"Acrobat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his cloak with its morocco collar, nor the striped blue cotton shirt. In this queer figure—so original that we cannot rub it out—how many divers personalities we come across! In the first place, what an acrobat, what a circus, what a battery, all in one, is the man himself, his vocation, and his tongue! Intrepid mariner, he plunges in, armed with a few phrases, to catch five or six thousand francs in the frozen seas, in the domain of the red Indians who inhabit the interior of France. ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... ruddy of complexion, and he looked out unblinkingly upon the world with a pair of steel-blue eyes. Neat he was to spruceness, and while of no more than medium height he had the shoulders of an acrobat. ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... hungry, hungry until I cry in my sleep when I dream about a muffin! I thought at first that getting out of bed before my eyes are fairly open, and turning myself into a circus acrobat by doing every kind of overhand, foot, arm and leg contortion that the mind of cruel man could invent to torture a human being with, would kill me before I had been at it a week, but when I read on page ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... of its suggestion, this wild scheme had sent the partner of Nick Dodd's fortunes to turning somersaults which would have befitted an acrobat. To put his head where his feet should be was Billy's only way of relieving his emotion and he brought his gymnastics to an end, some distance down the Lane, by assuming a military uprightness and bowing profoundly to Nick, who ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... their heads. Each hawker was intent on extracting coins from the interested spectators, who hung over the side of the steamer. In the foreground were acrobats of every description, dressed in all the colors of the rainbow; among them was a group of five musicians of tender years, an acrobat in pink tights who was exploiting the skill of his little daughter, scarcely five years of age, and another similarly cruel father, who was compelling a little girl to go through all manner of contortions. There was also a group of little girl ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... feeling which the occurrence had turned out of its previous course. Sometimes anger carries off the arrested current; and so prevents laughter. An instance of this was lately furnished me by a friend who had been witnessing the feats at Franconi's. A tremendous leap had just been made by an acrobat over a number of horses. The clown, seemingly envious of this success, made ostentatious preparations for doing the like; and then, taking the preliminary run with immense energy, stopped short on reaching the first horse, and pretended ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... no longer. "Look here, Harry," I said, "if you must know it, she looks upon you as an acrobat—a ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... all right, and offers to stake him to an old suit of clothes, but he laughs and says he won't need anything, tossin' his coat to one side like the acrobat at the theatre flips away his handkerchief before goin' to work. He rolls up his sleeves and starts limberin' up his arms in front of Miss Vincent, winkin' at her and noddin' to the Kid. She looks kinda worried, but her control is good and she holds fast. She wasn't the only one that looked ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... the wants of the civilized man, and therefore he does not wait to supply them before he seeks to gratify others. When man rises in the scale of civilization, his whole nature rises. You can't mount a ladder piecemeal; your head will go up first, unless you are an acrobat, and choose to go up feet foremost; but even if you are Gabriel Ravel, your whole body must needs ascend together. The savage is comfortable, not according to your notions of comfort, but according to his own. Comfort is not positive, but relative. If, with your present habits, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... you put her in her cot and order her to go to sleep, instead of crooning absurd ditties over her? Oh, I thought so," severely, as Babs grasped her toes with her dimpled hands in the practised style of an acrobat, and gurgled defiantly in his face; "she is just exulting over her own victory as an ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the cable with one hand, slowing himself, turned with the skill of an acrobat, and landed catlike, feet first, on the stat-magnetic walk around ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... standing. The man was short, long-armed, vastly broad at the shoulders, deep-chested: flashy in dress, dull and kind of feature—handsome enough, withal. He was an acrobat. Even in the dim light, he carried the impression of great muscular strength—of grace and agility. For a moment the woman's eyes ran over his stocky body: then, spasmodically clenching her hands, she turned quickly to the boy on the ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... electrified. Something told me she was Bob's fiancee. A moment and I was charging the hunter under that tree. Jumping up out of the saddle, I clasped the solitary branch with both hands, and turning as an acrobat would on a trapeze, I hung by my legs, hands downwards, calling to the lady to clasp them. The fiery steeds and the oscillating carriage dashed under me—our hands met. With a superhuman effort I raised the fainting fairy form out of the vehicle as it passed like a whirlwind. The next moment ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... fear, this lively little acrobat stops his hammering or hatcheting at your approach, and stretching himself out from the tree until it would seem he must fall off, he peers down at you, head downward, straight into your upturned opera-glasses. If there is too ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... the world is to lose!" he exclaimed as he died; and artist he was, but in the Roman sense; one that enveloped in the same contempt the musician, acrobat and actor. It was the artist that played the flute while gladiators died and lovers embraced; it was the artist that entertained ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... muscular bumblebee booms along. Owing to his great strength, an inverted, pendent blossom, from which he must cling upside down, has no more terrors for him than a trapeze for the trained acrobat. His long tongue—if he is one of the largest of our sixty-two species of Bombus—can suck almost any flower unless it is especially adapted to night-flying sphinx moths, but can he drain this? He is the truest benefactor ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... him all his mendacity for the sake of a new accomplishment he had brought back with him, and which beat all his others. He could actually turn a somersault backwards with all the ease and finish of a professional acrobat. How he got to do this I don't know. It must have been natural to him and he never found it out before; he was always good at gymnastics—and all things that required grace and agility ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... and he felt a soreness in his chest. It was too dangerous to pull in to the bank at that point, and he tried a delicate experiment. He sought to crawl upon his little raft and lie there flat upon his back, a task demanding the skill of an acrobat. ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the cockpit, and I tried to sleep and dream that I was not a sardine, nor securely confined in some inhospitable vault. It was impossible to turn over without unbuttoning one side of the deck-cover and going through contortions that would have done credit to a first-class acrobat. For the first time in my life I found it necessary to get out of bed in order ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... the back, the suspended insect raises itself and fixes the talons of the anterior limbs in the empty skin above it. Never did acrobat, hanging by the toes to the bar of a trapeze, raise himself with so stupendous a display of strength in the loins. This gymnastic feat accomplished, the rest ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... creature heard its master's voice and saw his form—for his features must have been invisible against the strong light—the scowl vanished from its little visage. With a shriek of joy it sprang like an acrobat from a spring-board and plunged into the hermit's bosom—to the alarm of the Malay, who thought this was a furious attack. We need not say that Van der Kemp received his faithful little servant kindly, and it was quite touching to observe the monkey's ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... monument of the advantage of being misunderstood. Mr. Bernard Shaw is always represented by those who disagree with him, and, I fear, also (if such exist) by those who agree with him, as a capering humorist, a dazzling acrobat, a quick-change artist. It is said that he cannot be taken seriously, that he will defend anything or attack anything, that he will do anything to startle and amuse. All this is not only untrue, but it is, glaringly, the opposite of the truth; it is as wild as to say that Dickens ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... goes out of the frying-pan into the fire, it is usually productive of interesting by-products. The maxim applies to fat. The fat was in the fire with a vengeance. A great sheet of flame rushed out and up. Shoeblossom leaped back with a readiness highly creditable in one who was not a professional acrobat. The covering of the mantelpiece caught fire. The flames went ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... or the sofa, taking her in his arms. Between them they had invented a great game. The ex-engineer, his boots removed, his huge legs in the air, hoisted the little tad on the soles of his stockinged feet like a circus acrobat, dandling her there, pretending he was about to let her fall. Sidney, choking with delight, held on nervously, with little screams and chirps of excitement, while he shifted her gingerly from one foot to another, and thence, the final act, the great gallery play, to the palm of ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... doesn't get dizzy!" a voice was saying and Laura for the first time noticed that a boy was scaling the wall. Favored by the thick vines and uneven stones up he went with the agility of an acrobat. He was bareheaded and the sun shone on his face, reddened with exertion, and on his sandy hair and Laura recognized him as one of the Stony Road boys, the one she had talked ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... in the ages past men believed the body to be the individual, and they endeavored through care of the body to build up mental as well as physical power. In those days the acrobat and the sage were found working side by side in the gymnasium, the one to gain physical strength, the other to increase his mental ability, and each profited ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... by his instructions, in anticipation of the contest on which he was embarking against you and against Daubrecq, at whose house he did the same thing. He had under his orders a sort of acrobat, an extraordinarily thin dwarf, who was able to wriggle through those apertures and who thus detected all your correspondence and all your secrets. That is what his two friends revealed to me. I at once conceived the ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... to move accurately, as though a false move would disturb the balance of things so that I would walk out of the room on my hands like an acrobat. ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... of his mother's arms. Two years with the teacher and Nathan is probably ready for a debut as a wonder child. The critics are kind. If his parents are very poor Nathan may go from town to town for awhile being exhibited like a trained poodle or a tiny acrobat. The further he gets from home the more severe his critics become, and Nathan and his mother hurry back to the old teachers, who tell them that Nathan must still practice long and hard as well as do something to build up his general education. The ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... (but not at the print), and subsiding into the arm-chair she would suck back again the soul of the moment; or, for sometimes she was restless, would pull out book after book and swing across the whole space of her life like an acrobat from bar to bar. She had had her moments. Meanwhile, the great clock on the landing ticked and Sandra would hear time accumulating, and ask herself, "What ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... the bath was arranged in that way; you had to undress, and then go down to the cellar to let on the wet.) No sooner did the kitten remark the unfamiliar sensation, than he departed thence with a willingness quite creditable in one who was not a professional acrobat, and met his ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... and dignified ways of life. A sailor, a shepherd, a schoolmaster - to a less degree, a soldier - and (I don't know why, upon my soul, except as a sort of schoolmaster's unofficial assistant, and a kind of acrobat in tights) an artist, ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... half-notes! Flats and sharps introduced into every bar; C, C sharp; D, D sharp; E, F, F sharp; G, G sharp; A, B flat, B, C. In that scale, or what would seem to be that scale, he balances himself like an acrobat, springing on to the desired key without preparation," and so on until the old stag was interrupted by a friend, a lady who had just recognised him. As she squeezed past, she stopped to tell him that Wagner had spoiled her for all other music. She had ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... that the ordinary mortal doesn't wish to be reminded of. Some day—if I don't turn stoker or acrobat beforehand, and give up peddling in the emotions—some day I shall write music to it. That would ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... strenuous work of the movies. Fairbanks, in addition to being blessed with a strong, lithe body, has developed it by expert devotion to every form of athletic sport. He swims well, is a crack boxer, a good polo player, a splendid wrestler, a skilful acrobat, a fast runner, and an absolutely ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... and pleasantry that Lilly could recite offhand through the current program of any of the nine theaters, leaping glibly from motion picture, to acrobat, and sister acts. ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... to run quietly along some boards laid over the loft ceiling, and, making a jump that would not have disgraced an acrobat, he caught at a rope, pendent from the highest portion of the rafters, twisted his legs about it, and ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... Then there were two days when his place was taken by a young man who wore pale blue instead of white, and got very little applause. But after the two days Horace appeared again, and those who sat close to the stage remarked an expression of beatific happiness on that young acrobat's face even when he was twisting breathlessly in the air an the middle of his amazing and original shoulder swing. After that performance he laughed at the elevator man and dashed up the stairs to the flat five steps at a time—and then tiptoed very carefully into ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... we're fond of the kid," said Ben Flint. "He's free from vice and as clever as paint. He's a born acrobat. Might as well try to teach a duck to swim. It comes natural. Heredity of course. There's nothing he won't be able to do when I'm finished with him. Yet there are some things which lick me altogether. He's an ugly son of a gun. His father and mother, by the way, were a damn good-looking pair. ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... out of the way I'll have more room to do my flipflops," said the boy acrobat, and he started to do all sorts of tricks. But, just as Uncle Tad had said, the girl was only pretending, for pretty soon she came back again with a prettier dress on, and she danced and sang while the boy did handsprings to the delight of Bunny Brown, his sister Sue, and ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue Giving a Show • Laura Lee Hope
... year to fill the hermit's little cask at running streams, and endeavours in vain, finds it brimming the moment one tear of true penitence falls into the vessel. Most exquisite in its feeling is the tale of the Tombeur de Notre-Dame—a poor acrobat—a jongleur turned monk—who knows not even the Pater noster or the Credo, and can only offer before our Lady's altar his tumbler's feats; he is observed, and as he sinks worn-out and faint before the shrine, the Virgin is seen to descend, with her angelic attendants, and to wipe ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... the spar the moment it struck, and the momentum helped him. He ran again, steadying himself like a tight-wire acrobat. He snatched the noose from his shoulders, slipped it over the end of the boom, and yelled an order, with all the strength of ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... of elephants four elephants high! Here is the acrobat in the midst of the smoke and blaze of an Armstrong cannon, beginning some flight to a far-off trapeze, or swing, in the air! It ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... acrobats—accomplished men in tight clothes—who cut the most amazing somersaults, and seemed to regard no object as too great to be leaped over. They brought in the horses, and stood ever so many of them together, backed up by the elephant, and the leading acrobat jumped over them all without any apparent effort. After which all the horses galloped off of their own accord, and "put themselves away" without giving anyone any trouble. Then the acrobats were hauled up into the top of the tent, where they swung themselves from rope to rope, ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... if we did not know it so well, would be startling. This change is known as a 'complete metamorphosis.' The dragon-fly is another insect with a complete metamorphosis. How the dragon-fly moults you will see in the illustration (fig. 1): even an acrobat ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... While the acrobat hung from the cornice striving to get hold of the pillar with his feet and legs, Sergius was wrestling with the question, what could impel a fellow being to tempt Providence so rashly? If a messenger with intelligence for some one in the procession, why not wait for him outside? In ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... familiar subjects are performed; many are of a more serious turn than the loves of Mr. Punch, while others again are of the knock-about style so dear to the ordinary boy and girl. Besides such entertainments as these, the streets of a Chinese city offer other shows to those who desire to be amused. An acrobat, a rope-dancer or a conjurer will take up a pitch right in the middle of the roadway, and the traffic has to get on as best it can. A theatrical stage will sometimes completely block a street, and even foot-passengers will have to find their way round. There is also ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... world of novel-readers constitute a huge hippodrome, where, if you can succeed in amusing your spectators or make them gasp in amazement at your rhetorical legerdemain, they will applaud vociferously, and pet you, as they would a graceful danseuse, or a dexterous acrobat, or a daring equestrian; but if you attempt to educate or lecture them, you will either declaim to empty benches or be hissed down. They expect you to help them kill time, not ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... most women, and gave out an air of fine unconscious health which made her good to see, although her face was too broad to be pretty. She smiled easily, and her teeth were white and even. Her hand he noticed was as strong as steel and brown as leather. Her neck rose from her shoulders like that of an acrobat, and she walked with the sense of security which comes from ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... just for the joy of the season that he played in the air, or was there, after all, someone besides himself to be pleased with the sport? Who knows whether the little acrobat was showing his mate what a splendid fellow he was, how strong of wing and skillful in the tricks of flight? Be that as it may, the mate of Mis was satisfied in some way or other, and went with him on a voyage of discovery one afternoon, when ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... with hundreds of lamps hung in festoons of blue, yellow, and red. This is the Casino. On each side of the wide entrance is a bill-board, announcing that some world-renowned Tyrolean warbler, famous acrobat, or marvelous juggler will sing or tumble or bewilder, the price of admission remaining the same, despite the enormous sum paid for ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the fact that they obtained their support from the cultivators, they have come to rank below these latter. The Wanjari cultivators of Berar have now discarded their Banjara ancestry and claim to be Kunbis. The Nat or rope-dancer and acrobat may formerly have had functions in the village in connection with the crops. In Kumaon [66] a Nat still slides down a long rope from the summit of a cliff to the base as a rite for ensuring the success of the crops on the occasion of a ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... Nature. Did it ever strike you that the globe and the people who live on its surface, are always marching different ways? While all the restless tide of humanity moves to the West, the globe turns itself to the East. On its surface, Man is much like the acrobat we see at the theatres, who, mounted on his parti-colored ball, faces one way while it moves the other. It must be a queer spectacle to those who, from the planetary dress circle of the universe, ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... martyr to my passion for original observation. He might have pursued his even course across the arena unharmed, but he too persisted in trespassing, and suddenly was seen to transform from a slow creeping laggard into the liveliest acrobat, as he stood on his head and apparently dived precipitately into the hole which suddenly appeared beneath him. A certain busy fly made itself promiscuous in the neighborhood, more than once to the demoralization of my necessary ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... himself something of an acrobat by the grace and agility with which he vaulted the six foot fence, and Jim went over with more power if less grace. Now they were in a quandary for directly before them was a wood of the tall and ghostly eucalyptus, into which the two fugitives ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... Whist! Was that a shillin' he gave ye? That makes ten ye have now, thin. Bun like a hare an' put ut on Acrobat at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 21, 1920 • Various
... trained seals do not need a dramatist to lend them interest, nor does the acrobat need his skill; but without the writer what would the actress be, and without the song-smith, what would the singer sing? And even the animal trainer may utilize the writer to concoct his "line of talk." ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... and showed it. Besides, even if I'd dared, I should have had no chance to straighten matters out; for though the flag-episode was after all no fault of Slaney's, there were a few little things which had escaped even his Napoleonic memory; and it was only by combining the feats of an acrobat with those of a juggler that I saved my reputation during ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... forward on his face, a great brown hulk like an overturned bronze statue. Shane stooped down for either the half-Nelson and hammer-lock, or full Nelson.... An instant too long of hesitation. Light as a lightweight acrobat Ahmet Ali had rolled aside, put palm to ground, sprung to his feet. His face was bloody, his right knee shook. With the back of his hand he wiped the blood from his eyes. There was a twitter from the Syrians. The wrestler lumbered forward again.... A little ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... below the window-sill a rough string-course, which might give to a fugitive a moment's finger-hold before dropping to earth. But the fall between shoes and ground would be some two and a half yards—a serious matter even for an acrobat so placed that he ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... an eccentric vehicle which instinct whispers is an English 'hansom.' For years I have aspired to drive in an English hansom once. It is in your power to fulfil my dream with effulgence. Will you consent to instruct the acrobat who is performing with a whip, and to take a seat in ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... face. It was easily taught, and in course of time it could perform many surprising feats. I made a small trapeze, the bar being a slate pencil about four inches long, which was wound with yarn and hung from strings of the same; and on this the rat would perform like an acrobat, appearing to enjoy the exercise as much as the performance always delighted me. I made a long cord out of yarn, on which it would climb exactly in the manner in which a sailor shins up a rope; and when the cord was stretched horizontally it would let its body sway ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... the grass now, his legs in the air like an acrobat about to balance a globe, the water pouring from his wading boots, soaking the rest of him, all three of us tugging away—I at his head, the Sculptor at his feet. How Marie ever helped him squirm out of this diving-suit was more than ...
— The Man In The High-Water Boots - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... were the fiercest and most sullen-looking of all. They did not join in the general barking and uproar, but kept their heads buried in the straw. Once, as we were watching them, away off in a remote end of the building, an acrobat began his performance of walking on a rope and jumping through rings, high up in the air. Then these hounds suddenly lifted themselves erect, and, fixing their sharp eyes on that little red and blue speck of a man suspended in the air, set up a loud, long, unearthly howl, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... choking," the Ramblin' Kid replied without moving from where he stood, "—he's sufferin' some, but he ain't chokin'. He's got quite a lot of wind yet an' is gettin' some valuable experience. That cat's what I call a genuine acrobat!" he mused as the terrified creature leaped frantically in the air and somersaulted backward, striking and clawing desperately to free itself of the can tightly wedged on ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... upon huge revolving wheels, afford as much delight and more risk to other youths. Punch and Judy, and the man with the air-gun and conspicuous mark, are also present. A performing monkey divides the honors and pennies with the rest of the entertainers. Not far away an acrobat, in flesh-colored tights, lies upon the carpeted ground and tosses a lad, dressed in spangled thin clothes, into the air, catching him upon his foot again as he comes down, and twirling him so rapidly ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... whole trio falls forward across the chasm, the top one grasping some bush or creeper on the other side; so that a living bridge is formed, on which the heroine (herself, it would seem, something of an acrobat) can cross the dizzy gulf and bid defiance to the baffled villain. This is clearly a dramatic crisis within our definition; but, no less clearly, it is not a piece of rational or commendable drama. To say that such-and-such a factor is necessary, ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... agile as a young monkey, Lydia let herself down, landing with a spring of which an acrobat might ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... mere male thing that rides the machine. He is not so accomplished an acrobat as is the lady; but simple tricks, such as standing on the saddle and waving flags, drinking beer or beef-tea while riding, he can and does perform. Something, one supposes, he must do to occupy ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... plates, and they walked on their hands with their feet in the air or with their heads turned downwards so as to look through their legs backwards. These acrobatic feats were even practised by women. According to a legend, the daughter of Herodias was a renowned acrobat, and on a bas-relief in the Cathedral of Rouen we find this Jewish dancer turning somersaults before Herod, so as to fascinate him, and thus obtain the decapitation of ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... He thought that I was going out to eat husks with the swine as the Prodigal Son did, and told me not to take it into my mind ever again to cross the threshold of my father's house in my future capacity as acrobat or bareback rider, as he was pleased to express it. His door was not open to such scum! Well, I'll fight it down! Only I'm sorry for my poor, dear mother.—You can't imagine with what abysmal hatred a man of his kind considers the theatre and everything connected with it. The ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... realize, for he could scarcely scrape together eight thousand francs a year; his mother still being alive and possessing a life-interest in a valuable estate in Alencon. This young man had already, during previous visits to Paris, tried his rope, like an acrobat, and had recognized the great vice of the social replastering of 1830. He meant to turn it to his own profit, following the example of the longest heads of the bourgeoisie. This requires a rapid glance on one of the effects of the new order ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... The youthful acrobat did look as if he had been sick and was not yet entirely over it. He walked slowly over to one of the ropes and grasped it ...
— Out with Gun and Camera • Ralph Bonehill
... we had a glorious gallop after Starlight and his gang, When they bolted from Sylvester's on the flat; How the sun-dried reed-beds crackled, how the flint-strewn ranges rang To the strokes of Mountaineer and Acrobat! Hard behind them in the timber, harder still across the heath, Close beside them through the ti-tree scrub we dashed; And the golden-tinted fern-leaves, how they rustled underneath! And the ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... the silver mines; indeed, it may be said to be the one thing to do at Zacatecas, but for which only the most awkward means imaginable are supplied, such as ladders formed of a single long, notched pole, quite possible for an acrobat or performer on the trapeze. It is up and down these hazardous poles that the Indian miners, in night and day gangs, climb, while carrying heavy canvas bags of ore weighing nearly or quite two hundred pounds each. The writer is free to acknowledge that he did not improve ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... which was the first and most alarming trait to intrude itself upon the observer's attention, the outstanding characteristic of Chief Inspector Kerry was his compact neatness. Of no more than medium height but with shoulders like an acrobat, he had slim, straight legs and the feet of a dancing master. His attire, from the square-pointed collar down to the neat black brogues, was spotless. His reefer jacket fitted him faultlessly, but his trousers were cut so unfashionably narrow that the protuberant thigh ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... are put up so as to conform to the letter of the law; and in such manner that no one but a sailor or an acrobat would be likely to trust himself to them. In crowded city buildings, and in other places where the ordinary means of escape are not in duplicate, it is essential that fire escapes should be provided; but it is a great deal better to make a mill building so that they ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... obscene vaudeville piece, and vicious topical songs were sung (a thunder of applause); an animated chansonnette-singer screeched and pulled about with her naked, excessively whitened shoulders, and winked with her exaggeratedly painted eyes; a woman acrobat, raising her legs, attired in pink tights, above her head, was dancing on ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... interest of the circus at heart, had decided to do this dangerous swing. He was an acrobat, as well as a stage magician, and he had decided to take up some of his earlier acts which ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... saw a subtle motive in this awkward tarrying at the door, and, having no objection to gratifying it, he straightway introduced Mr. Wesley Tiffles to Miss Philomela Wilkeson. Mr. Tiffles put himself into the form of an L, like a professional acrobat; and Miss Wilkeson executed a courtesy in the old, exploded style. Then, as if appalled at what she had done, she backed into the entry as fast as she had ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... system, and faith in fixed principles—that is to say, a scheme of jurisprudence, a summing-up, and a verdict. The critic is then a magistrate of ideas, the censor of his time; he fulfils a sacred function; while in the former case he is but an acrobat who turns somersaults for a living so long as he had a leg to stand on. Between Claude Vignon and Lousteau lay the gulf that divides mere ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... is on the point of being raised still higher in the social scale, and becoming the wife of a real live young nobleman, when she sensibly accepts a considerable sum of money, consents to forego her action for breach of promise, and finally marries a highly respectable acrobat, and becomes the landlady of the "Man of Kent." The earlier portion is entertaining, especially to those who are not altogether ignorant of some of the personages, sketches of whom are drawn by the author, Mr. CHARLES HOLLIS, with, it is not improbable, considerable fidelity. They are rough sketches, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various
... comedian, low comedian; walking gentleman, amoroso[obs3], heavy father, ingenue[French], jeune veuve[French]. mummer, guiser[obs3], guisard[obs3], gysart |, masque. mountebank, Jack Pudding; tumbler, posture master, acrobat; contortionist; ballet dancer, ballet girl; chorus singer; coryphee danseuse[Fr]. property man, costumier, machinist; prompter, call boy; manager; director, stage manager, acting manager. producer, entrepreneur, impresario; backer, investor, angel[fig]. dramatic ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... with a sardonic mildness, "that your games are already sufficiently interesting. Are you, may I ask, a professional acrobat on a tour, or a travelling advertisement of Sunny Jim? How and why do you display all this energy for clearing walls and climbing trees in our melancholy, ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... coldly to inform her. "Do you not know what von Bulow said: If I miss my practising for one day I notice it; if for two days my friends notice it; if I miss it for three days the public notices it. The artist is like an acrobat, juggling always, intent always on his three golden balls kept flying in the air. That is what it is like. Every atom of their strength is used. People, like my guardian, literally give their ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... is professionally known as a dompteuse," she explained. "Of course, when I was a kid I was trained as an acrobat, for my father was poor; but when he grew rich and the owner of animals, which he did when I was fourteen, I joined him and worked with him all over the world until I went on my own. Do you mean to say you never heard ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... of words"; and this developed into "a power of pouring forth, with endless facility, perfectly modulated sentences of perfectly chosen language, which as far surpassed the reach of a normal intellect as the feats of an acrobat exceed the capacities of ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... Crandall's Acrobat or Circus Blocks, with which hundreds of queer, fantastic figures may be formed by any child, 1.15 Table-Croquet. This can be used on any table—making a Croquet-Board, at trifling expense 1.50 Game of Bible Characters and Events .50 Dissected Map of the United States ...
— The Nursery, Volume 17, No. 101, May, 1875 • Various
... world where all is unstable, and nought can endure, but is swept onwards at once in the hurrying whirlpool of change; where a man, if he is to keep erect at all, must always be advancing and moving, like an acrobat on a rope—in such a world, happiness in inconceivable. How can it dwell where, as Plato says, continual Becoming and never Being is the sole form of existence? In the first place, a man never is happy, but spends his whole life in striving ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... most of the doubles are men, even for the women stars, like Kitty Carson always carries one who used to be a circus acrobat. She couldn't hardly do one of the things you see her doing, but when old Dan gets on her blonde transformation and a few of her clothes, he's her to the life in a long shot, or even in mediums, if ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... the Calico Clown was almost as good an acrobat, or jumper, as ever. When punched in the chest, the Clown would bang his cymbals together. And when the strings were pulled, out shot the arms and legs like those of a Jumping Jack, ...
— The Story of Calico Clown • Laura Lee Hope
... to ward off the dull agony, the killing depression, and manias generally. Fortunately I was of a very active disposition, and as a pastime I took to gymnastics, even as I had at Montreux. I became a most proficient tumbler and acrobat, and could turn two or three somersaults on dashing down from the sloping roof of my pearl-shell hut; besides, I became a splendid high jumper, with and without the pole. Another thing I interested myself in was the construction ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... other wandering troupes who stole the holy things from the Church of St. Martin, and in the place and exact situation of Madam the Virgin, left by way of insult and mockery to our Holy Faith, an abandoned pretty little girl, about the age of an old dog, stark naked, an acrobat, and of Moorish descent like themselves. For this almost nameless crime it was equally decided by the king, people, and the churchmen that the Mooress, to pay for all, should be burned and cooked alive in the square near the fountain where the herb market is. Then the good man ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... continued: "You may not know it, but she is a dancer of some repute, a circumstance which she owes entirely to me. I picked her up, a mere child in the streets of London, turning cart-wheels for a living. I took her and trained her as an acrobat. She was known on the stage as Toby the Tumbler. Everyone took her for a boy. Later, she developed a talent for dancing. It was then that I decided to marry her. She desired the marriage even more than I did." Again he smiled ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... there was a speedy departure, and for some hours the Committee lounged about the Aquarium, They there saw a female acrobat of great strength. Then they paid a visit to the Alhambra, where they met a pleasant young lady, who, seemingly without any assistance, lifted four or five bulky gentlemen seated on a chair. This she did without any exertion and with a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 5, 1891 • Various
... with the swimmer; how was it with the agile and dexterous skater; how with the acrobat, and what but practice has just enabled WESTON to walk one hundred and twelve miles in twenty-four hours, and four hundred miles ...
— A Project for Flying - In Earnest at Last! • Robert Hardley
... ACROBAT (Gr. akrobatein, to walk on tiptoe), originally a rope-dancer; the word is now used generally to cover professional performers on the trapeze, &c., contortionists, balancers and tumblers. Evidence exists that there were very skilful performers on the tight-rope (funambuli) ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... too serious, adds to the grace of his movement. Yet, when the german is over, we remember the warning of the wealthy Corinthian who refused his daughter to the son of Tisander on the ground that he was too much of a dancer and acrobat. ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... the Baccarat sector, I met a most interesting and effective man who was in the Supply Department of the "Y" on week days, and conducted services in outlying camps every Sunday morning with great success. He had been a circus acrobat back in the States. What a revolutionizing influence war is, with preachers chauffeuring and acrobats preaching! The important point was that they were all serving whole-heartedly in ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... rolled over and was up like an acrobat. But my revolver, pointing straight at his stomach, steadied ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... please," cried Cornelia, naughtily. She was standing up, cup in hand, but even as she spoke she subsided on to a footstool by Miss Briskett's side, with a sudden lithe collapse of the body, which made that good lady gasp in dismay. She had never seen anybody but a professional acrobat move so quickly or unexpectedly, and felt convinced that the tea must have been spilt, and crumbs scattered wholesale over the carpet. But no! not even a drop had fallen into the saucer, and there sat Cornelia nibbling at an undamaged ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... especially with his palpi, or feelers, he teases the buxom gossip, who answers with curious skips and bounds. Gripping a thread with her front tarsi, or fingers, she turns, one after the other, a number of back somersaults, like those of an acrobat on the trapeze. Having done this, she presents the under-part of her paunch to the dwarf and allows him to fumble at it a little with his feelers. ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... rejoined them, the lift had returned and ascended with another covey of fancy costumes, including a man with a nose a foot long and a girl with bright green hair, dressed as an acrobat. On its next journey the lift held Tommy and Nick's party, and it held ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... "A score of smaller letters were tumbling about my feet" 74 Tailpiece Chap. IX. "Mothers' pets" 77 Headpiece Chap. X. "Scrymgeour was an artist" 78 "With shadowy reptiles crawling across the panels" 81 "Scrymgeour sprang like an acrobat into a Japanese dressing-gown" 84 Tailpiece Chap. X. 86 Headpiece Chap. XI. "His wife's cigars" 87 "A packet of Celebros alighted on my head" 88 "I told her the cigars were excellent" 90 Tailpiece Chap. XI. 93 Headpiece Chap. XII. "Gilray's flower-pot" 94 "Then Arcadians would drop in" 97 "I wrote ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... seems to have been a good political acrobat, and was on more sides of more questions than anybody else of those times. Though connected with the White-Cap affair by which Alfred lost his eyesight and his life, he proved an alibi, or spasmodic paresis, or something, and, ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... let grandmamma go up in peace, upon Mother Carey's arm, and then a general romp and scurry all the way up the stairs, ending by Jock's standing on one leg on the top post of the baluster, like an acrobat, an achievement which made even his father so giddy that he peremptorily desired it never to be attempted again, to the great relief of both the ladies. Then, coming into the drawing-room, Babie perched herself on his knee, ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and stood aghast in the doorway at the spectacle of Mr. Gunnill, with his clenched fists held tightly by his side, bounding into the air with all the grace of a trained acrobat, while Mr. Drill encouraged him from an easy-chair. Mr. Gunnill smiled broadly as he met their astonished gaze, and with a final bound kicked something along the floor and subsided into ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... arsks," said Tilda wearily. "I dunno. If a body can't do without father an' mother, I'll make up a couple to please you, same as I made up a aunt for Glasson. Maggs's Circus is where I belong to, an' there 'twas Tilda, or 'The Child Acrobat' ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... undertaken with every possible regard to safety, on soaring and gliding machines, the Wrights became master pilots and conquerors of the air. Their success had in it no element of luck; it was earned, as an acrobat earns his skill. So confident did they become that to the end their machines were all machines of an unstable equilibrium, dependent for their safety on the skill and quickness of the pilot. Their triumph was a triumph of mind and character. Other men had more than their advantages, ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... taking the eighteenpenny dinner, you see. She'll get a glass of chianti free with it. I am in luck to-night. I can tell you about nearly all these people. Her name is Bessie Hazell—Sarah Ann Jinks, very likely, but that's what she calls herself, anyway. She married an acrobat two years ago and they started doing quite well. Then he got a cough, had to give up work, the doctors all shook their heads at him, wanted to tell him it was consumption. Bless you, she wouldn't listen to it! She got him down to Bournemouth somehow and they patched him up. ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... movements with exceptional ease, even with comfort, because he takes a direct pleasure in an activity for which he is particularly well-equipped, and therefore often exercises it without any object. Further, if he is an acrobat or a dancer, not only does he take leaps which other people cannot execute, but he also betrays rare elasticity and agility in those easier steps which others can also perform, and even in ordinary walking. In the same way a man of superior mind will not only produce thoughts and works which ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... Minister of Finance had sold secretly to Mrs. Scott half the crown diamonds, and that was how, the month before, he had been able to show a surplus of 1,500,000 francs in the budget. Add to all this that the lady had a remarkably good air, and that the little acrobat seemed perfectly at home in the midst of ...
— L'Abbe Constantin, Complete • Ludovic Halevy
... kind," I said. "You are the Countess de Vassart. A man is what he makes himself. I have made myself—with both eyes open; and I am now an acrobat and a tamer of beasts. I understand your goodness, your impulse to help those less fortunate than yourself. I also understand that I have placed myself where I am, and that, having done so deliberately, I cannot meet as friends and equals those who might have been my equals if not friends. Besides ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... advance!" said several, and one man remarked that "that feller was the most reckless rider he had ever beheld." The crisis came at length: a wagon had stopped the way; my horse in turning it, stepped upon a stake, and slipping rolled heavily upon his side, tossing me like an acrobat, over his head, but without further injury than a terrible nervous shock and a rent in ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... and infinitely more strenuous, the breaking-in of the dances under the supervision of the famous Johnson Miller. Johnson Miller was a little man with snow-white hair and the india-rubber physique of a juvenile acrobat. Nobody knew actually how old he was, but he certainly looked much too advanced in years to be capable of the feats of endurance which he performed daily. He had the untiring enthusiasm of a fox-terrier, and had bullied and ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... it all before in the days when, under his father's guidance, he had seen everything—the juggler, the acrobat, the step-dancer, the comic singer, the tableaus, and the living picture. He felt tired and ashamed, yet, he could not bring himself to go away. As the evening advanced he thought: "How foolish! What madness it was to think of such a thing!" He was ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... pair of white duck trousers, the gift probably of some departing American, and somebody's discarded bathing shirt in cherry and black stripes. He had cut off the trousers legs at the thighs, and, with bare arms and legs glistening, was as imposing an acrobat as ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... and courage, he made a bound forward that might have roused the envy of an acrobat, and cleared not only the space between but the parapet beyond, coming down with an awful crash into the midst of a certain box-garden, which was the special pride of the owner of ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... to after dinner; and also a strange contrivance called a concerto, put together to enable the player to exhibit within a brief space the utmost possible variety of finger gymnastics. To learn to perform these feats one had to devote his whole lifetime to practising them, just like any circus acrobat; and so his mind became atrophied, and a naive and elemental vanity was all that ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... imagination, the whole is comprised in two words—food and exercise. If you want strong arms, take animal food, and row. Feed your imagination with food convenient for it, and exercise it, not in the contortions of the acrobat, but in the movements of the gymnast. And ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... very wise to develop your ability along the line of acrobatic dancing rather than as an acrobat. There is a vast difference. As a mere acrobat one has to be a top-liner and wonderfully expert to get any kind of a salary at all, but as an acrobatic dancer you can command a place in the very best stage productions, high class musical comedies, musical ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... the animals. An acrobat who came here this morning, and who owns two horses, refused to sell ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... and ordered to go to the 'mast-head.' Go to the mast-head indeed! with a freshening wind, under whose influence the ship was beginning to heel over, and an increasing sea that made her jump about like an acrobat. I had not got my sea legs, and this feat seemed an utter impossibility to me. I looked with horror up aloft; then came over me the remembrance of Marryat's story of the lad who refused to go to the ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... Wonderful Child Acrobat! The Most Marvellous Aeronaut of the Age! Little Boy-Butterfly, and Bambo ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... with his father, the little harlequin went through still another trick: erect upon a galloping horse, he appeared in four characters—as a pilgrim, a sailor, a soldier, and an acrobat; and every time that he passed near me, he looked at me. And when he dismounted, he began to make the tour of the circus, with his harlequin's cap in his hand, and everybody threw soldi or sugar-plums into it. I had ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... abnormal and egotistic though it be, may develop marvellous powers, at which we may wonder as we do at the skill of an acrobat or the pugilism of Sullivan. It cultivates a will power and a spirituality by which miraculous phenomena may be shown, but they are of little real value compared to the nobler miracle of healing those whom physicians have surrendered to death, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... had a glorious gallop after 'Starlight' and his gang, When they bolted from Sylvester's on the flat; How the sun-dried reed-beds crackled, how the flint-strewn ranges rang To the strokes of 'Mountaineer' and 'Acrobat'; Hard behind them in the timber, harder still across the heath, Close behind them through the tea-tree scrub we dashed; And the golden-tinted fern leaves, how they rustled underneath! And the honeysuckle osiers, ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... never saw the ambassador, and neither did the old German lady who kept the shop. She told me she bought it from a Japanese acrobat who was out of an engagement and desperately hard up. But she told me also that the acrobat had told her that the garment had belonged to an ambassador who had given it to him as a reward of his skill, and that he never would have parted with it if ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... in any intelligible sense of that much-abused word,—no! He is one type of the successful man of our day. Where thousands of better and stronger men struggle vainly for fair recognition, he and his kind are glorified. In comparison with a really energetic man, he is an acrobat. The crowd stares at him and applauds, and there is nothing he cares for so much ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... had promised,—in no very professional style, be it said,—and with a grin stretched out his hand. The nickel glistened in the sun, and on the instant a second boy sprang forward, snatched it out of the sand, and made off in triumph amid the hilarious applause of his fellows. The acrobat's countenance indicated a sense of injustice, and I had no doubt that my younger eagle was similarly affected. "Where is our boasted honor among thieves?" I imagined him asking. The bird of freedom ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... he is, no more intended to establish any such ordered disorder than a moth intends to be burnt when it flies into a candle flame. He can shew that the difference between the grace and strength of the acrobat and the bent back of the rheumatic field laborer is a difference produced by conditions, not by nature. He can shew that many of the most detestable human vices are not radical, but are mere reactions of our institutions on ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... am so exhausted that I have lost all my energy for excitement. Three years ago I would have made a serviceable Minister; when I think of such a thing now I feel like a broken-down acrobat. I would gladly go to London, Paris, or remain here, as it pleases God and his Majesty. I shudder at the prospect of the Ministry as at a ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... for instance. Somehow he had come to be sadly neglected of late years—and yet how exactly he always responded to certain moods! He was an acrobat, this Leotard, who lived in a glass-fronted box. His loose-jointed limbs were cardboard, cardboard his slender trunk; and his hands eternally grasped the bar of a trapeze. You turned the box round swiftly five or ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... Ecclesiastes says: 'All is vanity.' I agree with that good man, who never existed, perhaps. Zero not wishing to go stark naked, clothed himself in vanity. O vanity! The patching up of everything with big words! a kitchen is a laboratory, a dancer is a professor, an acrobat is a gymnast, a boxer is a pugilist, an apothecary is a chemist, a wigmaker is an artist, a hodman is an architect, a jockey is a sportsman, a wood-louse is a pterigybranche. Vanity has a right and a wrong side; the right side is stupid, it is the negro ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... is to have only light gymnastics and folk dancing from this on," announced Helen. "There is to be a new gym instructor; a young man. He is a physical culture expert and an acrobat. He is to teach bar ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... what one felt and knew counted. A crowd is spellbound in watching a steeplejack at work, or an aviator doing a "loop-the-loop," or an acrobat swinging from one bar to another above the sawdust ring, or the "leap of death" of the movies; and here we were in the presence of a multitude who were running a far greater risk in an untried effort, with their inspiration not a breathless audience but duty. For none wanted to die. All were human ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... this day? A skilled horseman from Dacia?... I have one.... A pearl.... He can mount an untamed steed and drive a chariot in treble harness through the narrowest streets of Rome.... He can ... What—no?—not a horseman to-day?... then mayhap a hunchback acrobat from Pannonia, bronzed as the tanned hide of an ox, with arms so long that his finger-nails will scrape the ground as he runs; he can turn a back somersault, walk the tight-rope, or ... Here, Pipus the hunchback, show thine ugly face to my lord's grace, maybe thou'lt help to dissipate the ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... accession of the child-king, funeral service was read to the memory of Francis I., Latin dirges were chanted, and eight mitred bishops sang a requiem to the monarch lately deceased. At the coronation, while the guilds were marshalled along Cheapside, and tapestries hung from every window, an acrobat descended by a cable from St. Paul's steeple to the anchor of a ship near the Deanery door. In November of the next year, at night, the crucifixes and images in St. Paul's were pulled down and ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... of half a dozen rapid strokes, catching flies by the way, and crying peent-peent, the acrobat climbs until I look a mere lump on the roof; then ceasing his whimpering peent, he turns on bowed wings and falls—shoots roofward with fearful ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... gala night at the Royal Circus. Ricardo Harringtoni, the wonderful new acrobat of whom everybody was talking, stood high above the crowd on his platform. His marvellous performance on the swinging horizontal bar was about to begin. Richard Harrington (for it was he) was troubled. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various
... thrill I mean is never physical, and has nothing in common with that acute sensation experienced when the acrobat is seen to miss the rope in mid-air as he swings from bar to bar. There is no shock in it, for shock is of the nerves, arresting life; the thrill I speak of intensifies and sets it rising in a wave that flows. It is of the spirit. It wounds, yet marvellously. ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... wails, moans and whistles. The clarinet flings an obbligato high over the heads of the dancers on the cabaret floor. It makes shrill sounds. It raves like a fireless Ophelia. It plays the clown, the tragedian, the acrobat. ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... regarded as a needlessly hazardous task. His boldest and most seemingly reckless feats were to him no more than the every-day work of a man of a strong mind, of a stout heart, and of a perfectly trained body, who had so completely mastered every detail of his profession as gymnast, acrobat, and aeronaut, that he had come to have absolute faith in himself, downright abiding certainty that within his sphere of work not only must he succeed, but that, in the very nature of things it was quite ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... the public. Some such thought as this must have been in the mind of the man who conceived the idea of riding a bicycle on the ceiling instead of on the floor. The "trick" originated with the Swiss acrobat Di Batta, who, being too old to undertake such a performance himself, trained two of his pupils to do it, and they appeared with their wheel in Busch Circus in Berlin. The wheel, of course, ran on a track from which it was suspended ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... to stand up to bowling than to a cannon-ball, and who now hobbles about on rheumatic joints, by the help of a stick; the corpulent elder, who rowed when boats had gangways down their middle, and did not require as delicate a balance as an acrobat's at the top of a living pyramid—these are the persons whom I cannot see without an occasional sigh. They are really conscious that they have lost something which they can never regain; or, if they momentarily forget it, it is even more forcibly ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... sword of the satellite defended the master; other swords began to gleam anew. From all the quarters of that field of fight the bravos were gathering again, all there were left of them, and Lagardere was now alone. With the activity of the skilled acrobat he leaped backward to the cart, and, while he still faced his enemies and while his terrible sword glittered in ceaseless movement, he snatched the child from the sheltering hay with his left hand, and, turning, began to run at his full speed towards the bridge. There were ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... in the front trench which enables Tommy to fire "over the top." In rainy weather you have to be an acrobat to even stand on it on account of ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... being born. It was the daughter of Madame Bordier's late sister—Pauvre fille—who had worn the costume. She was a Femme Orchestre of such skill that her name was known from one end of the Eure to another. She made money, too, bien sr, but hlas! she married a vaurien acrobat who had taken her off to America, where she had died last year. Those clothes—bon Dieu!—they recalled the days of happiness; but if Mademoiselle desired them, she, Madame Bordier, could not stand ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... "the fly is such a little acrobat it can crawl up the steepest and most slippery wall and walk upside down or right side up with the greatest ease. Perhaps some day you can make a fly keep still long enough so that you can look at its foot. At the end of the foot are two little round pads thickly covered ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... Now it snatched up the keys again, and holding them close to its ear, rattled them furiously. Finally, with an incredible spring, it leapt on to the chain supporting the lamp above my head, and with the garish shade swinging and spinning wildly, clung there looking down at me like an acrobat on a trapeze. The tiny, bluish face, completely framed in grotesque whiskers, enhanced the illusion of an acrobatic comedian. Never for a moment did it release its hold upon ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... found out how limited is the circle of fame for even a successful writer. For one person who would read a book, there were fifty who would go to hear a famous singer or actor, and a hundred who would crowd to see a clever acrobat. As she read more she discovered that what she had fondly imagined were ideas originated by her own intellect, was, in reality, the echo only of thought long since given to mankind by other minds, in other words, often better than her own. Her own silent claim to genius ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... stock between the log and the skid, allowing it to be overrun; he stops the roll with a sudden sure grasp applied at just the right moment to be effective. Sometimes he allows himself to be carried up bodily, clinging to the cant-hook like an acrobat to a bar, until the log has rolled once; when, his weapon loosened, he drops lightly, easily to the ground. And it is exciting to pile the logs on the sleigh, first a layer of five, say; then one of six smaller; of but three; of two; until, at the very apex, ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... body. We go one step higher. The experience of centuries shows that gymnastics exist for the soul as well as for the body. But what the soul's gymnastics are is our secret. What is it that gives to the sailor the sight of an eagle, that endows the acrobat with the skill of a monkey, and the wrestler with muscles of iron? Practice and habit. Then why should not we suppose the same possibilities in the soul of the man as well as in his body? Perhaps on the grounds of modern science—which ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... of mine, my dear," Mr. Mackwayte said to Barbara when, dressed in his street clothes, he rejoined her in the wings where she stood watching Nur-el-Din dancing. "She was an acrobat in the Seven Duponts, a turn that earned big money in the old days. It must be... let's see... getting on for twenty years since I last set eyes on her. She was a pretty kid in those days! God bless my soul! Little Marcelle a big star! ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... was impossible, we offered a large reward to this member if he were proven right. We sent to the theater and found the acrobat in question. He had just finished his act and ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... Asia's slippery deck in a storm, when a sudden lurch flung him to cling to the side rail of a then unnetted bulwark, swinging him back again by another lurch right over the yawning waves—like an acrobat? Had I let go, no one would have known of that mystery of the sea,—where and when a certain celebrity then expected in America, had disappeared! Captain Judkin after that always had his bulwarks netted; so that was a good result of my escape: I was the only passenger on deck, a favoured one,—the ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... as he beheld it, and sneered. He had heard rumours of the wonders of his Grace's sword-play, that from boyhood he had excelled and delighted in it, that in the army he had won renown, through mere experiments of his skill, that he was as certain of his weapon as an acrobat of his least feat—but 'twas not this which maddened the other man but the ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... I would make a beautiful wooden puppet that should know how to dance, to fence, and to leap like an acrobat. With this puppet I would travel about the world to earn a piece of bread and a glass of wine. What ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... believe they're the comin' man, but I must confess, if I'm to speak the truth, it ain't for the simple, uninfected, childlike mind o' the male persuasion to foller their figaries, unless he's some of a trained acrobat. ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... had the Campanile of San Nicolo on the Lido covering the Campanile of St. Marks, he knew he had the route home and could make the Lido port. The tower was the center of popular festivals, such as that of the Svolo on Giovedi grasso, when an acrobat descended by a rope from the summit of the Campanile to the feet of the Doge, who was a spectator from the loggia ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... always be that the spirit shall rule over its naturalness, and shall make this an energetic and docile servant of its will. Strength and adroitness must unite and become confident skill. Strength, carried to its extreme produces the athlete; adroitness, to its extreme, the acrobat. Pedagogics must avoid both. All immense force, fit only for display, must be held as far away as the idea of teaching Gymnastics with the motive of utility; e.g. that by swimming one may save his life when he falls into the water, &c. Among other things, this may also be a consequence; but ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz |
