"Acrobatic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on around the fire, and used for acrobatic performances—yes, I see. I'll re-cover them right away. I'd do it to-night while I wait if I had the stuff—if I could sit still long enough. I want to go all over the house—and if it wasn't raining I'd go out in the garden and through the pine grove and over into the orchard. ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... "Acrobatic Stuff with Light Effects, eh? Well, you're on a couple of Mackerels. I never see any Benders that could get away with a Talking Act. You want to give your Piece to somebody that can Boost you. You write a good gingery Skit for me and Miss Fromage and we'll put ...
— People You Know • George Ade
... acrobatic agility to get into or out of the town. A slide, a series of frightful tosses from side to side, a run and you had crossed the narrow rope bridge which spanned the chasm dug by the waters between the stone bridge and Johnstown. ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... of gaining a livelihood. It seems certain to the scientific men who have been conducting the investigation, that not only the physical ability to become an acrobat, but also the mental qualities that contribute so much to success in this occupation—pride in the acrobatic pre-eminence of the family, courage, love of applause, and so on—have been handed down from one generation to another, and that it has cost each generation less time and effort to acquire its skill than its predecessor. In other words, we are told, members ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... the unnatural and the impossible. The super-human antics of the acrobatic buffoons in Hanlon's perennial "Superba," and those of the Byrne Brothers in "Eight Bells," ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... medals, one's mind is filled with something like foreboding in the reflection that too much success may lead the winners into the professionalism which is so associated with betting and so close to pugilism. Candor, however, compels me to state that a long acquaintance with the acrobatic folk who have to do with the circus, a large number of whom practice in our gymnasium every winter, has raised our ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... through hoops placed at certain distances from one another, they played with knives, slings, baskets, brass balls, and earthenware plates, and they walked on their hands with their feet in the air or with their heads turned downwards so as to look through their legs backwards. These acrobatic feats were even practised by women. According to a legend, the daughter of Herodias was a renowned acrobat, and on a bas-relief in the Cathedral of Rouen we find this Jewish dancer turning somersaults before Herod, so as to fascinate him, and thus obtain the decapitation ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... to her mother's amazed view the picture of little Vivian. It was taken in stage costume, and represented Vivian in one of her clever acrobatic feats. Her pretty child-face wore a sweet smile, and the whole effect of the photograph was dainty and graceful. Across a corner was scrawled the word "Vivian" ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... like Napoleon, was doomed to meet her Waterloo. Her last and most disastrous exploit ended sadly both for herself and others. It happened in this way. Polly went to the circus. From that time forth her daring acrobatic feats supplied the gossips of L—— with plenty of material for conversation. They would tell how Polly broke her horse's leg by urging him to jump over a stone wall, and how she almost dislocated her collar-bone in turning ...
— Harper's Young People, July 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... river with a solid mass. As the great sticks come dashing along, turning porpoise-like somersets or leaping up twice their length in the air, he must be everywhere, livelier than a monkey in a mimosa, a wonder of acrobatic agility in biggest boots. He made the proverb, "As easy as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... me that the hunt had had one desirable result. It had limbered up the Pilgrim Father so thoroughly, that he couldn't be stiff and dignified again after his acrobatic feat. It really did make a difference, for after that he was one of the jolliest ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... oppose it violently, upset the government upon it, come into power upon his victory, and then take the measure up himself and carry it through. The Duc de Broglie was not a politician of this adroit and acrobatic type. His yea was yea and his nay, nay in politics as in private life. He kept aloof from the Second Empire, as his grandfather, Mr. Carlyle's 'War-god Broglie,' had kept aloof from the first. But he never fell into the Republican folly of pretending to regard the Second Empire as a tyranny ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... motionless as the trees on the beach, and the reason for her state was clear. Her forefoot soared stiffly aloft till it was almost clear of the water; her stern was depressed; her decks listed to port till it was an acrobatic feat ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... level, dusty road two miles southwest of Ghent. As we approached a cross-road marked by a tavern, a couple of direction-posts, and nondescript stucco buildings, we made out two Belgian sentries, with their rifles lifted overhead and indulging in some acrobatic exercises which we interpreted as a signal to halt. Van Hee swapped cigarettes with them and gossiped in their native tongue, in return for which they gave us some good advice. They warned us to pay no attention to sign-posts, which, in order to fool the enemy, were either ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... knew it, the work was done, Father had come for the papers, and showed Sylvia one more twist in the acrobatic stunt they were learning together. She could already take his hands and run up to his shoulders in one squirrel-like dash; but she was to learn the reverse and come down on the other side, and she still got tangled up with which foot to put first. So they practised whenever they had, as now, ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... to be a novel kind of entertainment: a sort of vaudeville show in which were to figure a palmist, a gentleman set down in the programme with its gilt printing as the "Celebrated Professor Cheireman"; several singers; a couple of acrobatic performers; and a danseuse: ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... getting through after him, lifting up the heavy rails with his strong snout and great back as if they were so many pieces of cane. Then for the next three minutes Leon only managed to save himself by a very creditable acrobatic performance, which consisted of passing from one side of the fence to the other after the manner of a harlequin. He had lost his tuque, and the bear had spared time to rend it to shreds with its great jaws and one quick wrench of its forepaws. His stout ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... Jankiel and the tall young Jew looked very funny. During the battle the long coat tails had flapped about like wings, and Jankiel, in his desperate efforts to get rid of the intruder, had performed the most extraordinary acrobatic feats. It was a ridiculous scene altogether—the more ridiculous as the combatants belonged to a race at which it was an old, time-honoured custom to laugh. How could the young nobleman understand the deeper meaning of the play enacted before him? He saw before him ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... ground-cherry bushes growing along the furrows, full of fruit. I turned back the papery triangular sheaths that protected the berries and ate a few. All about me giant grasshoppers, twice as big as any I had ever seen, were doing acrobatic feats among the dried vines. The gophers scurried up and down the ploughed ground. There in the sheltered draw-bottom the wind did not blow very hard, but I could hear it singing its humming tune up on the ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... knowledge on this subject, Harry assented without any mental reserve; but concerning the military utility of acrobatic equestrian performances, or of their being available at all in the hunting field, he entertained the very gravest doubt. But they were good fun to watch, for all that, and one, that of vaulting into the ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... gracious Ruler!" they exclaimed in a chorus, and then they began a dance, so droll and amusing that all the company roared with laughter and even Ozma joined in the merriment. But after the dance the monkeys performed some wonderful acrobatic feats, and then they ran to the hollow of the cake and took out some band instruments of burnished gold—cornets, horns, drums, and the like—and forming into a procession the monkeys marched up and down the table playing a jolly tune with the ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... worthy of honour when he is a reverential and sympathetic interpreter of genius—has too often taken a lamentable part, especially in Latin countries, in the degrading of musical taste; for empty virtuosity makes a desert of art. The fashion of inept fantasias and acrobatic variations has, it is true, gone by; but of late years virtuosity has returned in an offensive way, and, sheltering itself under the solemn classical name of "concertos," it usurped a place of rather exaggerated importance in symphony concerts, and especially in M. Chevillard's ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... grind out some popular operatic air. At the left of the pump stretched a narrow mirror, reflecting he gaily-colored wine-glasses and decanters which stood on each other's shoulders, and held up lemons, and performed various acrobatic feats on a shelf in ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... all-around acrobatic exhibition. The Dodo performed on the trapeze. The Mock Turtle and the Cheshire Cat took turns on a diminutive springboard. The March Hare and the Dormouse energetically jumped over a small barrel. The Queen ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... and skipping, are probably learned. As to climbing, there is some evolutionary reason for suspecting that an instinctive tendency in this direction might persist in the human species, and certainly children show a great propensity for it; while the acrobatic ability displayed by those adults whose business leads them to continue climbing is so great as to raise the question whether the ordinary citizen is right when he thinks of man as essentially a land-living or surface-living animal. As to swimming, ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... precipitated head foremost into the hole, with his heels in the air, and Lilla at the same moment coming to a halt in her acrobatic descent, beheld the apparition of a pair of legs, feet upwards, and a coarse pair of knickerbocker stockings ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... and cabalistic signs. All the outer walls of the booth were covered with yellow bills, upon which could be read that "Signor Firejaws" would lift with his teeth red-hot irons of fabulous weight, swallow burning lead, and perform the most startling acrobatic tricks. Rolla, the Cannon Queen, would catch cannon balls shot from a gun, and do other tricks; at the same time the bill said she would eat pigeons alive, and with their feathers on. Caillette, the "daughter of the air," as she was called, would send the spectators into ecstasies by her performance ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... What an acrobatic performance to try and reconcile a Father's personal care for His poor little sparrows and His indifference at seeing so many of them stretched ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... exhibition of "ground and lofty tumbling" for the entertainment of their fellow prisoners. They had somehow contrived to retain the gaudy costume of the ring. They were really skillful. While we were watching with interest the acrobatic performance, a squadron of the Confederate General Imboden's Cavalry dashed past us. Sergeant Reed, who had just made me an offer for my watch, sprang to his feet, exclaiming: "I swear! there must be a battle going on in front, for there goes Jimboden's Cavalry to the rear! ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... the 'show' opened, there was a large attendance, and in that vast multitude of two hundred and thirty men, women, and children, there was not one who did not anticipate an acrobatic performance. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... extraordinary phrases, the most far-fetched, unnatural, and out-of-the-way expressions. Their sentences perpetually stalk about on stilts. They take so much pleasure in bombast, and write in such a high-flown, bloated, affected, hyperbolical and acrobatic style that their prototype is Ancient Pistol, whom his friend Falstaff once impatiently told to say what he had to say like a ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... Fanny desired to testify to the existence, on her part, of an attention that nothing escaped. She was like the kind lady who, happening to linger at the circus while the rest of the spectators pour grossly through the exits, falls in with the overworked little trapezist girl—the acrobatic support presumably of embarrassed and exacting parents—and gives her, as an obscure and meritorious artist, assurance of benevolent interest. What was clearest, always, in our young woman's imaginings, was the sense of being herself left, for any occasion, in the breach. She was ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... immortality. Facts transmuted in the alembic of hope into terms of faith. The ripest fruit of reason the stultification of reason. From the topmost peak of reason James teaches to cease reasoning and to have faith that all is well and will be well—the old, oh, ancient old, acrobatic flip of the metaphysicians whereby they reasoned reason quite away in order to escape the pessimism consequent upon the grim and honest exercise ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... excellences of it within those limitations are unmistakable. He had no tricks—the worst curse of art at all times, and the commonest in these days of what pretends to be art. He had no splash of so-called "style"; no acrobatic contortions of thought or what does duty for thought; no pottering and peddling of the psychological kind, which would fain make up for a faulty product by ostentatiously parading the processes of production. Had he once got free—as more than ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... sportive mood, performs some wonderful acrobatic feats with human nature; gives love of oriental luxury to the woman with nothing a year; appreciation of all that is beautiful and artistic, to the ploughman; an epicurian taste to the starving mechanic; ...
— Wise or Otherwise • Lydia Leavitt
... face the wrong way round, he was so often said good-bye to at the very moment of arrival, that he gradually lost his enthusiasm for social enterprises and confined himself to his own palace, where his acrobatic dexterity in supplying himself with soup was a constant source of admiration to his servants. ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne
... state, when the nesting season approaches, both birds make curious acrobatic flights above the tree-tops; then, after a short sail in midair, they return to their perch. This appears to be their only giddiness and frivolity, unless a dust-bath in the country road ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... 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 ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... circus since the good old days of the Cirque Rocambeau. And what a difference! They had a few uninspiring horses and riders for convention sake. But the haute ecole had vanished. Not even a rouged and painted ghost of Mademoiselle Renee Saint-Maur remained. It was a ragged, old-fashioned acrobatic entertainment, with the mildewed humour of antiquated clowns. But they had a star turn—a juggler of the school of Cinquevallis—an amazing fellow. And then I remembered having seen the name on the last week's bill, printed in the great eighteen inch letters which were ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... pink marble figure, naked down to the waist, supports a huge cornice. A thunder of big drums, a flash of lime-light and the palace splits from top to bottom. The figure staggers, falls on its hands and gives a stupendous acrobatic performance: somersaults on the hands; waltzing; treading the ball: the 'hornpipe, damn it!' And then Tom stands on his feet, all in shadow. A powerful ray of light is thrown upon him, and you see the muscles of the abdomen slowly moving, the pectoral muscles quivering, the deltoids leaping and starting, ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... imitation tortoise-shell pins. Her sleeves had a fashionable cut, and half a dozen metal bangles rattled on her wrists. Her voice rattled like her bangles as she poured forth a stream of anecdote and ejaculation; and her round black eyes jumped with acrobatic velocity from one face to another. Miss Mellins was always having or hearing of amazing adventures. She had surprised a burglar in her room at midnight (though how he got there, what he robbed her of, and by what means he escaped had never been ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... is almost invisible at that height, and despite its speed of two hundred kilometres an hour. On a gray day, when we are flying between twenty-five hundred and three thousand metres beneath a film of cloud, they repay the honor we do them by our acrobatic turns. They bracket us, put barrages between us and our own lines, give us more trouble than all the other ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... boys! And a big one, too!" cried Andy, as he rushed up to fairly embrace both his cousins. Then, to work off some of his high spirits, the acrobatic youth ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... uncomfortable and uneventful. The only remarkable feature was the acrobatic skill displayed by the mess staff, transferring meals from the kitchen-cattle-truck to the officers mess-cattle-truck. Even at the usual speed of a French troop train, it is no easy task to drop off the train with a pile of plates in one hand, ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... ceased. The spell was broken. We looked at one another, and then we laughed. How we laughed! Officers and men were doubled up with mirth as they watched the acrobatic antics of ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... Helen's parlor, and in as crooked an attitude as a man ever compassed. He had so managed to dispose of himself over three chairs as to give the general effect of having been suddenly arrested in the midst of an acrobatic feat of unusual difficulty, and with a cigar in his long, nervous fingers, was watching Mrs. Greyson, who occupied herself in tidying the ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... Certainly he had as good a right to be proud of his accomplishments as a turkey or a peacock that spreads its tail, or a boy who walks on his hands. Maybe a better right, for they have solid earth to strut upon and run no risks, while Mis did his whole trick in the air. It was a kind of acrobatic feat, though he had no gymnasium with bars or rings or tight rope, and there was no canvas stretched to catch him if he fell. A circus, with tents, and a gate-keeper to take your ticket, would have been lucky ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... saw the list of promised performers: La Belle Marie, the famous little toe dancer in her attractive transformations; the Brothers Zincatello, Risley experts at the Hippodrome; Julian Jokes, "in his inimitable Hebrew monologue"; the Seven Sebastians, the world's most marvelous Herculean acrobatic performers; Mlle. Joujou, the popular singing comedienne, Prima Donna and Star, direct from her unusual and most distinguished triumph at the Palace Theater, London; and a dozen more of the younger and more popular people ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... acrobatic performance with the dive. Landing on the ground he rolled over and over, scrambling toward the wall of the cabin—reaching it on all fours and crouching there, gun ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... satellites—the Quartermaster-Sergeant, four Company Sergeants, some odd orderlies, and a forlorn little man in a neat drab uniform with light blue facings,—the regimental interpreter. The party have descended, with the delicate care of those who essay to perform acrobatic feats in kilts, from bicycles—serviceable but appallingly heavy machines of Government manufacture, the property of the "Buzzers," but commandeered for the occasion. The Quartermaster-Sergeant, who is not accustomed to strenuous exercise, mops his brow and glances expectantly ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... swam dizzily, and went suddenly mad. The floor rose, and the roof fell, while cars and people performed impossible acrobatic feats above, below, and around him. Then, from afar off, he heard his ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... of dancing, one will therefore include those gesticulations or movements of the body suggesting an idea, whether it be the slow movement of marching, or the rapid gallop, even some of the movements that we commonly call acrobatic. It is not intended here to include the more sensual movements of the East ...
— The Dance (by An Antiquary) - Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D. • Anonymous
... to take their bearings, looking out on the same unbroken expanse of tree-tops, tossed up into all manner of inequalities, and then recommenced their acrobatic, performance, making for the next "station." With a few slips, a few scratches, and bruised shins, they kept on until they had covered about a mile, when the growing dusk ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... carried long decorated reeds, which they flourished wondrously, and with which occasionally they executed the most surprising leaps. While there was a stateliness about their movements, there were also the most startling acrobatic surprises, made possible by the ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... point of danger which was, presumably, that at which the last explosion had occurred. Then the whole police force held its breath, and the coach got past without any difficulty; and immediately the waiting multitude in Regency Row became violently demonstrative as though some great acrobatic feat had been achieved. And the piebald ponies came stepping like rope-dancers each held by a groom; and everything—except the fresh bomb for which so many stage preparations had been made—went off with all the ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... as of the nature of a tour de force. You took it as you took a leap. It was spiritually acrobatic. You didn't understand but you believed. The less you understood the more credit your belief became to you. The more hidden and difficult and mysterious and unintelligible God made Himself the greater your merit in having faith in spite of everything. I am far from saying that this is the common ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... almighty thud that it seemed as if the cars must fly into splinters. They rattled and shook and cracked. The passengers executed further acrobatic feats upon the floor; they clutched at things and fell over things and ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... nourishment, work and pleasure, the Sageman was careful about his exercises, assiduously devoting from two to three hours each day to physical culture. He practiced all manner of games and acrobatic performances, in order to bring the body up to its best possible shape. Suppleness, agility, and gracefulness were desired in preference to brute strength. Running, jumping, swimming, and flying were considered a necessary part of every one's daily routine, from ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... emotions to the keyboard or who must depend upon artifice to stimulate emotions rarely electrifies his audiences. Every concert is a test of the artist's sincerity, not merely an exhibition of his prowess, or his acrobatic accomplishments on the keyboard. He must have some vital message to convey to his audience or else his entire performance ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... Landing was an acrobatic feat. In you went on the crest of a wave, pointing for the place where the blue seas did not break into white. An instant after, you were in the quiet water inside of the surf. Jump out everybody and hold the boat! Then it was pick up the various instruments, ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... special chapter. One of the most famous, the Moulin de la Galette, of the Montmartre quarter, is here illustrated, with a touch of the picturesque. It may be reached by the Rue Lepic, more circuitous and possibly more safe than the acrobatic ladders which lead directly to its door. Its usual customers vary from workmen's families through many varieties of painters, strangers, filles, and marlous. Its dances are not of a kind to recommend themselves to the conventional. It is even ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... wonder that any man should think that he can please me by giving the labor of his soul to making them. It is much the same thing as I feel, for instance, when I go to hear a master of music, and find that he has spent his hours in torturing himself and his fingers in order to give me an acrobatic exhibition, when all the time what I wish him to do, and what his genius gave him power to do, was to find the magic word that should set free the slumbering demon of my soul. So I think that a man who wishes to grow by sympathy and worship should do without wealth, if only because it is so trivial; ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... disgusted. Because there are no buckwheat cakes, no codfish cakes, no hot bread, no pork and beans, no mammoth oysters, stewed, fried and roasted, he can find nothing fit to eat. The English cannot cook. Because he can find no noisy, clattering, dish-smashing restaurant, full of acrobatic waiters racing and balancing under immense piles of plates, and shouting jargon untranslatable, unintelligible and unpronounceable down into the lower kitchen, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... aspects. Schumann deemed brilliancy of execution only valuable when it served a higher purpose. That higher purpose is to reach and express the soul of music. Unless enriched by it, all mechanism is dead. It is not desirable that every one should perform acrobatic feats on some musical instrument, or indulge in vocal pyrotechnics, but it is desirable to extract music out of whatever technique may be attained. Instead of racing onward with feverish haste to ever increased technical skill at the expense ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... turn was in full swing and the folks below were standing around talking and drinking, and gazing with only partial interest at the feats of a woman acrobatic dancer. Bill was looking at her, too. But his thoughts were on the girl at Fort Mowbray and this man ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... cabman," said the policeman. "I said to him: 'You juggins,' I said, 'do you think a burglar who wants to get into a house waits till a cab's going past and then gives a acrobatic exhibition to attract the driver's attention? That's some young fool after one of the maids.' No, I don't want to see the rest of the young man—not if he's like the sample. Get him unwound as soon as you can, and send him about his business. If he's not out in two minutes, ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... her. Revue might have been her real line; or, better still, a strong-woman turn on the Halls. There was the episode, for instance, where, having to prostrate herself before the Baron, she insisted upon a backward exit (with the usual result) and then made an acrobatic ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various
... the merriest hodge-podge of acrobatic nonsense that the high school boys ever had seen. The clowns, entering into the spirit of the moment, grew wonderfully funny. They sang songs and told stories, while the acrobats hurled themselves into a mad whirl of somersaults, cartwheels ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... dervish says beggar, and who says beggar evokes the completest type of filth and laziness. But with what an extraordinary combination of gestures, with what attitudes in the management of the long-stringed guitar, with what acrobatic swingings of the body do they accompany their singing of their legends and poetry which could not be more profane. The instinct of the old actor was awakened in Caterna. He could not keep still; it ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... the Ring, Mr. Punch has ever been particularly fond of the old-fashioned equestrian entertainment. The Ring to which he has just made allusion is, it need hardly be added, The Circus, and The Book is a novel by Miss AMYE READE. Mr. P. is not sweet upon any gymnastic and acrobatic shows in which the chances of danger appear, and probably are, as ten to one against the performer; and especially does he object to children of very tender years being utilised in order to earn money for their parents or guardians by exhibiting ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 5, 1892 • Various
... microbes, bacilli, their tissues infest, And tapeworms securely their bowels digest; May corn-cobs be snared without hope in their hair, And frequent impalement their pleasure impair. Disturbed be their dreams by the awful discourse Of audible sofas sepulchrally hoarse, By chairs acrobatic and wavering floors— The mattress that kicks and the pillow that snores! Sons of cupidity, cradled in sin! Your criminal ranks may the death angel thin, Avenging the friend whom I ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... SMILED.... 'Fire!'... There was a rattle of musketry and every prisoner beside me fell forward dead.... I STOOD THERE ALONE, uninjured and alive ... coming toward me down the path was the daring female acrobatic aviator with her friend, the performer of the Metropole, robed in a shimmering sport outing costume, and smiling very sweetly to the ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... regions and all professions (motoring, cycling, acrobatic and circus feats) which demand audacity, activity, love of adventure, and intense efforts followed by long periods of repose are eminently suited to criminals. There are cases on record in which young men have ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... thing that roused the father of the family from his sullen moods was my extraordinary acrobatic performances, which also threw the two little nigger boys into hysterics of delight. Father, mother, and children tried to imitate my somersaults, "wheels," and contortions, but came to grief so desperately (once the morose man nearly broke his neck) ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... called from the hillside their quaint "Spring o' the year," the song sparrows sang their tinkling melody from the live oaks, catbirds mewed from the thicket, and occasionally a linnet sang its rollicking solo as it performed queer acrobatic feats while ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... the half hangings and the hideous disembowelling which followed, while the poor wretches, found guilty of treason, were yet alive, had pretty much the sensation with which a gathering nowadays sees a dangerous acrobatic performance. ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... three. We want to see 'em all." But this was easier said than done. Again our wise-looking piebald balked, and balked most awfully. Again the two men, at imminent danger to life and limb, jerked at the rope bridle, and again barely escaped with their lives as they performed the perilous acrobatic feat of falling headlong into the carriage while it was going ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... understand what they were doing. The comedians she found amusing, when they did not shock her—Bertie had explained to her one or two of the jokes she could not understand. The "song-scenas" and acrobatic displays filled her with rapture. She would have liked that sort of thing the whole time.... Albert said it was a dull show, he grumbled at everything, especially the turns Joanna liked. But gradually the warm, friendly, vulgar atmosphere of the place infected him—he joined in one or two ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... into the buggy with the agility to be expected from a lad of his acrobatic accomplishments. The two almost immediately fell into conversation upon perhaps the only subject of common interest between them. Before the town was reached, Tryon knew, so far as Plato could make it plain, the estimation ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... this satisfactory climax, the worthy colonel shifted his cap to the extreme side of his head, and walked jauntily along with his knees performing a variety of acrobatic wriggles. ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... from a sufficiently lofty point of view, must and do always agree, in an actor, in a romanticist, in an idealist, and in a Christian, there is always a yawning chasm between the two, which, whatever well-meaning critics may do, cannot be bridged posthumously by acrobatic ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... merry goatlet jumps, And the trifling yaller dog, With the tin can madly humps Like an acrobatic frog. ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... plays, properly so called, alternated with fights between animals, in which bears and bulls were baited by great blood-thirsty bulldogs, or with fencing-matches fought by celebrated English and foreign fencing-masters, with rope-dancing, acrobatic tricks, and boxing. Even the serious performances ended with a more or less absurd jig, in which the clown sang endless songs about the events of the day, and danced ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... ground, and, running alongside the car, called to Miss Arminster to jump into his arms, which she promptly did. Putting her to one side out of the reach of the train, he ran forward to receive Mrs. Mackintosh; but that good lady, being unaccustomed to such acrobatic feats, and arriving with more force than precision, completely bowled him over, and they went flying into space together. Banborough and Friend Othniel followed almost immediately, and, both trying to get out of the door at the ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... with just the apology he wanted for a frolic, and rushing into the adjoining bedroom, he pulled Harry from his bed, seated him on the top of his head, and marched with him struggling and laughing about the room. After he had performed sundry acrobatic feats with him, he carried him back to his bed. Then he returned to his room, and entered seriously upon the task of arraying himself in his wedding attire. To get on his collar and neck-tie properly, he was obliged to ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... only two barbers in the whole Congo. One is at Elizabethville and the other at Kinshassa, on the Lower Congo, nearly two thousand miles away. My locks were not shorn for seven weeks. I had to do what little trimming there was done with a safety razor and it involved quite an acrobatic feat. Take shaving. The water in most of the Congo rivers is dirty and full of germs. More than once I lathered my face with mineral water out of a bottle. The Congo River proper is a muddy brown. For washing purposes ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... hounded along the trail, perhaps he might overhaul the other two. Then, then if he did perish in the Desert, he would not have perished for naught! It was then, the earth performed the acrobatic feat of heaving up, and he fell! This time, he knew he had fallen. It was no trip. He was down and out and done for; and he knew it. He rose to his knees steadying himself on his Service axe. Then, it came again, the silver ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... he caught sight of her. And, fascinated by the novelty of the situation, she stood a moment watching his antics, which were similar to those of a monkey upon a pole. Again and again he climbed the post, indulged in various acrobatic performances upon the foot-board, and then turned a double somersault right into the centre of the great feather-bed. And all the while his villainous little iron-bound heels made woful work, leaving countless dents and scratches upon the fine old mahogany, and catching ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... twenty-three, arrived in Paris. She had known him when he was "Le Petit Prodige"—when she was a girl with dreams and he but a child. She wished to see how he had changed, and so went to hear him play. He was insincere, affected and artificial, she said—his mannerisms absurd and his playing acrobatic. At the next concert where he played she sought him out and half-laughingly told him her opinion of his work. He gravely thanked her, with his hand upon his heart, and said that such honesty and frankness were refreshing. After the concert Liszt remembered this woman—she was the only one he did ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... the loop, his upside-down flights, his general acrobatic feats in the air are all of the utmost value to pilots throughout the world. We shall have proof of this, I am sure, in the near future. Pegoud has shown us what it is possible to do with a modern machine. In his first attempt to fly upside down he courted ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... in for acrobatic performances on the top of one of the highest, rockiest hillocks. Poising myself on one leg I take a rapid slide sideways, ending in a very showy leap backwards which lands me on the top of the lantern I am ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... climbs to attain acrobatic efficiency, and may aim at nothing higher than inspired legs. Mrs. Peck climbed to establish the equality of the sexes. Mr. and Mrs. Bullock Workman climbed in the Himalayas with strong determination to name a mountain ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... see it very much indeed," were the exclamations of the two little boys. "You know I have never seen any acrobatic feats." ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... performance is too long for the European taste, and in the next, most Japanese plays are of one kind, and concerned with one period—the feudal. There is, moreover, a plethora of by-play—sword exercise and acrobatic performances—which have nothing whatever to do with the plot of the piece. In fact, irrelevancy appears to the European the chief characteristic of what he sees on the stage of a Japanese theatre. Nor does the play, as is usual in serious dramas ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... had already witnessed Tim's acrobatic performance in the stable yard, did not take ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... Barnaba, where the Ponte de Pugni is adorned with four feet of stone let into the pavement, and defying each other from the four corners of the bridge. Finally, even these contests were given up and the Castellani and Nicolotti spent their rivalry in marvelous acrobatic feats.] This fair, which was established as early as 1180, was an industrial exhibition of the arts and trades peculiar to Venice, and was repeated annually, with increasing ostentation, till the end, in 1796. ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... longed that his guests might leave him. Chairs had been brought out on the balcony. Muchross and his friends had adjourned from the supper-room, bringing champagne and an hysterical lady with them. Snowdown and Platt were with difficulty dissuaded from attempting acrobatic feats on the parapet; and the city faded from deep purple into a vast grayness. Strange was the little party ensconced in the stone balcony high above the monotone of ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... Heavens. ANGIE, am I in the habit of making hideous grimaces before a looking-glass? Do you suppose I am given to over-indulgence in cod-liver oil and whatever the other beastliness was? Am I acrobatic in my calmer moments? Did you ever know me sing—with or without a broom? I'm a shy man by nature (pathetically), more shy than you think, perhaps,—and in my normal condition, I should be the last person to prance about in a gauze skirt for the amusement of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various
... Sepoy's Revenge! Thrilling Incidents! Sagacious Elephant! Dance of Arab Coursers!! Acrobatic ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thoroughly test my invention by falling off his back in every conceivable direction, my husband being present to prevent my voluntary fall from degenerating into a "cropper." Mr. Tautz, the well-known breeches maker of Oxford Street, witnessed these acrobatic feats, and after we had all been perfectly convinced of the absolute safety of the garment, he took it on a royalty. My skirt has now been on the market for several years, and I am glad to have this opportunity of thanking the numerous ladies ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... box." Muskrats feed on the bulb of the tufted "reed like a tree," sixteen feet high on each side, and again and again little kits came out and swam in the ripple of our canoe. Once an old duck performed the acrobatic feat over which the nature and anti-nature writers have been giving each other the lie. We had come out of one long amber channel to be confronted by three openings exactly alike, not much wider than the length of our Klondike canoe, all lined by the high tufted reed. ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... tried to beat on as if nothing had happened, too. He did not succeed, for the ravens who had been addressing him most particularly soon addressed themselves personally to him; and before he knew just how it all came about, they had summoned a quite amazing and unexpected aerial acrobatic power, and were shooting and diving, striking and flapping, about his regal head in a manner that even he could not pretend any longer to ignore. No one, not even a king of all the birds, feels comfortable ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... mostly. Lamuse was a farm-servant, Paradis a carter. Cadilhac, whose helmet rides loosely on his pointed head, though it is a juvenile size—like a dome on a steeple, says Tirette—owns land. Papa Blaire was a small farmer in La Brie. Barque, porter and messenger, performed acrobatic tricks with his carrier-tricycle among the trains and taxis of Paris, with solemn abuse (so they say) for the pedestrians, fleeing like bewildered hens across the big streets and squares. Corporal Bertrand, who keeps himself always a little aloof, correct, erect, and ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... of flight, so as not to be mixed up in the escapade of this stranger. But after a few steps she paused. The younger one was smiling, looking at the wall, and as the captain reappeared upon it she almost clapped with enthusiasm as though applauding a dangerous acrobatic feat. ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... well in place. Here it was different. The words, perhaps, in this free-spoken world, were gross enough to make a carter blush; and the most suggestive feature was this feint of shame. For such parts the women showed some disposition; they were pert, they were neat, they were acrobatic, they were at times really amusing, and some of them were pretty. But this is not the artist's field; there is the whole width of heaven between such capering and ogling, and the strange rhythmic gestures, and strange, rapturous, frenzied ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had both danced again for the people and Horatio had given them an acrobatic exhibition, they strolled away through the evening loaded down with luxuries of all kinds. The villagers went with them to the outskirts, and called good luck after them. As they passed into the quiet shadows of the forest they ...
— The Arkansaw Bear - A Tale of Fanciful Adventure • Albert Bigelow Paine
... varied his acts in the circus tent Sometimes he would omit the "vanishing lady" act, as Helen wanted to put through some extra work with Rosebud, and there was not time for both. Again he would leave out some of his acrobatic work, or perhaps not do the trick of seeming to catch fire and extinguishing the flames in Benny Turton's tank. Once in a while he would omit the ten thousand dollar ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... of this absence of repose, this bottled-lightning quality in us Americans? The explanation of it that is usually given is that it comes from the extreme dryness of our climate and the acrobatic performances of our thermometer, coupled with the extraordinary progressiveness of our life, the hard work, the railroad speed, the rapid success, and all the other things we know so well by heart. Well, our climate is certainly exciting, ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... my window a funeral procession on its way from the church to the cemetery. The Padre was not there, and this no doubt accounted for the acrobatic display given by the three men in cassocks and surplices, who led the way, bearing a cross and two candles. They started by playfully kicking each other, and this soon developed into angry words, so that I expected a free fight. One ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... fire-lighting, the poles being made into hurdles or sold to the crate-makers in the potteries for crates in which to pack earthenware goods of all descriptions. The men employed at the lopping had to stand on the heads of the pollards, and it was sometimes quite an acrobatic feat to maintain their balance on a small swaying tree, or on one which ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... mountaineering. Thus have I conquered glacier, peak, and pass, Aiguilles du Midi, Cols des Grandes Jorasses. Thus shall I onward march from peak to peak, Till there are no new conquests left to seek. O the wild joy, the unutterable bliss To hear the coming avalanche's hiss! Or place oneself in acrobatic pose, While mountain missiles graze one's sun-burnt nose! And if some future season I be doom'd To be by boulders crushed, or snow entombed, Still let me upward urge my mad career, And risk my limbs and life for honour dear! Sublimely acquiescent ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... the impossibility of realizing such a project," began Glogowski calmly, "but because our public has not yet reached the point where it is ready for such a theater and does not feel the need of such a stage. In the meanwhile, give them the farce full of acrobatic stunts and leg-shows, a half-naked ballet, cancan howling, a little, cheap kitchen sentimentality, a heap of empty phrases on the subject of virtue, morality, the family, duty, love, and ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... iron, Momsey, and if I can't do it very well at first, I can learn," declared the plucky girl. "And, of course, I can sweep. That's good for me. Our physical instructor says so. Instead of going to the gym on Saturday, I'll put in calisthenics and acrobatic stunts with ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... the future. So, one by one we descended the narrow stairway at the side of the ship, and then leaped at opportune moments to the decks of the dancing steam launches below. How it ever came to pass that each of us, ladies and all, in succession went through with this mid-air acrobatic performance without serious accident is a matter of profound wonder; but we did, and the launches when loaded danced away over the bay and entered the mouth of the Pasig River. At the wharf we were informally introduced to a crowd ...
— An Epoch in History • P. H. Eley |
