"Shuffling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hidden by the folds of a long, thickly wadded cloak, the hem of which reached to within an inch or so of the pavement, that it would have been impossible for a passer-by to have decided whether it was that of a man or a woman; but the manner in which it bent, added to a shuffling uncertainty of gait—a sort of "feeling the way" movement of the feet—as Mr. Narkom guided it across the pavement to the door, suggested either great age or a state of total blindness: an affliction, by the way, of such recent date that the sufferer had not yet acquired ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... Literature," which had caused some stir by its bitter and uncompromising attacks upon certain well-known authors and journalists. I looked at the man with some interest. I saw a pale-faced, sandy-haired little creature with a shuffling, weak-kneed gait, who looked as if a touch from a moderately vigorous arm would have swept him altogether out of existence. His manner was affected and unpleasant, his conversation the most disagreeable I ever listened to. He was coarse, not ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... shuddering and sickness that I believed the hour of my departure was come. The ship rolled heavily through the uneasy water, and at every lurch my heart sunk—I know not whither. I could hear the shuffling of steps overhead, and the dash of the waves against the ship's side, and the voice of the sailors at their posts. Little recked they of the comrade who ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... at Trinity must have been shuffling china plates like cards, from the clatter that could be heard in the Great Court. Jacob's rooms, however, were in Neville's Court; at the top; so that reaching his door one went in a little out of breath; but he wasn't there. Dining in Hall, presumably. ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... the factor's house, he went straight into the store and asked if he might speak to the master. The storeman stared and lingered before finally shuffling to the door of the office and knocking. In a moment the door was half opened by the factor himself, who, when he caught sight of little Snjolfur and heard that he wanted to speak to him, turned to him again and, after looking him up and down, ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... Collins; and the reply was followed by the shuffling sound of several pairs of feet, the owners of which came shambling into the room the next moment, with naked cutlasses in their hands, while one of them carried, in addition, a length of some three or four ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... table, idly shuffling a pack of grimy cards, sat Old Meg, a horrible old hag, wrinkled in face like a mummy, with only the stumps of teeth which had more the appearance of tusks. Her unkempt hair was matted and ugly wisps of it hung down over her bleary eyes. For clothes she wore an old-fashioned faded ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... undershirt, faded blue denim overalls and a pair of shoes much too large for him; this latter item indicating a desire to get the most for his money, after the invariable custom of a primitive people. He carried a peeled catclaw gad in his right hand, and with this gad he continually urged to a shuffling half-trot some one of the four burros. This man was a ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... embarrassing situation in which he finds himself, from the inconvenience of a double piece of villainy of which he is the victim. Everything can be managed with money. How much is necessary to terminate these miserable, shuffling tricks?" ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... The noise of shuffling feet, of muffled voices, of stifled sobs, reached the ears of the watchers in the corridor from another part of the house. Doctor Muir had sent a messenger to bid the men advance with their sad burden to a side door which opened into a ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... had not tried to push Miss Macroyd, and he was still grinding his teeth in a vain endeavor to get out some fit retort between them, when he saw Bushwick shuffling to his feet, in the front row of the spectators, and heard him beginning a ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the light and wound from head to foot in tobacco-smoke, were the farm-hands, playing cards. They sat wrapped up in their game, bending over their little table, very quiet. Now and then came a half-oath and the thud of a fist on the table and then again peaceful shuffling and stacking and playing of ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... enemy—upholding the institution for which it fights—obliged to bear the odium of its ancient opposition to protection, disgraced by its enmity to American manufacturing interests—apologizing in a thousand shuffling, petty ways for English arrogance—this wretched fragment of a faction, after assuring the South that the North would not fight, and persuading the North that the South was quite in the right in every thing, now appears as constant meddler and mischief-maker in the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... thoughts, the withdrawing the small poems from The Corsair (even to add to Childe Harold) looks like shrinking and shuffling after the fuss made upon one of them by the Tories. Pray replace them in The Corsair's appendix. I am sorry that Childe Harold requires some and such abetments to make him move off; but, if you ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... high up on the sheer face of the mountain, dotted with single torches, like drops of fire fallen from the two great blazing clusters of lights above, the ore shoots would begin to rattle. The great clattering, shuffling noise, gathering speed and weight, would be caught up by the walls of the gorge, and sent upon the plain in a growl of thunder. The pasadero in Rincon swore that on calm nights, by listening intently, he could catch the sound in his doorway as of ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... of it, he has a wife and children! Indeed, if I were he, I do not know what I should do. Well, he entered my room, and bowed to me with the pus standing, as usual, in drops on his eyelashes, his feet shuffling about, and his tongue unable, at first, to articulate a word. I motioned him to a chair (it was a dilapidated enough one, but I had no other), and asked him to have a glass of tea. To this he demurred—for quite a long time he demurred, but at length he accepted the offer. Next, ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... is given by the ship's drummer, who strikes a peculiar beat—short, broken, rolling, shuffling—like the sound made by the march into battle of iron-heeled grenadiers. It is a regular tune, with a fine song composed to it; the words of the chorus, being most artistically arranged, may give some ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... clad in a shapeless monotony of dingy blue, labeled on the back with their disgrace, stepping lightly or shuffling hastily to and fro, heads bent and eyes downcast, performing various offices, menial, clerical or industrial, with a certain obsequiousness and ostensible zeal that was yet inwardly repulsion and protest—these were men born under the great flag, Americans, my countrymen, and now my ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... the streets sought shelter in the shade of the houses. Only sun-burnt street-pavers in bast shoes were sitting in the middle of the street, setting boulders into the hot sand; gloomy policemen in unstarched blouses and carrying revolvers attached to yellow cords, were lazily shuffling about, and tram-cars with drawn blinds on the sides exposed to the sun, and drawn by white-hooded horses, were running ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... as he heard the shuffling of feet. Men were carrying out the prisoner. With feeble anger he brushed aside the hand of a cuirassier who was trying to staunch ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... said. "I'll tell her that you want to hear her. She likes you. She will come." He turned and hurried away to one of the far cottages, where Mademoiselle Reisz was shuffling away. She was dragging a chair in and out of her room, and at intervals objecting to the crying of a baby, which a nurse in the adjoining cottage was endeavoring to put to sleep. She was a disagreeable ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... head: two men who had come from behind a wall were crossing the street, and were shuffling along in the mud towards him. One of them had in his left hand a piece of folded paper; his other ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... trees, to view the gay groups who promenaded the alleys before him. First, there came a helmeted cuirassier, with his wife in blue satin, and a little boy in his hand in uniform, with a wooden sword, a perfect miniature of the father; then a group of short-petticoated, shuffling French women, each with an Italian greyhound in slips, followed by an awkward Englishman with a sister on each arm, all stepping out like grenadiers; then came a ribbon'd chevalier of the Legion of Honour, whose hat ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... tried the door. It was locked. But after further shuffling inside, as though some one were handling papers, it ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... semi-royal procession, with a recognized place under the patronage of an old lady of charming manners and infinite resource. The escort, their heads tied up native-fashion, fell in on either side the cart, shuffling enormous ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... crown, mine own ambition and my queen. May one be pardoned and retain the offence? In the corrupted currents of this world Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice. And oft 't is seen the wicked prize itself Buys out the law: but 't is not so above; There is no shuffling, there the action lies In his true nature; and we ourselves compelled, Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults, To give in evidence. What then? what rests? Try what repentance can: what can it not? Yet what can it when one cannot repent? O wretched state! ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... evening, were interrupted by Mrs. Micawber's discovering that Master Micawber was sitting on his boots, or holding his head on with both arms as if he felt it loose, or accidentally kicking Traddles under the table, or shuffling his feet over one another, or producing them at distances from himself apparently outrageous to nature, or lying sideways with his hair among the wine-glasses, or developing his restlessness of limb in some other form incompatible with the general interests of society; and by Master Micawber's ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... treason, high treason; apostasy &c. (tergiversation) 607; nonobservance &c. 773. shabbiness &c. adj.; villainy, villany[obs3]; baseness &c. adj.; abjection, debasement, turpitude, moral turpitude, laxity, trimming, shuffling. perfidy; perfidiousness &c. adj.; treachery, double dealing; unfairness &c. adj.; knavery, roguery, rascality, foul play; jobbing, jobbery; graft, bribery; venality, nepotism; corruption, job, shuffle, fishy transaction; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... chap did walk. There he was, head bent down, shoulders sagging, his step shuffling as though he wore slippers, and in his eyes that money fever which, to me, is one of the most awful things in all the world. Even the police were rather disgusted with him, I think, and the sergeant told me afterwards that he would have paid fifty pounds to have got ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... force) is held by a woman; and anyone who will watch girls making change before the pneumatic tubes in the great department stores about Christmas time will experience the same wonder one feels on first seeing a professional gambler shuffling cards. ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... that gleamed in faint colors, just above its gradual soft approach. It passed them, already halfway across the great room. I saw then that its stature was that of ordinary men. The prolonged booming of the clock died away. I heard the footfall, shuffling upon the polished boards. I heard another sound—a voice, low and monotonous, droning as in prayer. The figure was speaking. It was a woman. And she carried in both hands before her a small object that faintly shimmered—a glass of water. And then I ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... he suffer?' said my companion. We passed as he spoke some other squalid, wretched creatures shuffling among the crowd, whom he kicked with his foot, calling forth a yell of pain and curses. This he regarded with a supreme contemptuous calm which stupefied me. Nor did any of the passers-by show the slightest inclination to take the part of the sufferers. ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... and they sat down, leaving Jack Lesher still in the hammock. They had nearly finished when Dan Baxter came shuffling along. ...
— The Rover Boys on Land and Sea - The Crusoes of Seven Islands • Arthur M. Winfield
... apartment, he sternly banished them with the vanished romance they revived, and lighting his lamp, laid out his papers in the prospect of an evening of uninterrupted work. He was surprised, however, after a little interval, by the sound of uncertain and shuffling steps on the half-lighted passage outside, the noise of some heavy article set down on the floor, and then a tentative knock at his door. A little impatiently ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... inquiringly at Wollaston, who stood before her like a culprit, blushing and shuffling, and yet ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... has power to will as he pleases or chooses to will; that is, he has power by one act of choice to choose another; by an antecedent act of will to choose a consequent act, and therein to execute his own choice. And if this be their meaning, it is nothing but shuffling with those they dispute with, and baffling their own reason. For still the question returns, wherein lies man's liberty in that antecedent act of will which chose the consequent act? The answer, according to the same principle, must be, that his liberty ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... reason to believe the sheep and oxen above Saul'; and there is a tone of almost contempt for the shuffling liar in his quiet question: 'What meaneth then this bleating of the sheep in mine ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?' There was no answering that; so Saul shifts his ground without a blush or a moment's hesitation. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... The shuffling gait of the gigantic, unwieldy man, who had grown gray stooping over his work, had gained a certain majestic dignity. His cheeks glowed, and the gray eyes, which had long since acquired a fixed look from straining over the gemcutting, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... there, were now themselves heavy as if with surfeit of gossip and they drooped and hardly rustled. Not a tipsy waiter lurked in the shadows, not a skylarking couple of darkey lovers whispered on doorsteps. No birds, nor even crickets, serenaded the torpid night. The shuffling feet of Andrew Waples barely made watch-dogs growl in their dreams, and started his own heart with the concussions they produced on the arborescent and deeply-shadowed aisles of the after midnight. He saw the town-hall clock pallidly illuminated above its tower. The low frame villa ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... definite reason. Either they are irresponsible vagabonds who take this way of shuffling off their responsibilities, or they are men who have been caught in a net of distasteful circumstances. For instance, a civil servant or a solicitor or a tradesman finds himself bound for life to a locality and an ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... and finally caught in the current. Does the habit react on public life? Undoubtedly and most strongly! Catholic Quebec and Protestant Ontario for years literally dictated provincial and federal policies; but, with the shift of the balance of power from East to West, that shuffling of Catholic against Protestant and vice versa has ceased in Canadian politics; and those newspapers that gained their support playing on religious prejudice have had to sell and begin with a new sheet. At the same time ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... were spread out drying in the sun and wind; but there was no one. She did not know, of course, that Mr. Selincourt had passed that way half an hour before, and had summoned the portage men to help him to search for Mary among the rocks. Looking back, she could see Oily Dave coming along at a shuffling pace behind her, and with an imperious wave of the hand to hurry his movements she sped onward now at a quicker pace, because the ground was descending, and the hill behind her broke the force of the wind. At the bottom of the hill there were two tracks, ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... was a sliding, scrambling, shuffling noise, and the thief came in through the window—not Eric, nor Johnny, but a being very insufficiently attired, and possessed of a long black tail; no less a personage ...
— Eric - or, Under the Sea • Mrs. S. B. C. Samuels
... rather be a kitten, and cry mew, Than one of these same metre ballet-mongers; I had rather hear a brazen canstick turn'd, Or a dry wheel grate on the axletree; And that would set my teeth nothing on edge, Nothing so much as mincing poetry: 'Tis like the forced gait of a shuffling nag. ...
— King Henry IV, The First Part • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... door they could hear the shuffling impatience of the children anxious to be out in the open air, and the old woman enjoyed this state of things, doubling her maternal desire, and hindering her from doing anything to hasten its pleasure. At last the door opened. The tutor came out first—a priest with a pointed ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... a final statement. In the present emergency the leader's authority was supreme. They rested about an hour with no sound save the shuffling feet of the horses which could not be kept wholly quiet; and then they started on again, not going so quickly now, because the night was dark, and they wished to make as little noise as possible, ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... arrangements, further than as they promote the moral principles of government, and the keeping desperately wicked persons as the subjects of laws and not the makers of them, to be of little importance. What signifies the cutting and shuffling of cards, while the pack still remains the same? As a basis for such a connection as has subsisted between the powers of Europe, we had nothing to fear, but from the lapses and frailties of men,—and that was enough; but this new pretended republic has given us more to apprehend from ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... doubt my face was ashen. "Quite," whispered my voice. But this pathetic monosyllable was the last gasp of the social instinct in me. Suddenly, as the "voluntary" swelled to its close, there was a great sharp shuffling noise. The congregation had risen to its feet, at the entry of choir and vicar. Braxton had risen, leaving me in daylight. I beheld his towering back. The Duchess, beside him, glanced round at me. But I could not, dared not, stand up into that presented back, into that great ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... interspers'd with frantic shouts, as they spin around turning always towards Mecca, I see the rapt religious dances of the Persians and the Arabs, Again, at Eleusis, home of Ceres, I see the modern Greeks dancing, I hear them clapping their hands as they bend their bodies, I hear the metrical shuffling ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... produce, and the means of production. They worked together like an inspired machine. Mr Arthur Smallrice gave a rapid glance into a corner, and from that corner a concertina spoke—one short note. Then began, with no hesitating shuffling preliminaries nor mute consultations, the singing of that classic quartet, justly celebrated from Hull to Wigan and from Northallerton to Lichfield, "Loud Ocean's Roar." The thing was performed with absolute assurance and perfection. Mr Arthur Smallrice did the yapping ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... length, maintained a vertical posture all the way across, and slipped swiftly along as if they were suspended like a curtain on rings. Had these lively auroral fairies marched across the fiord on the top of the bow instead of shuffling along the under side of it, one might have fancied they were a happy band of spirit people on a journey making use of the splendid bow for a bridge. There must have been hundreds of miles of them; for the time required ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... endeavoured to obtain a portrait of Dodd, but there does not seem to be anything of the sort in existence. However, Dr. Selle gave me a graphic description of his personal appearance. In stature he was short and of a shuffling gait. As he affected nether garments of extreme brevity, very broad-brimmed hats, and was excessively negligent in the matter of clothing, etc., his habitual aspect was quaint and ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... had not succeeded the promulgation of this decree when Rosine's French pantoufles were again heard shuffling ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... time he lay, listening. Was there another person in the room? Mr. Grimm's ears were keenly alive for the inadvertent shuffling of a foot; or the sound of breathing. Nothing. Even the night roar of the city was missing; the silence was oppressive. At last he opened his eyes. A pall of gloom encompassed him—a pall without one ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... and Trask heard him shuffling to his own room, expressing some opinion in a whisper which Trask could not make out, except that it was to the effect that he hadn't started this "walkin' round like ha'nts in the middle of ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... he was, he had struggled to this upright position, he was making frantic, miserable efforts to raise himself still further. He, too, had heard the dull thud of feet, the shuffling gait of men when ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... evidences of confusion which he could not account for. All at once his sense of physical ascendancy had melted away—disappeared. He looked at Lady Cressage for an instant, and knew there was something shuffling and nerveless in the way his glance then shifted to the dim mountain chain beyond. His heart fluttered surprisingly inside his breast, during ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... dinner. He had a large company at table; every body was disturbed; my Lucy was a stranger to Mrs. Croft, and was to be introduced; and nothing could be more awkward and embarrassing than our entree and introduction. There were such compliments and apologies, such changing of places, such shuffling of chairs, and running about of servants, that I thought we should never ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... on her, the boy's dilated to fanaticism, glowing with obstinacy; the girl's, wet and pleading, miserable, but full of love. Luella, with narrowed lids, bored into those clear young eyes: no shadow of deceit, no hint of shuffling or double-dealing ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... is the maid of Donna Isidora. I knew her at Toledo, and for years kept her company. During my absence,—Saint Petronila strike him with the leprosy!—a certain Lopez, a dirty, shuffling, addle-pated knave, stepped in between us, and married her. She took the poor fool purely through pique, because I did not write to her; and the holy saint knows ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... 1812. He had evidently been very handsome, to which possibly he owed three successive wives, the last one much younger than himself. Now, in his sixties, he was still light in his movements. He had a queer way of tripping along on the balls of his feet, with a half-shuffling movement, his hands buried in his pockets, with the thumbs out. He was, I fear, the sort of man capable of wearing a frock-coat unbuttoned. It was amusing to see him walk the poop with the captain of the ship, who out topped him by a head, was ponderous in dimensions, with wide tread and ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... a charge of cerebricity fastening itself on a letter-sheet and clinging to it for weeks, while it was shuffling about in mail-bags, rolling over the ocean, and shaken up in railroad cars? And yet the odor of a grain of musk will hang round a note or a dress for a lifetime. Do you not remember what Professor Silliman says, in that pleasant journal of his, about the little ebony cabinet which Mary, Queen ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... defense, within half a mile of his cabin, Ward postponed a trip he had meant to make to the Wolverine and went out on the trail of the wolves. In the loose soil of the lower ridge he tracked them easily and rode at a shuffling trot along the cow-trail they had followed, his eyes keen for some further sign of them. He guessed that there would be at least one den farther up in the gulch that opened out ahead, and if he could find it and get the pups—well, the bounty on one litter would even his ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... yawned, extending his folded arms above his head and stretching his crossed legs under the table as far as possible, upon noticing which all laughed. His Excellency wished to change the course of the conversation, so, throwing down the cards he had been shuffling, he said half seriously: "Come, come, enough of jokes and cards! Let's get to work, to work in earnest, since we still have a half-hour before breakfast. Are there many matters to be ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... like a locomotive blowing off steam. Then he rose and took two or three turns up and down the gallery, shuffling his feet, his chest heaving. Then he ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... shop-door without hesitation, and beating a wild rataplan of blows on the wooden shutters, demanded an entry in a roar of voices. Otherwise they would shoot, they added. In very few seconds, at this clamour, some shuffling steps were heard and trembling hands unbarred in haste, fearing a worse fate. We then saw two blanched and trembling shopkeepers, whose dirtied clothes and dishevelled hair showed that they had had days and nights of the most wretched ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... with riveted sight. They were not the image and likeness of God, these creatures, despite the doctrinal platitudes of the Reverend Darius Borwell and the placid Doctor Jurges. They were not alive, these stooping, shuffling things, despite the fact that the religiously contented Patterson Moore would argue that God had breathed the spirit of life into the thing of dust which He created. And these children, drifting past in a great, surging throng! Fathers and mothers of a generation to ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... were talking the pastor made his appearance, looking somewhat damp about the face and hair, and rather embarrassed about the shape of his coat, which was much too large for him, and hung rather low about his heels. With an awkward shuffling gait he approached us, and, having shaken hands with Zoega, looked askant at me, and said something, which my guide ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... favoured, his head high lifted, his knees well lifted and his hands held straight down by his sides. When the morning practice was over the trainer would make his comments and sometimes illustrate them by shuffling along for a yard or so comically in an old pair of blue canvas shoes. A small ring of wonderstruck children and nursemaids would gather to watch him and linger even when he and uncle Charles had sat down again and were talking athletics ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... the other two ladies rising instantly, observing, in spite of the intimate relations in which they stood toward the duchesse, the deference due to her more exalted rank. The latter clapped her hands; outside the door a shuffling and a low groan were heard—the groan came from the sleepy lackey, roused from his deep slumber, as he uncoiled himself from the close knot into which his legs and body were knit in the curve of the ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... triple tyranny of mist, mildew, and mackintoshes. And early on the morning after the Mela,—while the breath of night still lingered in gorges and ravines, and in shadowed patches of the ascending path, a mixed procession of men and horses, shuffling mules, and trotting coolies wound, snake-like, out of the Chumba valley towards Kalatope ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... What is it we hear the strong-handed Philistines say in the market-place? "Brains are cheap"; that is what we hear them say. And they say truly. Many years ago I became acquainted with a millionaire who had acquired his wealth by building things, raising cattle, erecting factories—not by shuffling the cards of trade. ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... Jason returned, and the sun was well above the horizon. The people were all awake now, a shuffling, scratching herd of about thirty men, women and children. They were identical in their filth and crude skin wrappings, milling about with a random motion or sitting blankly on the ground. They showed no interest at all in the two strangers. Jason handed ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... Mose came shuffling up behind him and stood with his stiff leg thrust forward and his hands rolled up in his apron. Dick could see that he had something clasped tightly under ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... They headed upstream, going at a steady, shuffling trot. Three of the women, Kieran noticed, had babies in their arms. The older children ran beside their mothers. Two of the men and several of the women were ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton
... abroad. Here I hoped Zeenab would not fail to come at the moment of the Shah's departure, which was now close at hand. The clatter of the horses, the shouts of men, the passing to and fro of lanterns, all announced the close of the scene; and to my delight I heard a corresponding shuffling of women's slippers and voices making for the steps of the terrace. I had placed myself behind the wall, so as to be seen by those only who had a knowledge of the premises, and I flattered myself that Zeenab, by a natural impulse, would turn her eyes towards me. I was not mistaken. She ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... friends, and, borrowing a dead marine from the heap of empty bottles, shuffled off to the hotel to get it filled. The noise grew to an uproar—a babel of tongues, sudden explosions of laughter, and the shuffling of feet. ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... cowardly animal. I always found them shun my approach; and my uncle has told me, that when he often encountered them during his command of the outpost of Tantum Querry, on the leeward coast of Africa, they invariably turned from him, and slunk out of sight with their dragging, shuffling gait. I cannot say that they disturbed the stillness of the night, because a tropical night never is still; but their cry used suddenly to come upon our ears, and I know not why, always seemed to be close to us. The roar of a leopard or lion ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... have the regular stunts," said Eleanor. There was a shuffling of chairs and she and Betty and the people who had had toasts slipped back to their own particular crowds, leaving the top of the table for the stunt-doers. It was shockingly late, but they wanted all the old favorites. ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... low rumbling of heavy sea-boots among the benches, and a still slighter shuffling of women's shoes, and all was quiet again, and every ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... had not much time for his meditation, for the shuffling of feet came closer. There were no more sounds of expostulation now; only the heavy breathing of three people, as if the captive had ceased to struggle and was making but a passive resistance. Then there emerged on the landing the figure of the handsome cripple with a guardian on either ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... little black water-bugs. Their whole lives seemed to be play, skimming, swimming, swirling, and waltzing together in little groups on the edge of the lake and in the meadow springs, dancing to music we never could hear. The long-legged skaters, too, seemed wonderful fellows, shuffling about on top of the water, with air-bubbles like little bladders tangled under their hairy feet; and we often wished that we also might be shod in the same way to enable us to skate on the lake in summer as well as in icy winter. Not less wonderful ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... begging that I might not be any interruption. The cursed paper was four days old, so I put it down; and as I stood looking at nothing out of the window, I heard Baldwin going on with your Jew. They had a load of papers on the table, which Baldwin kept shuffling, as he talked about the losses the house had sustained by the sudden death of Alderman Coates, and the sad bankruptcy of the executors. Baldwin seasoned high with compliments to the Jew upon his known liberality and generosity, and was trying ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... bear, be he a grizzly, black, or polar, basking in the tropical sun, or freezing upon the ice-floe, he will still be the same droll old chap, shuffling and shambling, sniffing and inquiring with his keen nose. If he be the smaller black or brown bear, he will often be found in the company of man, conducting himself with dignity, and generally showing much good ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... The shadows move about, And some one seems to overhear our talk. The fire is low; the candles flicker out; The ghosts of former tenants want to walk. Already they are shuffling through the gloom. I felt an old man touch my shoulder-blade; Once he was married here; they love this room, He and his woman and the child they made. Dead, dead, they are, yet some familiar sound, Creeping along the brink of happy life, Revives their memory ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... gait, step, carriage; sidewalk, mall; ambulatory. Associated Words: ambulant, ambulatory, ambulatorial, peripatetic pedometer, odograph, gradient, gravigrade, stilts, shambling, shuffling, locomotion, alure. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... door. When he was gone, I went across the street to see Butterwick about top-dressing my grassplot. He was out, and I sat down on the porch chair to wait for him. A second later the proprietor of the dog came shuffling through the gate with the dog at his heels. When he reached the porch, he said, not ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... King bethought himself of the stabbing suggestion next, and, with his shuffling manner and his cruel face, proposed it to one William de Bray. 'I am a gentleman and not an executioner,' said William de Bray, and left ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... almost reached the limit of their strength. He had just reached the conclusion, having been interrupted several times by Abner's exclamations, when, ahead of them, on the road, they spied a figure shuffling along in the dust. The two boys were on the rear seat of the rig, so that the man, when he saw the rig approaching, having turned his head at the sound of hoofs, ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... porter, peeped out at the strange iron-clad visitor and the great black war-horse, streaked and wet with the sweat of the journey, flecked and dappled with flakes of foam. A few words passed between them, and then the little window was closed again; and within, the shuffling pat of the sandalled feet sounded fainter and fainter, as Brother Benedict bore the message from Baron Conrad to Abbot Otto, and the mail-clad figure was left alone, sitting there as ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... without any stiffness. One of her hands was hidden. The other, in a long white glove, rested on the table, and presently the fingers of it began gently to close and unclose, making, as they did this, a faint shuffling ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... kitten, who submitted with wonderful good-humor to the well- meant strangulation, his black eyes intently fixed upon the dumplings which his foster-mother was dexterously rolling together, when a strange footstep was heard shuffling uncertainly about on the floor of the round-house just outside the dwelling-room door. Mrs. Lake did not disturb herself. Country folk were constantly coming with their bags of grist, and both George and the miller ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... to such shuffling nonsense! If I am to claim Isabel openly, why am I not to visit her openly? You have yielded to that woman's crooked policy. I ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at supper, so plied him with smiles, ogles, and champagne, that our little hero grew crazed with ecstasy, and wild with love. In the midst of his happiness, a cruel knock was heard below, accompanied by quick loud talking, swearing, and shuffling of feet: you would have thought a regiment was at the door. "Oh heavens!" cried the marchioness, starting up, and giving to the hand of Poinsinet one parting squeeze; "fly—fly, my Poinsinet: 'tis the colonel—my husband!" At this, each gentleman of the party rose, and, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... wading about two, or perhaps five minutes, where it could just get its head out, it would suddenly rise to the surface and begin to swim, which it does quite as well as the Water-hen. The awkward, tumbling, shuffling wriggle which it appears to have, is occasioned by the incessant motion of its head as it turns over the gravel in search of creepers, which appear to me to form the ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... promised his readers that some curious results should follow from his shuffling. We will enable ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and voice had their effect with the angry, pushing, shuffling, elbowing, wailing, weeping crowd, in a pause like the ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... his head and body far to one side, straightened slowly, bent his head on a curve to the other side, and brought it up with a jerk, imitating, as he did so, the sound of the falling and bursting shell, "sss-eee-aaa-ahah-aow-Wump." Another shell fell, and "aow-Wump," he cried again, shuffling his feet and laughing gayly. The Towers laughed with him, and when the next shell fell there was ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... ended on a shout of triumph and a deep, solemn "Amen." There was a shuffling and scraping of feet as the congregation sat down and prepared itself to listen ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... last. He heard the shuffling of feet as the congregation knelt to pray ... and, with that, Vashti turned and ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... against the wall of his darkened room, his head turned toward the slightly open door. A slight shuffling sound had awakened him, and he was now as ready as a cat before her spring. But he did not hurl himself at the figure now easing the door farther open. He waited until the visitor was approaching the bunk before he slid along the wall, closing the door and putting ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... forward two paces, glaring defiantly at Dolores, waiting for men to follow. An uneasy shuffling of feet was his only answer for a moment; then his eyes shifted with cooling ardor at sight of Dolores. For a breath after he had ceased speaking, the girl stood like a splendid statue, except for the glitter ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... there still remains the sense of 'command' in 'Empire;' and in the past history of our Government of the Cape Colony there has been too little wholesome command and obedience, and too much opportunism, shuffling off of responsibility, with self-sufficient ignorance and doctrinaire foolishness taking the place of knowledge and insight. Want of courage is, I think, in short, at the ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... room it's a horrible place," he thought to himself, sitting down by a table and shuffling a ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... Hawker's tongue could wag to his purpose. The girl seemed in her mind to be frantically shuffling her pack of social receipts and finding none of them made to meet this situation. Finally, Hawker said that he thought Hearts at War was ...
— The Third Violet • Stephen Crane
... another musical number there was a general expectation of dismissal, a shuffling of feet and a murmur of voices. This was checked suddenly by Bill. The boy had been near the receiver all the while, on the chance of being needed in case of mishap, or for a sharper "tuning in"; now he got what the others did not and rising ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... of the men, and, a worse poison for good ears, the shrill venom of the women. Out of the gates she blindly went, and all the pack opened their music upon her. Stones flew, but words flew faster and stuck more deep. The mob, as she blundered through the streets, shuffling, gasping, stumbling at her caught gown, dry-eyed, open-mouthed, panting her terror, her bewilderment, her shame and amaze—the mob, I say, dizzied about her like a cloud of wasps; yet they had in them what ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... Methodist chapel resounds with the noise of appreciative groanings and sighing, it is very rarely that anything like gesticulation or vivid facial change is seen. Deep-chested men utter sonorous ejaculations and the women sigh, but there is no shuffling of feet and no movement. As a class, the fishers have grown to be more religious than almost any other body of men, and they like powerful excitement; but they are always severely decorous. In his behaviour toward his social superiors the fisherman is rugged—perhaps morbidly rugged—but ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... Before her parting lips uttered a line she had thoroughly mastered them, the innate purity of her perfected womanhood, the evident innocence of her purpose, shielding her against all indecency and insult. The ribald scoffing, the insolent shuffling of feet, the half-drunken uneasiness, ceased as if by magic; and as her simple act proceeded, the stillness out in front became positively solemn, the startled faces picturing an awakening to higher things. It was a triumph far exceeding the noisy outburst that greeted the Mexican—a moral ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... are you, Shike?" he growled. "What's this stuff on the floor?" he continued, shuffling his way ostentatiously to the other side of the room. But his noise-making was attended with the utmost caution. He had dropped, like a shot, flat on the floor and crawled, feeling his way, to the opposite side of the room, only to find, after much trouble, that the bed in ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... chant her name. Those venerable ancient song enditers Soared many a pitch above our modern writers. . . Our numbers may be more refined than those, But what we've gained in verse, we've lost in prose. Their words no shuffling double meaning knew: Their speech was homely, but their hearts were true. . . With rough, majestic force they moved the heart, And strength and ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... looked about, gladly, I thought, at the sound of a shuffling step approaching. "You, Aunt Mandy?" she called out. And to me, "I ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... drawback of the old shop-people among whom she lived. How strange it was to see her in the dress of which Mrs. Sam Hurst had raved, and of which even the young Nonconformist vaguely divined the excellence, putting her daintily-gloved hand upon old Tozer's greasy sleeve, walking home with the shuffling old man, about whose social position no one could make the least mistake! He turned with them, with a sensation of thankfulness that it was in Grange Lane, Carlingford, where nobody knew him. As for Phoebe, no such comfort was in her ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... days in the week, probably more flogging occurs on Friday than during all the others put together. On the unfortunate, the shuffling, and the dense, the effect of this day's ordeal has ever proved to be most searching. On Thursday, then, towards the conclusion of eleven o'clock school, the boys were not a little delighted, when Keate, ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... final shuffling dash, as she caught sight of immaculate Gertrude, "I wore your overshoes. Hope you don't mind. They're not very wet inside, and I brought over your things so that we can move into our borrowed study ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... gazes about him vacantly in stupid fashion like an emu bird; he makes a structure of boughs like the chrysalis of a Witchetty grub—his favourite food, and drags his body through it in pantomime, gliding and shuffling to promote its birth. Here, difficult and intricate though the ceremonies are, and uncertain in meaning as many of the details must probably always remain, the main emotional gist is clear. It is not that the Australian wonders at and admires the miracle of his spring, the bursting of the flowers ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... the little sister, sleeping peacefully enough after her one short year of storm, was carried to the last abode of silence. Then followed an old man's voice, sounding strangely thin in the open air, the straining of cords, the sweating and hard breathing and shuffling of men, the grating of oak on a grave-bottom, the updrawing of the ropes that had lowered the coffin. Genuine grief accompanied the obsequies of Joan Tregenza, and her uncle's sorrow touched even men to visible grief and sympathy; but ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... and all the penuriousness and rapacity in another, which met in the dissolute indolence of a peace of twenty years. But a more striking feature in these "Ordinaries" showed itself as soon as "the voyder had cleared the table." Then began "the shuffling and cutting on one side, and the bones rattling on the other." The "Ordinarie," in fact, was a gambling-house, like those now expressively termed "Hells," and I doubt if the present "Infernos" exceed the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... with a suitcase and three leather bags, came shuffling around the corner and dropped ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... to say at once—do you hear me? and spare neither for Ransom nor yourself. Tell all there is to be told, without any shuffling." ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... rapped again. Still no sign. He examined a slip of paper, glanced at the number on the house, and then, with the impatience of a child, he furiously kicked the door. There were signs of numerous other such kicks. A response came in the shape of a shuffling footstep in the hall, a turning of the rusty key, and a sharp face that peered through a cautious opening in ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... the land and never find his match, or run across his equal. Imagine a medium-sized, chicken-headed, tow-haired sort of man with mild blue eyes, and a mouth nearly from ear to ear, who walked with a shuffling, half-apologetic sort of a gait, and who, when his countenance was in repose, resembled an idiot. For hours he would sit in his chair, twisting his hair in little ringlets. Then I used to say, "Bill ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... lands in his harness-room and Major Basil did not seem to mind. I believe that people do not mind much in lonely stations. It might have lasted for ever if the Major had not been made what is called a brevet-colonel during the shuffling of troops that went on just before the South African War. He was sent off somewhere else and, of course, Mrs Basil could not stay with Edward. Edward ought, I suppose, to have gone to the Transvaal. It would ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... not hate a cruel sweater, nor a tyrannous landlord, nor a shuffling Minister of State, nor a hypocritical politician: it pities such poor creatures. Yet the Clarion opposes sweating and tyranny and hypocrisy, and does its best to ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... smiling Chinese, dressed just as the Bobbsey twins had seen them in pictures, with his shirt outside his trousers, came shuffling along, carrying big trays from which came ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Great West • Laura Lee Hope
... Mrs. Elliot most kindly volunteered to show the young people over the house. It was a funny little procession: the elderly lady with her cane; Lenox, in his khaki, still blurting out apologies; and Diana trailing the pink kimono, which was much too long, and shuffling in bronze-beaded shoes that were two sizes too large. The glories of the old Manor left them gasping: the big banqueting hall with its armour and tapestries, the panelled oak boudoir, the library with its family portraits, the wide staircase, the drawing-room with ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... make you my compliments," said Mr. Gusher, making one of his best bows, and moving backward with a shuffling motion, "I am so glad to make you my friend," he continued, bowing and placing his right hand on his heart. Mattie's beauty was quite up to the picture Mr. Gusher had drawn of it in his imagination. But her manner was ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... be pardoned and retain the offence? In the corrupted currents of this world, Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice, And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself Buys out the law; but 'tis not so above. There is no shuffling; there the action lies In its true nature; and we ourselves compelled, Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults, To give in evidence. What then? What rests? Try what repentance can; what can it not? Yet what can it when one cannot repent? O wretched state! O bosom black ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... still have to bear. It seemed to her that the murmur of their harsh voices went up in a great protest, an inarticulate cry of sorrow. While she looked on the doctor held back a long-haired man who was following a haggard woman shuffling in broken boots. He drew him aside, and when, after he had apparently consulted with the other official, two seamen hustled the man towards a second gangway that led to the tug, the woman raised a wild, ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... memory. I can still see the scene in its every detail, and I know I shall carry the picture with me to the grave; the long, low room with its blackened ceiling, the garish yellow gaslight, the smoke haze, the crowded tables, Otto, shuffling hither and hither with his mean and sulky air, Frau Hedwig, preoccupied at her desk, red-eyed, a graven image of woe, and Haase, presiding over the beer-engine, silent, defiant, calm, but watchful every ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... through the teeming alleys and down to the station—the road, that we had found so bitterly cold in the early morning, now a blaze of sunlight, where the dust stirred up by the shuffling feet of the wayfarers quivered in the heat, and the shadows of men and beasts lay short ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... The florid man was shuffling the pack, and the other two were arranging their marking cards, when the door opened slowly, and the Father of Timber Town, followed by Cathro and ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... to finish undressing with dignified deliberation. Sophia's behaviour under the blow seemed too good to be true; but it gave her courage. At length she turned out the gas and lay down by Sophia. And there was a little shuffling, and ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... be a shuffling of the cards? Take the question of servant-girls for instance. Where there are two or more servants in a family their lot is far better than that of the factory girl. But it is quite a different matter with the maid-of-all-work, the household drudge, who is increasingly ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... green and white, upon its inner walls, on a vast polished floor was a crowd of couples dancing to the music they had heard. It came loud through the open lattices, the insistent, luring, irresistible measure, violent now in solicitation, in appeal; and over it and under went the trailing, shuffling slur of the feet of the dancers and the delicate swish of women's gowns as ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... early in the preceding December by Lord Mornington (afterwards Marquis of Wellesley) as subsisting solely on the divisions of its enemies, might seem to be wrung from the embarrassments of the Administration. This shuffling policy, and want of magnanimity in the Minister—this coquetting with extremities, in the forlorn hope of extracting from them some advantage for a sinking Government, pervaded the councils of the Cabinet, and led finally to ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... above it, under the same roof, for the people to get away into when they weren't selling bread, to cook, and eat, and sleep, she had never exactly imagined how, but of course not as they did in real houses that were not shops. And when Mrs. Ingraham, who had bustled off down-stairs, came shuffling up again as well as she could with both hands full and her petticoats in her way, and appeared bearing a cup of hot tea and a plate of spiced gingerbread,—the latter not out of the shop, but home-made, ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... darkness pass after this. For the Moon has gone out. The very dogs are still, and I watch for the first light of the dawn before making my way homeward. Again the noise of shuffling feet. The morning call is about to begin, and my night watch is over. 'Allah ho Akbar! Allah ho Akbar!' The east grows gray, and presently saffron; the dawn wind comes up as though the Muezzin had summoned it; and, as one man, the City of Dreadful Night rises from its bed and turns its face ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... Miss Josephine. Now I come to think of it, I expect Hart is at home; I heard him shuffling about overhead ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... less before morning," said I, "if that's any consolation to you. Good night!" Setting off at a shuffling run, I doubled back along Grosvenor Street and Bond Street to the point where I hoped to pick up the trail again. And just there, at the issue of Bruton Street, two ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Scapin."] As well might the writhing obliquity of the serpent be compared to the swift directness of the arrow, as the duplicity of Mr. Hastings's ambition to the simple steadiness of genuine magnanimity. In his mind all was shuffling, ambiguous, dark, insidious, and little: nothing simple, nothing unmixed: all affected plainness, and actual dissimulation; a heterogeneous mass of contradictory qualities; with nothing great but his crimes; and even those contrasted by the littleness of his motives, which at once denoted both his ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... to produce a moderate degree of hilarity. It commences with a measured clapping of hands; a few low notes succeed, which, as the audience joins in, swell into a lively air; when some wild-looking "ghilly" in a long, tattered coat springs into the centre of the circle and begins shuffling. As he proceeds the singing grows gradually louder, accompanied from time to time with a more violent clapping of hands. Even shouts and screams are occasionally added to spur him on. Excited to the ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... I dared not run back to him, because my ill-calculated steps might carry me over the edge, he came shuffling towards me, with his hands ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... folds his hands and remarks that it was God's will that things should so come to pass. He knocks all the work he can out of his niggers, but does precious little himself. In stature he is mostly tall, thin, and active. He moves with a quick, shuffling gait, which is almost noiseless. Some of his women folk are beautiful, while others are fat and clumsy, and are never likely to have their portraits hung on the walls of the ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... man behind the desk, and when the same freckle-faced lad, who had pointed out to Joe the manager, came shuffling up, the lad took our hero's satchel, and did a little one-step glide with it toward ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... stillness—for, except for a quick shuffling of paws, there was no sound at first—Sheila chose her weapon of defense. She took down from its place the Eskimo ivory spear, and, holding it short in her hand, she put herself behind the great elk-horn chair. Her Celtic ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... deck was broken with a confusion of sounds. A babble of voices; a woman passenger's scream; shuffling of feet; and above it all, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... Nero came shuffling up, and I went forward to coax him, for he snarled a little at seeing ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat |
