"Trapeze" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of her past. She could barely remember the father, who was a circus acrobat and had been killed by a fall from a trapeze. Her mother had retired from the stage; she was doing needlework for the department ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... and he noted with indignation that a large portion of the painting at the northern end had been destroyed and some glass roofing inserted. In another place bolts had been driven in to support the ropes of a trapeze and a few other pieces of gymnastic apparatus. The walls were whitewashed, and at about four feet from the ground a dark band appeared, produced by pencil memoranda and little sketches scribbled on the whitewash. ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... The very froth of her brown gauzy dress was art emanation from Hume's leather arm there! If he looked long enough he would see Hume right through her and then be would be alone again in the room. He passed his fist across his eyes. He really must take up those trapeze exercises again. ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... the variety stage and the circus are always trying to find something new, for the same old trapeze performances, trials of strength, performances of rope dancers, etc., have been presented so many times that anyone who invents an entirely new trick is sure of making a large amount of money out of it; the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... the flying trapeze there is often another woman; and her life is in your hands every night ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... son-in-law of Martin Rigal, the husband of Flavia, will be recognized in the Rue Montmartre, the Rue Jacob, and the Rue de la Harpe. He will be joyfully welcomed in the Rue d'Arras; Fritz will embrace his ungrateful pupil; Vigoureux will remind him of his skillful feats on the trapeze; the Lorgelin family will press the lad whom they gave shelter to, to their hearts, and this will happen, Catenac, because I will it, and because all the people from the portress in the Rue Montmartre to the Lorgelins are my slaves, and dare not disobey one single command ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... you realize that the owner of the gymnasium gives you the chance to develop your muscles, and you thank him, although he makes you pay for the privilege. And you do your very best, on the trapeze, rings, parallel bars, or in ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... P. Henry in the characters of seseshers! As well fancy John Bunyan and Dr. Watts in spangled tites, doin the trapeze in a one-horse circus. ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... they could cover him with their rifles if he should succeed in giving them the slip at the start. Then it appeared anything but reasonable to suppose that the Indians would remain directly below him, waiting for their chance to try their fortune in the trapeze line again. More likely they would scatter and hunt separately for the outlet which had permitted their intended victim to gain his safety. They could expect to gain nothing by remaining, and they were too ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... circus as much about Andrew as he knew himself. Perhaps more; for a child of eight has lost all recollection of parents who died before he was two. They were circus folk, English, trapeze artists, come, they said, from a long tour in Australia, where Andrew was born, and their first European engagement was in the Cirque Rocambeau. Their stay was brief; their end tragic. Lackaday Pere took to drink, which is ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... you will excuse me, if I tell you how anxious I am not to do so, but movement is so indispensable to me! I am always seated—and, to me, it is quite a luxury to be able to move about for a minute or two. I purpose, in fact, to go through a course of calisthenics. The trapeze is said to stand in high favor amongst State counselors—counselors in office, even amongst privy counselors. Nowadays, in fact, gymnastics have become a positive science. As for these duties of our office, these examinations, all this formality—you yourself, you will remember, touched upon the ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... limited in its choice of behavior. A hamster, for instance, cannot choose to behave in the manner of a Rhesus monkey. A dog cannot choose to react as a mouse would. If I prick a rat with a needle, it may squeal, or bite, or jump—but it will not bark. Never. Nor will it leap up to a trapeze, hang by its tail, and chatter curses at ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... a great archway opened into a long and wide covered way, or viaduct in its original sense, where were more swings and trapeze bars, and here the little ones could play on rainy days. This arched tunnel led from the park to a school-house, so pleasant in appearance that every bright window and graceful stairway seemed to extend an invitation to the ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... Show, Poultry Show, Automobile Show, Sportsman's Show, the Cake-Walk, the Six-Day Bicycle Race, or events of the prize-ring from the days of Sullivan and Mitchell to those of Willard and Moran; Buffalo Bill and his Wild West Show, or the circus, the Greatest Show on Earth, with its houris of the trapeze and the saddle, and its animals, almost as fearful and wonderful as the menagerie of adjectives that its press-agent, the renowned, or notorious, Tody Hamilton, gathers annually out of the jungles of the ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... advertising manager in the car, who promised to give them all jobs when the circus came in two weeks. The boys deluged him with questions of every sort. "Will there be any elephants?" "Is there goin' to be a parade?" and "Will there be any trapeze performances?" The poor man was finally obliged to lock the door to keep them out, and the boys stood about the car until nearly six o'clock, admiring the paintings, and speculating as to whether they would ...
— The Adventures of a Boy Reporter • Harry Steele Morrison
... and sweet, but, for a while, perplexing. An almost instinctive leap to catch the trapeze-bar that had hung in his cage brought his hands in contact with only unresisting air. This confused and somewhat frightened him. The world seemed much broader and brighter since the black bars of his ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... of the actress; he had somehow always looked more poetically at that priestess of art. Yet what was she, the priestess, when one came to think of it, but a female gymnast, a mountebank at higher wages? She didn't literally hang by her heels from a trapeze and hold a fat man in her teeth, but she made the same use of her tongue, of her eyes, of the imitative trick, that her muscular sister made of leg and jaw. It was an odd circumstance that Miss Rooth's face seemed to him to-day a finer instrument than old Madame ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... days. It must always remain the same: feint and surprise. The first primitive man who looked at the breast of his opponent and struck suddenly at his face was a strategist; so, too, the anthropoid at the Zoo who leads another to make a leap for a trapeze and draws it out from under him; so, too, the thug who waits to catch his victim coming unawares out of an alley. Anybody facing more than one opponent will try to protect his back by a wall, which is ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... the town little picturesque balconies of iron or wood jut out from the second-story windows, where the houses rise to the dignity of two stories. From these balconies hang little naked children, like small performers upon the trapeze, until the passer-by fears for their lives. The travel in the narrow streets is regulated by law, and so divided that only certain ones are used for vehicles going north, and others for those traveling south. Thus, ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... in this position seven minutes and ate a meal during the interval. There were two clowns at the Cirque Franconi who duplicated this feat, and the program called their dinner "Un dejouner en tete-a-tete." Some other persons perform wonderful feats of a similar nature on an oscillating trapeze, and many similar performances have been witnessed by the spectators ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... for a little while, they were not talking or thinking about the circus, though up to the time when Grandpa Brown came around the house with the basket on his arm, Bunny had been telling Sue about the man who hung by his heels from a trapeze that was fast to the top of the big tent. A trapeze, you know, is something like a swing, only it has a stick for a ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Playing Circus • Laura Lee Hope
... their places on the suspended bars, the ring-master cleared the circle, and Mignon rode in at a gallop. Three times she went round the arena at full speed, then she was snatched from the horse's back by the long arm of M. Aristide extended from the trapeze above. Pluto galloped steadily on. One second only M. Aristide held Mignon poised in air, then he flung her lightly across the space to M. Joachin, who as lightly caught her, waited a second, and, as Pluto passed beneath, dropped her upon his back. It looked fearfully dangerous; all depended ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... aimless, idle snuffing and tasting of all sorts of things besides flowers; especially he indulges in a running accompaniment of gymnastics among the grass-stalks, which cannot possibly have anything to do with honey. I watched one fellow to-day through a series of positive trapeze movements from top to bottom and bottom to top of a grass-tangle. When he got through he shook himself, and smoothed off his legs exactly as the circus-men do. Then he took a long pull ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... an old man, had a very long, curling, white beard, and had his breast completely covered with orders and decorations. No convenient board fence on a circus day was ever more thoroughly covered with elephants and horses, and trapeze performers, than the breast of the King's black velvet coat with jeweled stars and ribbons. But even then, there was not room for all his store, so he had hit upon the ingenious expedient of covering a black silk umbrella with the remainder. He held it in a stately manner over his head now, ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... in his Mind as he took hold of the Trapeze Bar and signaled the Farm Hands to let go. As he trailed Skyward beneath the buoyant silken Bag he hung by his Knees and waved a glad Adieu to the Mob of Inquisitive Yeomen. A Sense of Relief came to him as he saw the Crowd sink ...
— Fables in Slang • George Ade
... same kind of life before me: he died at Genoa, his spine broken in two, like a snapped bough, by a fall from the trapeze before the eyes of all the citizens. I was a big baby in that time, thrown from hand to hand by the men in their spectacles as they would have thrown a ball or ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... circus posters," went on Harry, for Bert had pointed to the bright-colored pictures advertising the performance. There were shown men jumping through paper hoops or hanging from dizzy heights on trapeze bars, ladies riding galloping horses, and all sorts of wild animals, from the long-necked giraffe to the hippopotamus, who appeared to have no neck at all, and from the big ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Meadow Brook • Laura Lee Hope
... Antediluvian pastimes! not nearly such good fun as my nice new wooden trapeze. Oh, my cage, let us sign a joyful three-six-nine years' lease! I live like a Duke, I have filtered drinking-water—[At PATOU'S significant start and growl, he springs aside, finishing.] You can sling mud upon me, I have a ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... Eyolf, at least, is, from all points of view, an exercise on the tight-rope. We may hazard the conjecture that no drama gave Ibsen more satisfaction to write, but for enjoyment the reader may prefer less prodigious agility on the trapeze. ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... destined to keep our favor is, I imagine, that of the Schumann or Brahms type, which depends for its effect not at all on display, but on sound musicianship alone. The virtuoso is destined soon to leave the circus business and bid a long farewell to his late colleagues, the sword-swallower, the trapeze artist, the strong man, the fat lady, the contortionist, and the gentleman who conducts the shell-and-pea game. For presently the only thing that will be able to entice people to concerts will be the soul of music. Its body will be a ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... In early cases, an inequality in the level of the angles of the scapulae is often the only physical sign to be detected. It should also be observed whether the line of the spines is altered when the patient hangs from a horizontal bar or trapeze. Any backward projection of the ribs on one side is rendered more obvious if the patient folds the arms across the chest and bends well forward, while the surgeon looks along ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles |
