"Acrobat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... speech). Whist! Was that a shillin' he gave ye? That makes ten ye have now, thin. Bun like a hare an' put ut on Acrobat at the best ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 21, 1920 • Various
... always liable to find the shifty sands of American opinion yield suddenly under their feet. With this game an elderly friend had long before carried acquaintance as far as he wished. There was nothing in it for him but the amusement of the pugilist or acrobat. The larger study was lost in the division of interests and the ambitions of fifth-rate men; but foreign affairs dealt only with large units, and made personal relation possible with Hay which could not be maintained with Roosevelt or Lodge. As an ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... the swimmer; how was it with the agile and dexterous skater; how with the acrobat, and what but practice has just enabled WESTON to walk one hundred and twelve miles in twenty-four hours, and four hundred miles ...
— A Project for Flying - In Earnest at Last! • Robert Hardley
... a subtle motive in this awkward tarrying at the door, and, having no objection to gratifying it, he straightway introduced Mr. Wesley Tiffles to Miss Philomela Wilkeson. Mr. Tiffles put himself into the form of an L, like a professional acrobat; and Miss Wilkeson executed a courtesy in the old, exploded style. Then, as if appalled at what she had done, she backed into the entry as fast as she ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... very wise to develop your ability along the line of acrobatic dancing rather than as an acrobat. There is a vast difference. As a mere acrobat one has to be a top-liner and wonderfully expert to get any kind of a salary at all, but as an acrobatic dancer you can command a place in the very best stage productions, high class musical comedies, musical ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... get dizzy!" a voice was saying and Laura for the first time noticed that a boy was scaling the wall. Favored by the thick vines and uneven stones up he went with the agility of an acrobat. He was bareheaded and the sun shone on his face, reddened with exertion, and on his sandy hair and Laura recognized him as one of the Stony Road boys, the one she had talked with on ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... of the back, the suspended insect raises itself and fixes the talons of the anterior limbs in the empty skin above it. Never did acrobat, hanging by the toes to the bar of a trapeze, raise himself with so stupendous a display of strength in the loins. This gymnastic feat accomplished, the rest ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... him well. Don't forget his overcoat, olive green, nor his cloak with its morocco collar, nor the striped blue cotton shirt. In this queer figure—so original that we cannot rub it out—how many divers personalities we come across! In the first place, what an acrobat, what a circus, what a battery, all in one, is the man himself, his vocation, and his tongue! Intrepid mariner, he plunges in, armed with a few phrases, to catch five or six thousand francs in the frozen seas, in the domain of the red Indians who inhabit ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... rogue of a Babs is a match for you already. Why don't you put her in her cot and order her to go to sleep, instead of crooning absurd ditties over her? Oh, I thought so," severely, as Babs grasped her toes with her dimpled hands in the practised style of an acrobat, and gurgled defiantly in his face; "she is just exulting over her own victory as ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... stroke, and stopping occasionally to take breath, or look about him, as he did in his lectures. Thoreau came sometimes and performed rare glacial exploits, interesting to watch, but rather in the line of the professional acrobat. What a transfiguration of Hawthorne, to think of him skating alone amid the reflections of a brilliant ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... soon found out how limited is the circle of fame for even a successful writer. For one person who would read a book, there were fifty who would go to hear a famous singer or actor, and a hundred who would crowd to see a clever acrobat. As she read more she discovered that what she had fondly imagined were ideas originated by her own intellect, was, in reality, the echo only of thought long since given to mankind by other minds, in other words, often better ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... idea to be immediately dispelled from the mind, for that the Annals was composed by such a man would have been about as incomprehensible an occurrence, as it would be impossible to conceive that an acrobat who exercises gymnastic tricks upon the backs of galloping horses in an American circus could discharge the functions of a First Lord of the Treasury or a Justice in the High Court of Judicature, or that a pantaloon in a Christmas pantomime could think out ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... the kid," said Ben Flint. "He's free from vice and as clever as paint. He's a born acrobat. Might as well try to teach a duck to swim. It comes natural. Heredity of course. There's nothing he won't be able to do when I'm finished with him. Yet there are some things which lick me altogether. He's ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... this truculence, which was the first and most alarming trait to intrude itself upon the observer's attention, the outstanding characteristic of Chief Inspector Kerry was his compact neatness. Of no more than medium height but with shoulders like an acrobat, he had slim, straight legs and the feet of a dancing master. His attire, from the square-pointed collar down to the neat black brogues, was spotless. His reefer jacket fitted him faultlessly, but his trousers were cut so unfashionably narrow that the protuberant thigh ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... into the tendencies of the age, the adoption of a system, and faith in fixed principles—that is to say, a scheme of jurisprudence, a summing-up, and a verdict. The critic is then a magistrate of ideas, the censor of his time; he fulfils a sacred function; while in the former case he is but an acrobat who turns somersaults for a living so long as he had a leg to stand on. Between Claude Vignon and Lousteau lay the gulf that divides ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... to descend one or more of the silver mines; indeed, it may be said to be the one thing to do at Zacatecas, but for which only the most awkward means imaginable are supplied, such as ladders formed of a single long, notched pole, quite possible for an acrobat or performer on the trapeze. It is up and down these hazardous poles that the Indian miners, in night and day gangs, climb, while carrying heavy canvas bags of ore weighing nearly or quite two hundred pounds each. The writer is free to acknowledge that he did not improve ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... beast, and showed it. Besides, even if I'd dared, I should have had no chance to straighten matters out; for though the flag-episode was after all no fault of Slaney's, there were a few little things which had escaped even his Napoleonic memory; and it was only by combining the feats of an acrobat with those of a juggler that I saved my reputation ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... gala night at the Royal Circus. Ricardo Harringtoni, the wonderful new acrobat of whom everybody was talking, stood high above the crowd on his platform. His marvellous performance on the swinging horizontal bar was about to begin. Richard Harrington (for it was he) was troubled. Since he had entered ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various
... said Tilda wearily. "I dunno. If a body can't do without father an' mother, I'll make up a couple to please you, same as I made up a aunt for Glasson. Maggs's Circus is where I belong to, an' there 'twas Tilda, or 'The Child Acrobat' when they billed me." ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... run quietly along some boards laid over the loft ceiling, and, making a jump that would not have disgraced an acrobat, he caught at a rope, pendent from the highest portion of the rafters, twisted his legs about it, and swung easily ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... "This morning an Acrobat and Society Contortionist made such a fuss that in the end I had to take his card in to the private office. Mr. Quhayne was there talking to a gentleman whom I recognised as his brother, Mr. Colquhoun. They were engrossed in their conversation, and did not notice me for a moment. With no wish ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... stop the frightened steeds dashing on to death. As she approached I was electrified. Something told me she was Bob's fiancee. A moment and I was charging the hunter under that tree. Jumping up out of the saddle, I clasped the solitary branch with both hands, and turning as an acrobat would on a trapeze, I hung by my legs, hands downwards, calling to the lady to clasp them. The fiery steeds and the oscillating carriage dashed under me—our hands met. With a superhuman effort I raised the fainting fairy form out of the vehicle ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... up to Will, tossed the boy a half-penny, and then began to laugh heartily, at the rapid contortions of the little acrobat. ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... think," I grinned, "and you've given him plenty of reason to think it. You can't bring your crate in to the base without stunting around and showing off and risking your damn neck. That's why he sent me along with you this trip. Just to see that you act like a pilot—instead of circus acrobat." ...
— Larson's Luck • Gerald Vance
... want hearty laughter, country mirth— Or frantic gestures of an acrobat, Heels over head—or floating lace skirts worth I know not what, a large eccentric hat And diamonds, the gift of some dull boy— Then when you see her do not wrong Yvette, Because Yvette is not a clever toy, A tawdry doll in fairy limelight set ... And should her song ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... than to a cannon-ball, and who now hobbles about on rheumatic joints, by the help of a stick; the corpulent elder, who rowed when boats had gangways down their middle, and did not require as delicate a balance as an acrobat's at the top of a living pyramid—these are the persons whom I cannot see without an occasional sigh. They are really conscious that they have lost something which they can never regain; or, if they momentarily forget it, it is even more forcibly ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... the fire escapes are put up so as to conform to the letter of the law; and in such manner that no one but a sailor or an acrobat would be likely to trust himself to them. In crowded city buildings, and in other places where the ordinary means of escape are not in duplicate, it is essential that fire escapes should be provided; ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... the yacht, permitted Tagg and Royson to accept the proffered civility. They passed a pleasant evening, and saw the female acrobat negotiate a thirty-feet jump, head downward, taken through space by the automobile. Then they elected to walk to No. 3. Basin, a distance of a mile and a half. It was about eleven o'clock and a fine night. The docks road, a ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... was absorbed by later and equally interesting events: an acrobat broke his leg at the circus; an actress made her debut at a small theatre: and the item of the 28th ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... and not being in the habit of dressing without assistance, she was tardy, and Mysie fidgeted about and nearly distracted her. Thus, when she reached the nursery, Primrose was already in her little white bed-gown, and was being incited by Valetta to caper about on her cot, like a little acrobat, as her sisters said, while Mrs. Halfpenny declared that 'they were making the child that rampageous, she should not get her ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... higher. The experience of centuries shows that gymnastics exist for the soul as well as for the body. But what the soul's gymnastics are is our secret. What is it that gives to the sailor the sight of an eagle, that endows the acrobat with the skill of a monkey, and the wrestler with muscles of iron? Practice and habit. Then why should not we suppose the same possibilities in the soul of the man as well as in his body? Perhaps on the grounds of modern science—which either dispenses with the soul altogether, or does ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... than the loves of Mr. Punch, while others again are of the knock-about style so dear to the ordinary boy and girl. Besides such entertainments as these, the streets of a Chinese city offer other shows to those who desire to be amused. An acrobat, a rope-dancer or a conjurer will take up a pitch right in the middle of the roadway, and the traffic has to get on as best it can. A theatrical stage will sometimes completely block a street, and even foot-passengers will have to find their way round. There is also the public ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... room and stood aghast in the doorway at the spectacle of Mr. Gunnill, with his clenched fists held tightly by his side, bounding into the air with all the grace of a trained acrobat, while Mr. Drill encouraged him from an easy-chair. Mr. Gunnill smiled broadly as he met their astonished gaze, and with a final bound kicked something along the floor and subsided into ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... lit upon the trough and, skilled little acrobat, balanced upon the extreme edge as if thus to take in the full beauty of old ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... himself. He was not in love with Mademoiselle Olympe. He had no wish to speak to her, or to hear her speak. Nothing could have been easier, and nothing further from his desire, than to know her personally. A Van Twiller personally acquainted with a strolling female acrobat! Good heavens! That was something possible only with the discovery of perpetual motion. Taken from her theatrical setting, from her lofty perch, so to say, on the trapeze-bar, Olympe Zabriski would have shocked every aristocratic ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... muscular bumblebee booms along. Owing to his great strength, an inverted, pendent blossom, from which he must cling upside down, has no more terrors for him than a trapeze for the trained acrobat. His long tongue - if he is one of the largest of our sixty-two species of Bombus - can suck almost any flower unless it is especially adapted to night-flying sphinx moths, but can he drain this? He is the truest benefactor of the European columbine (q.v.), whose spurs suggested the talons ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... imagination itself really is in this relation is a mystery which is very difficult to solve. I have heard of an old French gentleman who, when in a circus, expressed an opinion that there was nothing remarkable in the wonderful performances of an acrobat on a tight-rope, or trapeze. "Voyez-vous monsieur" he exclaimed; "Ce n'est que la mathematique—rien que ca!" And only the Imagination—"all your Imagination" is still the universal solvent in ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... games. As the performance proceeded, he warmed up enough to forget the fire, and ceased to dread the rebuke of Bertha; but when all was over,—when the clown had made his last wry face, and the great American acrobat had achieved his last gyration, Bertha and the fire came back to him with increased power. Moody and sullen, he walked down to the river with Fanny, who, under ordinary circumstances, would have been too proud ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic
... in a soft monotone, while they pulled hard for the mouth of the bay. The priest and I were fairly comfortable in the stern, the steersman perched behind us on the very edge of the combing, balancing himself to the rise and fall of the boat as an acrobat on a rope. I laid my head on my bag and fell asleep before the sea had been reached. The last sound in my ears was the voice of Pere ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... unconscious result not a conscious aim, the result in fact of the mathematical calculation of curves and distances, of absolute precision of eye, of the scientific knowledge of the equilibrium of forces, and of perfect physical training. A good acrobat is always graceful, though grace is never his object; he is graceful because he does what he has to do in the best way in which it can be done—graceful because he is natural. If an ancient Greek were ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... feats were to him no more than the every-day work of a man of a strong mind, of a stout heart, and of a perfectly trained body, who had so completely mastered every detail of his profession as gymnast, acrobat, and aeronaut, that he had come to have absolute faith in himself, downright abiding certainty that within his sphere of work not only must he succeed, but that, in the very nature of things it was quite ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... make a sound like heigh, heigh. If the mouth is not much opened, whilst the lips are considerably protruded, a blowing, hissing, or whistling noise is produced. Mr. R. Brough Smith informs me that an Australian from the interior was taken to the theatre to see an acrobat rapidly turning head over heels: "he was greatly astonished, and protruded his lips, making a noise with his mouth as if blowing out a match." According to Mr. Bulmer the Australians, when surprised, utter the exclamation korki, "and to do this the mouth is drawn ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... wails, moans and whistles. The clarinet flings an obbligato high over the heads of the dancers on the cabaret floor. It makes shrill sounds. It raves like a fireless Ophelia. It plays the clown, the tragedian, the acrobat. ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... by a young man who wore pale blue instead of white, and got very little applause. But after the two days Horace appeared again, and those who sat close to the stage remarked an expression of beatific happiness on that young acrobat's face even when he was twisting breathlessly in the air an the middle of his amazing and original shoulder swing. After that performance he laughed at the elevator man and dashed up the stairs to the flat five steps at a time—and then tiptoed very ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... over three hundred years—no one of them would think of adopting any other means of gaining a livelihood. It seems certain to the scientific men who have been conducting the investigation, that not only the physical ability to become an acrobat, but also the mental qualities that contribute so much to success in this occupation—pride in the acrobatic pre-eminence of the family, courage, love of applause, and so on—have been handed down from ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... the combination of words"; and this developed into "a power of pouring forth, with endless facility, perfectly modulated sentences of perfectly chosen language, which as far surpassed the reach of a normal intellect as the feats of an acrobat exceed the capacities of a ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... as an acrobat, had never lost his suppleness and skill in trapeze work and other gymnastics since leaving Twomley & Sorber's Herculean Circus and Menagerie. There was a fine gymnasium at the Milton high school which he attended, and Neale had ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... journal than in half-a-dozen of the Royal Academy rooms in the season. No author can live by his work and be as empty-headed as an average successful painter. Again, consider our implements of music—our pianofortes, for example. Nobody but an acrobat will voluntarily spend years at such a difficult mechanical puzzle as the keyboard, and so we have to take our impressions of Beethoven's sonatas from acrobats who vie with each other in the rapidity ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... rejoined them, the lift had returned and ascended with another covey of fancy costumes, including a man with a nose a foot long and a girl with bright green hair, dressed as an acrobat. On its next journey the lift held Tommy and Nick's party, ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... 'All is vanity.' I agree with that good man, who never existed, perhaps. Zero not wishing to go stark naked, clothed himself in vanity. O vanity! The patching up of everything with big words! a kitchen is a laboratory, a dancer is a professor, an acrobat is a gymnast, a boxer is a pugilist, an apothecary is a chemist, a wigmaker is an artist, a hodman is an architect, a jockey is a sportsman, a wood-louse is a pterigybranche. Vanity has a right and a wrong ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the bed, or the sofa, taking her in his arms. Between them they had invented a great game. The ex-engineer, his boots removed, his huge legs in the air, hoisted the little tad on the soles of his stockinged feet like a circus acrobat, dandling her there, pretending he was about to let her fall. Sidney, choking with delight, held on nervously, with little screams and chirps of excitement, while he shifted her gingerly from one foot to another, and thence, the final act, the great gallery play, to the palm of one great hand. ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... No minor shall be allowed to sell indecent literature, etc., nor be let out as acrobat or mendicant or for any immoral occupation. Eight hours a legal day's work. No person shall be debarred from any occupation or profession on account of sex; but females shall not be required to work on streets ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... than done," I thought to myself; but I was much mistaken. Suddenly the woman bounded at least three feet into the air and caught one of the spreading boughs in her large flat hands; then came a swing that would have filled an acrobat with envy—and she ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... them are, but not all. I have one sister who is an acrobat. She is really one of the best I ever saw for her age. She's only twelve, and she can do wonderful feats ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... the most of. Look at an acrobat or a boxer: there is what your limbs might have been made for strength and agility: that is the potential which is in human nature in these respects. I never witnessed a prize-fight, and assuredly I never will witness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... had one crumb of consolation for me, for I saw at last a chat baby. He was a quiet, well-behaved little fellow, with streaks on throat and breast, and dull yellow underparts. His manners were subdued, and gave no hint of the bumptious acrobat he ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... the world is to lose!" he exclaimed as he died; and artist he was, but in the Roman sense; one that enveloped in the same contempt the musician, acrobat and actor. It was the artist that played the flute while gladiators died and lovers embraced; it was the artist that entertained ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... the sole other diversion in a true pilgrim's round of pious devotions. Later on in this eventful day, we stumbled on a somewhat startling variation to the penitential order of the performances. In a side alley, beneath a friendly overhanging rock and two protecting roof-eaves, an acrobat was making her professional toilet. When she emerged to lay a worn strip of carpet on the rough cobbles of the street, she presented a pathetic figure in the gold of the afternoon sun. She was old and wrinkled; the rouge would no longer stick ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... health. Half an hour with a skipping-rope would be equally beneficial to his liver. No; in nine cases out of ten he does it to prove to his friends and relations that he is not the mild, steady-going person they have always thought him. Observe the music-hall acrobat as he prepares to swing from the roof by his eyelids. His gaze sweeps the house. 'It isn't true,' it seems to ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... and also a strange contrivance called a concerto, put together to enable the player to exhibit within a brief space the utmost possible variety of finger gymnastics. To learn to perform these feats one had to devote his whole lifetime to practising them, just like any circus acrobat; and so his mind became atrophied, and a naive and elemental vanity was all ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... Magic we see a man swallowing a sword, or walking through fire, while hard by an acrobat is bending backward and drinking from cups arranged ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... the acquaintance between Mrs. Helen Holmes, nurse, and Omassa, Japanese acrobat. The other nurses teased Helen Holmes about her pet patient, saying she was only a commonplace, Japanese child woman; but Mrs. Holmes would exclaim, "If you could only see ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... accurately, as though a false move would disturb the balance of things so that I would walk out of the room on my hands like an acrobat. ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... and dream that I was not a sardine, nor securely confined in some inhospitable vault. It was impossible to turn over without unbuttoning one side of the deck-cover and going through contortions that would have done credit to a first-class acrobat. For the first time in my life I found it necessary to get out of bed in order to turn over ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... 71 "A score of smaller letters were tumbling about my feet" 74 Tailpiece Chap. IX. "Mothers' pets" 77 Headpiece Chap. X. "Scrymgeour was an artist" 78 "With shadowy reptiles crawling across the panels" 81 "Scrymgeour sprang like an acrobat into a Japanese dressing-gown" 84 Tailpiece Chap. X. 86 Headpiece Chap. XI. "His wife's cigars" 87 "A packet of Celebros alighted on my head" 88 "I told her the cigars were excellent" 90 Tailpiece Chap. XI. 93 Headpiece ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... panic-stricken, felt but one desire, that she might never know who had played the spy. He threw himself over the verandah rail with an acrobat's skill, and with head in front and nimble feet he darted off under the maple trees: but he had to reckon with an agile maiden. Helen had grown tired of a fruitless dream. A crescent moon gave her enough light to pursue; lights of friendly houses on ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... for being so material," he went on composedly, "but I want a drink, and I'm not acrobat enough to manage that, even with your help, while we're ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... strenuous work of the movies. Fairbanks, in addition to being blessed with a strong, lithe body, has developed it by expert devotion to every form of athletic sport. He swims well, is a crack boxer, a good polo player, a splendid wrestler, a skilful acrobat, a fast runner, and an ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... afternoon stroll, and then pleading with you for backsheesh; you will see hideous monkeys of a sort you never saw before, trained to do the same thing, so that you cannot walk out in Cairo without being attended with some sort of a bodyguard, either monkey, acrobat, cripple, or the beggar-girls with their sweet, plaintive voices, their pretty smiles, and their eternal hunger, to coax the piasters from your open purse. But you accept these sights and sounds as a part of this wonderful old city, and each day the fascination ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... I said, "that I was so slow that some day I would get run over by a hearse. Not being an acrobat, that fate may yet overtake me in New York and yet be ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... right," rejoined Mr. Bloxford. "I suppose there's nothing you can do in the professional way? You'd make a good acrobat, or—well, you'd shape into several things." He looked the figure up and down again, just as he would have examined an animal offered for his inspection. "But we'll see about that later on. Thirty bob a week. ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... to learn the whereabouts of a certain girl acrobat who lived about five or six years ago in a lodging-house of this ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... children began to see one of the laws of nature turn upside down and stand on its head like an acrobat. Any grown-up persons would tell you that money is hard to get and easy to spend. But the fairy money had been easy to get, and spending it was not only hard, it was almost impossible. The tradespeople of Rochester seemed to shrink, to a trades-person, from the glittering ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... trousers, the gift probably of some departing American, and somebody's discarded bathing shirt in cherry and black stripes. He had cut off the trousers legs at the thighs, and, with bare arms and legs glistening, was as imposing an acrobat as one ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... vex the tyrant; all I know is that I heard myself addressed as 'You young scoundrel,' and ordered to go to the 'mast-head.' Go to the mast-head indeed! with a freshening wind, under whose influence the ship was beginning to heel over, and an increasing sea that made her jump about like an acrobat. I had not got my sea legs, and this feat seemed an utter impossibility to me. I looked with horror up aloft; then came over me the remembrance of Marryat's story of the lad who refused to go to the mast-head, ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... from the interested spectators, who hung over the side of the steamer. In the foreground were acrobats of every description, dressed in all the colors of the rainbow; among them was a group of five musicians of tender years, an acrobat in pink tights who was exploiting the skill of his little daughter, scarcely five years of age, and another similarly cruel father, who was compelling a little girl to go through all manner of contortions. ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... "the result of an expectation which of a sudden ends in nothing." Some modern cynic has compiled a list of the situations on the stage which are always "humorous." One of them, I recall, is the situation in which the clown-acrobat, having made mighty preparations for jumping over a pile of chairs, suddenly changes his mind and walks off without attempting it. The laughter that invariably greets this "funny" maneuver would seem to have philosophical sanction. Bergson, too, the philosopher of creative evolution, has ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... boy be the very thing for it?" resumed Joe, after a moment's pause. "Isn't he jest the cut for an aeronaut, an' the right age to train as an acrobat? An' the gel! Look ee here!" and roughly snatching Joan from her seat at Darby's side, Joe swung her over to where the big furry bundle, which was the bear, and the mimic soldier—tired probably from their recent gambols—lay ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... booms along. Owing to his great strength, an inverted, pendent blossom, from which he must cling upside down, has no more terrors for him than a trapeze for the trained acrobat. His long tongue—if he is one of the largest of our sixty-two species of Bombus—can suck almost any flower unless it is especially adapted to night-flying sphinx moths, but can he drain this? He is the truest benefactor of the European ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... meadow stream. Having buried an arrow in the far bank, with a short run and a leap Young cleared the brook and landed on the greensward beyond. The succulent turf slipped beneath his feet and, like an acrobat, the archer turned a back somersault into the cold mountain water. Bow, clattering arrows, camera, field glasses and man, all sank beneath the limpid surface. With a shout of laughter he clambered to the bank, his faithful bow still in his hand, his quiver empty of arrows, but full ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... judge whether that damned acrobat shall pay for his writhing! But the other shall be my first business. So she is here—you have seen her? What do ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... believe they're the comin' man, but I must confess, if I'm to speak the truth, it ain't for the simple, uninfected, childlike mind o' the male persuasion to foller their figaries, unless he's some of a trained acrobat. ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... artless inquisitiveness than fear, this lively little acrobat stops his hammering or hatcheting at your approach, and stretching himself out from the tree until it would seem he must fall off, he peers down at you, head downward, straight into your upturned opera-glasses. If there is too much snow on the upper side of a branch, watch how he runs along ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan |
