. An age of "progress" had set in, of Grecian arts and culture, of material wealth, of sumptuous banquets, of splendid palaces, of rich temples, of theatrical shows, of circus games, of female gallantries, of effeminated manners—all the usual accompaniments of civilization, when it is most proud of its triumphs; and there was no resisting its march—to the eye of many a great ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... explained, with a dazzling smile that was a justification in itself; "me likes pretty new dress!" and then, with one hand reaching up to the door-knob, and the other throwing disarming kisses to Samantha,—"By-by! Lady Gay go circus now! Timfy, come, take ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... necessary thing, meanwhile consulting a tiny memorandum-book, and counting over a handful of loose gold and silver. Then he put on his hat and gloves, looked at the fit of his gray frock-coat in the glass, and went into the street. At Piccadilly Circus he bought a boutonniere, and as he was feeling slightly rocky after a late night at card-playing, he dropped into the St. James. He emerged shortly, fortified by a brandy-and-soda, and sauntered westward ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... exclaimed Mr. Blackford—"fine that you can go camping, I mean—not Will's circus act. But I must apologize for coming in on you this way. I happened to have some business in town, and as I received a curious bit of news I thought you girls might be interested. It's about my missing sister," he ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Winter Camp - Glorious Days on Skates and Ice Boats • Laura Lee Hope
... to be courteous, no doubt, but seemed only defiant. "An' this much I kin say without injury to Sall—that I'd rather hear you talk and see you smile, as I has been watchin' of you constant do to-day, than go to the circus in New York, or even to a Spanish bull-fight, or hear a Fourth-of-July oration, or'tend camp-meetin'—and that's saying no little—an' no iceberg shall come near you while Christian Garth lays a hand upon this helm. But don't be skeered, ladies; no harm ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... faith—and Miss Paulette's," he argued half crossly. "I could remind you of one or two that weren't. What about the Mappin murder, way back in nineteen-five? And that emerald business at the Houstons' country house this spring, with that dancing and circus-riding girl who used to be at the Hippodrome—the Russian, who did Russian dancing on her horse's back? What was her name? I ought to remember. I knew a poor devil of a cousin of hers out in British Columbia who was engaged to her when ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... has now but slight comprehension of the trials endured by the Abolitionists for principle's sake. In many ways were they persecuted. In society they were tabooed; in business shunned. By the rabble they were hooted and pelted. Clowns in the circus made them the subjects of their jokes. Newspaper scribblers lampooned and libelled them. Politicians denounced them. By the Church they were regarded as very black sheep, and sometimes excluded from the fold. And this state ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... fact is that for the crime of killing a British subject the bail was L200; and for the crime of objecting to it the bail was L1,000. This action only added fuel to the fire and a public meeting was immediately convened to be held in a circus building known as the Amphitheatre. Meetings are permitted under the Act provided they are held in an enclosed building. The object of the meeting was to record a protest against the arrest of Messrs. Dodd and Webb. A ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... I was!" declared FitzGerald; "standing at the corner of Piccadilly Circus this blessed minute, and making up my mind whether to go to the Criterion grill ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... nice bunch," he laughed, standing for a moment with his arm still about Celie's waist. "A regular hell of a bunch, little girl! Now if those wolves only had sense enough to know that we're a little brother and sister to Bram, we'd be able to put up a fight that would be some circus. Did you see that fellow topple off the fence? Don't believe I hit him. At least I hope I didn't. If they ever find out the size of this pea-shooter's sting they'll sit up there like a row of crows and laugh at us. But—what ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... clog-dancer. I believe I am pretty well known to the public," continued Signor Orlando complacently. "Last summer I traveled with Jenks & Brown's circus. Of course you've heard of THEM. Through the winter I am employed at Bowerman's Varieties, in the Bowery. I appear every night, and ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger
... the painter of his emotion and slipped off into the mid-stream of perfunctory eloquence. With all his disrobing he had retained his top-hat; he held it in his right hand with the brim pressed against his thigh, very much in the manner of a showman at a circus. It contributed largely to the opulence of ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... materials and hand embroidery marvellous; her jewelry was never ending. It didn't seem quite like clothing, in the sense of her own tarlatan and crinoline, her waist which Hodie wouldn't properly lace and tulle draping; there was a certain resemblance to the dressing in Van Amburgh's circus; but—in spite of Camilla's private laments—every inch of it was distinguished. The layers of paint upset them, but Uncle Gerrit had explained, a little impatiently, that it was a Manchu custom, adding ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... pages should receive in this particular the most careful education. To accustom them to mount firmly and with grace, they practiced exercises in vaulting, for which it seemed to me they would have no use except at the Olympic circus. And, in fact, one of the horsemen of Messieurs Franconi had charge of this part ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... one up as it returned down Piccadilly. Numbers of hansoms and four-wheelers passed, or stood by the curb, hailing us feebly, or not even attempting to attract our attention, but every taxi seemed to have its load. At Piccadilly Circus, losing patience, we beckoned to a four-wheeler and resigned ourselves to a long, slow journey. A sou'-westerly air blew through the open windows, and there was in it the scent of change, that wet scent which visits even the hearts of towns ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and only a few noticed that, while the mare was fighting for her head, she was suddenly pulled until she reared up, lost her place, and reached the post about seventh in a large field. The jockey who rode the mare, and who made her exhibit circus gambols, received a thousand pounds from the owner of the winning horse. Now, there was no disguise about this transaction—nay, it was rather advertised than otherwise, and a good many of the sporting prints took it quite as a matter of course. Why? Simply because ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... the foregoing principles. True, it glorifies Rome. It is equivalent to waving the Italian above the Egyptian flag, quite slowly for two hours. From the stage standpoint, the magnificence is thoroughgoing. Viewed as a circus, the acting is elephantine in its grandeur. All that is needed is pink ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... then I could catch a glimpse of our pilot standing up on the boards very much like a circus rider, for the wagon wheels were twisting around over the roots of trees and stones, in a way that required careful balancing on his part. We got along very well until about noon, when a soldier ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... wit and sarcasm the resolution of protest against "the objection of indelicacy and impropriety which is so often brought against women who address a public audience by those who encourage their appearance in the theatre and the circus." Miss Clay discussed with dignity and seriousness the resolution that "equality of human rights necessarily follows identity in capabilities and responsibilities." Mrs. Villard spoke of the great privilege of being the daughter of a reformer and said: "The cause of woman is so ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... Quaker belief regarding children's amusement barred them from most of the enjoyment familiar to the young people in the great world that lay beyond their home. So little were they acquainted with the forbidden attractions at the circus that one time when President Monroe visited Haverhill, Greenleaf (as the poet was known in his home), looking next day for traces of the presence of the great man, whom he had not been allowed to see, came upon the tracks ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... governor, to be neither of the green nor of the blue party at the games in the Circus, nor a partisan either of the Parmularius or the Scutarius at the gladiators' fights; from him too I learned endurance of labor, and to want little, and to work with my own hands, and not to meddle with other people's affairs, and not to be ready ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... Mrs. Gamp. "At Canterbury yesterday" (2nd of September) "I bought George Cruikshank's Bottle. I think it very powerful indeed: the two last plates most admirable, except that the boy and girl in the very last are too young, and the girl more like a circus-phenomenon than that no-phenomenon she is intended to represent. I question, however, whether anybody else living could have done it so well. There is a woman in the last plate but one, garrulous about the murder, with a child in her arms, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... temples, theatres, baths, circi, basilicae, obelisks, columns, statues, and groves. Authors differ in their opinions about the extent of it; but as they all agree that it contained the Pantheon, the Circus Agonis, now the Piazza Navona, the Bustum and Mausoleum Augusti, great part of the modern city must be built upon the ancient Campus Martius. The highway that leads from the bridge to the city, is part of the Via Flaminia, which extended as far as Rimini; and ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... because of its bad habit of growing so tall and losing its lower leaves. They look like giraffes at the circus. But ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... next door to a freak escaped from some side show connected with a Barnum and Bailey's circus. Jack often remembered the sight with more or less inward laughter. But it was no time for merriment now, with that wind growing in violence, and the waves assuming a ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... marked in odd patches of brown and white. These horses were ridden by ladies in wonderful blue and silver and pink and gold habits, and by knights in armor, all of whom carried umbrellas also. Pages walked beside the horses, waving banners and shields with "Visit Currie's World-Renowned Circus" painted on them. A droll little clown, mounted on an enormous bay horse, made fun of the pages, imitated their gestures, and rapped them on the back with his riding-stick in a droll way. A long line of blue and red wagons ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... their father—a devotion that was grave, stern, almost fierce in its single-hearted attachment to them. He was theirs altogether. He would not let them dance or play cards. The theatre and even the circus were tabooed to them. Novel-reading was discouraged and no books were admitted to the house which had not passed under his censorship. All this seemed strange to them; they could not comprehend it; at times they ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... in the centre of the piazza was brought to Rome from Heliopolis by Caesar Augustus and originally stood in the Circus Maximus. It was erected here by Pope Sixtus V, and it is nearly a hundred feet in height. It is formed of red granite, and while it has been broken in three places, the hieroglyphics are still legible. This obelisk was first erected in Egypt as a part of the Temple of the Sun at ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... usual eating-house near the circus and dined. To the surprise of the waiting-maid, I drank a quart of bitter ale and two glasses of sherry. It was my custom to drink water. She plied me with questions as to whether I was ill or in trouble. I answered her no, and at last begged ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... rue Vaugirard are marvels of neatness. The butcher-shop, with its red front, is iron-barred like the lion's cage in the circus. Inside the cage are some choice specimens of filets, rounds of beef, death-masks of departed calves, cutlets, and chops in paper pantalettes. On each article is placed a brass sign with ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... boy, whose tunic, for all his youth, sported wings. "Fritz can't touch it yet. Of course, he'll copy it soon enough, or go one better, but just at present I think it's the best out. Wish we'd got some in our circus. We've nothing but ..." and he trailed off ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... Thrasea, my trusty freedman, and let him see that they put the housings and gallic wolf-bit on the black horse Aufidus, and bring him thou, with one of my slaves, down the slope of Scaurus, and past the Great Circus, to the Carmental Gate, where thou wilt find ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... the rival of those of Verona and of Arles; at a respectful distance it emulates the Colosseum. It is a small Colosseum, if I may be allowed the expression, and is in a much better preservation than the great circus at Rome. This is especially true of the external walls, with their arches, pillars, cornices. I must add that one should not speak of preservation, in regard to the arena at Nimes, without speaking also ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... would jump off and on the horse eight times. I rode the horse bareback; seized his mane with my left hand, rested my right on his withers, and while he was going at full speed, I jumped to the ground, and sprang again upon his back, eight times in succession. Such feats I had seen performed in the circus and I had practiced considerably at it with Tall Bull, so that I was certain of winning the race ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... said, "is its dulness. The theatres are deplorable. You must admit that. And of society, there is, of course, none. I have even tried a travelling circus out by the Mokotow. ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... dissimilar nature, yet all closely interrelated to the main issue, marked the climax of the man's new role in his new career. The first of these was the arrival of his legacy; the second was a one-ring circus; and the third and last ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the Empire. To make up for the soldier excitements of the Petit Caporal, attractions of all kinds tempted the citizen to enjoy himself after his day's toil was finished—menagerie, mountebanks, Franconi circus, Robertson the conjurer in the Jardin des Capucines. At the other end of the city, in the Boulevard du Temple, were Belle Madeleine, the seller of Nanterre cakes, famous throughout Europe, the face contortionist Valsuani, Miette in his egg-dance, Curtius' waxworks. By each street corner were charlatans ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... single friendly witness. Solomon Northrup, who afterwards wrote an account of his experiences, was a free man who lived in Saratoga and made his living by working about the hotels, where in the evenings he often played the violin at parties. One day two men, supposedly managers of a traveling circus company, met him and offered him good pay if he would go with them as a violinist to Washington. He consented, and some mornings afterwards awoke to find himself in a slave pen in the capital. How he got there was ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... a life that was a dreary contrast to all her previous experience. In any case I cannot hold her blameless for the resulting shipwreck. A bride who comes down late for a most critical little dinner to her husband's family, and attires herself (see cover) like a circus-rider, simply is not giving matrimony a fair chance. Moreover I seem to observe that Mr. ANDREW SOUTAR thinks this was rather sporting in his heroine. He certainly loads the dice in her favour, for, when the inevitable had happened ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various
... press there were two "job" presses and an assortment of type for printing anything that might be required, from a calling card to a circus poster. A third man, who came from the city Thursday morning, was to take charge of the job printing and assist in the newspaper work. Three girls also arrived, pale-faced, sad-eyed creatures, who were expert typesetters. Uncle John arranged with Mrs. Kebble, the landlady ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... Alderson. They'll keep on swearing up and down that they haven't got it, of course; but that's just the coy way in which these things are handled. It's my opinion that the sacrifice of that million bags of peanuts up the elephant's trunk will ensure a good performance when the circus starts." ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... a circus parade here today one of the elephants, as if to relieve the monotony, flung its trunk in the air and brought it down with a resounding thump on a mule at the curb quietly watching ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... it had come to regard as its due, and Ida sprang lightly from the last step into the saddle. It was an informal way of mounting which few girls could have accomplished gracefully; but Ida did it as naturally and as easily as a circus rider, for the trick was a necessity to her who had so often ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... seemin'ly endless crowd a goin' by; back and forth, back and forth; to and fro, to and fro. I didn't enjoy it so much as some did, though for a few minutes at a time I looked upon it as a sort of a recreation, some like a circus, only ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... as a substitute for theatre-going. But one day, a week after the irretrievable disappearance of Fifi and Mimi, she went so far as to admit a note of unconscious confession into her protest that she was getting pretty tired of being mistaken for a three-ring circus! Such was her despairing expression, and the confession lies in her use of ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... over a few pages of Thirty Years in Washington. When he purposes to tempt the bounding bean of the kitchen garden of Chappaqua, or humble the hopeful harrow of agriculture, he may be found either at the Italian Opera, serenely sleeping under the soporific strains of Sonnambula, or at the Circus, benignly blinking at the agglomerating Arabs. The inspiration for that thrilling story in real life, entitled, What I Know about Farming, is said to have been received almost wholly from the state of somnolency ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 1, Saturday, April 2, 1870 • Various
... young undertaker, who had just succeeded to a thriving business. Things, I believe, are going on well at this time of writing, and I am glad for the landlady's daughter and her mother. Sextons and undertakers are the cheerfullest people in the world at home, as comedians and circus-clowns are the most ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... her bracelets," I said, "her earrings and her whole dress. I should not be the least surprised if she were a dancer or a circus rider, but most likely a dancer. Her whole style smacks very ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... brimming cup. His black Numidian horses, which he had been training for the world-renowned chariot-races of Antioch, won the victory over a score of rivals. Hermas received the prize carelessly from the judge's hands, and turned to drive once more around the circus, to show himself to the people. He lifted the eager boy into the chariot beside him ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... Pont-du-Gard, yet it made a much less impression on me, perhaps, because my admiration had been already exhausted on the former object; or that the situation of the latter, in the midst of a city, was less proper to excite it. This vast and superb circus is surrounded by small dirty houses, while yet smaller and dirtier fill up the area, in such a manner that the whole produces an unequal and confused effect, in which regret and indignation stifle pleasure and surprise. The amphitheatre at Verona is a vast deal smaller, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... story came to me at the White House, illustrating alike the calmness and the fighting quality of Woodrow Wilson. The incident happened while he was a student at the University of Virginia. It appears that some of the University boys went to a circus and had got into a fight with the circus men and been sadly worsted. They called a meeting at "wash hall," as they termed it. Many of the boys made ringing speeches, denouncing the brutality and unfairness of the circus people ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... collegians and to the ignorant men among their professors seems repulsive, carry on careful scientific study, read the best results of the latest inquiry, manage to bring together a first-rate library of reference, never spend a cent for liquor or tobacco, never waste an hour at a circus or a ball, but make their wives happy by sitting all the evening, "figuring," one side of the table, while the wife is hemming napkins on the other. All of a sudden, when such a man is wanted, he steps out, and bridges the Gulf of Bothnia; and people wonder, who forget that for two ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... has to catch and mount a horse, which as yet had never felt bridle or saddle. I conceive, except by a Gaucho, such a feat would be utterly impracticable. The Gaucho picks out a full-grown colt; and as the beast rushes round the circus, he throws his lazo so as to catch both the front legs. Instantly the horse rolls over with a heavy shock, and whilst struggling on the ground, the Gaucho, holding the lazo tight, makes a circle, so as to catch one of the hind legs just beneath the fetlock, and draws it close to the ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... amphitheatre almost upon the shoulders of the people. In vain the guard endeavoured to stem the passage of the multitude. They clambered up the tiers of arches, they filled the void and crumbling seats of the antique circus, they supported themselves upon each other's shoulders, they clung to the capitals of the lofty columns. The whole multitude had assembled to hear the intelligence; the scene recalled the ancient purpose of the building, and Alroy ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... decrease of his speed, but continued galloping forward with the easy swing shown by the trained circus animal when an equestrian is giving an exhibition. That the rider, from his position on the other side of his body, with his moccason extended over the spine of the animal, was keeping close watch of the youth the latter did not ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis
... there is a custom less vigorous though physically more painful. In the Moscow Corps des Cadets, in the fifties, matters were as much more savage as Russian civilization was, at that day, lower than that of England. In the Kishinaia, then, the popular form of hazing is—or was—the "circus"; and the pretty game was ordinarily arranged for several victims. But Ivan was accorded a distinction, inasmuch as the boys of his form positively refused to soil themselves by contact with a rank outsider; and the upper school could not but ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... of the syren and jerked it savagely. Obedient to the warning wail another drifter altered course in reluctant compliance with the Rule of the Road. "I'd rather take the flotilla through Piccadilly Circus than manoeuvre among these Fleet Messengers! They're bad enough on the high seas in peace-time with their nets out, but booming about inside a harbour they're enough to turn ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... differences of opinion among the listeners. One of the experiences through which Albert had brought his hero was that of working as general assistant to a sharp, unscrupulous and smooth-tongued rascal who was proprietor of a circus sideshow and fake museum. He was a kind-hearted swindler, but one who never let a question of honesty interfere with the getting of a dollar. In this fourth story, to the town where the hero, now a man of twenty-five, had ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln |
