"Elbowing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hands descend quickly, and, as I thought, kindly, lest he should lose his hat, upon the crown of it, until it encased more of his head than could be deemed either fashionable or comfortable. Presently, however, he was again seen viciously elbowing and writhing his way back to me, which after immense exertions he performed, in the full receipt of numerous anathemas and jocular insults. As he neared me, I inquired what he had been doing; why he had left me for such ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 30, 1841 • Various
... went in. Ascending to the dress circle, he stood for a little time gazing around upon the audience and occasionally upon the stage in his usual graceful manner. He was subsequently observed by Mr. Ford, the proprietor of the theater, to be slowly elbowing his way through the crowd that packed the rear of the dress circle toward the right side, at the extremity of which was the box where Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln and their companions were seated. Mr. Ford casually ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... long time, with rapid and irritated step, elbowing the passers-by that he need not deviate from a straight line, his great fury against her began to change into sadness and regret. After he had repeated to himself all the reproaches he had poured upon ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... was about a block from the livery, and as we entered, a large crowd of bystanders were watching the playing around one of the three monte games which were running. Elbowing our way through the crowd, we reached my bunkie, whom Officer slapped on the back and inquired ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... Mercer and I started off. The people struggled back before our advance, striving to make a path for us. At times the press of those behind made it impossible for them to give us room. We did not hesitate, but shoved our way forward, elbowing them away roughly. ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... a bowing acquaintance with Napoleon, Washington, Wellington, Prince Charlie, Henry of Navarre, Paul Revere, and Stonewall Jackson, but as these gallant gentlemen stand on the printed page, so they stood shoulder to shoulder, elbowing one another in her pretty head, made prettier by a wealth of hair, Marcel-waved twice ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... tally much better with my hypothesis of romantic busy-bodyism, than with the reasoner's suggestion of guilt. Once adopting the more charitable interpretation, we shall find no difficulty in comprehending the rose in the key-hole; the 'Marie' upon the slate; the 'elbowing the male relatives out of the way;' the 'aversion to permitting them to see the body;' the caution given to Madame B——, that she must hold no conversation with the gendarme until his return (Beauvais'); and, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... porter's lodge to the entrance hall of the theater. Along this narrow alley little women were racing pell-mell, for they were delighted to escape from the men who were waiting for them in the other passage. They went jostling and elbowing along, casting apprehensive glances behind them and only breathing freely when they got outside. Fontan, Bosc and Prulliere, on the other hand, retired at a leisurely pace, joking at the figure cut by the serious, paying admirers who were striding ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... caught Belle's glance and nodded toward the schoolhouse. Belle hurried away to find the musicians and set them playing, and a few couples strayed after her. But there were men who stayed, pushing, elbowing to see what would happen when Lance Lorrigan loosened his ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... afternoon in the year 1783, the streets of New York City, bordering on the bay, were crowded with excited people, pushing and elbowing each other rudely, and all pressing down to the water-side, where was collected a huge crowd, looking anxiously across the broad waters of the noble bay, to a spot where lay anchored a large squadron of ships. The taut cordage, the trimly squared yards, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... sense and too much real consideration for her friends and acquaintances to get together a mere mob of well-dressed people of probably incompatible tastes and temperament, and call it a party. She disliked an elbowing crowd and a clatter of fashionably shrill tongues with all the aversion of a delicately developed sensibility. No consideration of rank or social power or wealth had the slightest weight with her when she was distributing cards of invitation, ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... in the pursuit of any specific charm of hers. In my wanderings otherwhere in their islands I had occasion to observe how fond the English were of English travel and English objects of interest, and wherever I went in London there were Englishmen elbowing me from the front rank, not rudely, not unkindly, but insensibly to my rights of priority as an alien. In the old days of my Italian travels I had been used as a foreigner to carrying it with a high hand at shrines of the beautiful or memorable. I do not know how it is now, but in those days there ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... laughter, easily yielded and unnecessarily prolonged] that is to lift yourselves, and the city with you, from the abyss of no-art, and from the still deeper abyss of false art. That's where we're groping; that's where we're floundering. I declare, when I was elbowing my way through that struggling, gaping crowd [cries of "Oh, Doctor!" and laughter], I could only ask myself the question that I have just asked you here: what kind of a ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... side. Neither could he see his wife and General Triscoe, and he began to push frantically about in the crowd looking for the girl. He had an interminable five or ten minutes in his vain search, and he was going to call out to her by name, when Burnamy saved him from the hopeless absurdity by elbowing his way to him with ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... to recognise, and did not hesitate to address her. As was usually the case wherever Hester stood, a small vacant area—a sort of magic circle—had formed itself about her, into which, though the people were elbowing one another at a little distance, none ventured or felt disposed to intrude. It was a forcible type of the moral solitude in which the scarlet letter enveloped its fated wearer; partly by her own reserve, and partly by the instinctive, though ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Yet, in spite of this connection with human interests, what a moral loneliness, on week-days, broods round about its stately height! It has no kindred with the houses above which it towers; it looks down into the narrow thoroughfare, the lonelier, because the crowd are elbowing their passage at its base. A glance at the body of the church deepens this impression. Within, by the light of distant windows, amid refracted shadows, we discern the vacant pews and empty galleries, the silent organ, the voiceless pulpit, and the clock, which tells to solitude how time is passing. ...
— Sunday at Home (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to draw his weapon lest in such a situation it should provoke a holocaust. Yet he felt that in a moment he might need it. Then as he stood, still uncertain, he saw the giant who had until now looked on with detached emotionlessness come elbowing his way through the press, much as an elephant goes through small timber, uprooting obstacles and tossing them aside ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... I was going to fall, so I just jumped to where I seen you two," said she, with her customary calmness, and then she turned to assure her escort of the gondola, who was anxiously elbowing his way to her, that she was ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... People go and come, elbowing and disappearing behind each other. The waiters worm their way through with their fragile and sparkling burdens—green, red or bright yellow, with a white border. The grating of feet on the sanded floor mingles with the exclamations of the regular customers as they recognize ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... carried the table outside and laid it with a nice white table-cloth and put a plate for each; and, lastly, Granny brought out the steaming soup-tureen in state. The lamp was lit and the grandparents and grandchildren sat down to supper, jostling and elbowing one another and laughing and shouting with pleasure. Then, for a time, nothing was heard but the sound of the wooden spoons noisily ...
— The Blue Bird for Children - The Wonderful Adventures of Tyltyl and Mytyl in Search of Happiness • Georgette Leblanc
... lemonade, ice-cream, port wine negus, and small cakes, served in a room adjoining the dancing-hall, or brought in by the colored domestics, or by the cavalier in his own proper person, who ofttimes appeared upon the dancing-floor, elbowing his way to the lady of his adoration, in the one hand bearing well-filled glasses, and in the other sustaining a plate heaped ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... was aware of her intention, she had slipped away. At the same moment Judge Fulsom made his appearance, elbowing his smiling way through the crowd, a brimming saucer of vari-colored ice cream in ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... least on the surface. It was as though, knowing what he was going into, he would leave with Sara Lee no feeling, if he never returned, that she had inflicted a lasting hurt. He was everywhere in the little house, elbowing his way among the men with his cheery nonsense, bantering the weary ones until they smiled, carrying hot water for Sara Lee and helping her now and then with ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... commands my respect, but Russia takes my breath away," said Deulin, elbowing his way through the medley of many races. On all sides one heard different languages—German, the sing-song Russian—the odd, exclamatory tongue which ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... of Cannes, flanked on the left by Mont Chevalier and on the right by La Croisette, displayed a solid mass of hotels on the water front. Red-roofed villas climbed to Le Cannet and La Californie, elbowing each other in the town and scattering in the suburbs until the upper villas were almost lost in foliage. Behind were the Maritime Alps. Not far beyond La Croisette, the Cap d'Antibes jutted out into the sea. At night the lighthouses ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... whispered also that the sagacious Starbottle, aware of this fact, would retaliate in kind so outrageously as to leave Bungstarter no recourse but to demand satisfaction on the spot. As Colonel Starbottle rose, the eager crowd drew together, elbowing each other in rapt and ecstatic expectancy. "He can't get even on Bungstarter, onless he allows his sister ran off with a nigger, or that he put up his grandmother at draw poker and lost her," whispered the Quartz Crusher; "kin he?" All ears were alert, particularly the very long and ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... the conscription began, and amidst a breathless silence one of the mayor's assistants came to the window and called out the first name: "Adolphe Monnier, of the commune of S——;" and a tall country-boy, elbowing his way through the crowd, walked up into the town-hall. The commissioner of police gave the round box a touch, and as it turned round some six or seven times one might almost have heard a raindrop fall. "Now," said he laughing, "good luck to you!" and the peasant, plunging his hand into the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... They were elbowing the crowd now. Here were men from the small clearings in homespun and butternut or fringed hunting-shirts, with their women folk trailing after them. Here, too, in lesser numbers, were the lords of the soil, the men who counted their acres by the thousand and their slaves by the score. There ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... the badly hurt) who had had his eye all but knocked out. It stood out of his head the size of half a hen's egg. This would have laid out a white man on his back for a month: and yet there was that chap elbowing here and there in the crowd and talking to the others as if nothing had been the matter. They made a great hubbub amongst themselves, and whenever the old man showed his bald head on the foreside of the bridge, they would all leave ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... Elbowing her way in she caught sight of her gown held aloft by Mr. Bills, and heard his voluble ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... few things moved his fancy so pleasantly. The world, he would say, was so much smaller than we thought it; we were all so connected by fate without knowing it; people supposed to be far apart were so constantly elbowing each other; and to-morrow bore so close a resemblance to nothing half so much as to yesterday. Here were the only two leading incidents of his own life before I knew him, his marriage and the first appearance of his Pickwick; and ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... tastefully dressed dolls, showing so conspicuously among the dark-green foliage. The Barlows were rather late, for upon Uncle Ephraim devolved the duty of seeing to the license, and as he had no seat in that house, his arrival was only known by Aunt Betsy's elbowing her way to the front, and near to the Christmas tree which she had helped to dress, just as she had helped to trim the church. She did not believe in such "flummmeries" it is true, and she classed them with the "quirks," but rather than "see the gals ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... operations, when gradually descending a short distance, we entered the great vestibule or ante-chamber of the Cave. What do we now see? Midnight!—the blackness of darkness!—Nothing! Where is the wall we were lately elbowing out of the way? It has vanished!—It is lost! We are walled in by darkness, and darkness canopies us above. Look again;—Swing your torches aloft! Aye, now you can see it; far up, a hundred feet above your head, a ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt
... article left me loitering) is a cheerful, comely, old-fashioned town, the peculiarities of which, if there be any, have passed out of my remembrance. As you descend towards the Thames, the streets get meaner, and the shabby and sunken houses, elbowing one another for frontage, bear the sign-boards of beer-shops and eating-rooms, with especial promises of whitebait and other delicacies in the fishing line. You observe, also, a frequent announcement ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with any quantity of shells. His idea was to rob us of our morale. I wish he might have seen how abysmally he failed to do it. Down our narrow valley, like a flight of arrows, the shells screamed and whistled. Where they struck, the ground looked like Resurrection Day with the dead elbowing their way into daylight and forcing back the earth from their eyes. There were actually many dead just beneath the surface and, as the ground was ploughed up, the smell of corruption became distinctly unpleasant. Presently the shells began to go dud; we realised that ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... legs wedged into those uncomfortable sloping desks, where we sat elbowing each other; and the injunctions to attain a free hand, unattainable in that position; the first copy I wrote after, with its moral lesson, "Art improves Nature"; the still earlier pot-hooks and the hangers, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... made from as many different points, they cannot fail to approach accuracy. Faith is a first element in all great undertakings. It removes mountains at Mont Cenis, as it walked the waves with Columbus. In our century even faith is progressive, and does not shrink from elbowing its way through what Bunyan ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... Otto had stood on the left of his daughter, his heart thumping away, his face growing redder every minute, his eyes intent on each guest elbowing a way through the crowd as Masie handed them their gifts, noting the general happiness and the laughter that followed the reading of the lines, wondering all the time why no one was offended at the size and, to him, ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... forward, and elbowing Sir Thomas rudely out of the way, turned round, and, instead of apologising, eyed him coolly and ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... and cuts in. Then when the six-foot girl (brought by Kaye in your class, and to whom he has been trying to introduce you all evening) gallops by, the line surges back and the groups face about and become intent on far corners of the hall, for Kaye, anxious and perspiring, appears elbowing through the crowd in search ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... creek suited him better, and its proximity to the murmuring, eddying, rocky current appealed to us all, albeit it necessitated our mess-tent being pitched astride a shallow gully, and our individual tents elbowing one another in the narrow spaces between the boulders. But wild Nature, when you can manage her, is what the camper-out wants. Pure elements—air, water, earth—these settle the question; Camp Horseshoe Run had them all. It was here, I think, ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... in. Come, now, on the run, all of you! I'll show you what to do." She took instant charge of the situation, and when Dave refused to leave the carriage and began to fight off his friends, gabbling wildly, it was she who quieted him. Elbowing Blaze and her husband out of the way, she loosed the young man's frenzied clutch from the carriage and, holding his hands in hers, talked to him in such a way that he gradually relaxed. It was she who helped him out and then supported him into ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... moment in the Athens of the third century before Christ; that we are strolling in its streets, visiting its shops, its courts, and its temples, and that we are getting a whiff of the Aegean, mingled with the less savory odors of the markets and of the wine-shops. We stroll about the city elbowing our way through the throng of boatmen, merchants, and hucksters. Here a barber stands outside his shop and solicits custom; there an old usurer with pimply face sits bending over his accounts in a dingy little office; at the corner of the street a crowd encircles ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... so, protesting still, he led away their cattle in the end, Vallancey going with him to see that he performed this last duty as a stable-boy ere he too became a champion militant of the Protestant Cause. Trenchard sped after Wilding, who was elbowing his way through the yokels about the steps. The glare of a newly lighted lamp from the doorway fell full upon his long white face as he advanced, and ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... Park at Albert Gate, two of his young companions nodded and took off their hats, elbowing each other, as who should say, "I suppose that's a case!" How proud Dick felt, and how happy! The quarter of a mile that brought him to Apsley House seemed a direct road to Paradise; the man who is always watering the rhododendrons ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... monkeyfied compass, they were themselves, individually, upon a magnificent scale. It was as if there had been crowded half a dozen gigantic specimens of human ugliness into my lady's china closet, all of which were elbowing each other for room. The eyes would have been called large, had it not been for the vast proportions of the nose, and the nose would have been thought preposterous, had it not been for the horrible dimensions of the mouth. ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... a leisurely muddled manner we got to the Address; and I found myself packed in a dense elbowing crowd to the right of the Speaker's chair; while the attenuated Opposition, nearly leaderless after the massacre, tilted its brim to its nose and sprawled at its ease amidst ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... was confirmed by a constable of whom we made inquiry, and who directed us to the entrance to the court. Passing down a passage and elbowing our way through the throng of idlers, we made for the solicitor's box, where we had barely taken our seats when the case ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... the last, Genevieve) had brought into this fight, were now downtown for the supreme effort. And it seemed that there were now more of the so-called "better citizens." Certainly there were more of Noonan's men, and these were still elbowing and jostling, and making little mass rushes—yet otherwise holding themselves ominously ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... policemen looking like so many knaves of clubs; no cabs or omnibuses splashing the mud to the right and to the left; and, above all, none of your punctual men of business hurrying to their appointments, blowing like steam-engines, elbowing everybody, and capsizing the apple-stalls. No; there is none of ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... in their practical efforts. As many women fancied themselves capable of enduring hospital life, as there are always in every college, youth who believe they can become distinguished authors, poets and statesmen. But only the few who had a genius for the work, continued in it, and succeeded in elbowing room for themselves through the never-ending obstacles, jealousies and chagrins that beset the service. Every woman who keeps her place in a general hospital, or a corps hospital, has to prove her title to be trusted; ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... ye warmints!" cries the coachman, elbowing his way among them—and, remounting the box, he takes the whip and reins out of Mr. Jorrocks's hands, cries "All right behind? sit ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... English metropolis. London had altered greatly since the days of Queen Anne more than half a century before, when his grandfather had been there. It had become a greater market for trade, and the common people had been elbowing their way to the parts where only fine residences had once stood. Two kings of the House of Hanover had in the meantime reigned and died, and now King George III, another of that line, sat ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... the lifetime of Robert Boyle that our forefathers began to come into close contact with the races and nationalities of the outer world. When he was born in County Cork in the year 1627, small and isolated bands of Englishmen were elbowing Red Indians from the eastern sea-board of North America; before his death in London in 1691, at the age of sixty-four, he had seen these pioneer bands become united into a British fringe stretching almost without a break ...
— Nationality and Race from an Anthropologist's Point of View • Arthur Keith
... Elbowing the boy aside, he seized the operating lever and thrust it to the notch labelled "Descend." An instant of pause followed: like its attendant the elevator seemed stalled in inertia ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... another under foot; veils and dresses are torn; ladies faint away in the scrimmage, and only the strongest and most unscrupulous get in. I have heard some say, who have been in the pellmell, that, not content with elbowing and pushing and pounding, some women even stick pins into those who are in the way. I hope this latter is not true; but it is certain that the conduct of most of the women is brutal. A weak or modest or timid woman stands no more ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... wives but of doubtful virtue, considered this matter duly, I believe their inordinate ardour after gain would be a good deal cooled, when they could not be certain (though their mates could) for whose children they were elbowing, bustling, griping, and perhaps cheating, those with whom they have concerns, whether friends, neighbours, or more certain next-of-kin, by the ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... probably belonging to the Maxwell party, and found themselves a good deal jeered and hustled, and could hardly make any way at all. However, a friendly policeman came to their aid. They were passed into a lobby, and at last, with much elbowing and pushing, ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... professional man carries a rigid crust around him which has very little variation and hardly any elasticity. This professionalism is the region where men specialise their knowledge and organise their power, mercilessly elbowing each other in their struggle to come to the front. Professionalism is necessary, without doubt; but it must not be allowed to exceed its healthy limits, to assume complete mastery over the personal man, making him narrow and hard, exclusively ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... madame the widow Dupuis of Hirondelette," who was now elbowing her broad way through the crowd to her bargain which she struggled out with, red and perspiring, to the mud-smeared lawn, where her eldest daughter shrewdly examined ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... the Major caught sight of him, elbowing his way through the gut of a narrow lane leading off the Quay by the fish-market, and gave chase. But the weight in his pockets handicapped him, and the crowd seemed to take a malicious delight in blocking ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sudden, while her arms were yet upraised, she looked past the three who were retreating and through the door now opening at their back. Another trio was in the hall—Tottie, important and smiling; Mrs. Milo, elbowing her way ahead of the landlady to hear and see; and with ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... noisy group, elbowing each other in their haste to reach a cabaret, where they could drink away their week's wages. These fellows were followed by some shabby men who were swearing under their breath at the trifle they had received, having been tipsy and absent more ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... crowds, and the charm of it all. About four o'clock hundreds of government clerks streamed out sluggishly from the side streets. At the crossings fakirs were busy, their customers good-naturedly elbowing each other in their eagerness to be swindled. And violets everywhere! The air was filled with the scent of them. Men, women, and children with trays piled high with the tiny purple and white flowers were doing a tremendous business; their customers ranging from dignified statesmen to the loudly ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... police, a more unpleasant aspect. People walked in mud up to the knee; and the multitude of caleches or volantes (the characteristic equipage of the Havannah) of carts loaded with casks of sugar, and porters elbowing passengers, rendered walking most disagreeable. The smell of tasajo often poisons the houses and the winding streets. But it appears that of late the police has interposed and that a manifest improvement ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... unfortunately, one is not a "vox et praeterea nihil," but with a considerable corporality attached which requires feeding, and so while my inner man is continually indulging in these anchorite reflections, the outer is sedulously elbowing and pushing as if he dreamed of nothing but ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... a western frontier settlement where the home missionary had gone, and now this one elbowing by her with the same lightened face is from the mountain section of the South. And so they come eagerly up from many places where you have never been in person but where you have gone potentially through your money. ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... replenish them, and clamoring tirelessly for more. Newcomers had to force their way to the bar by violent efforts, and once there they stayed until pushed bodily aside. There were actually women to be seen here and there in the throng, elbowing and shoving like the rest for a place at the front. Some of the more gallant young men fought their way outward, from time to time, carrying for safety above their heads glasses of beer which they gave to young and pretty girls standing on the fringe of the crowd, among ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... upon settlers might be best explained by giving an example: A young man, then, comes to this glorious country fresh from all the excitement and fever of Europe, where people are, as a rule, overcrowded and elbowing each other for a share of the bread that is not sufficient to feed all; he settles down, either to steady work under a master, or to till his own farm and mind his own flocks. In either case, while feeling labour to be not only a pleasure, but actually ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... in amazement as he walked over to the canvas awning in front of the low dock building, actually elbowing his way through a group of natives. Presently he came ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... see the king and his family return from chapel; for by this time London had poured forth its chaises and one, and the astonished inmates of Cheapside and St. Mary Axe were elbowing each other to see how a monarch smiled. They saw him well; and often have I heard the disappointed exclamation, "Is that the king?" They saw a portly man, in a plain suit of regimentals, and no crown upon his head. What a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 355., Saturday, February 7, 1829 • Various
... lot of them in 1743; he presented them to Martin Folkes, who gave them to Baker, and these interesting creatures revived in water in 1771. They enjoyed a rare satisfaction in elbowing their own twenty-eighth generation. Wouldn't a man who should see his own twenty-eighth ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... wonder what's keepin' em." Suddenly he straightened himself with a jerk: "Good Lord! I wonder if—— But no, not even Purdy would try that. Still, if he knows I know he tried to dope me he'll be figgerin' on pullin' his freight anyhow, an'—" The man's lips tightened and, elbowing his way to the door he stepped onto the street and hurried to the Headquarters saloon. Cinnabar Joe was behind the bar, apparently none the worse for his dose of chloral, and in answer to a swift signal, followed the Texan to the rear of ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... outright, but in a hysterical way, as he looked over the crowd in front of him. I followed his eye and saw, some distance back, as if crowded out by the well-dressed and elbowing throng, a little woman in a faded dress and a well-worn hat, with a face almost painful in its intense but hopeful expression, glancing rapidly from window to window ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Patsy hurried forward, elbowing her way vigorously, and the beauty of her dress even more than the dark intensity of her face, caused the throng to make way. She saw the man clearly now, and already the crowd was beginning to seek ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... right, Merrick had seen them. He was greatly amazed, for he had not dreamed of their being in that vicinity. He left his seat in a hurry, and, elbowing his way through the crowd, started for the entrance ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... Rooney, with a start, for in diving operations Life and Death frequently stand elbowing ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... as though to get his bearings, and while they waited for him to go on Brown nudged Jaune to look at the delightfully picturesque frame house, set in a deep niche between two high brick houses, with the wooden stair elbowing up its outside to its third story. It came out wonderfully well in the moonlight, but Jaune was too much excited even to ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... Chinese and beady-eyed Tartars who throng the business quarters are quite in keeping with the Oriental filth around, unredeemed by the usual Eastern colour and romance. On fine mornings the Market Place presents a curious and interesting appearance, for here you may see the Celestial in flowery silk elbowing the fur-clad Yakute and Bokhara shaking hands with Japan. The Irkutsk district is peopled by the Buriates, who originally came from Trans-Baikalia, but who have now become more Russianised than any other Siberian race. The Buriat dialect is a kind of patois ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... the day for the evacuation drew closer and closer, one became dimly conscious of an electrical condition of the social atmosphere which any trifle might stimulate into a thunderstorm. Blouses gathered and muttered about the street-corners, scowling at and elbowing the German soldiers as they strode to buy sausages to stay them in the homeward march. The gamins, always covertly insolent, no longer cloaked their insolence, and wagged little tricolour flags under the nose of the stolid German sentry on the Pont St. Croix. At the table d'hote the painful ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... every box which is put up and bids fair to be as great or a greater nuisance than the sparrow. It is a handsome bird and a fine whistler, but when we remember how this foreigner is slowly but surely elbowing our native birds out of their rightful haunts, we find ourselves losing sight of its beauties. The cowbird, of course, imposes her eggs upon many of the smaller species of birds, while our beautiful purple grackle, meadow lark, red-winged blackbird, and the Baltimore and orchard orioles ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... reticent of speech and swift of action, light-hearted and altogether human. They were the adventurous and unfettered spirits of hundreds of communities whom the restrictions of respectable society had galled. Here they were, elbowing each other in a little corner of sagebrush country where there was little to do and much whiskey to drink; and the hand of the law was ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... faintly, and the boy came to her, elbowing. 'I want some of that pop-corn so much! I could buy it if you'd hold this baby till I put my hand in my pocket.' The youth laughed, but for the sake of 'making a trade' set down his basket and took the 'enfant terrible.' There was an instant attack upon his hair, which ...
— Prudy Keeping House • Sophie May
... the messenger who had summoned her to appear before the bar of the Assembly in reply to the accusations of Viard, informed him of their peril, and implored him to hand her letter to the president. The messenger, M. Roze, took the paper, and, elbowing his way through the throng, disappeared. An hour elapsed, which seemed an age. The tumult within continued unabated. At ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... youths and extremely pert misses going and coming. Only they all seem more sophisticated nowadays. They—naturally enough—know more than their daddies, and they show it. As they brushed past, literally elbowing me, they seemed contemptuously arrogant in their youthful exuberance. And ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... but the mob had a good lead, and when the youth arrived he found the space within the surrounding chain fence fairly covered. Where the people could all have come from struck him even at that moment as a mystery. Certainly all told the town could not in itself have mustered half the number. Elbowing his way among them, however, he began soon to understand. Here and there among the mass he caught sight of familiar faces,—Russell of the Circle R Ranch, Stetson of the "XI," each taking no part, but with hats slouched low over their eyes watching every movement of the drama. ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... position began to clamber over the booms, along the hammock- rail, and actually out through the ports, along the main-channels, and in again through the ports farther aft, in their eagerness to volunteer. The struggling and elbowing increased until it became almost desperate, when one of the boatswain's mates—a brawny, muscular, old sea-dog, with a mahogany visage, a gigantic pig-tail, and his chest and arms elaborately tattooed—stepped out, and, facing round, exclaimed ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... into the habit of going to the beer houses, where the continual elbowing of the drinkers brings you in contact with a familiar and silent public, where the heavy clouds of tobacco smoke lull disquietude, while the heavy beer dulls the mind and calms the heart. He almost lived there. He was scarcely up ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... him alone. He's all right, and has got as much right to talk as you have," said another man, elbowing his ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... these, pressing close to catch every word of the argument, were braves, youths, women, and children, mixed together indiscriminately. A low platform extended the length of the building against the wall on each side, and this held another crowding, elbowing, whispering mass of redskins. Every chief and warrior, as well as most of the women, held each a pipe between his teeth, and puffed out clouds of ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... he asked guests and made a feast, but the meat was to be boiled in the new pot, and so he took it up and set it in the middle of the floor. The guests thought the King had lost his wits, and went about elbowing one another, and laughing at him. But he walked round and round the pot and cackled and chattered, saying ...
— East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon • Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen
... not limited to mere reviewers, as some of your old class-fellows would have the world to believe. When I contrast the quiet unobtrusive development of Mr. G—-'s character with that bustling and obstreperous elbowing into notice of some of those to whom the Edinburgh Review owes half its fame, and compare the pure and steady lustre of his elevation, to the rocket-like aberrations and perturbed blaze of their still uncertain course, I cannot but think that we have overrated, if not their ability, ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... himself some time, for his long ride had made him very weary, he rose, and, changing his apparel, went to the Greyfriars church, where the clergy were assembling, and elbowing himself gently into the heart of the people waiting around for admission, he got in with the crowd ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... with fate no longer. Grasping Flora by her slender waist, I dragged her from her seat, and hurried her along through the thickening throng. When she could no longer keep her feet. I supported her entirely, elbowing, pushing, struggling with the maddest of them. I reached the narrow exit—I fought my way through like a tiger. Bleeding, exhausted, my hat gone, my coat torn from my back, I at last emerged under the calm moonlight with my darling ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... difficult to attempt a picture. The pencil of a Cruikshank or a Rowlandson might indeed convey some idea; but all weaker hands would find the subject overpowering. A mob of manufacturers, melting hot, elbowing one another into ill-humour, by their anxiety to teach their offspring the fashionable vice of gaming; giving the pretty innocents a taste for loo, which generally ends in loo-sening what little purity of principle ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... sees mountains of watermelons, piles of garlic, old scows and worn-out gondolas, heaped with all manner of strange-looking fish. Crossing over the bridge to the end where the jewelers have their shops, and elbowing through the crowd of young girls and matrons, with their gay-colored handkerchiefs and strands of bright beads, Paolo came to a more secluded quarter. Here he stopped, and, with careful deliberation, lifted the cover of the basket, saying as he laid his hand affectionately ...
— Chico: the Story of a Homing Pigeon • Lucy M. Blanchard
... of the plain where rose the tumulus on which the miller had established himself, a broad-brimmed tradesman was elbowing his way along. He saw Mr. Loveday from the base of the barrow, and beckoned to attract his attention. Loveday went halfway down, and the other came up as near as ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... give a note of variety to the country of the social shrubs. These chiefly clothe the benches and eastern foot-slopes of the Sierras,—great spreads of artemisia, coleogyne, and spinosa, suffering no other woody stemmed thing in their purlieus; this by election apparently, with no elbowing; and the several shrubs have each their clientele of flowering herbs. It would be worth knowing how much the devastating sheep have had to do with driving the tender plants to the shelter of the prickle-bushes. ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... the mechanism of her fan with a demure expression on lips shaped for happiness. A dark young man was elbowing his way through the mixed ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... the exhibit seemed surprisingly formidable, but the wonder in her eyes was not at that. Her marvel was for the fact that the man who was capable of so cruelly elbowing little Fifi out of his way should be counted a follower of the tenderest and ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... unusual sound and would hush quickly, only now and then uttering a warning note. Long before they were fully fledged they clambered up to the orifice to receive their food. As but one could stand in the opening at a time, there was a good deal of elbowing and struggling for this position. It was a very desirable one aside from the advantages it had when food was served; it looked out upon the great, shining world, into which the young birds seemed never tired of gazing. The fresh air must have been a consideration also, for the interior of a high-hole's ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... their traps, they gathered into a surly group and swore their discontent at the whole expedition. Into the midst of this Stubbs stamped and under pretence of gruff greeting to this one and that, together with much elbowing, broke the circle up into three parts. A dozen questions were shot at him, but he answered them with an assumption of authority that had a wholesome effect. In another minute he had picked out three of the most aggressive men and stationed them at ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... and light colored gowns, she became galvanized into action, and pinning on her hat began quickly to gather up her luggage. "Good-bye," she said indifferently. "I'll probably see you later." Then, rapidly elbowing her way down the aisle she disappeared through the open door, leaving the chums to make their way more slowly out of the car. As they stepped from the car to the station platform Grace caught sight of her at the far end of the station in conversation with a tall auburn-haired girl and ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... had recovered himself, and was no longer listening. At this moment Rogojin appeared, elbowing through the crowd; he took Nastasia's hand, drew it through his arm, and quickly led her away. He appeared to be terribly excited; he was trembling all over, and was as pale as a corpse. As he carried Nastasia ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... leave," cried the honest sailor who had found the stage-coachman's parcel—"avast, friend, by your leave," said he, elbowing his way between Alderman Holloway and his next neighbour, and getting clear into the middle of the circle—"I know more of this matter, my lord, or please your worship, which is much the same thing, than any body here; and I'm glad on't, mistress," continued the tar, pulling a quid of tobacco ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... down the street, through elbowing throngs of grooms, pages, men-at-arms, and archers, till I found the Paris Gate, whence the windmill was plain to behold. It was such an old place as we see in Northern France, plain, strong, with red walls which the yellow ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... it gives, in greater or less degree, more of such sensitiveness and energy than it could otherwise have had. Art thus calls forth contemplative emotions, otherwise dormant, and creates in the routine and scramble of individual wants and habits a sanctuary where the soul stops elbowing and trampling, and being elbowed and trampled; nay, rather, a holy hill, neither ploughed nor hunted over, a free high place, in which we can see clearly, breathe widely, and, for ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... gentleman; his spirit shone the brighter for being polished by decency. In scenes of gaiety he never broke into the regard that was due to the presence of equal, or superior characters, tho' inferior actors played them; he filled the stage, not by elbowing and crossing it before others, or disconcerting their action, but by surpassing them in true and masterly touches of nature; he never laughed at his own jest, unless the point of his raillery upon another required it; he had a particular talent in giving ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... are necessary. Apollinaris will take the place of stronger waters, and no embarrassment follows to either host or guest. As to the moral involved, a silent example may be quite as influential as an aggressive exhibition of one's principles. Questions of manners and morals are constantly elbowing one another, and it is a nice point to decide when and how far duty requires one to defy conventionality. It is safe to say that only in extreme cases is this ever necessary, or even permissible. The hostess who simply does not ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... eight players on stringed instruments, which accompanied the Royal party on their voyage of pleasure. The Queen stood on deck, leaning against the mast, her eyes fixed on the shore, as the vessel swung round, and bore away towards the west;—the people, elbowing each other, and climbing up on each other's shoulders and on the posts of the quay, merely to get a passing glimpse of her beauty, all loyally cheering and waving their hats and handkerchiefs, were as indifferent to her sight and soul as an ant-heap ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... wormwood and garlic; and though they exhibited great tenacity of life, they also exhibited great irregularity of purpose. In one spot there would be nothing, in an adjacent spot a whorl of beets, big and little, crowding and jostling and elbowing each other, like school-boys round the red-hot stove on a winter's morning. I knew they had been planted in a right line, and I don't, even now, comprehend why they should not come up in a right line. I weeded ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... and the theatres were emptying. The crowds, coming from every direction at once, were soon a confused, bewildered mass of elbowing humanity. In the proximity of Broadway and Forty-second Street, a mob of smartly-dressed people pushed unceremoniously this way and that. They swept the sidewalks like a resistless torrent, recklessly attempting ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... you; and if you let luxury relax your nerves and soften your brain tissues and make your muscles mushy, a similar mental and moral condition will develop. And then, when you go out into real life, you will find some sturdy young barbarian, with a Spartan training and a merciless heart, elbowing you ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... have almost no record of what the greatest of all writing men was doing in the world is that while his friends were elbowing the tide of life in the streets of London, or fighting in the Low Countries, or carousing at the Mermaid Tavern, or at the Apollo Saloon, he was filling every moment with workâwork which enabled him, before he reached his fifty-second year, to build up that literary monument of his, that edifice ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... the best known reminiscences of the eighteenth century; all Paris hurrying early in the morning to the doors of the Theatre Francais, the greatest ladies dining in the actresses' dressing-room in order to secure places." "The blue ribands," says Bachaumont, "huddled up in the crowd, and elbowing Savoyards; the guard dispersed, the doors burst, the iron gratings broken beneath the efforts of the assailants." "Three persons stifled," says La Harpe, "one more than for Scudery; and on the stage, after the rising of the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... out of the window," he said, elbowing his way up to her. "The room was quite bare, carpet and all gone, nothing to be found but these valuables," and with a smile, he held up the last number of the "Idol-Breaker," and ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... was conducted pretty much as in England; the servants handing round tea, coffee, and cakes, on broad silver salvers. But we all sat and took our refreshments at leisure, instead of standing with cups in our hands, and elbowing our way through crowds of persons, who all look as if they were bound on some particular business, and could scarcely afford time to recognise their passing acquaintance. We then adjourned to the music-room, ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... visited Germany with her children, Schlegel, and Sismondi. So eager was everybody to see her and hear her talk, that Bettina von Arnim says in her correspondence with Goethe: "The gentlemen stood around the table and planted themselves behind us, elbowing one another. They leaned quite over me, and I said in French, 'Your ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... It determines how much of what he expects he will expect of himself, and how much he will expect of others and how much of books. The man who expects too much of himself develops into the headlong and dangerous citizen who threatens society with his strength—goes elbowing about in it—insisting upon living other people's lives for them as well as his own. The man who expects too much of others threatens society with weariness. He is always expecting other people to do his living for him. The man who expects too much of books lives neither ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... Suddenly his eyes fell upon the little hand-bag which she carried. On one end, in small white letters, was: "Ruth Nelson, Kentucky, U.S.A." He watched her until she was lost to view, then he turned eagerly back into the crowd. Elbowing his way forward, he ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... Coblenz's engagement reception, an event properly festooned with smilax and properly jostled with the elbowing figures of waiters tilting their plates of dark-meat chicken salad, two olives, and a finger-roll in among the crowd, a stringed three-piece orchestra, faintly seen and still more faintly heard, ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... Lord F. Cavendish;(110) and to-day, Lady Hertford, Miss Floyd, and Lord Frederick and I dined at Colonel Kane's, who is settled in the Stable Yard, and in a damned good house, plate, windows cut down to the floor, elbowing his Majesty with an enormous bow window. The dog is monstrously well nipped; he obtrudes his civilities upon me, malgre que j'en ai, and will in time force me not to abuse him. He would help me to-day to some venison, and how he contrived it, ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... held, and slowly we climbed to its summit. It is a strange coincidence that just then I should have glanced up at the sky. I saw a huge, black cloud-mass elbowing its way, as it were, in front of those islands of light, the promise of peace. And so much was I by this time imbued with the moods of the skies that the disappearance of this mild glimmer sent a regret through my very body. ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... around the room. I knew that he was looking to see if I were there, so I decided to come out of my hiding place, and elbowing through the crowd of people, I came and stood beside him. His face lit up when he saw me. Presently, the trial ended. He was sentenced to two months' imprisonment and a fine of one hundred francs. Two months' prison! The door through which Vitalis had entered was opened. ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot |
