"Gymnastic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... occasionally, into the rambling, fluctuating life of the hunting tribes. It is, besides wars, perhaps the only factor that makes their solidarity vitally perceptible to the adherents of a primitive tribe, and it is at the same time one of the best preparations for war, for the gymnastic dances correspond in more than one respect to our military exercises. It would be hard to overestimate the importance of the primitive dance in the culture development of mankind. All higher civilization is conditioned upon the uniformly ordered co-operation of individual social ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... "Others have complete mastery over their mental images. They can call up the figure of a friend and make it sit on a chair or stand up at will; they can make it turn round and attitudinize in any way, as by mounting it on a bicycle or compelling it to perform gymnastic feats on a trapeze. They are able to build up elaborate structures bit by bit in their mind's eye and add, substract or alter at will ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... Harry felt his inferiority keenly. Not only was Ernest an excellent shot, but at the end of a long day's sport he would come in apparently fresh and untired, while Harry, although bodily far the most powerful, would be completely done up; and at gymnastic exercises he could do with ease feats which Harry could at first not even attempt. In this respect, however, the English lad in three months' time was able to rival him. His disgust at finding himself so easily beaten by a French boy nerved him to the greatest exertions, ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... day, and we were soon able to amuse ourselves by shooting with a cross-bow, using for a mark the top of our snowy flag-staff, which, until now, we had been unable to see. Indeed, we took exercise in any way possible, and endeavored by throwing, running, and other gymnastic sports, to restore strength and suppleness to our half frozen limbs. The foxes, in capturing whom we had formerly been so busily engaged, now suddenly vanished, a sure sign of the re-appearance of the bears. These dangerous beasts soon visited us again, and the war against ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... his manuscript. Nor has he vouchsafed to me, in conversation, anything but the rudest sketch. All we know is that he enlisted straight into the regular Army, the Grenadier Guards. Millions of Tommies have passed through his earlier experiences. His gymnastic training, his professional habits of accuracy and his serious yet alert mind bore him swiftly through preliminary stages to high efficiency. In November, 1914, he found himself in Flanders. Wounded, a few months afterwards, he was sent home, patched up, sent back again. Late in ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... Echinoderms ("On the locomotor system of Echinoderms," by G.J. Romanes and J. Cossar Ewart. 'Philosophical Transactions,' 1881, page 829.), the complexity with simplicity, and with such curious co-ordination of the nervous system is marvellous; and you showed me before what splendid gymnastic feats they ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... beauty of the landscape, which is lovely. My bed is a simple hammock of aloes-fibre, slung in a corner; very low divans, and huge tapestry arm-chairs, for the rest of the furniture. Hung up on the wainscoting are pistols, guns, masks, foils, gloves, plastrons, dumb-bells and other gymnastic equipments. My favorite horse is installed in the opposite angle, in a box of bois des iles, a precaution that secures him from the brutalizing society of grooms, and keeps him a horse ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... make mouths at it. A great invention provokes him into a whirlwind of flip-flaps absolutely bewildering to the secular eye; while at any exceptional phenomenon of nature, such as an earthquake, he will project himself frog-like into an infinity of lofty gymnastic absurdities. ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... know the distinctions of society,—citizens and helots, and their mutual relations,—the distribution of lands to check luxury, the public men, the public training of youth, the severe discipline to which all were subjected, the cruelty exercised towards slaves, the attention given to gymnastic exercises and athletic sports,—in short, the habits and customs of the people rather than any regular system of jurisprudence. Lycurgus was the trainer of a military brotherhood rather than a law-giver. Under his regime the citizen belonged to the State ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... his gymnastic exercises, at which he was very expert, he contracted intimacies with several youths who were greatly his superiors in point of age, and who, pleased with his aspiring genius and address, introduced him into parties ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... skin wounds—there are rarely any others—or by want of breath, palpitation or the like, the duel is over, and the duellists shake hands. This description, with some slight modifications, applies to the ordinary Corps Mensuren, which are simply a bloody species of gymnastic exercise. ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... botany, mechanics, and astronomy. Reading, writing, arithmetic, natural history, and some simple experiments in natural philosophy, might fill up the day; but these pursuits should never encroach on gymnastic plays in the open air. The elements of religion, history, the history of man, and politics, might also be taught by conversations, in ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... heels, and in mid caracoling To send the emperor's greeting smack through the panel of oakwood[15] 70 That makes the poor man so hard of hearing imperial orders. Arts such as these and others, the use of the sabre on horseback, All modes of skill gymnastic, modes whether forceful or artful, Of death-grapple if by chance a cannon-shot should un-horse you, All modes of using the limbs with address, with speed, or enormous Effort of brutal strength, all this did Harry Delancey Teach to his docile pupil: and arts more nobly delightful, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... was smiling, too. His heart fluttered, and performed some extraordinary gymnastic feat, when she held out ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... brought to the birth. He must know enough and not too much; he must not dim his perception by acquainting himself in detail with what has been said or thought; he must not take off the freshness of his mind by too much intellectual gymnastic. It is a race across country for which he is preparing, and he will learn better what the practical difficulties are by daring excursions of his own, than by acquiring a formal suppleness in ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... increase the amount and variety they were allowed to steal. But they were careful not to be detected, lest they should be severely punished. Likely this was a device for training them to stealthy and cautious movements. After the time of their maturity they continued gymnastic culture. They hunted the goats, boars, stags, and bears on the rugged heights of the Taygetus range. There was no system of liberal education; mental growth and development were not sought as ends. They were rather feared. Poetry and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... its front half over its hinder half by wormlike movements so slow that the lens can hardly detect them. In less than a quarter of an hour the larva, at first turned upside down, finds itself again head uppermost. I admire this gymnastic feat, but have some difficulty in understanding it, so small is the space which the larva, when at rest in its cell, leaves unoccupied, compared with that which we should be justified in expecting from the ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... shout at him to make him hear. But this time Plunger was wise and kept out of sight, as did also Pud Hicks, his assistant, and Bob Nixon, the chauffeur. The only person the boys could get hold of was Si Crews, the gymnastic instructor. ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... decrease around them, poor children! saw themselves left alone for hour after hour in a corner of the room or the courtyard, badly nourished, and at times scoffed at, or tormented for months by bandages and by useless orthopedic apparatus! Now, however, thanks to care and good food and gymnastic exercises, many are improving. Their schoolmistress makes them practise gymnastics. It was a pitiful sight to see them, at a certain command, extend all those bandaged legs under the benches, squeezed as they were between splints, ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... in for a little gymnastic work," cried Randy, and had soon shed his cap and his coat. He leaped up to one of the turning-bars, and was soon busily going through various gymnastic evolutions. His twin joined him, and then they did a little team work, much to the admiration of ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... Those who had made heroic resolutions on the subject were sitting in silent misery in their deck-chairs, which had been lashed to firm stanchions. Few were walking the clean bright deck, because walking that morning was a gymnastic feat. Three or four who evidently wished to show they had crossed before, and knew all about it, managed to make their way along the deck. Those recumbent in the steamer-chairs watched with lazy interest the pedestrians who now and ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... of later time; it has been well said that he is the god who, in the mythical athletic contest, could surpass Hermes in the foot-race and Ares in boxing; the embodiment of all-round physical and intellectual excellence, the combination of music and gymnastic, which again brings us back to a national Hellenic ideal. Throughout the representations of the gods in the art of the fifth century we find the same essential character. They embody in themselves the expression, ...
— Religion and Art in Ancient Greece • Ernest Arthur Gardner
... by which praise is won, Leon Battista was from his childhood the first. Of his various gymnastic feats and exercises we read with astonishment how, with his feet together, he could spring over a man's head; how in the cathedral, he threw a coin in the air till it was heard to ring against the distant roof; how the wildest horses trembled under him. In three things he desired to ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... the people who rushed into the war with the confidence of a schoolboy and who limped out like a man overtaken in his gymnastic exercise by a paralytic stroke. The war taught the South a very useful lesson, but did not sufficiently convince it that it was preeminently a supercilious, arrogant people, who did not and do not possess all the virtue, intelligence, and courage of the country; ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... there was an intrenchment thrown across the straits, and that the Spartans were in front of it. There were other forces behind, but these the horseman could not see. The Spartans were engaged, some of them in athletic sports and gymnastic exercises, and the rest in nicely arranging their dress, which was red and showy in color, though simple and plain in form, and in smoothing, adjusting, and curling their hair. In fact, they seemed to be, one and all, preparing for ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... sanctify all joys, and ensure the harmonious development of all our powers, have we not been forgetting that hand and foot may cause us to stumble, and that we had better live maimed than die with all our limbs? There is a true asceticism, a discipline—a 'gymnastic unto godliness,' as Paul calls it. And if our faith is to grow high and bear rich clusters on the topmost boughs that look up to the sky, we must keep the wild lower shoots close nipped. Without rigid self-control and self-limitation, no ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... altogether; and in several others, the employments of artificers and manufacturers were considered as hurtful to the strength and agility of the human body, as rendering it incapable of those habits which their military and gymnastic exercises endeavoured to form in it, and as thereby disqualifying it, more or less, for undergoing the fatigues and encountering the dangers of war. Such occupations were considered as fit only for slaves, and the free citizens of the states ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... all ages. The spontaneous exercises and mimic contests of the boys of all countries, the friendly emulation of robust youth in trials of speed and strength, and the discipline and training of the military recruit have in them much of the true gymnastic element. In Attica and Ionia they were first ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... least as important as any branch of mental discipline. Accordingly, when the titles of the professorships were under discussion, it seemed right not to take my designation from the classes I instruct in history and philosophy, but from the general gymnastic development of the female members of the college, which it is likewise my duty to oversee. I know, of course, that the prejudices of the public would hold me in greater esteem as a teacher of some ancient lore ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... he found the city in a state of turmoil. The occasion was the march of the Catholic gymnastic associations from the church where they had heard the Mass to St. Peter's, where they were to be received by the Holy Father. Cries of "Long live free-thinking!" were issuing from the rabble which followed hooting in the wake of the procession. To these ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... E. Ellsworth, in a novel drill based on the quick movements of the Moors. The staid old military organizations were magnetized by the rapid, theatrical manner in which the Zouaves executed the manual and several gymnastic company movements. Their uniform was loose scarlet trousers, gaiter boots, and buff-leather leggings, a blue jacket trimmed with orange-colored braid, and a red cap with orange trimmings; their scarlet blankets were rolled on the top of their knapsacks. ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... solemnly to the General and made way for two other combatants. They were great powerful men, very different from the type of Chinese one sees in this country. One of the performers we were told by the O.C., could carry a weight of five hundred pounds on his shoulders. After the gymnastic performance, we had a concert, and a man sang, or rather made a hideous nasal sound, to the accompaniment of something that looked like a three stringed fiddle. The song, which greatly delighted the Chinese listeners, consisted of an interminable number ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... would you do so too, Melesias? If you were deliberating about the gymnastic training of your son, would you follow the advice of the majority of us, or the opinion of the one who had been trained and exercised ...
— Laches • Plato
... upon. Trunks of palm or other trees with their bark still on them unite the banks by a shaky and infirm foot-bridge which, if not a very secure crossing, is nevertheless a wonderful contrivance for gymnastic exercises in preserving one's balance, a thing not to be despised. The boys bathing in the river are amused by the difficulties of the old woman crossing with a basket on her head or by the antics of the old man who moves tremblingly ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... usually were, she was sure it would come out right in the end. It always had. Jack had found a way to make the extra sums needed to wipe out the accumulation of bills. Bragdon might feel misgivings, but he was too busy these days in the gymnastic performance of keeping his feet from the sliding sand to indulge in long reflection. Perhaps, in a mood of depression, induced by grippe or the coming on of languid spring days, he would say, "Milly, let's quit this game—it's no ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... hospitable heart, Sped, when I passed his sylvan fort, To do the honors of his court, As fits a feathered lord of land, Flew near, with soft wing grazed my hand, Hopped on the bough, then, darting low, Prints his small impress on the snow, Shows feats of his gymnastic play, Head downward, clinging to the spray. Here was this atom in full breath Hurling defiance at vast death, This scrap of valor just for play Fronts the north-wind in waistcoat gray, As if to shame my weak behavior. I greeted loud my little saviour: "Thou ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... tables, seventy-four times every minute, and he is willing to swear to seventy times, without counting the occasional diversions made by the brute for the purpose of snatching at Mr. Lamb's pantaloons and hair. Just as Mr. Lamb had about made up his mind that the cat would conclude the gymnastic exercises by eating him, the animal dashed through the glass sash of the door into the shop, whisked two jars of licorice root and tooth-brushes off the counter, tore out the ipecac-bottle and four jugs of hair-dye, smashed a bottle of "Balm of Peru," alighted on the bonnet ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... to smooth the slightly wrinkled surface of the sheet. This gymnastic feat necessitated the averting of her face and turning ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... significant inference from this. Bacon's method, he said, had succeeded in the physical sciences, because there we could apply experiment. But experiment is impossible in the science of mind; and therefore philosophy will never be anything but a plaything or a useful variety of gymnastic. Stewart replied at some length in his Essays,[168] fully accepting the general conception, but arguing that the experimental method was applicable to the science of mind. Jeffrey observes that it was now admitted that the 'profoundest reasonings' ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... the grim Doctor was satisfied of his skill. Under his instruction, with the stimulus of the Doctor's praise and criticism, Ned soon grew to be the pride of the Frenchman's school, in both the active departments; and the Doctor himself added a further gymnastic acquirement (not absolutely necessary, he said, to a gentleman's education, but very desirable to a man perfect at all points) by teaching him cudgel-playing and pugilism. In short, in everything that related to accomplishments, whether ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in the brain (haud rediturus) over one of the noblest—if it be not a treason to discriminate—of all the dead one has known who have died for England. Graciousness was in all his doings and in all the workings of his mind. The music and gymnastic whereof Plato wrote, that should attune the body to harmony with the mind, and harmonise all the elements of the mind in a perfect unison, had done their work upon him. He seemed—at any rate, to the eyes of those who loved him, and they were many—to have the perfection of ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the uniformity of his diet, and other habits of the same regularity, to lengthen his life. On this consideration, indeed, he had come to regard his health and his old age as in a great measure the product of his own exertions. He spoke of himself often under the figure of a gymnastic artist, who had continued for nearly fourscore years to support his balance upon the slack-rope of life, without once swerving to the right or to the left. In spite of every illness to which his constitutional tendencies ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... learning of those days, who bleared their eyes over the midnight furnace, and macerated their bodies by out watching the Polar Bear. He indulged in all courtly pleasures, and until he grew corpulent, had excelled in all martial sports and gymnastic exercises, as well as in the use of arms; insomuch, that Janus Pannonius [a Hungarian poet of the fifteenth century] has left a Latin epigram upon a wrestling match betwixt Galeotti and a renowned champion of that art, in ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... twitters and carols, as I have more than once pictured, and cannot do so too often—shaking first his little wings, and then his little throat; the old zigzagging to and fro—here, there, everywhere—whisking in this direction, and bouncing in that direction, restless gymnastic that he is, in a very ...
— The Story of a Dewdrop • J. R. Macduff
... feats of horsemanship and acrobatic displays by juvenile actors, rope-dancing, high vaulting and other daring gymnastic feats seen in any of our present-day circuses are interesting, but not new. The Romans had many clever tight-rope walkers, and I do not think they used the long pole loaded at the ends to enable them to maintain their equilibrium, as do some later performers. Japanese tumblers are very popular ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... and comic strokes, their negro-minstrelsy and attempts at Yankee comedy, seem in a minor key. There was not enough irreverence and slang and coarse ribaldry, in the whole evening's entertainment, to have seasoned one line of some of our most popular comic poetry. But the music, and the gymnastic, acrobatic, and other feats, were of a very high order. And I will say here that the characteristic flavor of the humor and fun-making of the average English people, as it impressed my sense, is what one gets in Sterne,—very ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... astonish the considerate. Before he can tell what cadences he truly prefers, the student should have tried all that are possible; before he can choose and preserve a fitting key of words, he should long have practised the literary scales; and it is only after years of such gymnastic that he can sit down at last, legions of words swarming to his call, dozens of turns of phrase simultaneously bidding for his choice, and he himself knowing what he wants to do and (within the narrow limit of a man's ability) able to ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the settlers upon the far northwestern prairies of a later epoch, many a mind snapped. Unnatural tension was succeeded by unnatural crimes. But for the stronger intellects New England Calvinism became a potent spiritual gymnastic, where, as in the Swedish system of bodily training, one lifts imaginary and ever-increasing weights with imaginary and ever-increasing effort, flexor and extensor muscles pulling against one another, driven by the will. Calvinism bred athletes ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... inches of hairy red wrist, looked like flippers. At the end of the third hymn this personage sprang straight up into the air, cracked the heels of a pair of red cowhide boots together, and whooped: "Glory be! Send the PAOWER!" in a voice like the screech of a northeast gale. Mr. Ellery, whom this gymnastic feat had taken by surprise, jumped in sympathy, ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... "As gymnastic helps he recommended the bending inward and outward of the wrist, the repeated touch from the wrist, the extending of the fingers, but all this with the earnest warning against over-fatigue. He made his pupils play the scales with a full ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... been slowly welded together by this ceaseless work, continual life in the open air, and coarse hard food. This is what makes a man hardy. This is what makes a man able to stand almost anything, and gives a power of endurance that can never be obtained by any amount of gymnastic training. ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... factor in this big school, and that she was doing her bit—however insignificant—to help up the athletic standard. In physical agility Winona was superior to Garnet. She could beat her easily at tennis, and there was already a wide gap between their gymnastic achievements. It was a fortunate circumstance, for it just balanced their friendship, and put them on a footing of equality which would have been otherwise absent. Garnet, so manifestly first in Form work, possessed of greater confidence and savoir faire in school ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... to the development of the arms: exercise, that is, of the arms themselves. Gymnastic exercises that bring the muscles of these into play should be, as far as possible, encouraged in girls, as tending not only to their improvement in this particular, but as being beneficial ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... every village, and in the outskirts of every town, if a large plot of ground were set apart for children to play in, and to go through regular gymnastic exercises. Play is absolutely necessary to a child's very existence, as much as food and sleep; but in many parts of England where is he to have it? Playgrounds and play are the best schools we have; they teach a great deal not taught elsewhere; ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... Aponi were warm springs near Padua. An altar, inscribed to Apollo Aponus, was found at Ribchester, and is now at St. John's College, Cambridge. (Wright, "Celt, Roman, and Saxon", p. 320.) (12) See Book I., 411, and following lines. (13) For the contempt here expressed for the Greek gymnastic schools, see also Tacitus, "Annals", 14, 21. It is well known that Nero instituted games called Neronia which were borrowed from the Greeks; and that many of the Roman citizens despised them as foreign and profligate. Merivale, ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... but in captivity they are generally fed on bread and milk and slices of apple. They can be tamed to a small extent, but for the most part they do no more than run round a wheel, although if other gymnastic contrivances are offered them they will probably do something with them. Dormice (to whose food you may add nuts) sleep through the winter months, and are therefore not very interesting for more ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... the subject of my inferior stature led me to a determination to try what gymnastic practice could do to remedy the defect. For some thirty years, gymnastics, first introduced into this country, I believe, at the Round-Hill School at Northampton, then under the charge of Messrs. Cogswell and Bancroft, had languished and revived fitfully at Cambridge. It was during one of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... say of their education? Were they not to be trained in gymnastic, and music, and all other sorts of knowledge which were proper ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... Vibius Salutaris, with an endowment for their custody. In one of these (dated A.D. 104) it is ordained that the treasures so given shall be carried in solemn procession from the temple to the theatre and back 'at every meeting of the assembly, and at the gymnastic contests, and on any other days that may be directed by the Council and the People.' Orders are given respecting the persons forming the procession, as well as respecting its route. It must pass through the length of the city, entering by the Magnesian Gate and ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... have striven to say everything they possibly could think of, or to leave out all they could not help saying. In your own case, my worthy young friend, what you have written is merely a deliberate exercise, the gymnastic of sentiment. For your excellent maternal relative is still alive, and is to take tea with me this evening, D.V. Beware of simulated feeling; it is hypocrisy's first cousin; it is especially dangerous to a preacher; for he who says ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... band, playing tom-tomic strains—the lyric style of dinner-gong music that tears holes in the air. The leader was an imitator of Sousa and had his gymnastic eccentricities down to a fine point. He executed a fantasia on his horn of plenty that brought a shower of silver on the stage. We were told that the members of the orchestra were called the "Flowers of Music ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... in a corner and prepared to refresh himself with a pipe of bang in the most natural and civilised fashion imaginable; and young Obo—for so Yohama called him—entered upon a series of gymnastic exercises with his father—for such Kambira was— which partook of the playfulness of the kitten, mingled with the eccentricity ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... our enemies to him." The good woman now brought food for the pig, when, having devoured it with a keen appetite, the major, in order to test his various talents, put him to a severe examination. It was found that he could perform with wonderful agility numerous gymnastic feats, such as jumping backward and forward, walking and vaulting upon his hinder legs, and keeping time to certain tunes. He could also distinguish between certain figures and letters of the alphabet, to the latter of which he would, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... muscles of the body, if those of the chest are not brought into strong action in expelling or compressing the air within the lungs, does not lead to the contraction of the muscles round the eyes. I have observed my sons using great force in gymnastic exercises, as in repeatedly raising their suspended bodies by their arms alone, and in lifting heavy weights from the ground, but there was hardly any trace of contraction in ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... belong. It is a kind of co-operative society for the "purchase and distribution of daily necessities," but one of its objects is "the maintenance of public morality." Then there is the students' association which has literary and gymnastic sides, the one side "to refine wisdom and virtue," the other "for the rousing of spirit." Mention may also be made of a "discipline calendar" of fixed memorial days and ceremonies "that all the students should observe": the ceremony of reading the Imperial Rescript on education, ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... country under immense disadvantages: first, because of late hours and heated rooms; and secondly, because some of the current dances seem equally questionable to the mamma and the physiologist. But it is doubtful whether any possible gymnastic arrangement for a high-school would be on the whole so provocative of the wholesome exercise as a special hall for dancing, thoroughly ventilated, and provided with piano and spring-floor. The spontaneous festivals of every recess-time would then rival ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... fearlessness. "At present," he had written, "he is influenced more by curiosity than by a care for truth, according to the character of the young. Certainly, he differs strikingly from his equals in age, by his passion for a vigorous intellectual gymnastic, such as the supine character of their minds renders distasteful to most young men, but in which he shows a fearlessness that at times makes me fancy that his ultimate destination may be the military life; for indeed the rigidly logical tendency of his mind always leads him out upon the practical. ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... laughing; and accordingly, after performing some complicated gymnastic feats in getting off his boots, he slid from the seat into the water, and so hauled the "coffee-mill" back to ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... a confusion of circumstances, the book played the part of the fatted calf, being read afresh from beginning to end. During his earlier and more agile years the Rabbi used to reach the higher levels of his study by wonderful gymnastic feats, but after two falls—one with three Ante-Nicene fathers in close pursuit—he determined to call in assistance. This he did after an impressive fashion. When he attended the roup at Pitfoodles—a day of historical prices—and purchased in open competition, at three times ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... nine out of ten of our college students use tobacco; and yet by the statistics of the last graduating class at Cambridge it appears that it is used by only thirty-one out of seventy-six. I am satisfied that the extent of the practice is often exaggerated. In a gymnastic club of young men, for instance, where I have had opportunity to take the statistics, it is found that less than one-quarter use it, though there has never been any agitation or discussion of the matter. These things indicate ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... much may be gained for the world as a whole by this fragmentary cultivation, it is not to be denied that the individuals whom it befalls are cursed for the benefit of the world. An athletic frame, it is true, is fashioned by gymnastic exercises; but a form of beauty only by free and uniform action. Just so the exertions of single talents can create extraordinary men indeed; but happy and perfect men only by their uniform temperature. And in what relation should we stand, then, ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... melancholy severity nor of a repulsive gravity; nay, whatever conduced to pleasantness and cheerfulness, and was not inconsistent with honour and rectitude, he cultivated all his life and approved even in his old age. The works he has left on Gymnastic and Music are ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... about to ask which was the juster of the two, and which was the wiser of the two; but at this moment Menexenus was called away by some one who came and said that the gymnastic-master wanted him. I supposed that he had to offer sacrifice. So he went away, and I asked Lysis some more questions. I dare say, Lysis, I said, that your father and mother love ...
— Lysis • Plato
... do. He must develop a strong, clean manhood, equipped with the virtues to which success is fore-ordained, if he would be master of the future in a large way. Providence is helping him by the discipline of present exigences, making even the wrongs and hardships he is suffering a gymnastic to eliminate weakness and develop moral power. His ambition is chastened, his indolence is rebuked, his patience, courage, and persistence are being trained. But Providence waits for us to give him more direct assistance in this matter. We can re-enforce him in certain directions where he is now ...
— The American Missionary - Vol. 44, No. 3, March, 1890 • Various
... first the art of politics, which attends on the soul, having a legislative part and a judicial part; and another art attending on the body, which has no generic name, but may also be described as having two divisions, one of which is medicine and the other gymnastic. Corresponding with these four arts or sciences there are four shams or simulations of them, mere experiences, as they may be termed, because they give no reason of their own existence. The art of dressing up is the sham or simulation of gymnastic, ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... who resided on shore ascended by a ladder to the gun-deck, which had been turned into a schoolroom; how six cadets occupied the space intended for each gun-carriage, where hammocks hung from hooks served them instead of beds; how the chapel was in a closet opened only on Sundays. He described the gymnastic feats in the rigging, the practice in gunnery, and many other things which, had they been well described, would have been interesting; but Fred was only a poor narrator. The conclusion the young ladies seemed to reach unanimously after hearing his descriptions, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... visitors' custom to Larkin. Still she need not have spoken in that angry tone, and called her "ill-bred." "Ill-bred" was a very uncomfortable word to have suddenly thrust upon one. Pauline leapt up at the gymnastic bar, and swung and wriggled there to shake ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... of a gymnastic masterpiece, since I was lying—or, rather, standing aslant—on the rough sea-wall, with crannies of brick for foothold and the water plashing below me; but then I had not lived in the Dulcibella for nothing. My chain of thought, I fancy, was this—the tug is to carry my party; I cannot shadow ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... the children give me great joy, though also not a little annoyance owing to their importunity. Fortunately, during my activity in connection with the school children's gymnastic society at —— I have gained so much patience that I never permit myself to lose my temper. While I am writing this already ten or twelve children have invaded my room asking for bread. Everyone of them got something. I am now almost reduced ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... and extreme extensions and flexions of the limbs for a few days, then assisted movements, next active unassisted movements, and last active movements gently resisted by nurse or masseuse. When the patient is able to sit and stand, it is well to keep up and extend the number of these gentle gymnastic acts and to encourage the patient to make them habitual, or at least to keep them up for many months after the conclusion ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... to a method learned during college days, which consists of wearing as little as possible, and arranging it at night so that two thrusts (trousers and under-drawers), one enveloping gesture (shirt and under-shirt), and a gymnastic effort of standing first on one leg and then on the other (socks and shoes), made a ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the Guards' regiments stationed in the town furnish music. But not far away, in the less stately, more natural park surrounding the Alexander Palace, the property of the Crown Prince, lies the real paradise of the children of all classes. There is the playground, provided with gymnastic apparatus, laid out at the foot of a picturesque tower, one of the line of signal towers, now mostly demolished, which, before the introduction of the telegraph, flashed news from Warsaw to St. Petersburg ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... fancy to him, made him sleep in his own study, and watched with an equal care the progress of his studies and the cure of his foot. This latter task was no easy one, owing to the restlessness of the child, who would join in all the gymnastic exercises suitable to his age, whereas absolute repose was prescribed for him. Dr. Glennie says, however, that, once back in the study-room, Byron's docility was equal to his vivacity. He had been instructed according to the mode of teaching ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... soldiers, fully armed and arrayed, while his fleet also played its part in the scene, he proceeded to the temple of Melkarth in the middle of the town, and offered his much desired sacrifice to Hercules. A gymnastic contest and a torch race formed a portion of the display. To commemorate his victory, he dedicated and left in the temple the battering-ram which had made the first impression on the southern wall, together ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... never forget the sensations I experienced in making the passage of the huaro. I had felt giddy enough in going over the 'soga' bridges and 'barbacoas' common throughout Peru, but the passage of the huaro is really a gymnastic feat of no easy accomplishment. I was first tied, back downwards, with my back resting in the concavity of the bent wood; my legs were then crossed over the main rope—the bridge itself—with nothing to hold them there ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... also contains an Illustrated Glossary of the Principal Gymnastic Terms; the Exercises for the Second and Third Class Badge of the A.G. and F.A. (Illustrated); 42 Exercises for Developing Muscles; and an article on Training for Competitions, by A. BARNARD, Captain of ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn
... it was held, were owing civilization, the discovery of agriculture, laws, arts of all kinds, religious worship, temples, the invention of letters, astronomy, the gymnastic arts, and music; and thus they were the universal benefactors. Osiris travelled to civilize the countries which he passed through, and communicate to them his valuable discoveries. He built cities, and taught men to cultivate the earth. Wheat and wine were his ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... drawn to the tether of the cord to which it was attached, necessarily hitched against this projection; and thus the cord was as it were fastened to the wall, and Tomlinson was enabled by it to draw himself up to the top of the barrier. He performed this feat with gymnastic address, like one who had often practised it; albeit the discreet adventurer had not mentioned in his narrative to Paul any previous occasion for the practice. As soon as he had gained the top of the wall, he threw down the cord to his companion, and, ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... for a soldier's life. The Spartan men likewise fed at public tables, and slept in barracks, only making occasional visits to their own houses. No money was in circulation except iron: no one was permitted to possess gold or silver. Girls were separately drilled in gymnastic exercises and made to be as hardy as boys. Marriage was regulated by the State. There was more purity, and women had a higher standing, in Sparta than in other parts of Greece. The strength of the Spartan army was ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... when he thought of any active exertion to avoid it, and shivered in all his long, thin limbs. Then he pulled out his Baedeker and began to write his will upon the flyleaf, but his hand twitched so that he was hardly legible. By some strange gymnastic of the legal mind a death, even by violence, if accepted quietly, had a place in the order of things, while a death which overtook one galloping frantically over a desert was wholly irregular and discomposing. It was not dissolution ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... turn of mind, and never was entirely willing to learn the things that his keepers sought to teach him. To him, dining at a table was tiresomely dull, and the donning of fashionable clothing was a frivolous pastime, On the other hand, the interior of his cage, and his gymnastic appliances of ropes, trapeze and horizontal bars, all interested him greatly. Every square inch of surface, and every piece of material in his apartment, was carefully ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... Richard—oddly enough he was ever able to poke fun at himself—had christened this outhouse "the cemetery of dead fads." Here was a set of Indian clubs he had been going to harden his muscles with every morning, and had used for a week; together with an india-rubber gymnastic apparatus bought for the same purpose. Here stood a patent shower-bath, that was to have dashed energy over him after a bad night, and had only succeeded in giving him acute neuralgia; a standing-desk he had broken his back at for a couple of days; a ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... obeyed. Meanwhile the gymnastic exercise continued with unabated vigor. There was not an instant's pause. The mountain lion was busier perhaps than it ever had been in its life. It was battling for its life, ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... Snap was aroused at last. He began wheeling and barking round her, tearing up the sand as he went like a little whirlwind. This induced Winifred to redouble her gymnastic exertions. She twirled round with the velocity of an engine wheel. At last, finding the enjoyment it gave to Snap, she changed the performance by taking off her hat, flinging it high in the air, catching it, flinging it up again ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... grasped the other end, and, between them, with much puffing, pushing, and squeezing, they thrust the box through the trap to the upper regions, whither the Captain followed it by means of the same gymnastic feat that he performed on his first ascent. Thrusting his head down, he invited the doctor to "come aloft," which the doctor did in the same undignified fashion, for his gentle manner and spirit had not debarred him from the practice ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... everybody liked to see them. Even the magnificent Mr. Checkynshaw had deigned to regard them with some attention, and had condescended to say that his daughter Elinora would be delighted to see them. Then the houses, and the gymnastic apparatus which Leo attached to them, rendered them tenfold more interesting. At a store in Court Street the enterprising young man had seen them sold for half a dollar a pair; indeed, he had paid this sum for the ancestral couple from which ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic
... of our little promenade I was guilty of impatiently shaking off a sudden seizure of my arm in his big paw. If ever, in an hour, the Elsinore had been less gymnastic than at that moment, I had not noticed it. So I shook off the sustaining clutch, and the next moment the Elsinore had smashed down and buried a couple of hundred feet of her starboard rail beneath ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... the more important European languages; he can learn, under the supervision oL mature teachers, English and French, at a cost of not more than three florins, three hours a week. And if my young friend has a few hours to spare, he cannot do better than spend them in the gymnasium; gymnastic exercise is healthy, it encourages the development of the muscles along with that of the brain, and it does not cost anything, only ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... school for girls, in which she is not only training their minds to vigorous thought, but taking the initiative steps to secure for them an equally vigorous physical development. Her pupils are required to wear a comfortable gymnastic costume, all their garments loosely resting on their shoulders; corsets, tight waists and high-heeled boots forbidden, for deep thinking requires deep breathing. The whole upper floor of her new building is a spacious gymnasium, where her pupils exercise every day under the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... only to find that the ordinary conveniences for making several people distinctly uncomfortable were distributed throughout my individual frame. At last, resting my arms on the straps, by dint of much gymnastic effort I became sufficiently composed to be aware of a more refined species of torture. The springs of the stage, rising and falling regularly, produced a rhythmical beat, which began to painfully absorb my attention. Slowly this ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... them, and as I saw his fine countenance looking in love on those distorted and opaque vases of humanity, where he had succeeded in waking up a faint flame, I thought his heart could never fail to be well warmed and buoyant. They sang well, both in parts and in chorus, went through gymnastic exercises with order and pleasure, then stood in a circle and kept time, while several danced extremely well. One little fellow, with whom the difficulty seemed to be that an excess of nervous sensibility paralyzed instead ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... exists a mysterious attraction in the sight of a number of people, and Mr. Salt, no wiser than his neighbors, pushed his way, when the doors were opened, into the room. There, on a sort of stage, he saw a tall and powerfully-built young man, performing various gymnastic exercises, and feats of strength. While this Hercules in tinsel was lifting enormous weights, and jumping from a table over the heads of twelve men, a pretty, delicate-looking young woman, was arranging some hydraulic machines and musical glasses, with which the entertainment was to terminate. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... the swift-footed messenger, and trusted ambassador of all the gods, and conductor of shades to Hades. He presided over the rearing and education of {118} the young, and encouraged gymnastic exercises and athletic pursuits, for which reason, all gymnasiums and wrestling schools throughout Greece were adorned with his statues. He is said to have invented the alphabet, and to have taught the art of interpreting foreign languages, ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... very large play-ground, and in it, their kind teacher had had a number of gymnastic fixtures put up, for their healthy exercise and amusement. There was a very high pole, with four strong ropes fastened to the top of it, and an iron ring at the ends of the ropes. The boys would take hold of the rings, and run round as fast as they could; then lifting their feet off the ground, ...
— Aunt Fanny's Story-Book for Little Boys and Girls • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... hard Suffolk or Yorkshire cheese. A peg is also a blow with a straightarm: a term used by the professors of gymnastic arts. A peg in the day-light, the victualling office, or the haltering-place; a blow in the eye, stomach, ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... nausea she suffered not at all, and it was with a feeling of joy that she felt the animals come to a halt, saw the black one, upon a word of command, get docilely to its knees, heard Howesha grumbling fiercely to the moon as she went through the same gymnastic performance, and felt her own rocking and pitching until it came to the ground. Whereupon she dismounted lightly, and reeled against the man as the entire desert, herself and camels included, turned a complete ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... the very keepers?' is the old question, and here is the answer:—You cannot execute the gymnastic feat of 'erecting yourself above yourself' any more than a man can take himself by his own coat collar and lift himself up from the ground with his own arms. But you can cultivate faith, hope, and charity, and these ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren |
