"Circus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... common amateur; and in short there is no end to the number of the things that he does, and does badly. His one manly taste is for the chase. In sum, he is but a plexus of weaknesses; the singing chambermaid of the stage, tricked out in man's apparel, and mounted on a circus horse. I have seen this poor phantom of a prince riding out alone or with a few huntsmen, disregarded by all, and I have been even grieved for the bearer of so futile and melancholy an existence. The last Merovingians may have ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lot. They are comfortable too; and if the patriarchal ideal of a vine and fig tree for each is not yet attained, at least each has his rented patch in the country or his rented cell in a city building. Bread and the circus are freely given to the deserving, and as for the undeserving, they are merely reaping the rewards of their contumacy and pride. Order reigns, each has his justly appointed share, and the state rests, in security, ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... impregnated with cold light that we still see clearly. We are amid magnificent tragic scenery on a lake surrounded by a kind of fearful amphitheatre outlined on all sides by the mountains of the desert. It was at the bottom of this granite circus that the Nile used to flow, forming fresh islets, on which the eternal verdure of the palm-trees contrasted with the high desolate mountains that surrounded it like a wall. To-day, on account of the barrage established by the English, the water has steadily risen, like a tide ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... replied Howard, filling a large cigarette case from the nearest box, as was his most friendly habit. "Two sweaters, tennis morning, noon and night, no sugar, no beer, no butter, no bread, gallons of hot water—and look at me! Martin, it's a tragedy. If I go on like this, it's me for Barnum's Circus as the world's ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... magnificent work than even the Pont-du-Gard, yet it made a much less impression on me, perhaps, because my admiration had been already exhausted on the former object; or that the situation of the latter, in the midst of a city, was less proper to excite it. This vast and superb circus is surrounded by small dirty houses, while yet smaller and dirtier fill up the area, in such a manner that the whole produces an unequal and confused effect, in which regret and indignation stifle pleasure and surprise. The amphitheatre at Verona is a vast deal smaller, and ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... he began, with perhaps a vague recollection of the last circus he had seen, and there ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... down the passage, and you'll come out in Market Street. Go straight down Southwick Street—you know it—to Oxford and Cambridge Terrace, and you'll see a cab-rank right in front of you. Get into a taxi, and tell the fellow to drive you to Piccadilly Circus. Leave him there—take a turn round so's he won't see what you do—then get into another taxi, and drive to St. Pancras Church. Get out there—and foot it to King's Cross Station. You'll catch the 3.15 for the North easy—and after you're once in it, you're all right. Get to Peebles!—that's ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... before she spoke of her past life; but when she found that Petie had no sharp-eyed mother at home, only a deaf great-aunt who asked no questions, she began to give him little glimpses of the circus world, which filled him with awe and rapture. It was hardly a real circus, only a little strolling troupe, with some performing dogs, and a few trained horses and ponies, and two tight-rope dancers; then there were two other musicians, and Marie ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards
... came a faint answering chime of church bells; and the Arizona, "porting" her helm, kept circling about the same spot for two hours more ("playin' circus," as Jack Dewey said), till the morning breeze suddenly parted the fog, displaying to Frank's eager eyes the rocky shores of Malta, and the ...
— Harper's Young People, April 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... fragments struck him; but fortunately the injuries that he received were slight, and had no permanent consequence. The bulk of the surviving inhabitants, finding themselves houseless, or afraid to enter their houses if they still stood, bivouacked during the height of the winter in the open air, in the Circus, and elsewhere about the city. The terror which legitimately followed from the actual perils was heightened by imaginary fears. It was thought that the Mons Casius, which towers above Antioch to the south-west, was about to be shattered by the violence of the shocks, and to ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... with the inhabitants. He had not mounted the box many times before he inadvertently dropped the expression, "Thirty shillings a day!" The word was attended with all the powers of magic, for instantly a second rolled into the circus. ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... In Piccadilly Circus his attention was immediately attracted by a number of stout, florid, elderly ladies who were selling some most lovely bouquets for the buttonhole. This was a temptation impossible to resist, and he lost no time in choosing one. It cost ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... deliberately said: Evil, be thou my good! That he has emptied upon the boards from his Pandora-box imagination the greatest gang of scoundrels, shady ladies, master swindlers, social degenerates, circus people, servants, convicts, professional strong men, half-crazy idealists, irritable rainbow-eaters—the demi-monde of a subterranean world—that ever an astonished world saw perform their antics in front of the ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... every lady we saw in a carriage had hired one o' them plumes for the day, and had it niddle noddling on her head. It were the Queen's Drawing-room, they said, and the carriages went bowling along towards her house, some wi' dressed-up gentlemen like circus folk in 'em, and rucks* o' ladies in others. Carriages themselves were great shakes too. Some o' the gentlemen as couldn't get inside hung on behind, wi' nosegays to smell at, and sticks to keep off folk as might splash their silk stockings. I wonder why they didn't hire a cab rather than hang on ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Mourzuk. The officers have quarters with the Bashaw in the Castle. Mr. Gagliuffi related a characteristic anecdote of the ignorance prevailing amongst the Arabs as gross as that of Negroes. Mohammed Circus (or the Circassian) was a few years ago Bashaw of Bengazi whilst Mr. G. visited that place. The Bashaw was buying something of an Arab, and gave him but a third of its real value. Mr. G. took upon himself to say, "Why do you injure this ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... thing. This work begins, on one side, as a narrow causeway, which, becoming gradually broader, rises, with a gentle ascent, to the height of ten feet, where it is five paces broad, and the whole length seventy-four paces. Joined to this is a sort of circus, whose diameter is thirty paces, and not above a foot or two higher than the causeway that joins it, with some trees planted in the middle. On the opposite side, another causeway of the same sort descends; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... boys of the common sights and pleasures of city life. The strict Quaker belief regarding children's amusement barred them from most of the enjoyment familiar to the young people in the great world that lay beyond their home. So little were they acquainted with the forbidden attractions at the circus that one time when President Monroe visited Haverhill, Greenleaf (as the poet was known in his home), looking next day for traces of the presence of the great man, whom he had not been allowed to see, came upon the tracks ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... this wonderful ship seems to have no bottom, and when I look up, nothing appears to have any top, while, if I look backward or forward things seem to have no end! Ah! I see something now. Coming in from the light prevented me at first. Why, it's like a huge circus!" ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... had vanished and in its place there reared the Black Venus, the vile shape of ancient Africa, and her face was the face of Lilith. The screaming lovely witches capered in fantastic spirals, each sporting a lighted candle. It was the diabolic Circus of the Candles, the infernal circus of the Witches' Sabbath. Rooted to the ground, Baldur realized with fresh amazement and vivid pain the fair beauty of Adam's prehistoric wife, her luxurious blond hair, her shapely shoulders, her stature of a goddess—he trembled, for she had turned her mordant ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... of the visit of Hercules to our country. Tacitus and Pliny attribute its construction to Evander the Arcadian, forgetting that in prehistoric times the tract of land on which the altar stood, between the Forum Boarium and the Circus Maximus, was submerged by the waters of the Velabrum. It was at all events a very ancient structure, held in great veneration. Its rough shape and appearance were never changed, as shown by a precious—yet unpublished—sketch by Baldassarre Peruzzi ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... see, I were in love once—ah, an' with a sweet purty lass an' she wi' me, but afore I could marry 'er she bolted along of a circus cove in a scarlet, laced coat an' whip, ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... of commerce and gain. We find mention of a temple having been erected to him {124} near the Circus Maximus as early as B.C. 495; and he had also a temple and a sacred fount near the Porta Capena. Magic powers were ascribed to the latter, and on the festival of Mercury, which took place on the 25th of May, it was ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... them. Amongst other creditors was Mr. Wainwright. He, however, was not one of the hostile party, but was very well-disposed towards Mr. Smith. One day, in the month of June, Mr. Wainwright received an anonymous letter, requesting him to meet the writer at a small public-house near the "Olympic Circus," which was a temporary place of amusement erected in Christian-street, then beginning to be built upon (the Adelphi Theatre in Christian-street succeeded the Circus—in fact, this place of amusement was called "the Circus" for many years). Mr. Wainwright, on carefully examining the letter, ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... which exists in Europe; or being impressed with the contrast which a visit across the Pyrennes would exhibit, between the affability and vivacity of a Frenchman at a theatre or in the Elysian fields, and the hauteur and reserve of a Spaniard at their bloody circus, when "bounds with one lashing spring ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... to see us often after that, and his friend always sent us something. Once he tipped us a sovereign each—the Uncle brought it; and once he sent us money to go to the Crystal Palace, and the Uncle took us; and another time to a circus; and when Christmas was near the ...
— The Story of the Treasure Seekers • E. Nesbit
... clippings from rival papers. The wild man was actually being seen in Essex County, not twenty-five miles from Newark. He had ravaged the property of people in five different States. It was assumed that he was a lunatic turned savage, or that he had escaped from a circus or trading-ship wrecked on the Jersey coast (suggestions made by Peter himself). His depredations, all told, had by now run into thousands, speaking financially. Staid residents were excited. Rewards for his capture were being offered in different places. Posses of irate citizens ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... strives to escape its terrible neighbour. Lying on its back, it fiercely wends its way round and round the glass circus. Presently the Scolia's attention awakens and is betrayed by a continued tapping with the tips of the antennae upon the table, which now represents the accustomed soil. The Wasp attacks the game, delivering her assault upon the monster's hinder end. ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... method of dismounting were the regular way. Jumping on again, I bumped and bobbed back along the grassy, flowery track, over the Indian mound, cried, "Whoa, Jack!" flew over his head, and alighted in father's arms as gracefully as if it were all intended for circus work. ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... of the pack, was too old a villain to be caught so easily. He leaped through the loop of Ted's lariat like a circus performer through ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... setting sun; the street-lamps had just been kindled, and ahead of him, massed above the housetops, the blue-grey clouds of evening hung. He watched the faces of the people as they passed, some eager, some jaded, some pleasure-seeking, some smug, and he strove to conjecture their aim in life. At the Circus he paused awhile, breathing deep and filling out his lungs with fragrance of violets and narcissi, which flower-girls clamoured for him to purchase. He bought a bunch and smiled faintly, contrasting the beautiful significance of the name of the vendor's profession with the slatternly ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... to think, and even sometimes to weep. In much of his that seems burlesque, the most audacious, there are hidden springs of thought and tears. Often, when most he seems as the grimed and grinning clown in a circus girded by gaping spectators, he stops to pour out satire as passionate as that of Juvenal, or morality as eloquent and as pure as that of Pascal. And this he does without lengthening his face or taking off his paint. Sometimes, when he most absurdly scampers in his thoughts, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... divine was brought up in New England by a staid old aunt, who never let him go anywhere except to church, Sunday school and prayer meeting. When quite a lad she let him go to New York City to visit a cousin. That cousin took him to see Barnum's circus. It was his first circus, and the wild animals, the bareback riding, trapeze performance, clowns and chariot races bewildered the country boy. Next morning he wrote his aunt, saying: "Dear Aunt, if you'll go to one circus you'll never go to another prayer meeting as long as you live." But ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... up, looking very red in the cheeks and heavy about the eyes.—Hy'r'ye?—he said, and made for an arm-chair, in which he placed first his hat and then his person, going smack through the crown of the former as neatly as they do the trick at the circus. The Professor jumped at the explosion as if he had sat down on one of those small calthrops our grandfathers used to sow round in the grass when there were Indians about,—iron stars, each ray a rusty thorn ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... is really too bad! A perambulating Circus has pitched its tent on the Village Green! When I say tent, I make a mistake; it is a beastly ugly iron thing, that looks simply hideous, and from the durable stoutness of its construction, it evidently is going to be a fixture for some time. My tenants support the Circus ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 3, 1892 • Various
... "You get your knees against that, and what with the high peak and the high cantle you can hardly be chucked out anyhow, that is, if the horse does not buck; but I will try him as to that before you mount. We will lead them out beyond the town, we don't want to make a circus of ourselves in the streets; besides, if you get chucked, you will fall softer there than you would on the road. But first of all we will give them a feed of corn. You see they are skeary of us at present. Indian horses ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... He saw a circus in Ankara, a football game in Budapest, a nullgrav wrestling match in Moscow. He journeyed to the far reaches of Siberia, where Cavour had spent his final years, and found that what had been a bleak wasteland ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... a circus in the attic. We're minstrels. I've got to be blacked up and Willie can't get his dress on—it's too big. Pin it ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... boxes, whose wide-open front doors gave to view the whole domestic economy, including the bed, centre-table, and melodeon. They strolled also on the elevated plank promenade by the beach, encountering now and then a couple enjoying the lovely night. Music abounded. The circus-pumping strains burst out of the rink, calling to a gay and perhaps dissolute life. The band in the nearly empty hotel parlor, in a mournful mood, was wooing the guests who did not come to a soothing tune, something like China—"Why do we mourn departed friends?" A procession of lasses ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... sometimes practised at meetings by unctuous, ill-read politicians, whose abnormal egotism, impudence and ignorance cause them to boast of a devotion for the flag equalled by no one else. The sailor, on the other hand, speaks of it as a thing too sacred to act circus games with. If his shipmate dies at sea, he is sewn up in canvas and covered over with the Union Jack; a heavy weight is placed at his feet, and, with heads bowed low, they silently commit his remains to the deep. If a sailor dies in port, ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... bribe for a repetition. For they had stopped abashed as soon as they found they had a public. Regardless of maternal consequences, I thus encouraged the sport. But after all, was it so much a bribe as an entrance fee to the circus, or better yet, a sort of subsidy from an ex-member of the fraternity? Surely, if adverse physical circumstances preclude profession in person, the next best thing is to become a ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... shame of you," declared Mrs. Cameron. "They'll take us for a wandering circus. Put those unmusical instruments in your pockets till we're clear of the town. I never heard a poor Scottish air so mangled. You may practice your band on the hills and scare the goats. Don't play it in my ears again till you catch the ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... have been put together and replaced in modern times. Augustus, for instance, had two large obelisks brought from Heliopolis to Rome, one of which he placed in the Campus Martius. The other stood upon the Spina, in the Circus Maximus, and is said to have been the same which king Semneserteus (according to Pliny) erected. At the sack of Rome by the barbarians, it was thrown down, and remained, broken in three pieces, amidst the rubbish, until, in 1589, Sixtus V. had it restored by the architect Domenico Fontana, ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... white and shining crystals Covered road and wood and meadow. There were speeches and mass-meetings, When elections stirred the people, Anniversary orations Of the nation's independence. In the springtime came the circus; Summer time, school exhibitions; Fairs and pleasure trips in autumn, Rare festivities in winter. And sometimes there were dissensions, In this era of my story. One disastrous feud was raging, In the year of eighteen fifty, And continued with ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... entered the dining-room, Mrs. Brooks started up in dismay. She had left her sick husband, and come a long distance through the storm, only to find Mrs. Allen gone, and a parcel of children decked out like circus-riders. It seemed ...
— Prudy Keeping House • Sophie May
... was gorgeous. There were mute oysters with wands, drunken oysters with scarves and hat-bands, a sable hearse with hearth-dusters on it, a swindling undertaker's bill, and all the accessories of a first-rate churchyard circus—everything necessary but the corpse. That had been disposed of by the monkey, and the undertaker meanly withheld the use ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... sight and the ability to read fortunes. I foretell good an' evil, questions of love and mattermony by means of numbers, cards, dice, dominoes, apple-parings, egg-shells, tea-leaves, an' coffee-grounds." The speaker's voice had taken on the brazen tones of a circus barker. "I pro'nosticate by charms, ceremonies, omens, and moles; by the features of the face, lines of the hand, spots an' blemishes of the skin. I speak the language of flowers. I know one hundred and eighty-seven weather signs, and I interpet dreams. Now, ladies and gents, ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... Piccadilly Circus with a brisker step. It was no use worrying over questions which could not be examined scientifically. The only really important question in life was ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... rehearse on) One Mr. Vansittart, a good sort of person, Who's also employed for this season to play, In "Raising the Wind," and "the Devil to Pay."[2] We expect too—at least we've been plotting and planning— To get that great actor from Liverpool, Canning; And, as at the Circus there's nothing attracts Like a good single combat brought in 'twixt the acts, If the Manager should, with the help of Sir Popham, Get up new diversions and Canning should stop 'em, Who knows but we'll have to announce in the papers, "Grand ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... was turned into a circus menagerie, and Margaret MacLean and her assistant were turned into keepers. Together they set about the duties for the day with great good-humor. Two seals, a wriggling hippopotamus, a roaring polar bear, a sea-serpent of surprising activities, two teeth-grinding ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... three emperors successively deposed and murdered. The theatre of Pompey and the amphitheatre of Titus still rose in their beauty; and as the Gothic king inhabited the vast and deserted halls of the Caesarean palace, he looked down upon the games of the Circus Maximus, where the diminished but unchanged populace of Rome still justified St. Leo's complaint, that the heathen games drew more people than the shrines of the martyrs whose intercession had saved Rome from Attila. In fine, St. Fulgentius could still say, If earthly ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... rolled nearer and nearer, and finally she saw the King on horseback, with a large party of nobles galloping after him. The King, who was quite an old man, had a very long, curling, white beard, and had his breast completely covered with orders and decorations. No convenient board fence on a circus day was ever more thoroughly covered with elephants and horses, and trapeze performers, than the breast of the King's black velvet coat with jeweled stars and ribbons. But even then, there was not room for all his store, so he had hit upon the ingenious ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... laughed. "Me? I like it. I am sorry to have Miss MacVeigh hurt, but having her in the house with all those pretty things and people coming and going is better than a circus." ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... array of pasted and tacked pictures; some engraved, many colored, and ranging in comprehensiveness of designs, from Bible scenes cut from magazines, to "riots" in illustrated papers; and even the garish glory of circus and theatre posters. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... and was always, whether coming or going, under a heavy fire; but he enjoyed that fact, and he seemed to regard the battle only as a delightful change in the quiet routine of his life, as one of our own country boys at home would regard the coming of the spring circus or the burning of a neighbor's barn. He ran dancing ahead of us, pointing to where a ledge of rock offered a natural shelter, or showing us a steep gully where the bullets could not fall. When they came very near him he would jump high in the air, not because he was startled, but out of ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... You may, perhaps, further remember that whilst the ceremony of saddling was in progress, you casually related one of your most ornate and unassailable anecdotes—how, with that very saddle, you had once backed a roan filly that on the preceding day had broken a circus man's collar-bone? For reasons of your own, you located the performance a hundred miles away; and for proof, you pointed to the saddle itself. Yes; I see you remember it ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... one of his stunts he called "the barnyard," in which he imitated with astonishing likeness the sounds every farm-animal or bird makes ... and by drumming on his guitar as he played, and by the energetic use of his mouth-organ at the same time, he could also make you think a circus band was swinging up the street, with clowns ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... in Theatres did first improve, And Theatres are still the Scene of Love: Nor shun the Chariots, and the Coursers Race; The Circus is no inconvenient Place. Nor Need is there of talking on the Hand, Nor Nods, nor Sighs, which Lovers understand; But boldly next the Fair your Seat provide, Close as you can to hers, and Side by Side: ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... equerries, and nothing was neglected in order that the pages should receive in this particular the most careful education. To accustom them to mount firmly and with grace, they practiced exercises in vaulting, for which it seemed to me they would have no use except at the Olympic circus. And, in fact, one of the horsemen of Messieurs Franconi had charge of this ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... saying as much as the Lord protect me, I swung to me left from whence the noise came and beheld Mrs. Fennell (Sneeze)—God bless us!—rushing out of her own house the way you'd see a wild Injun rushing in the moving pictures and shouting like a circus lion before his breakfast: "Police! police! police!" An' as though it was the will of Providence, I was in the very place where me presence ...
— Duty, and other Irish Comedies • Seumas O'Brien
... and emphasising his function as a rescuer from the dangers of the sea, would have been without meaning for the old Romans who worshipped him merely as a patron of horsemen and horsemanship. The new ideas seem to have had as their centre a later temple in the Circus Flaminius and thus Hercules and Castor may again be paralleled, since they have, each of them, an old cult-centre inside the pomerium, Hercules in the Forum Boarium, Castor in the Forum, and a ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... allowed himself time to recover from his first battle, and his blows were slow and weary. Albert, moreover, was made of sterner stuff than Ted. Though now a peaceful tender of cows, there had been a time in his hot youth when, travelling with a circus, he had fought, week in, week out, relays of just such rustic warriors as Tom. He knew their methods—their headlong rushes, their swinging blows. They were the merest commonplaces of life to him. He slipped Tom, he side-stepped Tom, he jabbed ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... of rescue was greatly impeded by the selfishness of residents. An Indian of the Wallace circus secured a boat and charged people $200 before he would help them off. Instances were told of men who drew revolvers on the men and boys working in the boats, threatening to shoot if they did ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... story came to me at the White House, illustrating alike the calmness and the fighting quality of Woodrow Wilson. The incident happened while he was a student at the University of Virginia. It appears that some of the University boys went to a circus and had got into a fight with the circus men and been sadly worsted. They called a meeting at "wash hall," as they termed it. Many of the boys made ringing speeches, denouncing the brutality and unfairness of the circus people and there was much excitement. ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... happened to hurt their wives' and daughters' feelings. And how are you going to manage? Aren't you afraid that they will hang around, after the show, indefinitely, unless you ask all those who have not received invitations to the dance and supper to clear the grounds, as they do in the circus when the minstrels are going to give a performance not included in the price of admission? Mind, I don't care ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... Square soon perceived that Dick had a natural talent for breaking- in an untrained boneshaker. After a few attempts he could remain on the back of the machine for at least ten yards, and his feats had the effect of endowing St. Luke's Square with the attractiveness of a circus. Samuel Povey watched with candid interest from the ambush of his door, while the unfortunate young lady assistants, though aware of the performance that was going on, dared not stir from the stove. Samuel was tremendously tempted to sally ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... courthouse [U.S.]; ghetto. street, place, terrace, parade, esplanade, alameda[obs3], board walk, embankment, road, row, lane, alley, court, quadrangle, quad, wynd[Scot], close, yard, passage, rents, buildings, mews. square, polygon, circus, crescent, mall, piazza, arcade, colonnade, peristyle, cloister; gardens, grove, residences; block of buildings, market place, place, plaza. anchorage, roadstead, roads; dock, basin, wharf, quay, port, harbor. quarter, parish &c. (region) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... that museum into a circus show, your Excellency. He has named every one of those stuffed animals for somebody in politics he doesn't like, and leads a snickering mob of sight-seers around the room and lectures. When a state officer names a saucer-eyed Canadian lynx for me and then folks ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... bowled down the road toward a group of brick houses on the left, a shell passed not more than fifty yards in front of us and through the side of one of these houses as easily as a circus rider pops through a tissue-paper hoop. Almost at the same instant another exploded—where, I haven't the least idea, except that the dust from it hit us in the face. The motor rolled smoothly along meanwhile, and the Belgian soldier driving ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... along the road, protected on the side of the city by the proud sepulchre of the Roman matron, and up to the long ruined walls of the back of the building stretches a grassy slope, at the bottom of which are the remains of an old Roman circus. Beyond that is the long, thin, graceful line of the Claudian aqueduct, with Soracte in the distance to the left, and Tivoli, Palestrina, and Frascati lying among the hills which bound the view. That Frangipani baron was in the right of it, and I hope he got ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... - one from the Atlantic, the other from the Pacific - to witness the overwhelming success of the only honest, horny-handed, double-breasted patriots - the... party. The roads are found rather sandy east of the pike, and the roadful of wagons going to the circus, which exhibits to-day at ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... dearer to a woman than anything else. How should he know—yet he ought to have done so, if he really was a philosopher—that a woman would want the cleverest man in the world to be a boy and play the fool sometimes; that she would rather, if she was a healthy woman, go to a circus than to a revelation of the mysteries of the mind from an altar of culture, if her own beloved man ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Latins, in whose territory he took the town of Apiolae by storm, and having brought back thence more booty than might have been expected from the reported importance of the war, he celebrated games with more magnificence and display than former kings. The place for the circus, which is now called Maximus, was then first marked out, and spaces were apportioned to the senators and knights, where they might each erect seats for themselves: these were called fori (benches). They viewed the games from scaffolding which supported seats twelve feet in height from the ground. ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... virgins bestowed upon his grandmother Antonia, the daughter of Mark Antony and the faithful friend of Tiberius; he had these same vestal privileges bestowed upon his three sisters, Agrippina, Drusilla, and Livilla; he had assigned to them a privileged position equal to his own at the games in the circus; he even had it decreed that their names should be included in the vows which the magistrates and pontiffs offered every year for the prosperity of the prince and of his people, and that in the prayers for the conservation ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... another and out upon the country road. Just where the town and country met stretched a row of ragged, tumble-down buildings. There was an ill-smelling hotel, with two or three loungers smoking on the sagging veranda, a long fence covered with tattered and glaring circus posters, a half-dozen patched and weather-beaten houses and a row of abandoned sheds ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... the Greek who flew before Nero in the circus; but he, I admit, had a bad fall, as Seutonius recounts. That character of Lucian's, who employed an eagle's wing and a vulture's in his flight, I take to be a mere figment of the satirist's imagination. But what do you make of Simon Magus? He, I cannot doubt, ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... unfortunately, instead of brushing away traditions and going back to the vital conception of Mozart, they sought to modernise it, to convert it into an early Wagner music-drama. The result may be seen in any performance at Covent Garden. The thing becomes a hodge-podge, a mixture of drama, melodrama, the circus, the pantomime, with a strong flavouring of blatherskite. The opera is largely pantomime—it was intended by Mozart to be pantomime; and the only possible way of doing it effectively is to accept the pantomime frankly, but to play it with such force ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... his political Egeria. "During that period," says T. Everett Harre, "when she was known throughout the world as the 'Uncrowned Queen of Bavaria,' Lola Montez wielded a power perhaps enjoyed by no woman since the Empress Theodora, the circus mime and courtesan, was raised to imperial estate by the Emperor Justinian." Well aware of this fact, and much as they objected to it, the Cabinet, headed by von Abel, began by attempting to win her to their ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... traffic, such as the pensive Londoner may study for himself at the intersection of Shaftesbury Avenue with Oxford Street, and unless colossal—or inconveniently steep—crossing-bridges are made, the wider the affluent arteries the more terrible the battle of the traffic. Imagine Regent's Circus on the scale of the Place de la Concorde. And there is the value of the ground to consider; with every increment of width the value of the dwindling remainder in the meshes of the network of roads will rise, until to pave the widened streets with gold will be a mere trifling ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... and white. These horses were ridden by ladies in wonderful blue and silver and pink and gold habits, and by knights in armor, all of whom carried umbrellas also. Pages walked beside the horses, waving banners and shields with "Visit Currie's World-Renowned Circus" painted on them. A droll little clown, mounted on an enormous bay horse, made fun of the pages, imitated their gestures, and rapped them on the back with his riding-stick in a droll way. A long line of blue and red wagons closed ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... somersaults which Pegoud made, two or three thousand feet above the earth, it would be well to see what was the practical use of it all. If this amazing airman had been performing some circus trick in the air simply for the sake of attracting large crowds of people to witness it, and therefore being the means of bringing great monetary gain both to him and his patrons, then this chapter would never have been written. ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... centurion of the Immortals, whom we have already introduced to our readers by the name of Harpax; "Not so, Stephanos; that happy time may arrive, but it is not yet come, my gem of the circus. Thou knowest that on this occasion it is one of these Counts, or western Franks, who undertakes the combat; and the Varangians, who call these people their enemies, have some reason to claim a precedency in guarding the lists, which it ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... he hardly knew. He had a dim memory of wandering through a labyrinth of sordid houses, of being lost in a giant web of sombre streets, and it was bright dawn when he found himself at last in Piccadilly Circus. As he strolled home towards Belgrave Square, he met the great waggons on their way to Covent Garden. The white-smocked carters, with their pleasant sunburnt faces and coarse curly hair, strode sturdily on, cracking their whips, and calling out now and then ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... been making love to his mistress, and then been thrown over in favour of his master once more. And another son, Grigori, after being given a high school education at St. Petersburg, became a lunatic. And another, Alexei, entered the army as a cavalryman, but is now acting as a circus rider, and probably has also become a drunkard. And the youngest son of all, Nikolai, ran away as a boy, and, eventually arriving in Norway with a precious scheme for catching fish in the Arctic Ocean, met ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... in St. Paul by everybody. There is this immense advantage of English or American hospitality over that of all other countries, that it introduces us to the home, and makes us forget that we are strangers. When we were at the end of the fearfully wearisome great moral circus known as the Oriental Congress, held all over Scandinavia in 1890, there came to me one evening in the station a great Norseman with his friends. With much would-be, ox-like dignity he began, "You ha-ave now experienced de glorious haspitality off ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... mare that was only less notorious than her lawless rider. It was noised in travellers' huts and around campfires that she would do more at her master's word than had been known of horse outside a circus. It was the one touch that Stingaree had borrowed from a more Napoleonic but incomparably coarser and crueller knight of the bush. In all other respects the fin de siecle desperado was unique. It was a stroke ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... her. She hurried from house to house. Once, she told him, when she was a little kid, a traveling-man had taken her to a circus, because he was sorry for her. That was the happiest day she had ever spent; it stood out bright and golden in her memory. There had been a steam-piano hoo-hooing "Wait till the clouds roll by, Jenny." Wasn't a steam-piano perfectly grand? ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... not care," he says, "to loiter in the baths of Agrippa and to hear from the idlers there the gossip of the hour. The gladiatorial struggles in the Circus Maximus and the comedies in the theaters have lost for me their relish. For the civic rewards which Tiberius gives his favored ones I have no wish. Senatorships and proconsulships are like the dust in the apothecaries' scales. I ...
— An Easter Disciple • Arthur Benton Sanford
... saw recently at Petworth, whither we are now moving, a travelling circus whose programme included a comic interlude that cannot have received the slightest modification since it was first planned, perhaps hundreds of years ago. It was sheer essential elemental horse-play straight from Bartholomew Fair, and the audience received it with rapture that was vouchsafed ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... Camille. "He owes Bill Stark a pile, and he can't pay a cent of it; and Jack's sense of honor about a poker debt is about the biggest thing in his character. Jack has got to pay. And Bill has a little circus, going to travel all summer, and he's offered big money for you. Jack can pay Bill what he owes him, and we'll have enough to live on, and have lots of fun going around. You hadn't ought to make a fuss ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... of a sudden a new and moving thought. Alfred Williams had been cheated of his boyhood. The chances were he had never gone swimming, nor to a ball game, or maybe never to a circus. It might even be that he had never owned a dog. The Senator from Maxwell was right when he said the boy had never been given his chance, had been defrauded of that which has been a boy's heritage since the world itself ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... Englishman, who arrived at Hongkong from Manila February 11, gives in detail evidence of the conspiracy of the insurgent swarms in attacking the American army. He was at a circus where there were no natives when our soldiers were called out. They behaved nobly, disarming natives, but not killing them. There was mysterious shooting going on in the city "when an American shell struck a tree 200 yards away, and four natives dropped to the ground. ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... the young men, delightful and elegant in black and white, who are so vociferously cheering him, "Will you stand me a cab-fare, ducky, I am feeling so awfully queer?" The soul, the spirit, the entity of Piccadilly Circus is in the words, and the scene the comedian's eyes—each look is full of suggestion; it is irritating, it is magnetic, it ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... the small, soft, but firm hand which it had come to regard as its due, and Ida sprang lightly from the last step into the saddle. It was an informal way of mounting which few girls could have accomplished gracefully; but Ida did it as naturally and as easily as a circus rider, for the trick was a necessity to her who had so often to dismount ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... 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 estimate of ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... his waywardness. Some boys win college-prizes by memorizing their lessons in conformity with the wishes of a dreaded or beloved preceptor, others by dint of natural aptitude and a love of knowledge based on spontaneous inquisitiveness; and every circus-trainer knows that teachers who understand to avail themselves of that gift can teach a monkey tricks which can neither be coaxed nor kicked into the skull of the most docile dog. Besides, the domestic dog is a considerably modified variety of the family to which he belongs, and in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... for a-ready, boy? You goin' to the circus before breakfast? Don't you make no noise, else you'll have 'em all down here before I git my ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... few old stones covered with water-moss. The Roman arena is the rival of those of Verona and of Arles; at a respectful distance it emulates the Colosseum. It is a small Colosseum, if I may be allowed the expression, and is in a much better preservation than the great circus at Rome. This is especially true of the external walls, with their arches, pillars, cornices. I must add that one should not speak of preservation, in regard to the arena at Nimes, without speaking also of repair. After the great ruin ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... resigned on account of age, an experienced teacher, who was an enthusiast in education, succeeded him in that office. Feeling depressed by the lack of life among the children, the latter concluded, after a few weeks, to break the routine by taking thirty of the older boys and girls to a circus. But shortly before the appointed day one of these girls proved so refractory that she was told that she could not be allowed to go. To the new superintendent's astonishment, however, she did not seem disappointed or angered; she merely remarked that she had never ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... clattering sound, like a small army of tin pans on a rampage, suddenly woke the echoes one still, sultry afternoon. Auntie Jean thought it was the circus, and sighed as she wondered if they were going to keep it up long enough to make it worth while for her to leave her cool room and her afternoon nap, to go and stop them. Grandma heard it, and supposed it was Cricket, trying some new experiment as a tinware merchant, and hoped she would soon ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... a picture out of a fourteenth century book, but dad looked like a clown in a circus. One of dad's calves made him look as though he had a milk leg, cause the padding would not stay around where the calf ought to be, but worked around towards his shin. We went to Marlboro House in a hansom cab, and all the way there the driver kept looking ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... a place it looked, that Astley's; with all the paint, gilding, and looking-glass; the vague smell of horses suggestive of coming wonders; the curtain that hid such gorgeous mysteries; the clean white sawdust down in the circus; the company coming in and taking their places; the fiddlers looking carelessly up at them while they tuned their instruments, as if they didn't want the play to begin, and knew it all beforehand! What a glow ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... that, most of the doubles are men, even for the women stars, like Kitty Carson always carries one who used to be a circus acrobat. She couldn't hardly do one of the things you see her doing, but when old Dan gets on her blonde transformation and a few of her clothes, he's her to the life in a long shot, or even in mediums, if he keeps his ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson |
