"Shuffling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... (for we had no passengers;) and I will own there was a pleasant feeling of superiority in being able to walk the deck, and eat, and go about, and comparing one's self with two poor, miserable, pale creatures, staggering and shuffling about decks, or holding on and looking up with giddy heads, to see us climbing to the mast-heads, or sitting quietly at work on the ends of the lofty yards. A well man at sea has little sympathy with one ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... him. As a sustained piece of emotional prose it fell short of the highest standard. Most of it was lost at the back of his throat, and what did emerge was mainly inaudible. However, as she distinctly caught the word 'love' twice, and as Tom was shuffling his feet and streaming with perspiration, and looking everywhere at once except at her, Sally grasped the situation. Whereupon, without any visible emotion, ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... antagonist, and unanswerably establishes the interpretation above stated, by the laws of the Hebrew language, by the ancient interpretation of the Targum, by venerable tradition, and by appealing to history. Rittangelius begins his defence by shuffling, an ends by getting into a passion, and calling names; which his opponent, who is cool, because confident of being able to establish his argument, answers by notifying to Rittangelius his compassion ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... young man behind the desk, and when the same freckle-faced lad, who had pointed out to Joe the manager, came shuffling up, the lad took our hero's satchel, and did a little one-step glide with it ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... hovered a few degrees above zero. The winds that swept down from the North were keen and biting, and the mist-like snow fell fitfully. An old man, his once tall form bent by the burdens and sorrows of sixty odd years, his step slow and shuffling, his clothes unkempt and tattered, his long beard flowing down upon his breast, his eye still bright and in his face lingering traces of refinement, made his way along the deserted street. He was accompanied by a dog, whose long, shaggy hair indicated a blooded ancestry. So emaciated was his form ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... threshold and called the owner by name. There was a shuffling sound in an inner room and the scraping of a match. A minute later a door was opened and an old woman stood in the aperture, fully dressed and carrying ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... I knew by their shuffling, Clubs would be Trump; mass, here's the Knave, and he can do any good upon 'em: ...
— The Puritain Widow • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... ter me," muttered free Levi, shuffling his bare feet in the long grass, "en Marse Dan, he wuz moughty good ter me, too, 'fo' he went away on dat black night. I 'members de time w'en dat ole Rainy-day Jones up de big road (we all call him Rainy-day caze he looked so sour) had me right by de collar wid ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... cleverly. She was gone. I had been so long, to my great vexation, painfully pacing after the slowly-moving, out-shuffling mass of ex-worshippers—dexterously essaying the while to avoid treading on the trailing trains of the ladies, or incurring the anathemas, "not loud, but deep," of gouty old gentlemen with tender feet, which they would put in ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... third act of the drama is yet under rehearsal; the actors are still running in and out of the green-room, and hastily shuffling on their new and ill-fitting dresses; but its general scope is not far to seek. At no distant day our once timid and tearful guest will be turning up her nose at the fare provided for her. "Give me no more youths to teach," she will say; "but pay me handsomely, and let me think. Plato ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... his peer," she thought. "He is as handsome as he is intelligent. What a keen eye he has! What clearly-cut, spirited features—thin and serious, but graceful! I do like his face, I do like his aspect, I do like him so much—better than any of those shuffling curates, for instance—better ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... it, man. You keep shuffling about the edge like a timid boy goin' to dive into deep ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... axes. The boss snatched down his big-bore Snider rifle, slipped in a cartridge, and coolly threw open the cabin door. He was a tall, ruddy-faced, wide-mouthed man, much like the kindly manager of the show. At sight of him, standing there in the door, the bear was overjoyed, and broke into a shuffling run. ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... The girl came shuffling along with a look of mingled stupidity and terror on her face. It was scarcely the same one that had bent over ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... Avonlea; Mrs. Elisha Wright said she understood that Redmond girls, especially those who belonged to Kingsport, were 'dreadful dressy and stuck-up,' and she guessed I wouldn't feel much at home among them; and I saw myself, a snubbed, dowdy, humiliated country girl, shuffling through Redmond's ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... treason and constructive treason. He also disclaimed all participation in the law for taxing America, as he had not been consulted on the subject. The Duke of Grafton complained of both these lords, and accused Camden of meanness and shuffling, in endeavouring to screen himself by accusing others; reminding him, that at the time the act was passed, he was lord-chancellor, and had signified the royal approbation of the act in his official ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... above its gradual soft approach. It passed them, already halfway across the great room. I saw then that its stature was that of ordinary men. The prolonged booming of the clock died away. I heard the footfall, shuffling upon the polished boards. I heard another sound—a voice, low and monotonous, droning as in prayer. The figure was speaking. It was a woman. And she carried in both hands before her a small object that faintly shimmered—a glass of water. And then I ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... useless. What is it we hear the strong-handed Philistines say in the market-place? "Brains are cheap"; that is what we hear them say. And they say truly. Many years ago I became acquainted with a millionaire who had acquired his wealth by building things, raising cattle, erecting factories—not by shuffling the cards ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... the natural inquiry. 'Most of them are crippled, in some form or other,' said the Wardsman, 'and not fit for anything.' They slunk about, like dispirited wolves or hyaenas; and made a pounce at their food when it was served out, much as those animals do. The big-headed idiot shuffling his feet along the pavement, in the sunlight outside, was ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... superficial sketch where we have erred in the past in South Africa. On our hands, too, is the Jameson raid, carried out by Englishmen and led by officers who held the Queen's Commission; to us, also, the blame of the shuffling, half-hearted inquiry into that most unjustifiable business. These are matches which helped to set the great blaze alight, and it is we who held them. But the fagots which proved to be so inflammable, they were not of our setting. They were the wrongs ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... quite a bunch of cattle might shuffling along a dusty road. The night was so quiet you could hear things plain from a long ways off. It growed a little louder and a little nearer. And then it struck a plank bridge somewheres, and come acrost it with a clatter. Then I knowed it wasn't cattle. ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... of that," cried the hag, disabling him for the moment, by a severe blow on the arm from her staff. And shuffling off with an agility which could scarcely have been expected from her, she passed through a gate near her, and ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... shuffling and a whispering at this, and every man nudged his neighbour to begin, but no one spoke till the sergeant felt that it was his duty, and going along the front of both ranks he had a few words with the soldiers ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... their thoughts from Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt, the saviour of his country from the Spanish yoke, as he professed himself in his defence on his trial, and Spain's determined enemy, to Sir Walter Raleigh, whose head had just fallen on the block, the victim of a perfidious foe and of a mean, shuffling king. ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... All these States, compact—Every square mile of these States, without excepting a particle—you also—me also. Me pleased, rambling in lanes and country fields, Paumanok's fields, Me, observing the spiral flight of two little yellow butterflies, shuffling between each other, ascending high in the air; The darting swallow, the destroyer of insects—the fall-traveller southward, but returning northward early in the spring; The country boy at the close of the day, driving the herd of cows, and shouting ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... friendliness she had to concede the point. Immediately afterward he said good-night to his mother and wife, and went in to his study. Madame Carter followed him in, and went upstairs, but Isabelle sat on moodily shuffling and reshuffling the cards, in the bright soft light of the ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... displayed in utter heedlessness! There are whole families leading idle and hungry lives in the splendid sunlight; fathers waiting for work to fall to them from heaven; sons listlessly spending their days asleep on the dry grass; mothers and daughters, withered before their time, shuffling about in loquacious idleness. O Holy Father, already to-morrow at dawn may your Holiness open that window yonder and with your benediction awaken that great childish people, which still slumbers in ignorance and poverty! May your Holiness give it the soul ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Pelle stood there shuffling, in order to fight down his tears; but he had to snigger with mischievous delight at the idea ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... tasks in the kitchen when the two ladies came to pay her a visit. She was sitting in a low, stoutly made chair which had been fashioned expressly for her huge frame, and was shuffling a pack of cards ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... give me, then, if I 'll blurt it out?" asked Adrian, shuffling along sidewise, so that he ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... had completed my survey, a sound of shuffling footsteps was heard; and immediately afterwards there emerged from a passage underneath the staircase, a short, stout good-tempered-looking personage, dressed in a blouse and military trousers, with a cook's cap on his head, and a long white ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... the brother came rushing over him and he yielded himself again to the wonder of the situation till he was reawakened to realities by the shuffling of feet on the stairway and the raised tones of Mrs. Deo as she tried to make herself understood by her new and somewhat difficult guest. A maid followed in their wake, and from some as yet unexplored region below there rose the sound of ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... beautiful music after the rotten, miserable, wretched conditions I had seen in the city. It does a fellow good once in a while to get away from the grip of the tenements, the shades of the skyscrapers, the roar of the factories, and the shuffling, tired footsteps of the crowds, ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... seen in one who has consorted with Chinamen. Even the light eyes seemed to have grown slightly oblique; the voice, the unimpassioned greeting, were those of a son of Cathay. He carried himself with a stoop and had a queer, shuffling gait. ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... The sailors obeyed, shuffling wearily along the deck and painfully endeavoring to make haste. Exhaustion was evident in every movement. The cook came out of his galley to hear, and the cabin ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... morning," said I, "if that's any consolation to you. Good night!" Setting off at a shuffling run, I doubled back along Grosvenor Street and Bond Street to the point where I hoped to pick up the trail again. And just there, at the issue of Bruton Street, two ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... sitting, Throws his shuttle to and fro; Foot and treadle, Hand and pedal, Upward, downward, hither, thither, How the weaver makes them go: As the weaver wills they go. Up and down the web is plying, And across the woof is flying; What a rattling! What a battling! What a shuffling! What a scuffling! As the weaver makes his shuttle Hither, thither, scud and scuttle. Threads in single, threads in double; How they mingle, what a trouble! Every color, what profusion! Every motion, what confusion! While ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... tire. He went on and on at his steady shuffling gait which left the miles behind, while Odin's pack and rifle grew heavier and heavier. But Gunnar did not stop. So Jack gritted his teeth and stumbled after him, while the dead things grinned at them ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... favourable position for seeing and hearing. After waiting till our small stock of patience was nearly exhausted, we were rewarded by hearing the study-door slowly open, followed by the tread of a well-known footstep in the passage. The next sound that reached 60our ears was a quick shuffling of feet upon the oil-cloth, as if the person advancing had "shyed" at some unexpected object; then came the muttered exclamation, "Bless my heart, what's this?" And immediately afterwards Dr. Mildman's face, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... percolated through all the currents of Paris life, so that wherever one goes, in every quarter and at every hour, among the busy confident strongly-stepping Parisians one sees these other people, dazed and slowly moving—men and women with sordid bundles on their backs, shuffling along hesitatingly in their tattered shoes, children dragging at their hands and tired-out babies pressed against their shoulders: the great army of the Refugees. Their faces are unmistakable and unforgettable. No one who has ever caught that stare ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... you won't be back till night," called the deacon from the sleigh; "for this is New Year, and we're going to make a day of it," and he laughed away as heartily as might be—so heartily that the parson joined in the laughter himself as he came shuffling down the icy path toward him. "Bless me! how much younger I feel already!" said the good man as he stood up in the sleigh, and with a long, strong breath breathed the cool, pure air into his lungs. "Bless me! how much younger I feel already!" he repeated, as he settled down ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... thunder didn't them blame boys tell us you'd struck on?" said Uncle Salters, shuffling to his place at the table. "This ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... street-cars began to fill with sunburned passengers, and motors began to purr out of the narrow side streets lined with shoddy buildings which housed the summer sojourners. One more Sunday night's revelry was tapering off into shouted farewells, clanging gongs, honking horns and the shuffling of tired feet ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... upon that of the young girl whose place I had usurped, I placed my elbow on the box and looked out of the window. As I did so I heard a shuffling in the adjoining room, and knew that in another moment the doctor would again appear at the door to announce that he was ready for another patient. How could I evade the summons? The man behind me was a determined one. He was there for the purpose of opening the box, and would not be likely ...
— The Bronze Hand - 1897 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... on a moderate computation, a hundred people, slowly shuffling up these stairs, on their knees, at one time; while others, who were going up, or had come down—and a few who had done both, and were going up again for the second time— stood loitering in the porch below, where an old gentleman in a sort of watch-box, ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... sudden, choking grunt, and abruptly ceased. His eyelids rolled slowly back, like an owl's, revealing pale blue eyes, which fixed themselves first upon the ceiling, then upon Anselme. Instantly he sat up, puffing and scowling, his hands shuffling his papers. ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... dress for the diplomatic service of Japan. Time has proved that he was wrong, and that the Japanese were right in adopting a new uniform, when they wished to fall in line with nations of the West. With their old shuffling habiliments and the cringing manners inseparable from them, they never could have been admitted to intercourse on easy terms with ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... strangled by the easterly blast, met and crossed one another, died away in a side street, to emerge again and again encounter. Such words as were distinguishable seemed of sinister import, agitating to the imagination. Then de Courcy Smyth's shuffling footsteps crossed the floor of the room overhead. The wire-wove mattress of his bed creaked as he sat on the edge of it, kicking off his slippers and putting on walking boots, as might be gathered from floppings followed by an equally nerveless but heavier tread. A ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... her nose and said over her shoulder, even as she sailed on. "Besides being a Haer, I'm an M.D., captain. At the ludicrous sight of a man shuffling about in ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... took it, ducked again, and retired silently, and there was presently a great shuffling of ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... distant and thin strain of mirthful music which steadily grew nearer, louder and merrier. The bells in the tower began to break forth into a doubling peal, and a greater and greater concourse of people to crowd into the church, shuffling the snow from off their feet, and clapping and blowing in their hands. The western door was flung wide open, showing a glimpse of sunlit, snowy street, and admitting in a great gust the shrewd air of the morning; and in short, it ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hot July morning Mrs. Holt was sweeping the front porch when a forlorn specimen of humanity came shuffling up the front walk and asked to see Dr. Holt. Mrs. Holt took him into the office and ran to the garden to tell George his first patient had come. His face had been flushed from pulling weeds, ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... being discovered, and in an instant had swung it open, and was standing in the long covered way outside. She drew the door to after her noiselessly, then sank upon her knees and listened. In a short while she heard the nurse come shuffling down the corridor, and the creaking of her chair as she sank heavily into it. So far, she felt that she ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... the pencil," said Mrs. Wragge, shuffling the circulars in a violent hurry. "I can't go to bed yet—I haven't half done marking down the things I want. Let's see; where did I leave off? Try Finch's feeding-bottle for Infants. No! there's a cross against that: the cross ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... servant who opened the door gave him another verbal message from Miss Wrackgarth. It was that he must wipe his feet "well" on the mat. In obeying this order he experienced a thrill of satisfaction he could not account for. He must have stood shuffling his boots vigorously for a full minute. This, he told himself, was life. He, Albert Grapp, was alive. And the world was full of other men, all alive; and yet, because they were not doing Miss Wrackgarth's bidding, none ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... long familiar in the streets of Warwick, a blind news-vender, with his cane and smoked glasses and bundle of papers. In the morning, he might be seen at the railroad station, a grotesque and patient form, holding out his papers silently in the direction of the shuffling feet that passed by. He never cried his wares, but his appeal was more compelling than the noisy shouts of his more fortunate competitors. He had become an institution in Warwick. Every one knew where ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... of this service, back clear out of the zone of fire; fresh men come up to take their places, and so on. All you see as you whirl through is a sentry here, a soldier's head there at a second-story window, a company shuffling along ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... Towsley had taken his ragged cap in his hand, fastened his torn jacket by its one button, and was shuffling carefully along the hall toward the front door. Miss Armacost espied ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... we turn to that political party which is so anxiously shuffling him and his plot out of its way, and looking around for some available slave holder, perhaps, to be its candidate, at least for one who will execute the Fugitive Slave Law, and all those other unjust laws which he took ...
— A Plea for Captain John Brown • Henry David Thoreau
... then. 'Twas the cat those men wanted. Before Pierre Radisson had said one word the mutineers had discovered the deck cannon pointing amidships. A shout of baffled rage broke from the ragged group. Quick words passed from man to man. A noisy, shuffling, indeterminate movement! The crowd swayed forward. There was a sudden rush from the fo'castle to the waist. They had charged to gain possession of the powder cabin—Pierre Radisson raised his pistol. For ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... days in the week, probably more flogging occurs on Friday than during all the others put together. On the unfortunate, the shuffling, and the dense, the effect of this day's ordeal has ever proved to be most searching. On Thursday, then, towards the conclusion of eleven o'clock school, the boys were not a little delighted, when Keate, ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... anniversary of the Eureka Stockade—he had watched some two to three hundred men, with crepe on their hats and sleeves, a black-draped pole at their head, march there to do homage to their fallen comrades. The dust raised by the shuffling of these many feet had accompanied the procession like a moving cloud; had lingered in its rear like the smoke from a fire. Drays and lorries crawled for ever laboriously along it, seeming glued to the earth by the monstrous sticky heat ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... footmen, under their own awning, instead of hiring it with the supper and the ball-room chairs. They had also inaugurated the custom of letting the ladies take their cloaks off in the hall, instead of shuffling up to the hostess's bedroom and recurling their hair with the aid of the gas-burner; Beaufort was understood to have said that he supposed all his wife's friends had maids who saw to it that they were properly coiffees when ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... A shaft of sunshine pierced the rosy glass windows and fell upon the hieratic figure of the bearded Christ, which glowed supernally. In the chancel the Psalms had died away and the only sound was that of sandals shuffling over marble floors. The man turned the lock. It was a return to the world as if one had participated ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... on a blazing day in June, when the very air, tired of being hot, leaned heavily upon us, and we felt unequal to contest, that a cough outside my open door announced a visitor. "Come in!" Another cough, and I looked out and saw a shuffling form disappear round the corner of the house. I called again, and the figure turned. It was a man who had helped us before, but about whose bona-fides we had doubts; so we asked without much hopefulness what he had to tell us. He said he had reason to believe a certain Temple woman known ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... foot in tobacco-smoke, were the farm-hands, playing cards. They sat wrapped up in their game, bending over their little table, very quiet. Now and then came a half-oath and the thud of a fist on the table and then again peaceful shuffling and stacking and playing of ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... seen him when he stood up to sing at our concerts—his tight little figure stepping to and fro, and his feet shuffling to the air, his eyes seeking and bestowing encouragement—and to have enjoyed the bow, so nicely calculated between jest and earnest, between grace and clumsiness, with which he brought each song to a conclusion. He was not only a great favourite among ourselves, but his songs attracted the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... beautiful things: the directness of contact with men and women gave a thrill of power which he had never known. He found an endless excitement in looking at their faces and hearing them speak; they came in each with his peculiarity, some shuffling uncouthly, some with a little trip, others with heavy, slow tread, some shyly. Often you could guess their trades by the look of them. You learnt in what way to put your questions so that they should be understood, you discovered ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... whistling and the shuffling of feet, felt a queer, qualmy feeling in the region of his diaphragm, and he yielded to a hunger for consolation and company in his misery. He edged over to where Chip and Cal were amusing themselves by peeping at the audience from ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... A shuffling step is now audible outside the door; she opens wide her tawny-hazel eyes, that have a look of gazing on the world in surprise, a smile parts her lips and her whole aspect is as completely changed as that of a butterfly which escapes from the shade into the sunshine where the bright beams ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... "what a quaint name;" and he started to follow the Reverend Joel Byram, who was shuffling towards the ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... hanging upon the parapet of the bridge we found a somewhat reluctant cab and drove homeward through the muted Sunday streets. The roar of the city was still there, but it was subdued; the crowd was still abroad, but it was an aimless, idle, shuffling crowd. The air itself seemed more vacant than on week-days, and there was a silencing suspense everywhere. The poor were out in their poor best, and the children strayed along the streets without playing, or lagged homeward behind their parents. There were no vehicles ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... looked after him, then, reflectively, at the closed door. Outside the sound of shuffling feet alone broke the stillness; before the book-stand the bibliomaniac buried his face deeper in the musty ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... houses. Only sun-burnt street-pavers in bast shoes were sitting in the middle of the street, setting boulders into the hot sand; gloomy policemen in unstarched blouses and carrying revolvers attached to yellow cords, were lazily shuffling about, and tram-cars with drawn blinds on the sides exposed to the sun, and drawn by white-hooded horses, were running ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... meantime they reached the brink. And now began the shuffling of the elephant's feet, the nodding, the movements of the ears, the gurgling, and again the mournful trumpeting when Nell attempted to retire even for a moment. In the end the little maid began to explain to the ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... once said to me, "If he had asked me for as much money as would have built a frigate he should have had it. All I want now is to be paid, and to get rid of the business." M. Collot had reason and honour on his side; but there was nothing but shuffling on the other. ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... and desire. Then he followed the parlour-maid into the house smoking. As he entered the dinner-bell rang, and there was the sound of rushing feet, which died away into shuffling and silence. Through the window of the boys' dining-hall came the ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... Another hour. The watcher's eyelids grew leaden; a great emptiness, a lonely dread, crept through him. He shivered in the growing chill of the room. At last, a little before ten, there came the sound of shuffling steps in the hall, followed by a fumbling at the door, which presently swung back as Joseph appeared on the threshold and paused, blinking ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... occasion. He rapidly reloaded the emptied chambers of his revolver. Stepping to the door of the inner room he spoke some soothing words, and then hurrying back, he drew the ponderous bedstead away. Outside he heard shuffling, as of footsteps, and thought they might be dragging away those who had been wounded last. All this had been done in a moment. To unlock the door, to spring forward with leveled pistol upon his assailants, was but the work ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... to take aim and fire as well as any man, and she stood with the gun firmly held in her strong young arms, and pointed towards the door. For one breathless moment—which seemed a year—they waited. The growl sounded nearer, and a swift shuffling of clumsy feet told them that some ponderous animal was approaching. The next instant the object of ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... sir, if you meant that remark as an insult," cried Distin, "and you evade answering, in the meanest and most shuffling way. I was under the impression when I came down to Greythorpe it was to read with English gentlemen, ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... a great movement in the hall. The deputies poured out in a disorderly mob into the corridors, while the ushers passed the white metal urn along the tiers of seats. The corridors were full of the sound of shuffling feet, and of shouting and gesticulating people. Grave looking young men and excited old ones went passing by. The air was pierced with the sound of voices ...
— Marguerite - 1921 • Anatole France
... enjoying themselves as the four were certainly capable of doing, they were noticeably restless; listened for the shuffling of careless feet on the steps, and the sound of uncultured voices in the hall, and waited expectantly whenever the bell pealed, only to be obliged to send word to some caller that "Mr. ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... he would, Veitel's eyes could not follow this rapid shuffling, so he seized the packet, and while the enraged official, catching hold of him, exclaimed, "What are you about, man! how dare you?" he devoured the directions, gave back the letters, and touching his hat, coolly said, "Nothing for me; do not lose the post; I am going to the councilor," ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... through the snow and came to a stop with a clang and a roar, disgorging a chattering holiday crowd who paused for a change of cars at Cotesville on their southbound trips. Uncle Noah hastened his shuffling footsteps: the Northern Express with its horde of transient visitors had been a vital part of the inspiration. Upon the station platform people stamped up and down in the snow or laughed and chatted, quite oblivious ...
— Uncle Noah's Christmas Inspiration • Leona Dalrymple
... of the five greatest jewel houses in New York were assiduous in their search for that copperplate superscription in their daily mail. On the morning of the eighth day it came. Mr. Latham was nervously shuffling his unopened personal correspondence when he came upon it—a formal white square envelope, directed by that same copperplate hand which had directed the boxes. He dropped into his chair, and opened the envelope with eager fingers. Inside was ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
... ranks, that they were making for the communications of the boaster Pope, the regiments stepped out with renewed energy. "There was no need for speech, no breath to spare if there had been—only the shuffling tramp of marching feet, the rumbling of wheels, the creak and clank of harness and accoutrements, with an occasional order, uttered under the breath, and always the same: "Close up, men! Close up!""* (* "Battles and Leaders volume ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... is Dill's room it's a horrible place," he thought to himself, sitting down by a table and shuffling a ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... shuffling a pack of grimy cards, sat Old Meg, a horrible old hag, wrinkled in face like a mummy, with only the stumps of teeth which had more the appearance of tusks. Her unkempt hair was matted and ugly wisps of it hung down over her bleary eyes. For clothes she wore ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... of the Caucasian's habit of shuffling off on God those ills for which he will not face the responsibility himself, and I am inclined to think that this is one of them. In my own experience the explanation of "God's Will" made to the mother of a little family left fatherless, or to the ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... the bower which had been made of the porch, Chester, disgracefully shuffling off the duties of host and lounging with Macauley and two or three other of the young married men, reported through the flower-hung window the progress of the ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... Oriental custom, were allowed to go about unattended by the usual guard of eunuchs, but that they walked in a painful, hesitating, and impeded manner. This walk was not the conventional, short, shuffling step that peculiarity of dress and shoe-wear imposes on the Japanese beauty, nor the willowy, swaying gait produced in the Chinese beauty by the lack of a sufficiency of foot; neither could it be ascribed to the presence of the ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... round shallow tray, 40 centimeters in diameter and usually of plaited rattan strips with a rim of thicker rattan. It is held in both hands and by a series of shuffling motions, which are better seen than described, accompained[sic] by a peculiar movement of the thumb of the left hand, the chaff and the little broken fragments of rice are thrown off into another receptacle for ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... friar, in robe of rough gray frieze, his head covered by a pointed hood, his otherwise bare feet protected by sandals, in his hand a stout cudgel, shuffling along on snow-shoes and dragging his scanty possessions on a sled, or, if it was summer, paddling his canoe from one lonely cabin to another, celebrating mass wherever he could get together a half-dozen people, telling ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... puffed fiercely, like a locomotive blowing off steam. Then he rose and took two or three turns up and down the gallery, shuffling his feet, his chest heaving. Then ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... There was no further voice of the orator; but thee arose a wild, plaintive sound of chanting, a song which none but those who sang it might have understood. Its savage unison rose and fell for just one bar or so, and then sank to sudden silence. There came a quick shuffling of feet in separation. The group fell apart. The store was empty! Out in the open air, under the warm summons of the sun, there passed a merry, laughing group of negroes, happy, care-free, each humming the burden of some simple song, each slouching across ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... sovereigns he gave me himself at different times with his own hand." "You surprise me." "I saw him coming once with his servants. I had my baby in my arms—that's she that lives in that cottage yonder, she's grown a woman now—and I was shuffling along to get out of his way, when he called out, 'What a beautiful little babe, let me look at it,' and then he smiled and made as though he would shake hands with the child, and, bless you, he slipped half-a-sovereign into my hand." I confess I was delighted at the little anecdote, ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... was a shuffling step which Adah knew was Sam's, and remembering the conversation once held with him concerning that golden locket, whose original Sam was positive he had seen, Alice waited curious for his entrance. With hobbling steps the old man came in, scarcely noticing ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... and down they talked of professional beggars and what a problem they are to India, because they both happened as they turned to catch sight of Umra with the one eye, entering through the little gate in the wall and shuffling without modesty or a moment's hesitation to his favorite seat among the shrubs, ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... The shadows move about, And some one seems to overhear our talk. The fire is low; the candles flicker out; The ghosts of former tenants want to walk. Already they are shuffling through the gloom. I felt an old man touch my shoulder-blade; Once he was married here; they love this room, He and his woman and the child they made. Dead, dead, they are, yet some familiar sound, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... it were a quarter-circle. His hands were clutched behind his back, and with this singular motion, and in this singular attitude, he began to move his feet; and still groaning and half bowing, he made a shuffling progress across the hall. ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... big front chamber?" said the little boy, shuffling his feet, and looking down at ...
— Captain Horace • Sophie May
... manoeuvres by frightening the colonel's horse. In 1858 I was quartered for a time with a naval brigade; and once, when there was an alarm of the enemy, Jack went to the front with all his pets, including Bruin, which brought up the rear, shuffling along in blissful ignorance of the bubble reputation to be found at the ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... opening door after door of several bedrooms, ranged on both sides of it; into each, speaking a word, which, though only in whisper, seems to awake a sleeper as if a cannon were discharged close to his ears. Then succeeds a general shuffling, as of men hastily putting on coats and boots, with an occasional grunt of discontent at slumber disturbed; but neither talking nor angry protest. Soon, one after another, is seen issuing forth from his sleeping apartment, skulking along the corridor, out through the ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... fellow had, of course, failed in his examination, and this had renewed the Colonel's resentment at his laziness and shuffling. He was, however, improved by contact with strangers, looked and behaved less bearishly, and had acquired a will to do better. Still, it was not possible to regret his absence, except because it involved that of his brother; and, with a great effort, and many assurances of ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... play, as usual. Will you make the third, Lavvie?" inquired Valentine, shuffling the cards. "It's no use asking Zack; he can't even ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... footsteps shuffling across the yard, and then one of the robbers spoke, in the quavering tones of ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... hurrying crowd. State and Monroe. A sound came to Terry's ears. A sound familiar, beloved. To her ear, harassed with the roar and crash, with the shrill scream of the crossing policemen's whistle, with the hiss of feet shuffling on cement, it was a celestial strain. She looked up, toward the sound. A great second-story window opened wide to the street. In it a girl at a piano, and a man, red-faced, singing through a megaphone. And on a ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... food upon a donkey, and gave the boy directions where to meet him—a considerable distance from the appointed spot. He went himself on foot. He slipped in the heat along the sandy street, where strings of camels still go slouching, shuffling with their loads from the quarries that built the pyramids, and he felt that little friendly Helouan tried to keep him back. But desire now was far too strong for caution. The desert tide was rising. It easily swept him down the long white street towards the enormous ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... continually to plead their claims and distract us from our single decided course, is one of the most potent forces in winning success. To hesitate is sometimes to be lost. In fact, the man who is forever twisting and turning, backing and filling, hesitating and dawdling, shuffling and parleying, weighing and balancing, splitting hairs over non-essentials, listening to every new motive which presents itself, will never accomplish anything. There is not positiveness enough in him; negativeness never accomplishes anything. The negative man creates no confidence, ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... at her own door, Pillow and bobbins all her little store; Content though mean, and cheerful if not gay, Shuffling her threads about the live-long day, Just earns a scanty pittance, and at night, Lies down secure, her heart and pocket light; She, for her humble sphere by nature fit, Has little understanding, and no wit, Receives no praise; but, though her lot be such, (Toilsome and indigent) she renders ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... and local government in many Negro districts. Little by little the Democrats rooted out these last vestiges of Negro control, using all the old radical methods and some improvements,* such as tissue ballots, the shuffling of ballot boxes, bribery, force, and redistricting, while some regions were placed entirely under executive control and were ruled by appointed commissions. With the good government which followed ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... an awful distance, never venturing to offer her a bit of broiled lark, or set before her a dish of crabs,—beaming back with a grin from ear to ear, if Miss Agatha so much as smiled on her, breaking into the wildest of dances and shuffling out the shrillest of tunes after every such incident. Moreover, Miss Agatha was hedged about with a dignity of grief, and the indistinct pity given her made her safe from other intrusion; for Mas'r Andersen, in bringing home a Northern ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... I don't know which. "Are you all right?" the Duchess' voice whispered, and no doubt my face was ashen. "Quite," whispered my voice. But this pathetic monosyllable was the last gasp of the social instinct in me. Suddenly, as the "voluntary" swelled to its close, there was a great sharp shuffling noise. The congregation had risen to its feet, at the entry of choir and vicar. Braxton had risen, leaving me in daylight. I beheld his towering back. The Duchess, beside him, glanced round at me. But I could not, dared not, stand up into that presented back, ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... paper, glanced at the number on the house, and then, with the impatience of a child, he furiously kicked the door. There were signs of numerous other such kicks. A response came in the shape of a shuffling footstep in the hall, a turning of the rusty key, and a sharp face that peered through a cautious opening in ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... interminable evening in the beer-cellar will remain stamped in my memory. I can still see the scene in its every detail, and I know I shall carry the picture with me to the grave; the long, low room with its blackened ceiling, the garish yellow gaslight, the smoke haze, the crowded tables, Otto, shuffling hither and hither with his mean and sulky air, Frau Hedwig, preoccupied at her desk, red-eyed, a graven image of woe, and Haase, presiding over the beer-engine, silent, defiant, calm, but watchful every time the ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... hot place was a lot of merry devils laughing and shouting, with an old pack of greasy cards—it reminded me of them we used to play with at the Rendezvous—shuffling them to the time of the Devil's Dream, and Money Musk; then they'd deal in slow time, with the Dead March in Saul, whistling as solemn as medicine-men. Then they broke out sudden with Paddy O'Rafferty, which made this hoss move ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... pregnant, was broken by the shuffling of feet. Evidently Kipping drew off to kick the door a second time. His boot struck it a terrific blow, but the door, instead of breaking, flew open and crashed against the ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... the doorway at an azure and almost speckless sky. There was an uneasy shuffling of boots. One of the boys from The Beaches giggled. Cap'n Abe—and the fishfly—boomed on together, the storekeeper evidently visualizing the scene he narrated and not the half-lighted and goods-crowded ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... there now came the sound of music; a phonograph had been started, and it was plain from the shuffling of feet that the girls inside were dancing. Dolly crept closer and closer, until she reached one of the windows. Even as she did it a sharp, shrill voice cried out, and Bessie saw someone rush toward her from the darkness of a clump of trees ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Mountains - or Bessie King's Strange Adventure • Jane L. Stewart
... was restored to the upper rooms the Duchess was on her feet as soon as the door opened for the entrance of the gentlemen. Then it might have been seen that she had a purpose, for as soon as the elements had again, with a due amount of the usual shuffling and mismatching, been mixed, her case proved the first to have been settled. She had got Mr. Longdon beside her on a sofa that was just right for two. "I've seized you without a scruple," she frankly said, "for there are things I want ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... Piper, loudly shuffling his feet to drown the noise as he stealthily cracked a peanut, "that there are scoundrels in our very midst who would feel no compunction in swiping plugged money from a contribution box. Doubtless," he continued, deftly snapping the shelled kernels ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... bit of ecarte," said Ladislas, shuffling the cards. "You see, Countess, I am very fond of cards. Why? Because card-games are symbolic. ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... coffee had been downed and pipes lighted, Sims gave the order to march. The herd was nearly still now, and roused with much complaining, but the dogs were inexorable, and presently the two thousand were shuffling on, feeding now and then, ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... of unassuming authority ordered the scattered people to condense. Starboard gangway, there! side away to larboard—larboard gangway to starboard! Midships! midships! There was a low rumbling of heavy sea-boots among the benches, and a still slighter shuffling of women's shoes, and all was quiet again, and every eye on the preacher. He paused a little; then kneeling in the pulpit's bows, folded his large brown hands across his chest, uplifted his closed eyes, .. and offered ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... far that treatment may have preyed upon and corroded his heart. Who shall say that with this consciousness there did not mingle a quick and instinctive perception of the hidden motives of action,—that he did not sometimes detect, where others might have been blind, the under-shuffling of the hands, in ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... both very still until the shuffling of the physician's slippered feet was heard in the passage. Then the Countess roused herself and answered the appeal with ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt |
