"Circus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... time coming for me, and another driving me down. While awaiting him, I came into painful and memorable contact with the Aborigines of Australia. The Publicans had organized a day of sports, horse-racing, and circus exhibitions. Immense crowds assembled, and, amongst the rest, tribe after tribe of the Aborigines from all the surrounding country. Despite the law prohibiting the giving of strong drinks to these ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... marks! Did he perform tricks in a circus? Of course, we know that he is a cute dog. Of course you have plenty of nickels now, and if you had sent on your order for dinner, you could have had spring chicken, peas, early apples, and ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... book on Pontifices, one on Augurs, one on Quindecimviri Sacrorum; the second into books on shrines, temples, and sacred spots, respectively; the third into those on festivals and holidays, the games of the circus, and theatrical spectacles; the fourth treats of consecrations, private rites, and public sacrifices, while the fifth has one treatise on gods that certainly exist, one on gods that are doubtful, and one on the chief and ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... he used to get up a private circus once a week, every Saturday, and charge ten cents a head, and made ten dollars a week," he said. Then his voice of angry accusation ended in ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... glory, followed about by an innumerable tag-rag and bobtail, and I am afraid that on two occasions at least he was tempted to swagger and 'show off,' as children say. He shambled up to one of the 'try your strength' machines: the figure of a circus clown, with a buffer to punch at in the neighbourhood of his midriff, and a dial on his chest to indicate the weight of the blow administered. The Slasher tossed a penny to the proprietor of the machine and waved him on one side; but the man stood in front of the contrivance and besought him ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... glory of his countrymen, could not restore the simplicities of former times. An age of "progress" had set in, of Grecian arts and culture, of material wealth, of sumptuous banquets, of splendid palaces, of rich temples, of theatrical shows, of circus games, of female gallantries, of effeminated manners—all the usual accompaniments of civilization, when it is most proud of its triumphs; and there was no resisting its march—to the eye of many a great improvement; ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... yourself a great artist, oh, such a great artist! Do you remember how you played the part of Francis in The Robbers? . . . Do you? . . . If you don't, I'll tell you . . . You played it like a shoemaker, like a circus clown! ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... still speaking, and we listened intently; and it befell that he told us how, I know not when, he and three of his mess companions at Treves, while the emperor was engaged in an afternoon spectacle in the circus, went out for a walk in the gardens round the walls; and as they walked there in pairs, one with him alone, and the two others by themselves, they parted. And those two, straying about, burst into a cottage, where dwelt certain servants of thine, poor in spirit, of such as is the kingdom of heaven; ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... Roman amphitheatres were in general; that is to say, the transverse axis is much longer in proportion to the conjugate diameter than is the case in the Roman amphitheatres, and it is by no means so high. In the time of Napoleon, games were executed in this circus in imitation of the games of the ancients, for Napoleon had a great hankering to ape the Roman Caesars in everything. There were, for instance, gymnastic exercises, races on foot, horse races, chariot races like those of the Romans, combats of wild beasts, and as water can be introduced into the ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... woman he would have felt an inclination to be voluble and contradictory; with a sympathetic woman, on the contrary, he would have seemed to himself like a circus runner whom one of his pupils is trying to overtake, and who has to run hard to keep the record ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... I was talking as one man to another, and in a foreign language to people who knew no other tongue. The inn-keeper was a fat little person in white drill and a red sash, in which he carried two silver-mounted pistols. He looked like a ring- master in a circus, but he cooked us a most wonderful omelette with tomatoes and onions and olives chopped up in it with oil. And an Indian woman made us tortillas, which are like our buckwheat cakes. It was fascinating to see her toss them up in the air, and ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... victim was Marsh, of the first eleven. Marsh, who was top of the school averages. Where were his drives now, his late cuts that were wont to set the pavilion in a roar. Wrapped in a blanket, and looking like the spotted marvel of a travelling circus, he was driven across to the Infirmary in a four-wheeler, and it became incumbent upon Burgess to select a ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... Jack. I'd like to, but we were ordered here for rest and observation work; and you know, as well as I do, that obeying orders is just as important as sending a member of the Hun Flying Circus down where he can't do any more of his grandstand stunts. But I'm hoping the time will come when we can climb up back of our machine guns again, and do our bit to show that the little old U. S. A. is ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... duty to the President and to the country," he wrote, "and I shall go on with right good heart."[1072] In the East the party got on very well, but at Cleveland and other Western cities the President acted like a man both mad and drunk, while people railed at him as if he were the clown of a circus. "He sunk the Presidential office to the level of a ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... The club is full of hobby-riders. Of all people that I know, they have the keenest appetite for life. Look at old Denechaud; he was a misanthrope until he took to gathering scarabs. Fenton, over there, has the finest collection of circus posters in the world. Bellerding's house is a museum of obsolete musical instruments. De Gay collects venomous insects from all over the world; no harmless ones need apply. Terriberry has a mania for old railroad tickets. Some are really very curious. I've often wished I had the time to be ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... in the circus and the gladiators fight beneath me. Once a Thracian who was my lover was caught in the net. I gave the signal for him to die and the whole theatre applauded. Sometimes I pass through the gymnasium and watch the young men wrestling ...
— A Florentine Tragedy—A Fragment • Oscar Wilde
... Then back he raced, washed, combed and fed the little, old soldier, helping him to think the gruel a "swell puddin'," and the service Buckle's best. After that there was a short trip to Madison Square Garden where, despite all facts to the contrary, a colossal circus had moved in. Johnnie summoned lions before the wheel chair, and tigers, camels, Arab steeds and elephants, Cis's room serving admirably as the cage which contained these various quadrupeds. And, naturally, ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... At the Gaming Table; Taking Coffee. Baglioni: The Festival of the Padrona. Dresden. Portrait of a Lady. Hampton Court. Three genre-pictures. London. Visit to a Circus; Visit to a Fortune-Teller; Portrait. Mond Collection: Card party; Portrait. Venice. Academy: Six genre-paintings. Correr Museum: Eleven paintings of Venetian life; Portrait of Goldoni. Palazzo Grassi: Frescoes; Scenes of fashionable ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... mother. With the agony of an undying conscience torturing him, he strives to avert care by amusement. He hopes to turn the mob from despising him by the grandeur of their public entertainments. He enlarges for them the circus. He calls unheard-of beasts to be baited and killed for their enjoyment. The finest actors rant, the sweetest musicians sing, that Nero may forget his mother, and that his people may ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... considerable. He'd made a fine ad. for a physical culture school, just as he stood; for he's well muscled, and his underpinning mates up, and he don't interfere when he walks. The cold water had brought out the baby pink all over him, and he looked like one of these circus riders does on the four sheet posters. He had the lime-light, too, for a streak of sun comin' down between the towers just hit him. I see the girl wasn't missin' any of these points. It wasn't any snap-shot she was takin', it was a ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... fought, they struggled, they quarreled over the smallest fragment. The drops of hot blood splashed over these festive monsters, and the whole of this detestable crew groveled under a rain of blood. It was like the delirious fury of tigers fighting over their prey, or like a circus where the wild beasts devour the deer. This scene ended, a score of fires were lit at various points of the "pah"; the smell of charred flesh polluted the air; and but for the fearful tumult of the festival, but for the cries that emanated from ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... mind now recalled all the details Morcerf had related, and comparing them with his own situation, he felt sure that he must be on the Appian Way. On the left, in a sort of valley, he perceived a circular excavation. It was Caracalla's circus. On a word from the man who rode at the side of the carriage, it stopped. At the same time the door was opened. "Scendi!" exclaimed a commanding voice. Danglars instantly descended; although he did not yet speak Italian, he ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... mass, was scheduled to proceed uptown from far downtown, and that very soon. Heads were turned that way. Fanny, wedged in the crowd, stood a-tiptoe, but she could see nothing. It brought to her mind the Circus Day of her Winnebago childhood, with Elm street packed with townspeople and farmers, all straining their eyes up toward Cherry street, the first turn in the line of march. Then, far away, the blare of a band. "Here they come!" ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... their son Herbert, arrived at noon at Liverpool, and were met at the railroad station by 2,000 enthusiastic people. The meeting was held in the vast auditorium of the Circus Building, which was filled. Thousands failed to ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... now present, gentlemen," he began, "my circus of touring artistes, who are raising a fund for the endowment of the Oxford boating club. I must beg ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... we were out of Ross Sea and had entered the South Pacific Ocean, the old circus started again — in other words, the Fram began her everlasting rolling from one side to the other. When this was at its worst, and cups and plates were dancing the fandango in the galley, its occupant's only wish was, "Oh, to be in Buenos ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... I crossed Piccadilly Circus with a brisker step. It was no use worrying over questions which could not be examined scientifically. The only really important question in life ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... blame ye a mite fer standin' by them beaver!" continued Jabe. "They're jest all right! It was better'n any circus; an' I don't know ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... thriving business. Things, I believe, are going on well at this time of writing, and I am glad for the landlady's daughter and her mother. Sextons and undertakers are the cheerfullest people in the world at home, as comedians and circus-clowns are the most ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... picnic nook is pre-empted from earliest morning, the river-side tea-gardens are thronged, the inns are depleted of men and women in yachting-costumes, and the locks are jammed as full as they can be of highly-draped boats, gayly-dressed women, and circus-costumed men, the whole scene gayer, brighter, more fantastic than any Venetian carnival since the days of the most sumptuous of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... and fat people have always interested people as freaks, departures from the usual and the normal, and have formed the stock of popular museum, circus and country fair. Every mythology has concerned itself with them. The Titans among the Greeks, Og, Gog and Magog among the Hebrews, are examples of the fascination of the superlarge. John Hunter, the founder of experimental surgery, spent a fortune in chasing after the skeleton of a ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... that can get us into the circus. Maybe someday we can even have a circus of our own. We could be the biggest circus-fellows in the world. That's if you want to go in with me. Otherwise—Well, I guess I can do it on my own. I just thought: Let's give ...
— Youth • Isaac Asimov
... of the Green party in the circus informs us that they are oppressed, and that the factions of the circus are fatal to public tranquillity. We therefore order you to assume the patronage of the Green party, which our father of glorious memory paid for[231]. So ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... because they know he's always likely to do something crazy and make a circus out ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper
... round," he said; "through Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square and up the Mall. I want to see the sights ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... whether coming or going, under a heavy fire; but he enjoyed that fact, and he seemed to regard the battle only as a delightful change in the quiet routine of his life, as one of our own country boys at home would regard the coming of the spring circus or the burning of a neighbor's barn. He ran dancing ahead of us, pointing to where a ledge of rock offered a natural shelter, or showing us a steep gully where the bullets could not fall. When they came very near him he would jump high in the air, ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... thousands of people present Mrs. Ebert spoke with Governor Hatfield, both making appeals for votes for women. At the annual Fall Festival at Huntington a suffrage float designed by Mrs. E. C. Venable was in the parade. At Parkersburg suffragists addressed an immense crowd at Barnum and Bailey's circus. ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... tell you one sure thing if you want a good circus you've got to train your animals. The Kaiser has ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... fires. Lo! loose, lewd trulls, and lean, luxurious liars Had brought the fair, fine face of Rome to shame, And made her one with sins beyond a name— That queenly daughter of imperial sires! The blood of elders like the blood of sheep, Was dashed across the circus. Once while din And dust and lightnings, and a draggled heap Of beast-slain men made lords with laughter leap, Night fell, with rain. The earth, so sick of sin, Had turned her face ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... children of Ancus were too young to reign at their father's death, he was chosen king. He is said to have been the first Roman king who wore a purple robe and golden crown, and in the valley between the Palatine and Aventine Hills he made a circus, where games could be held like those of the Greeks; also he placed stone benches and stalls for shops round the Forum, and built a stone wall instead of a mud one round the city. He is commonly called Tarquinus Priscus, ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... cone.—Ver. 106. In the Roman Circus for the chariot races, a low wall ran lengthways down the course, which, from its resemblance in position to the spinal bone, was called by the name of 'spina.' At each extremity of this 'spina,' there were placed upon a base, three large cones, or pyramids ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... clothes. The cage was situated at one end of the field apart from the other training-quarters. When Ken got there he found a mob of players crowding to enter the door of the big barn-like structure. Others were hurrying away. Near the door a man was taking up tickets like a doorkeeper of a circus, and he kept shouting: "Get your certificates from the doctor. Every player must pass a physical ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... were worth attention, even from us, who certainly did not need to regard them from her personally hostile point of view. Don stood straight up, with his forepaws beating the air; he walked on his hind legs like the trained dog in the circus; he yelped continuously, as if it agonized him to see the lion safe out of his reach. Sounder had lost his identity. Joy had unhinged his mind and had made him a dog of double personality. He had always been unsocial with me, never responding to my attempts to caress ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... to scramble down, and for a while we had a three-ringed circus. The men looked as frightened and tame as a lot of rabbits in a deep snow. They had on, on an average, about a quarter of a suit of clothes and one shoe apiece. One chap was sitting on the floor of the aisle, looking as if he were working a hard sum in arithmetic. ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... if you are willing," he avowed, earnestly. "You can take the water with you." Visions of a tank lady in the "Greatest Circus ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... Gate at once came out and looked at them curiously, as if a circus had come to town. He carried a bunch of keys swung round his neck by a golden chain; his hands were thrust carelessly into his pockets, and he seemed to have no idea at all that the City was threatened by rebels. Speaking pleasantly to ...
— The Marvelous Land of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... very excessive but false laugh. "No harm intended," he said, vaulting on to the fence and sitting discreetly at that distance. "What's all this going on here? Going to have a circus or play store ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... life, I can't remember anything about 'em but some small painful mishap that al'ays went along with 'em an' sp'iled the pleasure. Thar was the evening I dressed up in my best clothes an' ran off to Applegate to take a yellow haired circus lady, in pink skirts, out to supper. It ought to have been a fine, glorious bit of wickedness to remember, but the truth was that I'd put on a new pair of boots, an' one of 'em pinched so in the toes that I couldn't think of another thing the whole blessed evening. 'Tis ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... time! My soul and body! Yes, I'm havin' a good time. I haven't had a better one since I went to the sideshow at the circus. Who's that long-legged critter with the lay-down collar and the ribbon necktie? That one over there, talking to the woman with the hair that ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... circenses" pursued the mathematician, pleased with his simile, "to appease the howling rabble. But it is mostly circus, and very little bread that our emperors ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... notice it'll be a circus if ye don't let that bear be," warned the forest woman in a ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... allude to hawks, which constantly dash at the call, or play-birds, of the netsman. I remember seeing, taken in a lark net on the racecourse of Corfu—one of the Ionian Isles—a most beautiful male specimen of the hen harrier (Circus cyaneus, Macg.); and here in England I have received, within the last few years, one great grey shrike (Lanus excubitor, 1.), four or five hobby hawks (Falco subbuteo, 1.), a dozen or more merlins (Falco oesalon, Tunstall), ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... and the circus was there, And Mother said that the twins and I And Charles and Clarence and all of us Could go out and see ...
— Under the Tree • Elizabeth Madox Roberts
... Evolution and development, with the exception of firearms, seem to have halted at East cape. The place, with its cave-like dwellings and skin-clad inhabitants, among whom the presence of white men creates the same excitement as the advent of a circus among the colored population of Washington, makes one fancy that he is in some grand prehistoric museum, and that he has gone backward in time several thousand years in order to ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... what we can do," remarked the astronomer; "there 's a big balloon in town which belongs to the circus that came here last summer, and was pawned for a board bill. We can inflate this balloon and send the Man out of the ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum
... would take him into town along the upland, and now he lingered purposely and chose indirect ways because, although it was unlikely that any one would know him, he shrank from the prospect of demanding eyes. At nine o'clock even he was no farther than the old circus ground, and, nearing it, he heard, through the evening stillness, a voice, loud, sharp, forensic. It was hauntingly familiar to him, a voice he might not know at the moment, yet one that had at least belonged to some part of his Addington life. ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... farther from Roland's mind than his bright weekly paper, as he sat down to dine in a crowded grill-room near Piccadilly Circus. Four weeks of acute torment in a city where nobody seemed to understand the simplest English sentence had driven 'Squibs' completely from his mind ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... to the tall timber myself if this thing gets common," was what Jack observed. "My stars! but he was a whopper. Looked like the side of a house to me when he sizzled past, scattering the fire, leveling our best tent, and kicking up a whole circus ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... party, but was very well-disposed towards Mr. Smith. One day, in the month of June, Mr. Wainwright received an anonymous letter, requesting him to meet the writer at a small public-house near the "Olympic Circus," which was a temporary place of amusement erected in Christian-street, then beginning to be built upon (the Adelphi Theatre in Christian-street succeeded the Circus—in fact, this place of amusement was called "the Circus" for many years). Mr. Wainwright, on carefully ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... I am with you, my distorted lover! Only I wish you had not taken the white paint from your face. I wish your lips were fantastically scarlet as when you danced. I wish you were in your clown's dress and that the circus dwarfs could be here, playing their evil music while we ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange
... arrival, nor of its being witnessed by everyone present, myself and the South Denboro delegates excepted. Newcomb and Baker and Mullet and Black began talking all together. I learned that the Colton invasion of Denboro was a spectacle only equaled by the yearly coming of the circus to Hyannis, or the opening of the cattle show at Ostable. The carriages and horses had arrived by freight the morning before; the servants and the family ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... seen by a lot of boys who eyed us closely and with much curiosity, for we were dressed in our trapping suits. They followed us, and as we went along the crowd increased so that when we got to Crum. Lloyd's tavern the door was full of boys' heads looking at us as if we were a circus. Here we were heartily welcomed, and every body was glad to see us, as they were about to start a company to go in search of their reported murdered friends. It seems a missionary got lost on his way to Prairie La Crosse and had come across our deserted ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... downfall of the empire. Constantinople, he says, was split into two factions, the green and the blue, which owed their origin to the inclination of the people to favour one set of charioteers in the circus rather than another. These two parties raged in every city throughout the empire, and their fury rose in proportion to the number of inhabitants. Justinian favoured the blues, who became so elate with pride, ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... the errand-boy, had arrived crying, with tidings that the shop and house were shut up; nobody answered his knock; Mother Butterfly had "cut" in the night, gone off, he believed, with the circus, and Miss Lydia too; and there was two-and- ninepence owing to ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... nobody here but me—you needn't unfurl Old Glory," counseled Mr. Doolittle, a trifle impatiently. "They're asking real questions, not blowing off hot-air. Oh, I say, who owns McMonigal's block since the old man died? We'll have the owner stop this circus. That's the first thing ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... Tarquinius—as they called him, from his native city—to reign over them in his stead. He proved a valiant and successful warrior, and in times of peace did noble work. He built great sewers to drain the city, constructed a large circus or race-course, and a forum or market-place, and built a wall of stone around the city in place of the old wooden wall. He also began to build a great temple on the Capitoline Hill, which was designed to be the temple of the gods of Rome. In the end Lucius was murdered by the sons ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... proceeding feverishly upon new defences far behind his lines. By this time we had complete control of the air, and the heavens were alive with our aircraft, though the enemy tried his best to equalise matters by bringing along his famous "travelling circus" to the scene of action, and many thrilling fights were witnessed. The batteries were subjected to much chemical shelling during the night, and the enemy were known to bring forward special guns under cover of darkness for this purpose, and to withdraw (p. 050) them ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... and you simply had to put up with it. The second lead had a great deal more ambition, and a very good little woman in her way, too, but of course not half the talent. He was obliged to confess that Miss Howe wasn't game for risks, especially after doing her Rosalind the night the circus opened to a twenty-five rupee house. It was monstrous. She seemed to think that nothing mattered so much as that everybody should be paid on the first of the month. There was one other grievance, which Llewellyn mentioned only in confidence ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... reason to believe that any disadvantage accrued to Turner from his somewhat uncheerful birthplace. It is hardly the Venetians who are the most alive to the beauties of Venice. But Mr. Ruskin is fond of mounting a richly-caparisoned charger of the imagination, and caracoling round a crotchety circus; and his feats in this respect are so elegantly and admirably fantastic, that we almost forbear to smile, out of deference to so perfect a non-perception of humour, when we find him tracing the painter back to Covent Garden Market in all his paintings. Mr. Ruskin detects in the corners ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... Circus his attention was immediately attracted by a number of stout, florid, elderly ladies who were selling some most lovely bouquets for the buttonhole. This was a temptation impossible to resist, and he lost no time in choosing ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... native diversions were exhausted, such exhibitions of riding and racing as have never been seen out of California. As lithe as willow wands, on slender horses as graceful as themselves, they looked like meteors springing through space, and there was no trick of the circus they did not know by instinct, and translate from gymnastics into poetry. Even Rezanov shared the excitement of the shouting, clapping Californians, and Concha laughed delightedly when his ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... I'll not begin at the beginning, for, being a ring-tail monkey yourself, you know what life is like in the great tropical forests. Perhaps it would be better to skip the circus part, too, for it was a very unhappy time that followed, after I was stolen from home by some men who came on a big ship, and carried me away to be sold to ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... windows; or to come down Bishopsgate of a morning and see the stupendous swarms of white men rushing to and fro along the pavements of Threadneedle Street, crowding the motor-buses round the Mansion House, St. Paul's and Ludgate Circus — yet all this throng so well regulated by the City Police that nobody seems to be in the other's way — the disproportion of men and women in the East and West respectively forming a partial segregation between ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... had no little herd—two thousand head or more— And some as wild a brush beeves as you ever saw before. We swung to them all the way and sometimes by the tail,— Oh, you know we had a circus as we all went up ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... dying at his shanty on Davis | |Street as a result of a difficulty between him and | |Isom Werner over a woman they met on their way home | |from the circus ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... on the plan of the circus that you and Mary got up away back in sophomore year," explained Eleanor. "I should think you ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... alarmed companions, and tripping now and again over some fallen chair whilst the pursuing cavalry clattered noisily along the foot-pavements. A Londoner might form some idea of the scene by picturing a charge from Leicester Square to Piccadilly Circus at the hour when Coventry Street is most thronged ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... went into the Olympic circus where his six thousand pelargoniums stood, and made his ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... he yelled. "You'll kill me between you! I never struck such a place! Is it a circus or a ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... been a-totin' dis kindlin' from way up yander in Twenty-third Street where the circus useter be. Dey's buildin' a big hotel dere now—de Fifth Avenue dey calls it. I'm a-carryin' mortar for de brick-layers an' somehow dese sticks is monst'ous ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the "wonderful calf with five legs and a huming head," and "the philosophical lung-tester," were there. Then there was the Flying Circus and any number of other ingenious contrivances to relieve young ladies and gentlemen from the rural districts of their ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne
... my mate and I begin house-keeping, I do some very funny things, like the clown in a circus. I feel so happy that I go up a tree branch by branch, by short flights and jumps, till I get to the very top. Then I launch myself in the air, as a boy dives when he goes swimming, and you would laugh to see me flirting my tail, and dangling my legs, coming down ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [December, 1897], Vol 2. No 6. • Various
... combined to make it glorious. Like a glittering mirage out of the sand-swept desert arose its palaces and temples and grandly sculptured archways. With aqueducts and monuments and gleaming porticos with countless groves of palm-trees and gardens full of verdure; with wells and fountains, market and circus; with broad streets stretching away to the city gates and lined on either side with magnificent colonnades of rose-colored marble—such was Palmyra in the year of our Lord 250, when, in the soft Syrian month of Nisan, or April, ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... along the Rue de la Paix when you pretend you can have anything you see in any window, leaves one just as rich, but unsatisfied. So the advice of the war correspondent to seek out German spies came to Jimmie like a day at the circus, like a week at the Danbury Fair. It not only was a call to arms, to protect his flag and home, but a chance to play in earnest the game in which he most delighted. No longer need he pretend. No longer need he waste his energies in watching, unobserved, a greedy rabbit rob a carrot field. The game ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... chiefly due to Ling, a Swede. In the German manuals, such, for instance, as Eiselen's "Turnuebungen," are to be found nearly all the stock exercises of our institutions. Until within a few years, American skill has added nothing to these, except through the medium of the circus; but the present revival of athletic exercises is rapidly placing American gymnasts in advance of the Turners, both in the feats performed and in the style of doing them. Never yet have I succeeded in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... authority. But in the case of Richard, if he was not born an author, certainly no other career was ever considered. So far as I know he never even wanted to go to sea or to be a bareback rider in a circus. A boy, if he loves his father, usually wants to follow in his professional footsteps, and in the case of Richard, he had the double inspiration of following both in the footsteps of his father and in those ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... great show for the plebeian spectators. Much better than Miss So-and-So's wedding, said one woman who had attended the aforesaid ceremony as a unit in the well-dressed mob that almost wrecked the carriages in the desire to see the terrified bride. Better than a circus, said a man who held his little daughter above the heads of the crowd so that she might see the fine lady in a wild-beast fur. Swellest funeral New York ever had, remarked another, excepting one 'way back ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... he had come for the purpose of bringing us information, or of helping us to escape. The crowd had now begun to grow as impatient at the non-appearance of the prisoners as they would at a bull-fight, had there been a delay in turning the bull into the circus, when three bodies of troops were seen marching up from the several streets leading into the square. They formed on either side of it, making a lane from the prison gates to the river; while the crowd fell back behind them. I had observed a number of Indians collecting ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... This amount of pay is considered sufficient for expenses at Mourzuk. The officers have quarters with the Bashaw in the Castle. Mr. Gagliuffi related a characteristic anecdote of the ignorance prevailing amongst the Arabs as gross as that of Negroes. Mohammed Circus (or the Circassian) was a few years ago Bashaw of Bengazi whilst Mr. G. visited that place. The Bashaw was buying something of an Arab, and gave him but a third of its real value. Mr. G. took upon ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... his Bishop might not approve. We turned to go downstairs from the third story of the seminary. Looking in at an open door, my eye was caught by the familiar wording of a blackboard problem. "If 16 men and 4 boys working 4 hours a day dig a trench 82 yards long——." And I halted, as the one-time circus-horse stops when he hears the drum of ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... he did not lose the sad faculty of analysis. He said to himself while gauging himself at a glance: "I am like the litter in a circus, trodden down by all the sorrows which go and come to play their parts. Doubts about Faith, which seemed to stretch into every sense, turned in fact in the same circle. And now scruples, from which I thought myself freed, reappear and ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... saw here, at the great fork of the road into the Rockies; and soon the last pelt was baled from the beaver. If you go to the Blackfeet now you find them a thinned and broken people, and the highest ambition of their best men is to dress up in modern beef-hide finery and play circus Indian around the ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... equerries, and nothing was neglected in order that the pages should receive in this particular the most careful education. To accustom them to mount firmly and with grace, they practiced exercises in vaulting, for which it seemed to me they would have no use except at the Olympic circus. And, in fact, one of the horsemen of Messieurs Franconi had charge of this ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... circus said," finished Tom Rover, "when he thought he was going to jump through a paper hoop and found instead that it was a solid white barrel-head;" and at this little joke ...
— The Rover Boys on Snowshoe Island - or, The Old Lumberman's Treasure Box • Edward Stratemeyer
... it I see?" begged the younger boy, wringing his hands and glaring across the short strip of water between the powerboats. "I know there ain't no sech animile, as the farmer said when he first saw the giraffe at the circus." ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... age is best from the sixth to the eleventh summer—or in lieu of a son, a nephew, only a few years in pants—mere shoots of nether garments not yet descending to the knees—doubtless, if such fortunate chance be yours, you went on one or more occasions last summer to a circus. ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... lips never hinted. Once to-night she spoke more plainly than Jem had ever known her to do in all his life. It was after the children had gone to bed, which they did, shouting and singing, and playing circus-riders over the pillows, their mother leaning her elbows on the foot-board, laughing, in the mean time. Jem got up, after the others were asleep, and stole after her, in his little flannel drawers, back to the kitchen. By the window again, as he had feared, the woollen sock which she was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... reprobate uncle of yours never batted an eye. He slid down in his chair a little so's he could be comfortable while he listened. He grinned up at her like she was some kind of specimen had broke loose from a circus an' he was interested in the way it acted. That didn't calm her down none. She rip-r'ared right along, with a steady flow of words, mostly adjectives. Finally she quit, an' she was plumb white with anger. 'Quite through?' ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... of his boys. Watching them were four ununiformed officers. Nora and I and the lieutenant were joined later by Gimpy Gordon, who might have been radiating childlike wonder and a circus-air of excitement at actually being at the Derby. He might have been. No one could cut through the constant, maddening mental blah-blah-blah that was being ...
— The Big Fix • George Oliver Smith
... asked him the name of the garden. He said, "ADRAMANDONI; which is the delight of conjugial love." I entered, and lo! there were olive-trees; and among them ran pendulous vines, and underneath and among them were shrubs in flower. In the midst of the garden was a grassy circus, on which were seated husbands and wives, and youths and maidens, in pairs; and in the midst of the circus, on an elevated piece of ground, there was a little fountain, which, from the strength of its spring, threw its water to a considerable ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... I 'se gwine to try dese heah stockin's on!" she said, with a giggle, as she drew the silken lengths over her bare, dusty feet. "Gee Bob! Ain't them scrumptious! I look lak a shore-'nuff circus lady!" ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... figure of an Indian, broad-shouldered and immense; indeed, the largest figure of a man I have ever seen outside of a circus hall. By some power of light that seemed to generate itself in the brain, I saw the strong dark face with the aquiline nose and high cheek-bones flattened against the glass. The direction of the gaze I could not ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... and disgorged Father Felipe, the Donas Carmen and Inez Alvarado and Maria Sepulvida, while Don Victor and Don Vincente Sepulvida, their attendant cavaliers on fiery mustangs, like outriders, drew rein at the same time. A slight thrill of excitement, as of the advent of a possible circus, had preceded them through the little town; a faint blending of cigarette smoke and garlic announced their presence on ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... taken their prowess elsewhere, and a circus had come to Madison Square Garden. Clavering had heard the roar of lions in the night. A far different crowd would stand under the arcade in a few hours, but the peanut venders would ply their trade, and a little ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... time, however, every now and then to look out of his little black eyes at the rightful owners, with rather a spiteful expression, but protruding at the same time his red tongue, like a clown at the circus, as if enjoying the joke of their picking and he eating. Afterward I learned that they had deposited their baskets on the ground under a loaded bush, for greater facility in securing the fruit, when suddenly they heard a blow and a snort, and looking where ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... not been broken in any other way. Rogers said he would ride her where he could, and before she got to the wagons she would be as gentle as a lamb. He got a bridle and tried her at once, and then there was a scene of rearing, jumping and kicking that would have made a good Buffalo Bill circus in these days. No use, the man could not be thrown off, and the crowd cheered and shouted to ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... among the Romans, even in the most martial days of that republic, the art of dancing was taught, as one of the points of accomplishment necessary to the education of youth; and was even practised among the exercises of the Circus. I need not observe, that there were also various abuses of dancing, which they very justly accounted dishonorable to those who practised them, whether in public or private. These, in the degenerate days ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... a teacher's institute—both get food for thought. At the cattle-show the farmer may learn of new methods and see their results. The trouble is that the ordinary farmer goes to the fair for the same reason that the average citizen buys a ticket to the menagerie—to see the circus. There are more clowns at a cattle-show than the sawdust ever saw. The horses may not be so pretty or gaudy, but they go faster. One man defended himself very frankly at the dinner of a county fair in this State when he said: "The Lord made horses to go, and I like to see ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... miracle. Into this miracle nature has poured her lavish treasures of fertility, of rain, of sunshine, and of zephyrs, and from it at the zenith of its beauty the full-throated robin pours forth his heart in melodious greeting. It may be well to dismiss the school to see the circus parade, but even more fitting is it to dismiss the school to see this burst of splendor. In its glorious presence silence is the only language that is befitting. In such a presence sound is discord, for such enchantment as it begets cannot be made articulate. ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... Washington and P. Henry in the character of seseshers! As well fancy John Bunyan and Dr. Watts in spangled tites, doin the trapeze in a one-horse circus! ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 2 • Charles Farrar Browne
... and I sympathized with them all. The boy who ran away to sea; the boy who delighted in the society of ranchmen and cowboys; the stage-struck boy, whose ambition was to drive a pasteboard chariot in a circus; the boy who gave up his holidays in order to earn money for books; the bad boy who played tricks on people; the clever boy who invented amusing toys for his blind little sister—all these boys I admired. I could put myself in the place of ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... went to Kenilworth. There was not blue sky enough to encourage Mr. Hawthorne at first; but at eleven o'clock we set forth in very good sunshine, and delicious air. By a short turn out of our Circus we came into a street called Regent's Grove, on account of a lovely promenade between noble trees for a very long-distance, almost to the railroad station; and Una and I walked that way, leaving Mr. Hawthorne and Julian to follow, as we wished to saunter. They overtook us, having ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... "It's this way—I figure that the frogs grow rather large where she lives, and they're a bit different too. Well, Lakla's got a lot of 'em trained. Carry spears and clubs and all that junk—just like trained seals or monkeys or so on in the circus. Probably a custom of the place. Nothing queer about that, Olaf. Why people have all kinds of pets—armadillos and snakes and rabbits, kangaroos ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... lies, was hunting after empty praise. Chiefly did I speak of such things with Alypius and Bebridius, of whom Alypius was born in the same town with me, and had studied under me, and loved me. But the whirlpool of Carthaginian habits had, when he lived there, drawn him into follies of the circus. One day as I sat teaching my scholars, he entered and listened attentively, while I by chance had in hand a passage which, while I was explaining, suggested to me a simile from the circensian races, not without a jibe at those who were enthralled by that folly. Alpius took it wholly to himself, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... visit of Hercules to our country. Tacitus and Pliny attribute its construction to Evander the Arcadian, forgetting that in prehistoric times the tract of land on which the altar stood, between the Forum Boarium and the Circus Maximus, was submerged by the waters of the Velabrum. It was at all events a very ancient structure, held in great veneration. Its rough shape and appearance were never changed, as shown by a precious—yet unpublished—sketch by Baldassarre Peruzzi which I ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... the 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. Since he had ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various
... good looks, Miss Cameron," said Mercedes, "added to my natural ability, I'd make Julia Marlowe look like an old-fashioned one-ring circus. Send Mr. Bacon to me, Mr. Barnes. I ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... goldsmith of Trapani, came to me one day and said he wished me to be his compare. I at once had a vision of myself as a black man riding round a circus on a bare-backed horse and jumping through hoops. That was because, at the time, all my knowledge about a compare was derived from a conversation I had had in the house of the Greco family at Palermo. Among the photographs grouped on the wall was one of a pleasant-looking nigger in European ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... me, I swung to me left from whence the noise came and beheld Mrs. Fennell (Sneeze)—God bless us!—rushing out of her own house the way you'd see a wild Injun rushing in the moving pictures and shouting like a circus lion before his breakfast: "Police! police! police!" An' as though it was the will of Providence, I was in the very place where me ...
— Duty, and other Irish Comedies • Seumas O'Brien
... told."[182] The best points in it, out of the circle of stage fire (an expression of wider application to this part of Dickens's life than its inventor supposed it to be), were the sketches of the riding-circus people and the Bounderby household; but it is a wise hint of Mr. Ruskin's that there may be, in the drift of a story, truths of sufficient importance to set against defects of workmanship; and here they challenged wide attention. You cannot train any one properly, unless you cultivate ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... door. Reveille, guard-mount, mess-call, taps,—the village would seem strange without these bugle-notes. The sturdy sentry who had paced his beat was gone. When would I ever see again my old friend the ex-circus clown, and hear him tinkle the "potato-bug" and sing "Ma Filipino Babe?" Walking along the lonely shore, now lashed by breakers, I looked out on the blue wilderness beyond. It was with feelings such as Robinson Crusoe ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... to stay out here tamely, while you two were having a regular circus in there?" he remarked. "That would never suit me. And it's easy to see that you count on a ticket of admission to Sallie's parlor, too. Well, then, we'll all go, and share in the danger, as well as the sport. For to rid the range country of this pest I consider the greatest ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson
... spectacle it was: ten thousand swifts, I should think, filling the air above a whole square like a whirling swarm of huge black bees, but saluting the ear with a multitudinous chippering, instead of a humming. People gathered upon the sidewalks to see them. It was a rare circus performance, free to all. After a great many feints and playful approaches, the whirling ring of birds would suddenly grow denser above the chimney; then a stream of them, as if drawn down by some ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... Walker imagined. He was only aware that, when they were both at home, Hatteras would come through it of an evening and smoke on his verandah. Then he would sit for hours cursing the country, raving about the lights in Piccadilly-circus, and offering his immortal soul in exchange for a comic-opera tune played upon a barrel-organ. Walker possessed a big atlas, and one of Hatteras' chief diversions was to trace with his finger a bee-line across the African continent and the Bay of ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason |
