"Shuffling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nerves, which came over him at the barracks when he lifted his gun to start. The load on his back was snug and light as he stood there in marching rig; how much heavier and harder it was to grow before he should stand on American soil again, he could not know. Then, the shuffling of many feet and the flutter of a flag outside the stone gates, so strangely like the gates which stand at the entrance of the Land of his Memories—and his Commencement ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... himself, and of course the gas flared up immediately. I do not think that I had ever seen any one more surprised. This power of generating static electricity from their own bodies was naturally a source of immense delight to the Lansdowne children. They loved, after shuffling their feet on the carpet, to creep up to any adult relation and touch them lightly on the ear, a most sensitive spot. There would be a little spark, a little shock, and a little exclamation of surprise. ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... slapdash and independent, and decidedly lacking in "that repose which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere". Gwen could never keep still for five seconds, her restless hands were always fidgeting or her feet shuffling, or she was twisting in her chair, or shaking back a loose untidy lock that had escaped from her ribbon. Gwen often did her hair without the aid of a looking-glass, but when she happened to use one the reflection of her own face gave her ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... very good, and so far thou hast not misspoken aught, nor uttered a word unprofitably. Wherefore for this night thou shalt lack neither raiment nor aught else that is the due of a hapless suppliant, when he has met them that can befriend him. But in the morning thou shalt go shuffling in thine own rags, for there are not many mantles here or changes of doublet; for each man hath but one coat. But when the dear son of Odysseus comes, he himself will give thee a mantle and doublet for raiment, and send thee whithersoever thy heart ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... a loud barking at this, but there were sounds as if of protest mingled with it, and finally the dog subsided into a howl, and dropped down by the door to wait, a low, shuffling, panting sound coming through the ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... you did," retorted Phemie pertly. But here a pushing of chairs and shuffling of feet in the kitchen checked her. Clementina fixed an abstracted gaze on the ceiling; Phemie regarded a leaf on the window sill with photographic rigidity as the door opened to the ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... at the door and on her shuffling, slippered feet old Miriam entered, handing some packages to Madame de Coulevain. Then she turned to revolve about the bright figure of her young mistress, her eyes glistening fondly, her dark fingers ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... to have seen him when he stood up to sing at our concerts—his tight little figure stepping to and fro, and his feet shuffling to the air, his eyes seeking and bestowing encouragement—and to have enjoyed the bow, so nicely calculated between jest and earnest, between grace and clumsiness, with which he brought each song to a conclusion. He was not only a great favourite among ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... though some one had exploded a mental bomb. Men and women craned forward to see the man who had been identified, the man who no doubt had murdered James Cunningham. The murmur of voices, the rustle of skirts, the shuffling of moving bodies filled ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... his hat very far back from his forehead. He removed it, still quite abstractedly, and retired with long, shuffling ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... muffled sound, but there was no footfall, as of some one walking. Then there came stifled voices, whisperings, as of people talking eagerly yet cautiously. Then there were heavy steps, distinct yet slow, followed, after an interval, by the tramp of shuffling feet, like those of people carrying an awkward burden, and stumbling under it. But always, before Beth could think what the noise meant, the gust came again, racking her nerves, rattling the windows, making the doors creak; then dying away, to be followed by more mysterious sounds, ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... till about two Years afterwards. While he was in his Splendour at Antwerp, and cou'd answer every bodies Expectations as to Money matters, it was not any Mans Business to pry into his Pedigree; but when his Conduct began to be observ'd, and taken Notice to be full of Shuffling and Demurs in the Payment of small Bills, there was a Jealousy spread about the Town that the Lord G—— would prove a Cheat, so his Credit began to sink in the Shops, but it held up still among the Ladies, where a handsome Personage, and a charming Tongue is often ready Money. But it was ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe
... He had been going on hurriedly and feverishly, filling up the time as best he might, trying to forget the embarrassing situation into which he had brought his wife and himself, when the sound of heavy footsteps fell upon his ear. A sound of shuffling, the creak of men's boots, a little gruff whispering in the doorway—what was it all about? Were the men whom he had helped and guided going to turn against him openly—to give him in his wife's presence some other insult beside ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... sure of that," cried the hag, disabling him for the moment, by a severe blow on the arm from her staff. And shuffling off with an agility which could scarcely have been expected from her, she passed through a gate near her, and disappeared behind a ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... and then Mrs. Jakes, now the only servant in the house, was heard shuffling along the passage, followed by ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... loves, I'm coming now,"— Then, shuffling o'er the floor, Contrived to make his balance true, And led them ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield
... at the coarse words, but the galleries burst into shouts of laughter that lingered in ripples and murmurs and the shuffling of feet. ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... sound of struggling, renewed at intervals with silent but fearful energy. It was evident, however, that the parties were approaching the door, for he heard the solid oak sound twice or thrice, as the feet of the combatants, in shuffling hither and thither over the floor, struck upon it. After a slight pause he heard the door thrown open with such violence that the leaf seemed to strike the side-wall of the hall, for it was so dark without that this could only be ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... condensed versions, as his sorely taxed vocal organs had almost reached the limit of their strength. He had just reached the conclusion, having been interrupted several times by Abner's exclamations, when, ahead of them, on the road, they spied a figure shuffling along in the dust. The two boys were on the rear seat of the rig, so that the man, when he saw the rig approaching, having turned his head at the sound of hoofs, did not see ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... is, at least, the impression left on us by an anecdote told by Elwin. He says that Thackeray, talking to him once about The Virginians, which was then appearing, announced that he meant, among other people, to bring in Goldsmith, "representing him as he really was, a little, shabby, mean, shuffling Irishman." These are given as Thackeray's actual words. If so, they do not show the side of Goldsmith which is shown in the last ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... "You shuffling little turncoat! I don't know that there's any fire in that kitchen chimney of the old dean's, but I am morally certain that there is, because clouds of black smoke are coming out of it. And you know just as well who it ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... on a little sea-going steamer. Her captain was a Swede, and knowing me for a seaman, invited me on the bridge. He was a young man, lean, fair, and morose, with lanky hair and a shuffling gait. As we left the miserable little wharf, he tossed his head contemptuously at the shore. 'Been living there?' he asked. I said, 'Yes.' 'Fine lot these government chaps—are they not?' he went on, speaking English with great precision and considerable bitterness. 'It ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... he was interrupted by the tolling of a bell. As we stood surprised and listening, it was succeeded by the sound of many feet trooping up the stairs and shuffling by the door of our room. Both, I believe, had a great curiosity to set it open, which each, owing to the presence of the other, resisted; and we waited instead in silence, and without moving, until Romaine returned and bade us to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sitting "all hunched up," or a shuffling gait, are owing partly to bad habits, or "slouchiness," but chiefly to weak muscles and a badly-fed nervous system, often due to a poor digestion and a weak circulation. If a child is not healthy and vigorous, then no amount of drilling or reminders ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... voice, and stood still. His face wore the jeering twinkle that had disconcerted so many political meetings. Two lean fellows, rather alike, with lined faces and bitten, drooped moustaches, were the next to come through the yard gate. They halted behind Gaunt, touching their forelocks, shuffling a little, and looking sidelong at each other. And Malloring waited. Five past four! Ten ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... train shed one morning early in March, watched such a line go by. She watched it with interest. She had developed a new interest in people during the year she had been away. She had seen, in the army camp, similar shuffling lines of men, transformed in a few hours into ranks of uniformed soldiers, beginning already to be actuated by the same motive. These aliens, going by, would become citizens. Very soon now they would appear on the ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Herbert cheerfully. 'And my sister, quite by haphazard, once saw him from the garden. She was shelling peas one evening for Sallie, and she distinctly saw him shamble out of the window here, and go shuffling along, mid-air, across the roaring washpot down below, turn sharp round the high corner of the house, sheer against the stars, in a kind of frightened hurry. And then, after five minutes' concentrated watching over the shucks, she saw him come shuffling ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... Burgess to support them. We have heard of him before. Years had not altered him much. He was the same conceited, self-righteous puppet as of old. People got tired of listening to him. There was a sound of shuffling, a window began to bang with unnecessary noise. He sat down ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... of a pretty slipper, tapping restlessly, continued to betray Liane's temper. But she said nothing. Privately Lanyard yawned. Then Jules, tagged by three men with the fair white jackets and shuffling gait of stewards, sauntered into view from behind two mountains of freight, and announced: "All ready, madame." Liane nodded curtly, lingered to watch the stewards attack the jumble of luggage, saw her jewel case shouldered, and followed the bearer, Lanyard at her elbow, ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... Philip Phillips, "Nearer Home," has made the words its own, and the public are more familiar with it than with any other. It was this air that a young man in a drinking house in Macao, near Hong-Kong, began humming thoughtlessly while his companion was shuffling the cards for a new game. Both were Americans, the man with the cards more than twenty years the elder. Noticing the tune, he threw down the pack. Every word of the hymn had come back to him with ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... my business, sir. Please excuse me. I'll tell him you are in your room," said the man, shuffling away. "Queer smell of burning," he muttered as he went along the landing; "seemed ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... 'Quarterly' were opposition coaches, making a great dust and spattering each other with mud, but travelling by the same road to the same end. A Whig, he said, was a trimmer who dared neither to be a rogue nor an honest man, but was 'a sort of whiffling, shuffling, cunning, silly, contemptible, unmeaning negation of the two.' And the true genuine radical reformers? To them, as represented by the school of Bentham, Hazlitt entertained an aversion quite as hearty as his aversion for Whigs and Tories. If, he says, the Whigs are too finical to join ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... thickly wadded cloak, the hem of which reached to within an inch or so of the pavement, that it would have been impossible for a passer-by to have decided whether it was that of a man or a woman; but the manner in which it bent, added to a shuffling uncertainty of gait—a sort of "feeling the way" movement of the feet—as Mr. Narkom guided it across the pavement to the door, suggested either great age or a state of total blindness: an affliction, by the way, ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... games of chance or skill, such as whist, billiards, and cockamaroo. But the essential inanity of a fashionable party requires to be amused, so we set round a large table, and played at "letters," sedulously "shuffling" the handsome ivory capitals as we gave each other long jaw-breaking words, the difficulties of which were much enhanced by their being usually misspelt, but which, nevertheless, formed a very appropriate vehicle for what the world calls "flirtation." I can always find out ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... shuffling across, an opossum, or a snake going to the lake. Now are you frightened so that ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... her nose and said over her shoulder, even as she sailed on. "Besides being a Haer, I'm an M.D., captain. At the ludicrous sight of a man shuffling about in his ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... shuffling wearily up from the orchard, Fanny met him at the corner of the house, out of sight from the windows. She was flushed and perspiring, clad in a coarse cotton wrapper, revealing all her unkempt curves. She went close to him, and thrust one large arm through his. "Look here, Andrew," ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Little Joe sprang at him angrily, but Shadow was too quick and darted away. Little Joe put the fish back on the log and waited. This time he didn't take his eyes off it. At last, when he was almost ready to give up, he saw Buster Bear shuffling along towards the Laughing Brook. Suddenly Buster stopped and sniffed. One of the Merry Little Breezes had carried the scent of that fat trout over to him. Then he came straight over to where the fish lay, his nose wrinkling, and his ...
— The Adventures of Buster Bear • Thornton W. Burgess
... the band could be heard in the distance playing the strains of a waltz; also the voices of the couples who were promenading and passing the open door. To Hugh's amazement, Lord Huntingford, obviously heedless of his peculiar action, recommenced shuffling the stack of cards, though the dealt hands remained untouched on the table. Instinctively, Hugh was convinced that no play was intended. There was something on the mind of the wily old diplomat far more momentous than a mere game of cards; yet no chance had ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... truth he was himself a satire ready made. All that the art of the satirist does for other men, nature had done for him. Whatever was absurd about him stood out with grotesque prominence from the rest of the character. He was a living, moving, talking caricature. His gait was a shuffling trot; his utterance a rapid stutter; he was always in a hurry; he was never in time; he abounded in fulsome caresses and in hysterical tears. His oratory resembled that of justice Shallow. It was nonsense—effervescent ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... was not so easy to stumble upon the watch; for they had their secret sleeping-corners, from which they only issued in case of emergency, when they thought the time was come for crying out something, or when the shuffling sound of leather boots ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... strong effort at self-control, then, with the old ring and snap to every word, he first sent the bar-keeper out of the room, telling him to take the flask at once to his quarters, then turned quickly on Crane, who was stupidly shuffling at ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... the Caucasian's habit of shuffling off on God those ills for which he will not face the responsibility himself, and I am inclined to think that this is one of them. In my own experience the explanation of "God's Will" made to the mother of a little family left fatherless, or to the parents of a dead baby, or to a young ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... if he had been a child. Before he had time to think of further resistance he was bound, gagged, and carried, half-suffocated, to the corner of the Rue de la Chaise. No sound had been heard; not a word, not an ejaculation, not even a noise of shuffling—nothing. Any suspicious sound might have reached May, on the other side of the wall, and warned him ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... little space. "I reckon when we strike the settlements again I should like to buy my Uncle Bob a present." With knitted brows he considered what this should be, canvassing Yancy's needs. He had about decided on a ring such as Captain Murrell was wearing, when he heard the shuffling of bare feet over the ground and a voice spoke out ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... plead their claims and distract us from our single decided course, is one of the most potent forces in winning success. To hesitate is sometimes to be lost. In fact, the man who is forever twisting and turning, backing and filling, hesitating and dawdling, shuffling and parleying, weighing and balancing, splitting hairs over non-essentials, listening to every new motive which presents itself, will never accomplish anything. There is not positiveness enough in him; negativeness never accomplishes anything. The negative man creates ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... Marshall felt himself crowded towards the brink of ruin. In a moment of weakness he permitted himself a course to which only so great an emergency could have prompted him. The situation was saved by a species of legerdemain—of card-shuffling, so to speak—which was quite outside the lines of mercantile morality, and barely inside the lines of legality itself. An instrument willing to lend itself to this feat of juggling was needed, and was found in a pushing young fellow ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... very nick of time; for as Phil released his hold upon the handle he heard the door leading from the kitchen to the refectory open, the hitherto subdued sounds of activity in the kitchen suddenly became greatly intensified, while voices and the sound of shuffling sandals on the stone floor of the refectory came through the door which ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... them spake a word, but all stood shifting uneasily beneath Penfeather's quick bright eye, shuffling their feet and casting furtive glances ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... another bell, which was apparently out of patience with the slowness of its colleague. As the two iron tongues were silenced, and the stillness of death sank over the whole house, I suddenly seemed to hear, in the corridor before my chamber, something halting and shuffling along, like the unsteady steps of an old man. At last my door opened, and there entered slowly the late departed Dr. Saul Ascher. A cold fever ran through me. I trembled like an ivy leaf and scarcely dared to gaze upon the ghost. He appeared as usual, with the same transcendental-grey ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... sounded a couple of notes, and the cotillon paused in the very act of the break. The shuffling of feet grew still, and the conversation ceased. A diamond brooch had been found, no doubt, or some supper announcement was to be made. But Jerry Haight, with a great sweep of his arm, the forgotten cigarette between his fingers, shouted ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... the light grew, and the gas-lamps of Tyre beaconed with fading gleam. Overhead began a restlessness in the clouds, as of a giant drowsily shuffling off some of his bedclothes; but as yet he slept, and only the silver bosom of his spouse the ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... he was forced to explain, shuffling the while uneasily in his chair and dropping his whip, "one naturally takes an interest in one's friends' welfare. You and Maurice are the best friends I have in Loango. I often speak to Maurice about it. It isn't as if there was an English garrison, or anything like that. I don't ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... to Mrs. Perkins, as the shuffling feet on the porch shuffled off into the night, "what wages do ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... was shuffling of feet outside, and Nepapinas came in. St. Pierre held out his two great, bandaged hands, and David met them with his own, one bandaged and one free. Not a word was spoken between them, but their eyes were the eyes of men between whom had suddenly come the faith and understanding of ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... moment to Arthur Berkeley's well meant designs for shuffling off the trammels of his ecclesiastical habit. He was destined to appear in public at least once more, not only in the black coat and white tie of his everyday professional costume, but even in the flowing snowy surplice of a solemn and decorous spiritual ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... go and open the door himself, but that will produce confusion. She will have no time to dispose of that packet, and Major Abbot will not take advantage of what he has inadvertently seen. He hears the old butler shuffling along the marble hallway, ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... reeled and danced before his eyes. It dissolved into a new and startling shape that brought him to his senses with a shock. There had been a swift shuffling of ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... little man, still shuffling the cards, "he says that Mirza has a certain claim upon his wife, how valid he does not know; and he needs counsel and he needs shelter. When a man writes like this, he also needs a lawyer;" and ...
— The Turquoise Cup, and, The Desert • Arthur Cosslett Smith
... shuffling forward, bent over, and whispered a word in the ear of the sentinel at the door of the ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... sair'd, served. sark, shirt. sassenach, Saxon, Southron. saugh, willow. saut, salt. sax, six. scartit, scratched. scunnert, disgusted to the verge of nausea. shakers, pit the shakers on me, set me trembling with fear. shauchle, shamble, walk in a shuffling manner. shoon, shoes. shouther, shoulder. sib, related, like. sic, such. siccar, sure. sicht, sight. sichtit, sighted. siller, money. sin, since. sinon, sinew; wi' a gey teuch sinon in your neck, possessed of good stamina. skaith, harm. skeely, skilful. sklimmin', ...
— The Auld Doctor and other Poems and Songs in Scots • David Rorie
... shambling moonlit figure seen in glimpses through the leaves, very near us for an instant, then hidden by the shrubbery as he passed within a few yards of our hiding-place. A diminuendo of the shuffling steps; then a cursing, frightened savage at one end of the rhododendrons, and we two stealing out at the other, hand in hand, and bent quite double, into the ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... silly. He seems to see their poor lacerated souls, clutching their greasy dog-eared cards, climb to a squalid Valhalla, and there, in tobacco-stinking, sweat-stinking rooms, like those of the little cafes behind the lines, sit in groups of five, shuffling, dealing, taking tricks, always with the same slam of the cards on the table, pausing now and then to scratch ...
— One Man's Initiation—1917 • John Dos Passos
... lived in the room below the attic room missed the little old man's shuffling step, and, not hearing it for two days, they told the landlady, a kindly soul who had let the brother and sister have the attic room free of charge, and ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle
... is played by thoroughly shuffling all of the tiles face down in the middle of the table, and forming them in a double-tiered, hollow square, called the wall. This wall is then broken at some point determined by the dice and each player ...
— Pung Chow - The Game of a Hundred Intelligences. Also known as Mah-Diao, Mah-Jong, Mah-Cheuk, Mah-Juck and Pe-Ling • Lew Lysle Harr
... into place he may have made some little sound that reached the ears of the crazy man within the cabin. Max heard a shuffling of feet. Then the door was shaken, at first gently, and then with more and more violence, until the very walls of the cabin seemed to quiver ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... reason. Either they are irresponsible vagabonds who take this way of shuffling off their responsibilities, or they are men who have been caught in a net of distasteful circumstances. For instance, a civil servant or a solicitor or a tradesman finds himself bound for life to a locality and an occupation of intolerable monotony. Perhaps ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... wild, I know, but the whole scene made so deep an impression on my mind that I am perfectly certain as to what I felt while Barber was walking there. He walked slowly, with no trace of his usual shuffling uncertain gait, but with a balanced cadenced step, and as he turned his head calmly from side to side his face seemed transfigured. It was the face of a genius, an evil genius, unjust and ruthless—a brutal god. I felt, and no doubt everyone in the crowd felt, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Rob. Now, indeed, there was no doubt. They heard shuffling foot-falls and many voices in some confused speech ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... with surfeit of gossip and they drooped and hardly rustled. Not a tipsy waiter lurked in the shadows, not a skylarking couple of darkey lovers whispered on doorsteps. No birds, nor even crickets, serenaded the torpid night. The shuffling feet of Andrew Waples barely made watch-dogs growl in their dreams, and started his own heart with the concussions they produced on the arborescent and deeply-shadowed aisles of the after midnight. He saw the town-hall clock pallidly illuminated above its tower. The low frame villa of ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... in a style that would grace the lecture-room of any country, yet the great majority are far, very far, from any eloquence in their delivery. Timid and bashful often to an extreme, they ascend their rostrum with a shuffling, ambling gait, the very opposite of manly grace and bearing, and, prefacing their discourse with the short address, "Meine Herren" keep on in one long, never-varying, monotonous strain, from beginning to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... went into the house the dinner dishes were still piled in the sink; yet Aunt 'Mira was already getting supper. She was still shuffling around the kitchen in her list slippers and ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... on the second line of defense of the Spaniards, and after Greene's brigade moved through Malate, meeting a shuffling foe, the open space at the luneta, just south of the walled city, was reached about 1 p. m. A white flag was flying at the southwest bastion, and I rode forward to meet it under a heavy fire from our right and rear on the Paco road. At the bastion ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... or 8. moneths about Island.] First of all therefore it is euident enough out of the second section, viz. ice floateth not about this Iland, neither 8. nor 7. moneths in a yere then, that this ice (although at some times by shuffling together it maketh monstrous soundings & cracklings, & againe at some times with the beating of the water, it sendeth forth an hoarse kind of murmuring) doth any thing at all resound or lament, like vnto mans ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... feminine, for Daumier appears in neither of these forms he sees it in Madame Chaboulard or Madame Fribochon, the old snuff-taking, gossiping portress, in a nightcap and shuffling savates, relating or drinking in the wonderful and the intimate. One of his masterpieces represents three of these dames, lighted by a guttering candle, holding their heads together to discuss the fearful ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... but somewhat too tightly, round the waist of a sandy kitten, who submitted with wonderful good-humor to the well- meant strangulation, his black eyes intently fixed upon the dumplings which his foster-mother was dexterously rolling together, when a strange footstep was heard shuffling uncertainly about on the floor of the round-house just outside the dwelling-room door. Mrs. Lake did not disturb herself. Country folk were constantly coming with their bags of grist, and both George and the miller ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... was not to be wondered at. They stood at the door, each motioning the other to enter first, when an unusual sound from the adjoining entry caused both of them to stop, and one of them, at least, to shiver. It was a sound of slow and hesitating, shuffling steps, as of men carrying a burden. The steps came nearer. Both Bullion and Sandford moved hurriedly to the spot. The men stopped in the doorway with their burden, and in a moment, with frantic shrieks, Mrs. Fletcher rushed in and fell upon the body ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... very man? Who knows more about the true interests of the navy? Who has beaten so many Frenchmen? Then think of his hornpipe—the very shuffling ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... shuffling among the navvies toward the arrowy lad who confronted them. Deschaillon balanced himself on one leg, French boxing fashion, ready to kick out with the deadly accuracy of an ostrich. Hogan gave a brief happy laugh, broken by his jump, the crack of his fist ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... love, and the lights and the fire, And the fiddler's old tune and the shuffling of feet; For there in a while shall be rest and desire, And there shall ...
— Chants for Socialists • William Morris
... and deafened. She longed to shriek, pitting shrill clamor against the bass thunders of the cascade. She began to fear lest madness seize her if she remained longer thus supinely crouching amid the terrors of this place. Obeying a sudden impulse, she got up, and gropingly, with shuffling, cautious steps, moved across the cavern. When she reached the opposite wall, she got down on hands and knees, and crawled until her searching fingers found the emptiness of the hole through which the men had passed. Then, she drew back a little, and sat with ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... begin the descent; sometimes on foot, sometimes shuffling on the ice; always proceeding much more quietly and slowly than on our upward way; and constantly alarmed by the falling among us of somebody from behind, who endangers the footing of the whole party, and ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... In passing I may say that his circumstances are infinitely worse than my own; for, only think of it, he has a wife and children! Indeed, if I were he, I do not know what I should do. Well, he entered my room, and bowed to me with the pus standing, as usual, in drops on his eyelashes, his feet shuffling about, and his tongue unable, at first, to articulate a word. I motioned him to a chair (it was a dilapidated enough one, but I had no other), and asked him to have a glass of tea. To this he demurred—for quite a long time he demurred, but at length he accepted the offer. Next, he ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... above had come to an end, as was shown by the shuffling of feet as the men rose from the table. There was a sound as of a sheaf of papers being hastily gathered together. But there was no outcry to indicate that any one of them was missing, and the boys drew a long breath and relaxed their grasp on their rifles. There would be no search, and for ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... pretended word of God, the Bible, has been put together, and the uncertainty of who the authors were, we have only to look at the first three verses in Ezra, and the last two in 2 Chronicles; for by what kind of cutting and shuffling has it been that the first three verses in Ezra should be the last two verses in 2 Chronicles, or that the last two in 2 Chronicles should be the first three in Ezra? Either the authors did not know their own works or the compilers ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... poured here, gathered in isles, about which a swarming sea of well-dressed women pushed and crowded. The high ceilings were hung with glowing moons of light; the atmosphere was magic with confused talk, shuffling footsteps, and all the hum and stir of a human hive. Up and down Fifth Avenue swept a black thick stream of motors and carriages in which women and men lounged and stared. The great hotels sucked in and poured out tides of jeweled and lace-wrapped creatures, and in the lighted ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... went up-stairs to the attic window, Hester moved a chair into the hall, softly opened the window a little, to facilitate her hearing whatever passed outside, and took her seat by it, listening intently. There was soon but too much to listen to. Shuffling feet multiplied about the door; and some of the grumbling voices seemed to come from men who had stationed themselves on the steps. Hester rose, and, with the utmost care to avoid noise, put up ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... resume his forward march. If he halted again it would be forever; of that he felt perfectly assured, but neither the imminence nor the character of the peril in which he stood seemed sufficient to arouse him from his lethargy. Yet he kept on, walking with the shuffling stride of a mechanical doll; now he wavered and hesitated, as though the propelling spring had wellnigh run down. The night reek, hot and damp, hung like a poisoned veil upon his mouth and lips; he could not breathe; he gasped and threw up one arm as does a swimmer who ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... home the provender, for Moses, who was the only other available member of the family, was always busy praying when he had nothing better to do. And so to-night Esther fared to the kitchen, with her red pitcher, passing in her childish eagerness numerous women shuffling along on the same errand, and bearing uncouth tin cans supplied by the institution. An individualistic instinct of cleanliness made Esther prefer the family pitcher. To-day this liberty of choice has been ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... feels himself violently shoved aside; the hand with which he would draw his sword is in an iron grasp, as heavy as that which he has laid upon colonial freedom. There is a surging of unseen men about him, the shuffling of feet, vague outcries: he knows not what is to come: death, perhaps. Is Sir Edmund afraid? We have no information as to the physical courage of the man, further than that in 1675 he had been frightened into submission ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... young man behind the desk, and when the same freckle-faced lad, who had pointed out to Joe the manager, came shuffling up, the lad took our hero's satchel, and did a little one-step glide with it ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... unmistakable odor of the gryf, and now Tarzan stood silently listening. At first he detected no sounds other than those of the city that came to him through the window overlooking the lake; but presently, faintly, as though from a distance he heard the shuffling of padded feet along a stone pavement, and as he listened he was aware that ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... one may say we have no future there. Mr. —— and Mr. —— (as precious a pair of rascals as ever wrought upon the ignorance of a country) have disgusted all thoughtful men of whatever party; while the shuffling of our better men on the question of public honesty, their folly in allowing such people as Blaine and Conkling to taunt them into cheap hurlings back of defiance (as the silly Southern newspapers term it), their inconceivable mistake in permitting the stalwart Republicans to arrange all the ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... man looked at his watch, and declared they would come in the course of five or ten minutes. He then took the cards out of the box, and, after shuffling them, returned them to their place. Fred placed a "quarter" on the table; the gambler put another by its side, and drew out a card from the silver case. Tom did not understand the game; but his companion put the quarters in ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... kill a buffalo, even at arms-length. This superstition they had derived from the Indians, who often think the white hunters have laid a spell upon their rifles. Miller partook of this superstition, and used to tell of his rifle's having a spell upon it; but it often seemed to me to be a shuffling way of accounting for a bad shot. If a hunter grossly missed his aim he would ask, 'Who shot last with this rifle?'—and hint that he must have charmed it. The sure mode to disenchant the gun was to shoot a silver bullet out ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... of the gorilla is that of the apes and the monkeys generally. The big-bellied satyr advances to the assault as it travels, shuffling on all-fours; "rocking" not traversing; bristling the crest, chattering, mowing and displaying the fearful teeth and tusks. Like all the Simiads, this Troglodyte sways the body to and fro, and springs from side to side ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... were passing through her mind she happened to glance out of the window. Nutty was shambling through the garden with his pail, a bowed, shuffling pillar of gloom. As Elizabeth watched, he dropped the pail and lashed the air violently for a while. From her knowledge of bees ('It is needful to remember that bees resent outside interference ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... sui generis, occasionally visible about the same cock-crowing season, is the parliamentary reporter, shuffling to roost, and a more slovenly-looking operative from sunrise to sunset is rarely to be seen. There has probably been a double debate, and between three and five o'clock he has written "a column bould." No one can well mistake him. The features ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various
... was of different substance from the Father, but nevertheless agreed with Arius in thinking that the Son had a beginning of existence, were called Semi-Arians; and were received into communion by Athanasius, in spite of this disagreement. To me it seemed to be a most unworthy shuffling with words, to say that the Son was begotten, but was never begotten. The very form of our past participle is invented to indicate an event in past time. If the Athanasians alleged that the phrase does not allude to "a coming forth" completed at a definite time, but indicates ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... door they could hear the shuffling impatience of the children anxious to be out in the open air, and the old woman enjoyed this state of things, doubling her maternal desire, and hindering her from doing anything to hasten its pleasure. At last the door ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... came a stir from the room beyond, the tap-tap of a cane and shuffling steps across the polished parquet. Dysart's grip relaxed, his hand fell away, and he made a ghastly grimace as a little old gentleman came half-trotting, half-shambling to the doorway. He was small and dapper and pink-skinned under his wig; the pink was paint; his lips ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... time that I had completed my survey, a sound of shuffling footsteps was heard; and immediately afterwards there emerged from a passage underneath the staircase, a short, stout good-tempered-looking personage, dressed in a blouse and military trousers, with a cook's cap on his head, and a long white apron in front, reaching from ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... boat was on its way, and as I sat facing the changing scene, I heard a shuffling, hesitating step behind, and a drawling somewhat uncertain voice asked me about the country. I replied that it was my first trip and I was ignorant. Turning full upon the querist, no other than the globe-trotter, I said: "You are an Englishman I see. ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... Buck started up from shuffling and throwing a book of cards. "Look't me. If Jest Prebol's shot most daid by a woman, look't me. Do you know me—where I come from, where the hell I'm goin'? Yo' bet you don't. I've been shanty-boatin' fifteen years, but I ain't always been a shanty-boater, no, I haven't. Talk ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... cards, ripped off the covering, tossed aside the joker (though, really, I ought to have retained it!) and began shuffling the shiny pasteboards. I dare say that those around me sat up and took notice. It was by no means a common sight to see a man gravely shuffling a pack of cards in a public restaurant. Nobody interfered, doubtless because nobody ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath
... this miscarriage of their exploitation design when a shuffling sound in the distance proclaimed the shambling approach of the advertising department. And if Pee-wee had not made good his flaunting boast to handle the six merry maidens, he at least made amends and regained somewhat of ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... pass after this. For the Moon has gone out. The very dogs are still, and I watch for the first light of the dawn before making my way homeward. Again the noise of shuffling feet. The morning call is about to begin, and my night watch is over. 'Allah ho Akbar! Allah ho Akbar!' The east grows gray, and presently saffron; the dawn wind comes up as though the Muezzin had summoned it; and, as one man, the City of Dreadful ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... approached him, and for the first and last time he touched lightly with his cold lips the forehead of her he loved so well. They mounted the steps, she leaning on his arm, and entered the rose-coloured boudoir where the marchioness was seated, impatiently shuffling the cards, while ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... Judy paused, and there was a looking hither and thither among the little ones, and a shuffling about on the small Derby chairs, while one or two pairs of eyes were suddenly turned to the fire, as if watching it relieved a certain degree of embarrassment which their ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... the bed, pulled out the snake and flung it, still coiled, to the center of the room, whence with a harsh, shuffling sound it slid across the polished floor till stopped by the wall, where it lay without motion. It was a stuffed snake; its eyes were ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... all the congregation astir. Few could refrain from twisting their heads towards the door; many stood upright, and turned directly about; while several little boys clambered upon the seats, and came down again with a terrible racket. There was a general bustle, a rustling of the women's gowns and shuffling of the men's feet, greatly at variance with that hushed repose which should attend the entrance of the minister. But Mr. Hooper appeared not to notice the perturbation of his people. He entered with an almost noiseless step, bent his head mildly to the pews on each side, and bowed as he passed ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... murder, My crown, mine own ambition and my queen. May one be pardoned and retain the offence? In the corrupted currents of this world Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice. And oft 't is seen the wicked prize itself Buys out the law: but 't is not so above; There is no shuffling, there the action lies In his true nature; and we ourselves compelled, Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults, To give in evidence. What then? what rests? Try what repentance can: what can it not? Yet what can it when one cannot repent? O wretched ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... nearing the close of the last verse of the psalm, when Hughie, whose eyes never wandered long from Ranald's direction, uttered a sharp "Oh, my!" There was a shuffling confusion under the gallery, and when Maimie and her aunt looked, Peter Ruagh's place ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... dining-room was filling rapidly. A buzz of conversation, accompanied by the shuffling of the latest arrivals' feet, began to pervade the large room, and necks were craned ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... mounted them, the animals kneeling at the word of command for us to do so. Our party, six in number, was divided so that four persons, including the driver, rode on each elephant. They were large and docile creatures, being respectively seventy and ninety years of age. Their shuffling, flat-footed tread is peculiar, but not very unpleasant, except when the driver hurries the animals; but even then the gait is not nearly so trying to the rider as is that of the camel, which is only comparable to ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... plates representing the new dress for the diplomatic service of Japan. Time has proved that he was wrong, and that the Japanese were right in adopting a new uniform, when they wished to fall in line with nations of the West. With their old shuffling habiliments and the cringing manners inseparable from them, they never could have been admitted to intercourse on ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... year. The mercury hovered a few degrees above zero. The winds that swept down from the North were keen and biting, and the mist-like snow fell fitfully. An old man, his once tall form bent by the burdens and sorrows of sixty odd years, his step slow and shuffling, his clothes unkempt and tattered, his long beard flowing down upon his breast, his eye still bright and in his face lingering traces of refinement, made his way along the deserted street. He was accompanied ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... emphatic ending—the absolute destitution, the amount to be supplied, the relief afforded, or the happiness to donors for sharing in such a worthy charity? You can see how a mere mental planning, or a shuffling of notes, or a temporary numbering of topics will help in clearing up this problem of how to secure ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton |
