"Athletic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are the hydropathic and the Macfarlane museum of fine art and natural history. The industries include bleaching, dyeing and paper-making. The Strathallan Gathering, usually held in the neighbourhood, is the most popular athletic meeting in mid-Scotland. Airthrey Castle, standing in a fine park with a lake, adjoins the town on the south-east, and just beyond it are the old church and burying-ground of Logie, beautifully situated at the foot of a granite ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... to and from school through the city streets, whose teeming life never failed to fascinate Jerry; the jolly recess, breaking the school session, when the girls gathered around the long tables and ate their lunch; and then the afternoon's play on the athletic field at Highacres. ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... skeletons, Irish giants and Welsh dwarfs, children with two heads, and animals without any heads at all, were among the least of the wonders to be seen; while the more rational exhibition of wild beasts joined with the mysterious wonders of the conjuror and the athletic performances of tumblers, in calling forth expressions of surprise and delight from the old, as well as from the young, who were induced to contribute their pennies 'to see ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... profession, was better looking with some invalids than with others. His athletic figure, his red cheeks, and splendid teeth always had a cheering effect upon this particular patient, who ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... the costume, however, before the year was ended, as did most of the others. The establishment of gymnasiums and the encouragement of athletic sports among women eventually made a short dress an acknowledged necessity, and the advent of the bicycle so thoroughly swept away the old prejudice that the word "Bloomers" no longer strikes terror to the heart, nor does the wearing of a short skirt ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... dreary fortnight of inclement weather finally got on the nerves of Hortense. Belle could go out tramping in it, or cab-riding, or what-not. She was athletic, and loved exercise in the open air, no matter what the weather might be. But the second sister was just like a pussy-cat; she loved comfort and the warm corners. However, being left alone by Belle, and nobody coming ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... officers. I knew him at different stages in his career, but most particularly when he had retired from the Force and entered the coal business in Winnipeg. Later on he was the Civil Governor of the Yukon Territory. Clean-cut in figure, athletic, wiry and always faultlessly dressed, Walsh was a good-looking type and bore in his carriage the unmistakable stamp of his cavalry training. In Winnipeg he was popularly known as the man who had tamed Sitting Bull, the redoubtable Sioux of ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... quarrelsome and thievish that it was never safe to stop a night there without an extra guard, and he had engaged the brother of the sheik of the village to occupy this responsible post. This man was a great, tall, athletic-looking fellow, but a deaf mute. While we were taking our dinner he came into our tent, brandishing a revolver. He expressed to us by signs how safely we might lie down and rest, because he (brave fellow ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe
... cried Barkins; "he needn't make such a jolly mystery of it. It's Chinese athletic sports. Look, ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... publication of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," his athletic mind, scholarly and serene, was the first to bedew my hope with a drop of humanity. When the press and pulpit cannonaded this book, he introduced himself to its author by saying, "I have come to comfort you." Then eloquently paraphrasing it, and prophesying its prosperity, his conversation ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy
... as if made for a torrent of eloquence: it is supplied with massive muscles, as if to move with energy and calculated force and utterance. The jawbone is hard and heavy; the cheekbone emergent: between the two the flesh is hollowed, not so much with the emaciation of monastic vigils as with the athletic exercise of wrestlings in the throes of prophecy. The face, on the whole, is ugly, but not repellent; and, in spite of its great strength, it shows signs of feminine sensibility. Like the faces of ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... father was a poor curate. Goldsmith received his education at several preparatory schools, at Trinity College, Dublin, at Edinburgh, and at Leyden. He was indolent and unruly as a student, often in disgrace with his teachers; but his generosity, recklessness, and love of athletic sports made him a favorite with his fellow-students. He spent some time in wandering over the continent, often in poverty and want. In 1756 he returned to England, and soon took up his abode in ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... fifty-five years and eight months old; but he was already decrepit with premature old age. He was of about the middle height; and had been athletic and well proportioned. Broad in the shoulders, deep in the chest, thin in the flank, very muscular in the arms and legs, he had been able to match himself with all competitors in the tourney and the ring, and to vanquish the bull with his own hand in the favorite ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... There are athletic clubs in Belgium, and rowing is a favourite sport, especially at Ghent. Two years on end the Ghent Rowing Club won the Grand Challenge Shield at Henley, beating all the English crews which ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Belgium • George W. T. Omond
... early be left a widow. This it was which led to the agreement made by the two friends that if either died the living one should care for the widow and fatherless. To see the two you would not have guessed that the athletic Ralph would be the first to go, yet so it was. He died ere ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... around after it with a detective, trying to catch and pore over it. You may look at it differently, professor. Our paths in the great realm of education of youth may lie far apart; but it is my heartfelt wish that I may never live to see a son of mine ride right past healthy athletic languages and then stand up in the stirrups and begin to whoop and try to lariat some poor old language going around on a crutch, carrying half of its alphabet in a sling. If two-thirds of the words of a language are flat on their back, taking quinine, trying to get up an appetite, ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... great extent of ancient Indian fields, now silent and deserted, overgrown with forests, orange groves, and rank vegetation, the site of the ancient Alachua, the capital of a famous and powerful tribe, who in days of old could assemble thousands at bull-play and other athletic exercises "over these then happy fields and green plains." "Almost every step we take," adds he, "over these fertile heights, discovers the remains and traces of ancient ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... other women, with whom, before his departure for the East, he had been on terms of casual acquaintance; the daughters of City friends, girls who lived in Kensington or Hampstead, girls with brothers who had knocked up against the young men in athletic or journalistic circles; an actress or two; good-hearted, ordinary young women for the most part, commonplace in spite of suburban leanings towards "culture," and in many cases entirely out of sympathy with the aims and ideals of both ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... rear, came directly up to the principal performers in this interesting scene, and found honest Pat Murphy holding the man by his collar, while he was twisting and writhing to get released from the strong and determined grasp of the athletic Hibernian. ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... notice her, and she stood a while watching him. He wore no jacket; the thin yellow shirt, flung open at the neck and tightly belted at the waist, and the brown duck trousers, showed the lithe grace of his athletic figure. His poise and swing were admirable, and he was working with determined energy, his face and uncovered arms the ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... who were in want, and to protect the defenseless. They hunted wild beasts, they fought against robbers, they rescued and saved the lost. For amusements, they practiced running, wrestling, racing, throwing javelins and spears, and other athletic feats and accomplishments—in every thing excelling all their competitors, and becoming in the end ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... typical solicitor of the old school; fresh-faced, precise, rather irascible, and conveying a not unpleasant impression of taking a reasonable interest in his diet. The other man was quite young, not more than five-and-twenty, and was a fine athletic-looking fellow with a healthy, out-of-door complexion and an intelligent and highly prepossessing face. I took a liking to him at the first glance, and ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... saying it, I suppose," he pursued, "here I am neither rich nor successful as the world counts these things—in debt probably for several years to come, and with not so much as an athletic lustre to my name. It's not a cheerful picture I'm drawing, but because there's a struggle in it I am not afraid to ask you to come and share it. I wonder if you know how I ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... dress was composed of a sort of coarse cotton chequered jacket and trowsers, shirts that were open at the collar, red woollen caps, and broad canvas waistbelts, in which were the pistols and the knives. They were all athletic men, and seemed such as might well be trusted with the sanguinary errand on which they were despatched. While the boat was conveying them, Soto held in his hand a cutlass, reddened with the blood of ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... he hardly knew them. He supposed them to be at once immoral and shallow, hypocritical and dangerous, futile and embarrassing. Among the women of the demi-monde he had had some passing adventures due to his renown, his lively wit, his elegant and athletic figure, and his dark and animated face. He preferred them, too; he liked their free ways and frank speech, accustomed as he was to the gay and easy manners of the studios and green-rooms he frequented. He went into the fashionable world for the ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... a moment would come when someone would prescribe walking to you. All your illness comes from the lack of exercise, a man of your strength and your complexion ought to have lived an athletic life. ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... be too violent or too prolonged. Severe physical labor, and athletic sports, if indulged in to an extreme degree, produce undue excitability of the heart, and sometimes cause it to become enlarged. There is a form of heart disease induced by undue exertion which may be called a wearing out or wasting away of that organ. It is common in those persons whose ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... greatly pleased its author. He makes Mrs. Caudle exclaim, when protesting against her spouse's lapse into billiards—"There's the manly and athletic game of cribbage!" ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... health. Smoking generally stunts their growth. Smoking generally sallows their complexion. Smoking often leads them to lying. Smoking often leads them to stealing. Smoking often leads them to drinking. Smoking degenerates the boy physically, mentally, and morally. Smokers cannot excel in athletic sports, such as boating, cricket, cycling. Smokers are always at the bottom of the class in school and college, and backward at all kinds of study. Excessive smoking causes mental and physical ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... they studied long the figures of those old Roman heroes chosen by Perugino to symbolize the virtues; figures which possess a unique and irresistible charm because of their athletic proportions and vigorous action, while their faces are sweet, womanish, and tender, full of the pensive, mystic devotion which is so characteristic of this ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... fact that he walked home from his office in lower Broadway every afternoon in the year, "except Sundays and during his vacation," as his mother would add. She was a conscientious woman. Moreover, they thought him very handsome. He was five feet ten, lean, and athletic in appearance. It is true that his head was narrow and his face cast in a heavy mould; but there was no superfluous flesh in his cheeks, and his thick skin was clean. Like his sister, he managed to dress well. He was ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... there was one of the spectators who had stood behind the shelter of a bush, surveying, with sorrowful countenance, the tragic scene. He was a short, but fine-looking and very athletic man—a champion Cornish wrestler, named William Jeff. He was a first-rate boatman, and a bold swimmer. Fortunately he also possessed a generous, daring heart. When this man saw Captain Phelps near ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... my dreaming. I am on the parapet of a huge circular tower, hollow like a well, and pierced with windows at irregular intervals. The parapet is broad, and slabbed with red Verona marble. Around me are athletic men, all naked, in the strangest attitudes of studied rest, down-gazing, as I do, into the depths below. There comes a confused murmur of voices, and the tower is threaded and rethreaded with great cables. Up these there climb ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... assurance that carried the rest along with him. That had ever been one of his strongest points at school in the leadership of the class athletic ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... of arms, in riding, and in other athletic exercises was continued. There were large public institutions in which the boys were quartered, and simplest food and clothing were given them. Besides the training for war, they were taught religious proverbs and prayers, and were led to practice truth and justice. This education continued ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... nevertheless had been a source of deep satisfaction to his father and mother that he was to room with his classmate, Foster Bennett, for Foster was of a much more sedate disposition than his friend. Taller than Will by three inches, as fond as he of certain athletic sports, still Foster was one whom enthusiasm never carried away nor impulse controlled. When people spoke of him they often used the word "steady" to describe him. Not so quick nor so brilliant as Will, he was not able to arouse ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... The laws of Rome were very strict in regard to associations, which, formed on the pretence of amusement, charity, or athletic sports, were apt to degenerate into political sects. Exception was made in favor of the collegia funeraticia, which were societies formed to provide a decent funeral and place of burial for their members. An inscription discovered at Civita Lavinia quotes the very ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... act upon the masses, that he could not warm the multitude, which is like a sea of lead, and as heavy to set in motion, and which, though its waves may be melted and rendered malleable by heat, requires the powerful arm of an athletic Cyclops to manipulate, fuse, and pour into moulds, where the dull metal, glowing and seething under the electric fire, becomes thought and feeling under the new form into which it has been forced. He knew he was ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... in a way that became ridiculous. He never left the house without permission, he came in at dark, he told his beads, and went to confession when she bade him to. Whilst his body developed to a marvellous degree, so that he became a fine athletic young fellow, his mind remained as submissive and childish as that of ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... Covenden," and his most successful Victorian comedy "Araminta." In his new novel he breaks ground which has never before been touched by an English novelist. He follows no less a leader than Cervantes. His hero, Sir Richard Pendragon, is Sir John Falstaff grown athletic and courageous, with his imagination fired by much adventure in far countries and some converse with the knight of La Mancha. The doings of this monstrous Englishman are narrated by a young and scandalized Spanish squire, full of all the pedantry of chivalry. Sir Richard is a new type in literature—the ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... great good humor, surveyed the dark, handsome face and lithe, athletic figure of Jumonville de Villiers. He again raised his cane with the gravity of a Roman pontifex, marking off his templum in the heavens. Suddenly he stopped. He repeated more carefully his survey, and then turned his earnest ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... far from the City, just beyond Smithfield, a place of green sward and gently sloping ground, watered by a pleasant stream, far different from the crowded streets of the modern Clerkenwell. It was a spot famous for athletic contests, for wrestling bouts and archery, and hither came the Lord Mayor, sheriffs, and aldermen at Bartholomew Fair time to witness the ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... darkest night was lighted by stars; for her the birds sang of love and hope and happiness; for her the commonest flower was rich in beauty and perfume; and so the end of the three years found her a well developed, tall, boyishly athletic girl, with a color in her cheeks like an Okanagon peach, hair of richest brown, with little gleams of gold, waving back naturally from a high forehead; a firm chin, with a dimple; and great brown eyes, full of lights, and with ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... deserving to be mentioned as having influenced the history of my future life. I was somewhat above the middle stature. Without being particularly athletic in appearance, or large in my dimensions, I was uncommonly vigorous and active. My joints were supple, and I was formed to excel in youthful sports. The habits of my mind, however, were to a certain degree at war with the dictates of boyish vanity. I had considerable ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... attorney to succeed David Pettie if the Republican party won would be, as was now planned, an appointee of Butler's—a young Irishman who had done considerable legal work for him—one Dennis Shannon. The other two party leaders had already promised Butler that. Shannon was a smart, athletic, good-looking fellow, all of five feet ten inches in height, sandy-haired, pink-cheeked, blue-eyed, considerable of an orator and a fine legal fighter. He was very proud to be in the old man's favor—to be promised ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... a certain amount of intercourse with the garrison at Avoncester, and the officers stationed there at present had already some acquaintance with Bernard Underwood, who was known to be a champion in Ceylon in all athletic sports, especially polo and cricket. Tall and well made, he had been devoted to all such games in his youth, and they had kept up his health in his sedentary occupation. Now, in his leisure time, his prowess ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... has grown more athletic; his eye, more steadfast and less restless, looks you full in the face. His smile is more open, but there is a melancholy in his expression almost approaching to gloom. His dress is the same as that of ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of a gentleman of fifty, cleared Zack in gallant style; fell over on the other side, all in a lump on his hands and feet; gave the return "back" conscientiously, at the other end of the studio; and was leapt over in an instant, with a shout of triumph, by Zack. The athletic ceremonies thus concluded, the two stood up together and shook ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... path that beset Rome! I'll tell you what ruined it. The Roman Empire started out to be the greatest nation on earth, and they had a good start, too, just like the United States has got to-day. Then what happened to 'em? Why, them old ancient fellers got more interested in athletic games and gladiatorial combats and racing and all kinds of out-door sports, and bettin' on 'em, than they were in oratory, or literature, or charitable institutions and good works of all kinds! At first they were moderate and the country was prosperous. But six days in the week ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... Durland, always trying to think of things to make life in his Troop interesting and happy, had devised the plan of a field day, in which there should be games of all sorts. There was to be a baseball tournament between the three Patrols for the championship of the Troop, and a set of athletic games, including running, jumping, and all sorts of sports. There were eight Scouts in each Patrol, and, to make up a full nine, each had been allowed to select one boy from its waiting list so that the roster might ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters - or Jack Danby's Bravest Deed • Robert Maitland
... just then went to the door to see if the "Hirondelle" were not coming. She started. A man dressed in black suddenly came into the kitchen. By the last gleam of the twilight one could see that his face was rubicund and his form athletic. ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... told by cable that the Premier took part in most of the sports on board ship, and of course lost most of the events. Well, there is no harm in a Premier beginning to be whimsically athletic near fifty. But, unless now and then he could manage to win something it was obviously only an attempt to make him interesting to the cables, on the principle that a polar bear is prodded in a cage to make him perform for ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... accompany Captain Lewis a part of his route, so as to show him the shortest road to the Missouri, and in the mean time amused them with conversation and running races, on foot and with horses, in both of which they proved themselves hardy, athletic, and active. To the chief Captain Lewis gave a small medal and a gun, as a reward for having guided us across the mountains; in return the customary civility of exchanging names passed between them, by which the former acquired the title ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... corset-splints. Corsets placed on the young girl interfere with the functions of circulation, respiration, digestion, and of the pelvic organs, also with muscular development. In addition to all this, the girl is handicapped in taking all outdoor exercises and athletic sports. ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... is little to be told. My history prior to my acquaintance with Brande was commonplace. I was merely an active, athletic Englishman, Arthur Marcel by name. I had studied medicine, and was a doctor in all but the degree. This certificate had been dispensed with owing to an unexpected legacy, on receipt of which I determined to devote it to the furtherance ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... keep pace with Sweyn's most breathless burst, and laugh and talk the while. Christian took little pride in his fleetness of foot, counting a man's legs to be the least worthy of his members. He had no envy of his brother's athletic superiority, though to several feats he had made a moderate second. He loved as only a twin can love—proud of all that Sweyn did, content with all that Sweyn was; humbly content also that his own great love should not be so exceedingly ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... is black or very dark brown, their hair straight, and their features of the negro type. They are of medium stature, but generally thin, though well-formed, athletic and agile. They are eager in the pursuit of gain, and this characteristic, combined with their wonderful powers of endurance both of hunger and fatigue, renders them patient and successful miners, while all other causes combined have tended less to the development ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... of the group stood Sergius Vanno, recognizable at once by his athletic and graceful figure, reflective face, commanding eye, bright with intelligence, and his agreeable, refined, and attractive presence, as the leading spirit of the group. At his side leaned the poet Emilius, ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... parade-ground, there was one group, at least, to whom, as Frazier knew, the orders meant much more than the dance. There, switching the short grass with his stocky cane, stood their grim senior surgeon, Doctor, or Major, Graham. There, close beside him and leaning on the arm of a slender but athletic, sun-tanned young fellow in trim civilian dress, stood the doctor's devoted wife. With them was a curly-headed youth, perhaps seventeen years of age, restless, eager, and impatient for the promised news. Making his way eagerly but gently through the dense throng of ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... ill-conditioned Valencian, rubbed his eyes, muttered a coarse oath, and seemed half disposed, instead of replying, to pick a quarrel with his interrogator; but a glance at the athletic figure and resolute countenance of the latter, dissipated the inclination, and he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... one time a city of churches, but the hurricane of the Revolution swept over her, and now she has left but four. On the walls, is a very early Romanesque church, tottering to ruins, because the Society for the Promotion of Athletic Sports, to whom it has been surrendered up for tumbling, climbing, wrestling, are impecunious and cannot keep it watertight. Hard by is another church, still earlier, a temple adapted to Christian worship, now half swept away, half devoted to a cabaret. ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... can win races only on our own course," The Jasper, the Ardmore College paper declared, "what is the use of supporting an athletic association and four perfectly ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson
... schools, as well as our national naval and military academies, rigidly prohibit the use of tobacco by their pupils. So also young men in athletic training are strictly forbidden to use it.[12] This loss of muscular vigor is shown by the unsteady condition of the muscles, the trembling hand, and the inability to do with precision and accuracy any fine work, as ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... containing about fifty of the rings with their sebaceous cakes; at one end it is closed, and at the other adapted for receiving wedges, which are successively driven into it by ponderous sledge-hammers, wielded by athletic men. The tallow oozes in a melted state into a receptacle below, where it cools. It is again melted, and poured into tubs, smeared with mud, to prevent its adhering. It is now marketable, in masses of about eighty ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... sport clubs exist, also under the control of the corps, but they do not play a very prominent part, for the taste for athletic exercises is confined to a small minority. Considering the small number of players, the proficiency attained in the exotic games of football and hockey is surprisingly high. The rowing is even better, ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... sang, whatever he lived, this man swept all things else aside and plunged in over head. He loved to swim and he loved to dive. Perhaps into his living and his writing he carried this athletic joy also, and as he lived he lived to the full. It seems so as one reads in "I Loved" ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... yet served only two days, when one evening a young man, a dark, athletic, bold-looking youth, entered the blacksmith's shed. It was an evening in autumn, and the shed was far from any house; Dymock's tower was the nearest, and the sun was already so low that the old keep with its many mouldering walls, and out-buildings, was seen from ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... pony of yours, don't you, Jack?" and a motherly-looking woman came to the doorway of a small cottage and peered up the mountain trail, which ran in front of the building. Out on the trail itself stood a tall, bronzed lad, who was, in fact, about seventeen years of age, but whose robust frame and athletic build made him ...
— Jack of the Pony Express • Frank V. Webster
... great man. For my part, so warm was my enthusiasm, that I could have rushed into his arms, as into those of a parent or benefactor. He was sitting by the fire in a large elbow-chair, smoking. He received us most kindly, and in a very few minutes we felt as old friends. He appeared a large, athletic man, then in his seventy-first year, with thick, bushy, black hair, retaining his sight so completely as to read aloud rapidly the smallest type of a newspaper. He was dressed in very plain, brown clothes, but ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various
... in a soldier's jacket, her head pillowed on the shirt-sleeve of an artillery corporal in the stern sheets of that eight-oared government barge she had remembered. But the only officer was a bareheaded, boyish lieutenant, and the rowers were an athletic but unseamanlike crew ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... they escape that fate was it not but to be faced with far graver dangers? Alone, he might hope to survive for years; for he was a strong, athletic man. ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... his fellow-men. As a gipsy girl once remarked, “Nobody as ever see’d the white-headed Romany Rye ever forgot him.” Standing considerably above six feet in height, he was built as perfectly as a Greek statue, and his practice of athletic exercises gave his every movement the easy elasticity of an athlete under training. As to his countenance, “noble” is the only word that can be used to describe it. The silvery whiteness of the thick crop of hair seemed to add in a remarkable way to the beauty of the ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... some sharp exclamation, which caused both of the dusky natives to spring to their feet and hasten to the side of the proa nearest the shore, where they waited the chance to help her aboard. Inez noticed that the islanders were muscular, athletic fellows, with such a peculiar appearance that she could not avoid staring at them for a few seconds. Each was fully six feet in height—an unusual stature among the South Sea Islanders—and their breasts, arms and legs were tattooed with all ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... athletic contests in Greece—Olympian, at Olympia, Pythian, near Delphi, seat of Apollo's oracle, Isthmian, on the Corinthian Isthmus, ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... and his deep voice rolled like angry thunder in her ear. Catharine, against her will, obeyed his voice, and raised her eyes to his. She saw his lofty brow, like that of an angry demi-god, his dark, dangerous, fiery eyes, his glistening teeth, his magnificent frame, lithe, athletic, and graceful as that of "The statue that enchants the world," and a sensation of shuddering ecstasy flooded her whole being. Forgotten were her fears, her terror, her dream of vengeance; and, regardless of the hand which was ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... himself very agreeable to Welty, and also got himself introduced to the football player. The latter was a tall, lithe, heavy-shouldered, brown-faced, thick-knuckled youth, who practiced all kinds of athletic diversions. ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... caution cannot be the normal condition, for such caution cannot be exerted for the female peasant or savage, but it seems the necessary condition for American young women. It is a fact not to be ignored, that some of the strongest and most athletic girls among us have lost their health and become invalids for years, simply by being allowed to live the robust, careless, indiscreet life on which boys thrive so wonderfully. It is fatal, if they do too little, and disastrous, if they do too ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... he added, turning to an enormously tall and athletic man near by, "take that little drummer and his drum on your shoulder and lead the way. And, sergeant, make him pound that drum like ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... more than three or four times in my life before, and then he appeared to me merely a tall, handsome, conceited, slangy boy. But I now found him much improved—in all externals at least. He had made it his business, I knew, to perfect himself in all athletic pursuits which were open to a Londoner. As he told me that day—he found it pay, when one got among gentlemen. Thus he had gone up to Cambridge a capital skater, rower, pugilist—and billiard player. ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... in stature as dependent on age; town and rural population; athletic feats now and formerly; increase of stature of middle classes; large number of weakly persons; some appearances of weakness may be fallacious; a barrel and a wheel; ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... of their uncle Sancho, who, to save them the troubles of the throne, assumed it himself and transmitted it to his children,—all this some half dozen centuries ago. At every coronation the duke formally protests; an athletic and sinister-looking court headsman comes down to his palace in the Carrera San Geronimo, and by threats of immediate decapitation induces the duke to sign a paper abdicating his rights to the throne of all the Spains. The duke eats the Bourbon ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... laws, than the mayor himself. The former is a man of dark, heavy features, with an assassin-like countenance, more inclined to look at you distrustfully than to meet you with an open gaze. He is rather tall and athletic, but never has been known to do any thing that would give him credit for bravery. Several times he has been on the brink of losing his office for giving too much latitude to his craving for perquisites; yet, by some ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... illnesses, although in his younger days he looked handsome and athletic. He carefully nursed his health against his many infirmities, avoiding chiefly the free use of the bath; but he was often rubbed with oil, and sweated in a stove, after which he was bathed in tepid water, warmed either by a fire, or by being exposed to the heat of the sun. When, on account ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... all that they could to make existence tolerable, on the sandy shores of the Helmund. They got up foot races and athletic sports for the men, played cricket on the sands, and indulged in a bath—twice a day—in the river. Will often spent the evening in Colonel Ripon's tent. A warm friendship had arisen between the two officers, and each day seemed to bring ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... conversation reached us from time to time. So I do not know whether it was in connection with the Boer War that Jevons began telling Reggie that journalism was a rotten game; that from birth he had been baulked of his ambition. He had wanted to be tall and handsome. He had wanted to be valorous and athletic. And here he was sent into the world undersized and not even passably good-looking. And what—he asked Reggie—could he do ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... as shabby, bulky, shapeless, hairy, and altogether impossible as far as appearance goes. Can any words depict my astonishment at seeing him so suddenly transformed, glorified, redeemed and clean-shaven? His figure, which once appeared so stodgy, now looked merely strong and athletic encased in a well-fitting morning coat, a waistcoat of a discreet shade of smoke grey, with a hint of starched pique slip at the opening. His irreproachable trousers were correctly creased—not too marked to be ostentatious, but just a graceful fold emerging, as it were, ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... the eccentric capitalist cried gaily,—"with joy! He bested me proper the other night at the Athletic Club—he dusted the mat with me—and I want to play even." Seeing that Bruce's face did not lose its look of mystification he curbed his exuberance: "You see I've got some little reputation as a wrestler so when Billy Harper ran across this fellow in Central America he imported him on purpose to ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... posturing and jumping in masks—usually made to look like the head of a wild beast. But the men were usually very athletic. Wrestling competitions were almost universal, especially as a means of winning a wife. The conqueror in a wrestling match took the wife or wives of the defeated man. Their running powers for endurance and ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... of hospitality to Colonial, Indian and Foreign visitors. At Portsmouth arrangements were made for a banquet in the Drill-hall, on June 26th, to one thousand men from the Foreign war-ships, with five hundred British seamen and marines as hosts. On the following day there were to be athletic sports for the sailors and a garden party by the Mayor and Mayoress for the officers of the fleets and distinguished visitors. Following the Review, on June 28th, arrangements were made for a garden party ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... been better known than it was to the Greek and Roman women of centuries ago, yet they did not begin to have the resources in cosmetic arts that we have now. But they bathed incessantly, believing that cleanliness and health were the vital points in their endeavors to be lovely. They went in for athletic games to a large degree, and thereby hangs the secret of well-developed figures and fine, stately carriage. Creamy lotions for the face, made mostly of almond oil and the oil of cocoanut, were their ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... names. I suppose that the thing is important to any one who is ignorant of such evident matters as these. I suppose that if a man has ever believed that we English have some sacred and separate right to be athletic, such reverses do appear quite enormous and shocking. They feel as if, while the proper sun was rising in the east, some other and unexpected sun had begun to rise in the north-north-west by north. For the benefit, the moral and intellectual benefit of such ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... they were compulsory three times a week, and Murray took them as a duty rather than a pleasure. Keith them on the whole, and unlike most of the other boys, he preferred the slow routine of the setting-up exercises to the more athletic features. While he never consciously realized the cause of that preference at the time, it would not have been difficult for a fairly intelligent observer to ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... or medicine take special studies; those preparing for athletic contests take special training. If they did not, they would be idiotic. Those who are preparing for marriage should not leave success to chance. For, while happiness is sometimes dependent on luck, in the majority of ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... Fancy being capable of so much less toil than a poor slave boy! Does that sound like the perfection of athletic training? ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... constantly. After that I quite lost sight of him. Occasionally I read paragraphs in weekly papers about immense festivities due to the enterprise of the CHUMPS, and from time to time I received local papers containing long accounts of hunt breakfasts, athletic sports, the roasting of whole oxen, and other such stirring country incidents in which it appeared that the CHUMPS took a prominent part. I will do BEN the credit to say that he never omitted to mark with broad red pencil those parts which ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various
... completion of his apprenticeship, in 1812, he obtained a situation at Donibristle, a seat of the Earl of Moray at Aberdour. Here, he delighted his fellow-workers of an evening by his violin performances, was fond of athletic sports, in which he excelled, and became an accomplished swimmer, saving the life of one of his companions, who having got out of his depth was in imminent danger ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... in the care of a physician?" she queried, with a whimsical glance up at his brown face and athletic figure. ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... speak of the lively games of boys and girls, by which their cheeks grow rosy and their legs and arms grow strong, for we all know enough about them, but I will describe some of the athletic sports of grown-up folks. There are a great many of these, some of which are of great antiquity. Wrestling, boxing, vaulting, foot-racing, and similar exercises have been popular for thousands of years, and are carried on now with the same spirit as ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... try one of the avenues to the Harlem River. There are plenty of bridges. Now, careful!" And as Cecil moved slowly off, leading the horses towards the upper corner, the actor lounged up to the entrance of the court, blocking the doorway with his athletic figure. ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... he was still pursuing the tenor of his way. The interest of marriage was not, therefore, in his case a fresh burden on a soul already laden with a variety of side pursuits. He was neither socially nor philanthropically active; he was not a club man, nor an athletic enthusiast; he was on no committees; he voted on election days, but he did not take an active part in politics. For Selma's sake all this must be changed; and he was glad to acknowledge that he owed it to himself as well as to her to widen ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... that the town could not sink into utter dulness. What do we see now?" He raised his hand and grew rhetorical. "The crassest Toryism sweeping all before it, and everywhere depositing its mud—which chokes and does not fertilise. We have athletic clubs, we have a free library, we are better drained and cleaner and healthier and more bookish, with all, than in the old times; but for politics—alas! A base level of selfish ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... phenomena flew to the winds. If I angered the creature my life might pay the price. I must humor him till I got to the door, and then race for the street. I stood bolt upright and faced him. We were about of a height, and I was a strong, athletic woman who played hockey in winter and climbed Alps in summer. My hand itched for a stick, but I ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... of athletic sports, and there are numerous clubs devoted to baseball, football, cricket, golf, and the like. There are also rowing clubs, and their favorite rowing place is along the part of the Yarra above Prince's Bridge. The course is somewhat crooked, but there is a good view of ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... "An athletic constitution? Come, then, it only remained that I should encounter a Hercules in this run-mad Pylades," ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... young man, but a religious man—and one who had suffered much from sickness. The whole dignity of his features and person depended upon the expression of serene, yet solemn, purpose sustaining a feeble frame; and the painter, by way of flattering him, strengthened him, and made him athletic in body, gay in countenance, idle in gesture; and the whole power and being of the man himself were lost. And this is still more the case with our public portraits. You have a portrait, for instance, of the Duke of Wellington at the end of the North Bridge—one of the thousand ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... it seemed to me, have satisfied her, but apparently it did not. On one occasion, Judson and Herbert Bayliss being present, the conversation turned to the subject of American athletic sports. The curate and Bayliss took the ground, the prevailing thought in England apparently, that all American games were not games, but fights in which the true sporting spirit was sacrificed to the desire to win at any cost. I had ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... athletic, daring, standing six feet four, seemed at the age of twenty-four made for a life of travel and adventure. His business took him to Spain and Portugal. He studied Arabic and the ancient language of Abyssinia. He came under the notice of Pitt, and was made consul of Algiers. The idea of the undiscovered ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... athletic walker is he who takes Dame Care out for a stroll. He forever runs his machinery, plans his business ventures and introduces his warehouse ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... sits comfortably on a cushion in the bottom of the boat, and smokes the long pipe which the boatman, as a matter of course, fills and hands to him as he takes his seat, while the boatmen themselves, generally Albanians, and singularly handsome and athletic men, lay themselves down to their work with a vigor and a heartiness which would astound the boatmen of an ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... even in books, must all pretend to be as dull and foolish as our neighbours. It was not so with Hazlitt. And notice how learned he is (as, indeed, throughout the essay) in the theory of walking tours. He is none of your athletic men in purple stockings, who walk their fifty miles a day: three hours' march is his ideal. And then he must have a ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at once banishes the idea of a savage; and an intelligence which shows that they are advancing in civilisation. The common people, when working, keep the upper part of their bodies quite naked; and it is then that the Tahitians are seen to advantage. They are very tall, broad-shouldered, athletic, and well-proportioned. It has been remarked that it requires little habit to make a dark skin more pleasing and natural to the eye of a European than his own colour. A white man bathing by the side of a Tahitian was like a plant ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... fingers resting lightly on the table behind which Underhill was standing, his thin, clean-shaven, mask-like face as expressionless as if it belonged to a head that had been stuck on the end of a pike and shoved out across the table for Underhill to look at, instead of to one well placed on his broad athletic shoulders. They both knew that Underhill was young and had inherited from his beautiful American mother a nervous and temperamental disposition. They also knew that this was tempered by the crafty cleverness ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... corvette was then drifted by currents almost as far as the island of Pisang, near which she fell in with three dhows, manned by natives of the island of Gueby. These people have an olive complexion, broad flat noses, and thick lips; some are strong, looking robust and athletic, others are slender and weakly in appearance; and others, again, thickset and repulsive-looking. The only clothing worn by the majority at this time was a pair of drawers fastened with a ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... hard work for all of them, but four energetic, determined people can accomplish much, especially when one is a ten-year-old boy, whose sturdy legs can make countless trips up and down stairs without tiring, and another is an athletic young fellow with ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston
... in me a noble specimen of my kind," said young Harper, straightening up his broad shoulders and looking distinctly athletic. ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... seems to have been exceptionally happy, throwing himself into all the interests of the place, athletic as well as intellectual, and endearing himself both to his teachers and his fellow-students. His friendship with Professor Herford, then Professor of English at Aberystwyth, was one of the chief pleasures of his student days ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... of lacrosse, platter or dice, straws and chunkee, there were other games, some of an athletic nature, some purely of chance, which observers have described, some of which are mentioned only in limited areas, while others, like the games above mentioned, were played by Indians scattered over ...
— Indian Games • Andrew McFarland Davis
... athletic, amatory or otherwise (the amatory ones were the worst), usually faded slowly, like the light from the setting sun or an exhausted coal in the grate, about the end of Puffin's second tumbler, and the gentlemen after that were usually somnolent, but occasionally laid ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson |
