"Jig" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the mussulmans may have been mightily amused by the caper; but for my part I should modestly prefer skipping to the simple jig ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker
... about in the White House and study the portraits of the presidents, but where is the portrait of the people? The portrait of the people comes in little bits to the president like a puzzle picture. Each man brings in his little crooked piece, jig-sawed out from Iowa, South Dakota, Oklahoma or Aroostook County, Maine. This picture or vision of a nation, this wilderness of pieces, can be seen every day when one goes in, lying in heaps on the floor of ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... spirit. If it's my say-so, you will live to be a hundred. Come the cards are against you. Some other day they may fall more pat for you. But the jig's up now." ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... serene, How they skip and sway On this autumn day! They cannot know What has happened below, - That their boughs down there Are already quite bare, That their own will be When a week has passed, - For they jig as in glee To ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... craftily Feigning to eat of cakes of rye, Deflower his sister fair to see, Which was foul incest; and hereby Was Herod moved, it is no lie, To lop the head of Baptist John For dance and jig and psaltery; Good luck has he that deals ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... people early took possession of the dancing-hall, where, surrounded by the elders, a quick succession of Money Musk, Opera Reel, Chorus Jig, etc., interspersed sparingly with cotillons, evidenced the relish with which young spirits and light hearts enjoy the exercises of ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... position. Might have got the right figgers out o' the log, him havin' the run of the cabin. A cable would do the rest. He'd git his whack out of it, with the order of the Golden Chrysanthemum or some jig-arig to boot, an' git even with the way he feels to'ard our outfit for'ard, that ain't bin none too ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... floor was pretty well cleared. One could see the negro now; he sat on a barrel at the end of the room. He grinned with his white teeth and, without stopping in his fiddling, scraped his bow harshly across the strings, and then instantly changed the tune to a lively jig. Blackbeard jumped up into the air and clapped his heels together, giving, as he did so, a sharp, short yell. Then he began instantly dancing grotesquely and violently. The woman danced opposite to him, this way and that, with her knuckles on her hips. Everybody burst out laughing at Blackbeard's ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... business; we know he can have nothing to do with such 5 horrors; we know that he is a saint and all that a bishop should be, who is a great man beside. Oh, were but every worm a maggot, Every fly a grig, Every bough a Christmas faggot, Every tune a jig! In fact, I have abjured all religions; but the last I inclined to was the Armenian: for 10 I have traveled, do you see, and at Koenigsberg, Prussia Improper (so styled because there's a sort of bleak hungry sun there), you might remark over ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... considered the best of the sport, Took place in front of the old County Court; The Mayor and Ex-Mayor were dancing a jig, With the County Court Judge in his gown ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... Visit to England, p. 33, writing of Johnson on March 16, 1775, says:—'He has the aspect of an idiot, without the faintest ray of sense gleaming from any one feature—with the most awkward garb, and unpowdered grey wig, on one side only of his head—he is for ever dancing the devil's jig, and sometimes he makes the most driveling effort to whistle some thought in his absent paroxysms.' Miss Burney thus describes him when she first saw him in 1778:—'Soon after we were seated this great man entered. I have so true a veneration for him that the very sight of him inspires me with ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Stokes had become; he took the cobbler by the shoulder and sat him down in the warmest nook, saying, "I'll be assistant cook until you are better. As Zeke says, I'm a wolf sure enough; but as soon's the beast's hunger is satisfied, I'll rub that leg of yours till you'll want to dance a jig;" and with the ladle wrung from Stokes's reluctant hand, he began stirring the seething contents of ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... it and make their bow to imaginary audiences over three thousand feet below. One of the guides with our party, wearing heavy "chaps" (bear-skin overalls) walked out upon this rock, took off his hat, waved it over his head, posed for his photograph, even took a jig step or two, stood on one foot and peered into the abyss below with apparent unconcern. Earlier in life I might have taken a similar chance, but it would be a physical impossibility for me to do it now. We feasted our eyes on the ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves
... had a voice so sweet and mellow that any minstrel might have been proud of it, though he seldom sang, and it is possible that no one but Corbie's grandmother heard it at its best. He was, moreover, a merry soul, fond of a joke, and always ready to dance a jig, with a chuckle, when anything very ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... the theatres offered had little concern with the drama. Their advantages included the privileges of eating and drinking while the play was in progress. After the play there was invariably a dance on the stage, often a brisk and boisterous Irish jig. ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... this systematic attempt to regulate the occupation habits of employees. A typical example which he reports is the following: It regularly took a man one minute and forty seconds to set a piece in a jig. "After a study of the exact motions required to pick the piece up and set it accurately, we showed the same man how to do it in twenty seconds.'' This workman soon reduced the correct movement to habit, attained the ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... thou want ought here? [Touching his sword-hilt.] I care not for thee or Noll. Would he were here, and a matter of four thousand to back him. [Draws.] Sa! sa! canst fight as well as talk? Wilt take up the bilbo? Come, adopt the weapon of him I have sliced. Come, be nimble, sir, jig. I would fain go visit the ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... number had tuned up his fiddle. William Isham was his name, a great bearded fellow who hailed originally from Rochester, New York; he would sit by the hour on the tongue of his wagon playing "Oh Susannah" and other lively airs, or strike up a jig tune while Negro Joe, who had fled from slavery in Mississippi, did a double shuffle in the firelight. The children slipped away from their mothers to set peeps at the fun from the edges of the crowd or play hide and seek in the shadows of the sage-brush; ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... then knock a man down, jerk him to his feet, thrust a line into his hands, and kick him until he bent his weight upon it. It was bitter driving. But I'll admit it brought order out of chaos. We cleared the decks of the first-day-out hurrah's nest in jig time. Mercifully, it was fair weather, with ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... laugh and crow with his fiddle, and could make you jump up, aetat. 60, and snap your fingers at old age and propriety, and propose a jig to two bishops and one master of the rolls, and, they declining, pity them without a shade of anger, and substitute three chairs; then sit unabashed and smiling at the past; and the next minute he could make you cry, or near it. In a word he ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... more or less active all winter, but October and November are their festal months. Invade some butternut or hickory-nut grove on a frosty October morning and hear the red squirrel beat the "juba" on a horizontal branch. It is a most lively jig, what the boys call a "regular break-down," interspersed with squeals and snickers and derisive laughter. The most noticeable peculiarity about the vocal part of it is the fact that it is a kind of duet. In other words, by some ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... sacrificed. wide of the mark &c (error) 495; out of one's reckoning &c (inexpectation) 508 [Obs.]; left in the lurch; thrown away &c (wasted) 638; unattained; uncompleted &c 730. Adv. unsuccessfully &c adj.; to little or no purpose, in vain, re infecta [Lat.]. Phr. the bubble has burst, the jig is up, the game is up [Cymbeline]; all is lost; the devil to pay; parturiunt montes &c (disappointment) 509 [Lat.]; dies infaustus [Lat.]; tout ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... another, but they ain't held to apply to us of rights. For sech alien hookups, so to speak, we reefooses all reespons'bility. Which we regyards them escapades as fortooitous, an' declines 'em utter. Tutt's goin' against Texas is the only war-jig we feels ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... an old blind piper, the very beau ideal of energy, drollery, and shrewdness, who, seated on a low chair, with a well-replenished jug within his reach, screwed his pipes to the liveliest tunes, and the endless jig began. ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... well, he was allowing himself the luxury of a jig-saw puzzle, but as he considered the amusement frivolous for a man of his position, at the sound of his son's voice he hustled the board containing the half-finished picture into a drawer of his roll-top desk. In order to be doing something, ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... here and there, every move counting something done. While she stood there a wagon rattled out from the shadow of a haystack, with empty water-barrels dancing a mad jig behind the high seat, where the driver perched with feet braced and a whip in his hand. After him dashed four or five riders, silent and businesslike. In a moment they were mere fantastic shadows galloping up the hill ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... And he's patiently carried me many a mile, And that now I guard him I am sure is but just. Curl your tail up still tighter, and don't let it fall Lest a noise it should make—it's remarkably big— And, if you are good, by-and-by we may all Have a right merry tune and a right merry jig. ...
— Harper's Young People, November 11, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... gifts, And order they be kept with proper care, Till we do build a place most fit to hold These precious toys: tell your society We ever did esteem them of great worth, And our firm friends: and tell 'em 'tis our pleasure They do prepare to dance a jig before us. ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... and apprehended no danger. If one asked them how Mrs. Bull did? Better and better, said they; the parts heal, and her constitution mends: if she submits to our government she will be abroad in a little time. Nay, it is reported that they wrote to her friends in the country that she should dance a jig next October in Westminster Hall, and that her illness had been chiefly owing to bad physicians. At last, one of them was sent for in great haste, his patient grew worse and worse: when he came, he affirmed ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... good work and an earnest wish to do better tomorrow than he had done today. That Nature occasionally produces such a man should be a cause for gratitude in the hearts of all the rest of us little folk who jig, mince, mouth, amble, run, peek ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... without the aid of green tea," she rejoined. "There was really some one upon the porch, but why the apparition should scare Clara out of her wits, I cannot divine. The negro is an incurable Paul Pry, and, next to dancing a Christmas jig himself, is the pleasure of ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... would like to join in; but a glance at Scott and Ferguson showed that there was a struggle with his dignity, fearing to lessen himself in their eyes. At length one at his messmates came up, and seizing him by the arm, challenged him to a jig. The boatswain, continued Scott, after a little hesitation complied, made an awkward gambol or two, like our friend Maida, but soon gave it up. "It's of no use," said he, jerking up his waistband and giving a side glance at us, "one can't dance ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... new to keep up the interest of the people. I have played for them several tunes, but as far as I can judge they do not feel modern music, though they listen eagerly from curiosity. Irish airs like 'Eileen Aroon' please them better, but it is only when I play some jig like the 'Black Rogue'—which is known on the island—that they seem to respond to the full meaning of the notes. Last night I played for a large crowd, which had come together for another purpose from all parts ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... murder done inside it a hundred and twenty years ago, they say, until there it was, over his head a'most, with the gaps in it staring like ribs at him. 'Bout ship was the word, pretty sharp, you may be sure, when he come to his wits consarning it, and the purse of his lips, as was whistling a jig, went as dry as a bag with the bottom out. Through the grey of the night there was sounds coming to him, such as had no right to be in the air, and a sort of a shiver laid hold of his heart, like a cold hand flung over ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... shift, boys, shift, for there isn't the slightest doubt That we've got to make a shift to the stations further out, With the pack-horse runnin' after, for he follows like a dog, We must strike across the country at the old jig-jog. ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... own he's not fam'd for a reel or a jig, Tom Sheridan there surpasses Tom Bigg.— For lam'd in one thigh, he is obliged to go zig- Zag, like a crab—for no dancer is Bigg. Those who think him a coxcomb, or call him a prig, How little they know ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... possession of all that will be issued in the future? His answer will be to issue more. He has been told so by his political mentor. When the man with the ballot loses confidence in this mentor, he will start a game of his own, and then the jig will be up with that idiot. We use the word idiot advisedly here. When a tax was assessed against the incomes of the rich, this driveler would score a point gained in favor of the people. This claim of itself shows the institution to which ...
— Confiscation, An Outline • William Greenwood
... in Kansas. Three "opposition" cars discovered in the same yard with Phil Forrest. A race for the country. Paste cans dance a jig. Rivals turned over into a ditch. A case ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... The hag, who had been bent double, reared herself up with a "Ho!" after the fashion of a Scottish sword-dancer, and began to make a wretched shuffle with her feet. Then she moved with a hobble and a jig to the far end of the room; and she called out, beginning to come straight down to the door whereby I stood. I know not what presentiment forewarned me to beware as the creature drew near; but yet I felt the danger, and the throbbing ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... Ah, God bless your jig! And how would I know is it a notice of my own death has come into my hand in the pocket of this coat I put ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... When the Great Settling Day conies, this new higher spirit of France will, it is to be devoutly hoped, make for restraint in the universal craving for vengeance, and prove a weighty factor in the righteous re-adjustment of things and the proper fitting together of the jig-saw map ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... enough, handled his subject, and the judicious clerk has with utmost diligence called out two staves proper to the discourse, and I have found in myself and in the rest of the pew good thoughts and dispositions, they have been all in a moment dissipated by a merry jig ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... if Hamlet can possibly be speaking ironically. I am sure he will answer No. And then let him observe what follows. The speech is declaimed. Polonius interrupting it with an objection to its length, Hamlet snubs him, bids the player proceed, and adds, 'He's for a jig or a tale of bawdry: or he sleeps.' 'He,' that is, 'shares the taste of the million for sallets in the lines to make the matter savoury, and is wearied by an honest method.'[261] Polonius later interrupts ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... hurried descent before the strange silence above was shattered suddenly by the simultaneous banging of seven doors. Seven full-lunged voices burst forth into a howling song, while twice as many feet thumped and tapped and pranced and pounded in the mazes of an extemporaneous jig. ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... wearily, "I've done all I can. Hull and I have kept the market fairly stable so far. You saw what happened between ten and eleven this morning. The jig's up. We've borrowed our last dollar and hypothecated our last share. My personal fortune has gone into the balance, and so has Hull's. Some one of the outside stockholders, or all of them, are cutting the ground ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... synonymously? Or is it meant that this airy gentry shall come in a Minuet step, and go off in a Jig? The phenomenon of a tripping crank is indeed novel, and would ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... pony had a fashion of dancing a slow jig on his hind-legs, with his fore-feet in the air; but the boys were used to that, and stuck on until the dance was finished; then the pony ...
— The Apple Dumpling and Other Stories for Young Boys and Girls • Unknown
... decided that Richard's extremity was their opportunity, and so concluded to divide up his kingdom between them. At this dramatic moment Richard, having paid his sixty thousand pounds ransom and tipped his custodian, entered the English arena, and the jig was up. John was obliged to ask pardon, and Richard generously gave it, with the exclamation, "Oh, that I could forget his injuries as soon ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... bell you hear, That summons you to all the pride of prayer: Light quirks of music, broken and uneven, Make the soul dance upon a jig to heaven. On painted ceilings you devoutly stare, Where sprawl the saints of Verrio or Laguerre,[51] On gilded clouds in fair expansion lie, And bring all Paradise before your eye. To rest, the cushion and soft dean invite, Who never mentions ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... to play, And another tune straightway Sang the kettle, louder, louder, till its voice grew very big; And the feet of laughing girls (Girls with shamrock in their curls) You could almost hear a-keeping time to that old Irish jig. ...
— Harper's Young People, January 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... be in the music, cousin, if you be not wooed in good time: if the prince be too important, tell him there is measure in everything, and so dance out the answer. For, hear me, Hero: Wooing, wedding, and repenting is as a Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinque-pace: the first suit is hot and hasty, like a Scotch jig, and full as fantastical; the wedding, mannerly-modest, as a measure full of state and ancientry; and then comes repentance, and, with his bad legs falls into the cinque-pace faster and faster, till he sink ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... "He can't play nothin' but two jig tunes and he plays them like the very Old Scratch," she ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... wrapped themselves up so completely in their shaggy woollen mantles, or gubas, and drawn their hoods so low down over their heads, that they had no resemblance to anything human. Moreover, they were sleeping soundly. Both their heads were jig-jogging right and left, and only now and then one or the other, and sometimes both at the same time, would be thrown backwards by the jolting of the waggon, or they would bump their heads together, and at such times would sit bolt upright ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... laughter. "Alice, be sad!"—and, at the instant, down would come her tears, quenching all the mirth of those around her like sudden rain upon a bonfire. "Alice, dance."—and dance she would, not in such court-like measures as she had learned abroad, but some high-paced jig, or hop-skip rigadoon, befitting the brisk lasses at a rustic merry-making. It seemed to be Maule's impulse, not to ruin Alice, nor to visit her with any black or gigantic mischief, which would have crowned her sorrows with the grace of tragedy, but to wreak a low, ungenerous scorn upon her. ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... here Harvey first met the squid, who is one of the best cod-baits, but uncertain in his moods. They were waked out of their bunks one black night by yells of "Squid O!" from Salters, and for an hour and a half every soul aboard hung over his squid-jig—a piece of lead painted red and armed at the lower end with a circle of pins bent backward like half-opened umbrella ribs. The squid—for some unknown reason—likes, and wraps himself round, this thing, and is hauled up ere he can escape from the pins. But as he leaves his home ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... an analysis of every event which entered into the total of the mystery, seeking for some key which would aid me in assorting the tangled bits that only needed to be arranged properly to bet the solution, much as a jig-saw puzzle is worked out. If I had a proper beginning it ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... carriage, a closed carriage, call that night to take him to see the President, for he was told the President sent the carriage for him. When he got out he was at the insane asylum, an' I can tell you he was bundled into a padded cell in jig time, where he stayed for three days. 'He thinks he's a member of Congress,' I told the two huskies that handled him, an' gave 'em each a twenty-case note. The doctor that signed the ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... familiar conversation was a series of brilliant, egotistic, shrewd, and genial sallies, and she could be either caressing or impudent. In the matter of self-approbation she had no Statute of Limitation, but boasted of having taught Taglioni to dance an Irish jig, and declared that she had created the Irish novel, though in the next breath she would say that she was a child when Miss Edgeworth was a grown woman.' Her blunders were proverbial, as when she asked in all simplicity, 'Who was Jeremy Taylor?' ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... Norah pressing the arm of a tall peasant, and curtseying him a challenge to join her "on the floor." He paused for a moment, then gaily taking her hand, advanced with her to the centre. All eyes were bent upon them, but there was no restraint in the young parson's manner. The most popular jig-tune was called for—to it they went; his early-taught and well-practised feet beat living echoes to the most rapid bars. A foot of ground seemed ample space for all the intricate compilation of the raal ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... a weak solution of the acid," declared Ham. "Otherwise it would have eaten the rope through in jig time. So that's the game, is it? Well, they may have been trying it on a larger scale. Did you find out ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... tent, where the flag were flyin, never bothered about no sentries nor nothin. Just as I trot up, a little bit of a butterfly lady like bob out o the tent, and when she see me—'Beau, boy!' she squeals. 'Beau, boy! ere's a niked man! Do come and see!' And she jig up and down and tiddle her fingers at me, please as Punch.... Out come ole Whiskers, sword and all. 'You something something!' says he, and knocks her back into the tent. Then he run ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... is like a jig-saw puzzle, a mystery even to the man who devised it. A straight-forward recognition of the Omsk Government would have been an honest hand for honest work, but where would Allied diplomacy have come in? Diplomacy is only necessary ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... the jig's all up with me, boys," said the man, with a look of sheer disgust on his face. "I've had a little run for my money, but the stone jug seems to be yawning for me. I was a fool to bother with the kid, it seems; but when the scheme came to me at first I thought ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... the clarionet; and Mr. Nicks, with the oboe—all sound and powerful musicians, and strong-winded men—they that blowed. For that reason they were very much in demand Christmas week for little reels and dancing parties; for they could turn a jig or a hornpipe out of hand as well as ever they could turn out a psalm, and perhaps better, not to speak irreverent. In short, one half-hour they could be playing a Christmas carol in the squire's hall to the ladies and gentlemen, and drinking tay and coffee ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... in studying my passport. It had been viseed by the representatives of all the civilized powers, and except the Germans and their fellow gunmen, most of the uncivilized. The officer was fascinated with it. Like a jig-saw puzzle, it appealed to him. He turned it wrong side up and sideways, and took so long about it that the others, hoping there was something wrong, in anticipation scowled at me. But ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... whose feet drag along the floor, or beat it with slow, faltering accents. On a bare floor a girl walks with a rapid, elastic rhythm which is quite distinct from the graver step of the elderly woman. I have laughed over the creak of new shoes and the clatter of a stout maid performing a jig in the kitchen. One day, in the dining-room of an hotel, a tactual dissonance arrested my attention. I sat still and listened with my feet. I found that two waiters were walking back and forth, but not with the same gait. A band was ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... whispered Despeaux, recovering his confidence. "Every man has his price—but it's a mistake to think that the price must always be counted down in cash. Daunt didn't act as if he had captured our friend. He's dancing to a girl's tune now. Corson will whistle a jig when he gets ready and Morrison will dance to that ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... but Daniel Boone, that young rebel, didn't even hear of it until the following August. Whereupon the fearless hunter with the abandon of a happy lad danced a jig around the bonfire inside the stockade. It could have been an Elizabethan jig, ironically enough, for the Boones were English. Daniel tossed his coonskin cap into the air again and again and let out a war whoop that brought the terrified Rebecca hurrying to ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... the good fairy on board that steamer,—that two or three of the human puppets thereon would dance in accordance with his fingering of the wires; and mischievously as he would interfere at times in such matters, felt upon this occasion that the puppets would jig as much to their ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... which are apt to be frightened at a learned method, and may induce them to take more heed of the judgments which they are hourly passing on a great variety of subjects. If we still persist in saying when some one jingles some jig upon the piano that it is "charming," if we say of every daub in the Academy that it is "lovely," if every new building or statue is pronounced "awfully jolly," if the fastidious rubbish of the last volume of ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... and musical instruments and to handle tools, etc., we should not be discouraged if, after a whole day of hard exertion in work and play, there is still some energy left for drumming on the table or teasing sister or the cat, or for dancing a jig upstairs and ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... lug, dug from the wet sands. The squid or cuttle, herrings, caplin, any meat, or even a false fish of bright tin or pewter. (See JIG.) ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... drinks for the labourer and cigars for himself, several men came in and stood by the bar drinking together. As they drank they became more and more friendly, slapping each other on the back, singing songs and boasting. One of them got out upon the floor and danced a jig. The proprietor, a round-faced man with one dead eye, who had himself been drinking freely, put a bottle upon the bar and coming up to Sam, began complaining that he had no bartender and had to work ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... flinches from a sea. He just tends to his lines and hauls or "saws." Nay, have I not seen my old friend Deacon W. D—-, a good man of the island, while listening to a sermon in the little church on the hill, reach out his hand over the door of his pew and "jig" imaginary squid in the aisle, to the intense delight of the young people, who did not realize that to catch good fish one must have good bait, the thing most on the ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... top of a gay wooden stand, He stands on his head or he shakes your hand, He dances a jig or he trumps a chant— This jolly ...
— Animal Children - The Friends of the Forest and the Plain • Edith Brown Kirkwood
... of ordinary carpenters and handy men. And when the old house is on the ground they will display exasperating unconcern regarding what goes where and how to put the structure back together. The most complicated jig-saw puzzle is simplicity itself compared with an Early American house taken apart without ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... "The jig is up!" cried Captain Walker, sadly. "Gentlemen, we do not strike to one ship only. Haul down ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... Jepson to Randerson, when a few minutes later he followed the range boss out on the porch. He grinned at Randerson suspiciously. "Throwed twice, eh?" he repeated. "Masten's face looks like some one had danced a jig on it. Huh! I cal'late that if you was throwed twice, Masten's horse ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... other, dug their fists into each other, and cheered: "Oh, you Barnesy!" "Kill it, Kid!" "Whatcha know about dat!" "Sand it down, Barnesy!" The old-timer was doing the famous lock-step jig he had done with Pat Rooney in "Patrice" fifteen or twenty years before. It was so old that it was new. Encore followed encore. The perspiration cascaded through his pores; he grinned and winked and frisked and capered. They would ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... many a maple-tree in New Hampshire, and later on, many a walnut in Kentucky. He had not forgotten the art, and standing up on Ceph's back he leaped into the branches of the tree above him, and climbed to the top in what Artie would have called "jig time." ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... Dick, glorious news," returned Tom Rover, and he began to dance a jig on the tent ...
— The Rover Boys on the River - The Search for the Missing Houseboat • Arthur Winfield
... through the body and tingled along the nerves like successive electric shocks. The old Trapper fairly bounded into the air; and when he struck the floor his feet were flying. Nor was he alone; the jig had started a dozen on the instant; and the floor rattled and rang with the ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... It has not been easy, at the rate of about a millennium to a minute, to present a coherent account of the prehistoric record, which at best is like a jig-saw puzzle that has lost most of the pieces needed to reconstitute the design. But, even on this hasty showing, it looks as if the progressive nature of man were beyond question. There is manifest gain in complexity of organization, both ...
— Progress and History • Various
... to go to dances. I was great for cutting pigeon wings and balancing on the corner with a jig step. We used to dance the whirl waltz, too. Some called it the German waltz. We spun round and round as fast as we could, taking three ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... who read it be scholars who would argue about the origin and date of the poem, ingenious theorists who would fain use all the fragmentary tales and rhymes of the nursery as parts of a vast jig-saw puzzle of nature myths, or merely simple folk who read a tale for a tale's sake, every reader of the poem of Beowulf must own that it is one of the finest ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... she used to do a little jig step when she was a girl, and if they would play slower she would like to see if she had forgotten it. Tish did not hear this—she was talking to Tufik, and a moment later she got up ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... a mighty beautiful young crather; but the mirinit I laid my eyes upon her I knew her at once for a neighbour's daughter, one Anty Dooley, who had died a few months before, and who, when she was alive, could beat the whole county round at any sort of reel, jig, or hornpipe. The music struck up 'Tatter Jack Walsh,' and maybe it's she that didn't set, and turn, and thrush the boords, until the young prince hadn't as much breath left in his body as would blow out a rushlight, and he was forced to sit down ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 11, 1841 • Various
... refused to go, for she also was a grand dancer, and she was afraid that when she heard the fiddles starting a merry jig, she might start dancing. So she excused herself by saying she was too tired with scraping pots and washing saucepans; and when the others went off, she crept up ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... bulges out a little round, ugly, vulgar Dutch monstrosity (for which the architects have, no doubt, a name) which offends the eye cruelly. Take the Apollo, and set upon him a bob-wig and a little cocked hat; imagine "God Save the King" ending with a jig; fancy a polonaise, or procession of slim, stately, elegant court beauties, headed by a buffoon dancing a hornpipe. Marshal Gerard should have discharged a bombshell at that abomination, and have given the noble steeple a chance to be finished in the grand style of the early fifteenth ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "The jig's up with us, Joe. If I was only loose seven seconds, you wouldn't ketch me dying like a coon here agin a tree." Joe made no other response than a blubbering sound, while the tears ran down and dropped briskly ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... Jerry, and found all assembled around Ned, who was repeating over and over again, the story told by Tom. Even Patsey, whom I had scarcely noticed since he joined the train, was tossing his well-worn cap in the air, catching it upon the toe of a toeless boot, while executing a lively Irish jig, and exclaiming every time he ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... market, to buy a fat pig, Home again, home again, jiggety-jig; To market, to market, to buy a fat hog, Home again, home again, jiggety-jog; To market, to market, to buy a plum bun, Home again, home again, market ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... JIG, merry ballad or tune; a fanciful dialogue or light comic act introduced at the end or during an ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... back to me, when I dispelled his fright by explaining the way in which I had tricked him. Relieved and reassured, he clapped his hands and executed an impromtu jig, exclaiming, 'Ha! ha! when I get back to New Orleans won't I come de Barnum ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... hobble out was Ketch. In his own fashion, almost ignoring the presence of the bishop, he made known the tale. It was received with ridicule. The college boys especially cast mockery upon it, and began dancing a jig when the bishop's back was turned. "Let a couple of keys drop down, and, when picked up, you found them transmogrified into old rusty machines, made in the year one!" cried Bywater. "That's very like ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... of his learned talk about books, pictures, and politics, as if a young society girl were expected to know about these things; and as for his small talk, it reminded me of an elephant trying to dance a jig;" and she sprang up with a snatch of song from the "opera bouffe," and began ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... dear—it's no mistake—it's the water cure I'm after. Sure it's the blissid wather that saves us. There was Pat Murphy that brak his leg when he fell with a hod of bricks aff the ladder in Say Strate, and they put a bit of wet rag round it, and the next wake he was dancing a jig to the chune of Paddy Rafferty, at the ball given by the Social Burial Society. And there was my sister Molly's old man, Phelim, that was took bad wid the fever—and he drank walth of whiskey, but it never did him a bit of good—but when he lift off the whiskey, and drank nothin' but wather, ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... a query. He can't mean Quince, and Bottom, and Starveling, Christopher Sly, Jack Cade, Caliban, and poor old Hodge? No, no, Nevil. Our clowns are the stupidest in Europe. They can't cook their meals. They can't spell; they can scarcely speak. They haven't a jig in their legs. And I believe they're losing their grin! They're nasty when their blood's up. Shakespeare's Cade tells you what he thought of Radicalizing the people. "And as for your mother, I 'll make her a duke"; that 's one of their songs. The word ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... upon the American by dazzling him with her grace and beauty. Her eye's swift invitation brought Don Fernando, scowling, to her side. He led her to the middle of the room, and the musicians played the stately jig. ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... can dance a jig, you know. I'll go to New York, and let myself as the 'Eminent and Graceful Queen of Terpsichore, imported from Paris at a cost of Forty Thousand Dollars in Gold.' And then I'll make a tour of the New England States. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various
... gentlemen of the court should be pleased to give by B.mol express command to the pox not to run about any longer in gleaning up of coppersmiths and tinkers; for the jobbernolls had already a pretty good beginning in their dance of the British jig called the estrindore, to a perfect diapason, with one foot in the fire, and their head in the middle, as goodman ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... over the landscape, enabled to behold a horizon of triple range and to outstride the fleetest of his vagrant flock. When so inclined, he is quite able, it is said, to skillfully execute a pas seul or even a jig,—with every appropriate flourish of his timber limbs and with surprising grace and abandon. His stilts are strapped to the thigh, not the knee, for greater freedom, and he mounts from his cabin-roof in the early morning and lives in the air throughout the day. A third stilt ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... aspired! Red guineas packed his purse, too tight to ring. The fire-light gleamed upon his silken hose, His silver buckles and his powdered wig. What ho! more wine! He drank, he slowly rose. What made the shadows dance that madcap jig? He clutched the candle, steered his way to bed, And in a trice was sleeping ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... cordial at all; Contention and strife, in the but and the hall, Are ready to greet my return. Oh, did he come to us, our bondage to sever, I would cry, Be on Death benedictions for ever, I would jump it so high, and I 'd jig it so clever— Short while ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... steer, Not a single roguery, from the clipping of a purse To the cutting of a throat, but paid us toll. Od's curse! When Gipsy Smouch made bold to cheat us of our due, —Eh, Tab? the Squire's strong-box we helped the rascal to— I think he pulled a face, next Sessions' swinging-time! He danced the jig that needs no floor,—and, here's the prime, 'T was Scroggs that houghed the mare! ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... in bed when Shoop swaggered in. The foreman did a few steps of a jig, flung his hat in the corner, and proceeded ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... is no prettier word for it. "That naughty, naughty, Miss Thing-a-me-jig was making me sign a blank cheque! My autograph! My sacred aunt! Autograph ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... build hotels that go round and round like catherine wheels? They'll take away my shield and break me. I can think and talk con-con-consec-sec-secutively, but I s-s-stammer with my feet. I've got to go on duty in three hours. The jig is up, Remsen. The jig ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... Anxious to do honor to her patron and friend she threw her whole heart into the work; in the scene where she comes like a good angel to the home of the poor play-wright, she brought tears to the eyes of her audience; and when at her command Triplet strikes up a jig to amuse the children she "covered the buckle" in gallant style, dancing with all the frolicsome abandon of the Irish orange-girl who for a moment forgot her grandeur and ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott |
