"Acrobatic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... present one been chiseled out of it to a further depth of over fifty feet. At first the path struck inland, astutely making a chord to the river's bow, an unsuspected sign of intelligence in a path. It was adventurous, too, for soon after coming out above the brink, it began upon acrobatic feats in which it showed itself nationally proficient. A narrow aqueduct had been cut out of the side of the cliff, and along its outer embankment, which was two feet wide, the path proceeded to balance. The aqueduct had given way in spots, which caused the path to take to some rickety boards ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... like this. Orange red, pale blue, E flat minor, acrobatic, Ariel-like in its changes. Sometimes it made her careen heavily toward the curb—that was the time it made her head seem big and her feet very far away. Sometimes she could walk but she wanted to ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... of the old-fashioned equestrian entertainment. The Ring to which he has just made allusion is, it need hardly be added, The Circus, and The Book is a novel by Miss AMYE READE. Mr. P. is not sweet upon any gymnastic and acrobatic shows in which the chances of danger appear, and probably are, as ten to one against the performer; and especially does he object to children of very tender years being utilised in order to earn money for their parents or guardians by exhibiting their precocious ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 5, 1892 • Various
... in taking nourishment, work and pleasure, the Sageman was careful about his exercises, assiduously devoting from two to three hours each day to physical culture. He practiced all manner of games and acrobatic performances, in order to bring the body up to its best possible shape. Suppleness, agility, and gracefulness were desired in preference to brute strength. Running, jumping, swimming, and flying were considered a necessary part of every one's daily routine, ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... to be the William Bayliss of New Bedford. We boarded her with some difficulty on account of the jagged ice floes on the beach to which she was moored. It was an acrobatic feat to jump from the slippery ice, lay hold of a jibboom towering overhead, and scramble over the bows. But once aboard, Captain Cottle loaded us with good things (including a tin of sorely-needed tobacco), and all would now have seemed ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... of horsemanship and acrobatic displays by juvenile actors, rope-dancing, high vaulting and other daring gymnastic feats seen in any of our present-day circuses are interesting, but not new. The Romans had many clever tight-rope walkers, and I do not think they used the long pole loaded at the ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... at that moment, and he was angry enough for anything. He made a spring for the girl's hand, and I thrust my shoulder forward to bump him off. The Waif nearly stood on her end at that instant, and her acrobatic feat combined with the push flung Leith off his feet and sent him rolling ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... are very well in place. Here it was different. The words, perhaps, in this free-spoken world, were gross enough to make a carter blush; and the most suggestive feature was this feint of shame. For such parts the women showed some disposition; they were pert, they were neat, they were acrobatic, they were at times really amusing, and some of them were pretty. But this is not the artist's field; there is the whole width of heaven between such capering and ogling, and the strange rhythmic gestures, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shall be no disqualification for entering any business, vocation, or profession. Children under 16 may not be let out for acrobatic performances or any exhibition endangering life or morals. Any one who sends a minor under the age of 18 to a saloon, gambling house, or brothel, is guilty of a misdemeanour. One day of rest each week must be ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... with such an almighty thud that it seemed as if the cars must fly into splinters. They rattled and shook and cracked. The passengers executed further acrobatic feats upon the floor; they clutched at things and fell over things and swore ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... wished they could do some of the acrobatic work that Mart was to do on the stage. But though some of the lads of Bellemere, like Bunny Brown, were pretty good at turning somersaults or flipflops, none of them was equal to Mart, who had been on the stage for ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue Giving a Show • Laura Lee Hope
... there were hoarse shouts from the men who witnessed Joe's fall. At first some thought it was only part of the acrobatic trick, but a single glance at the desperate struggles of the young trapeze ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum
... This was war, as the common people saw it; but Jimmie could not stop now to think about it—Jimmie was on his way to the front! There were big observation balloons up over his head, looking like huge grey elephants with broad ears; there were aeroplanes whirring about, performing incredible acrobatic feats, and spraying each other with showers of steel; but Jimmie had no time for a single glance at these marvels—Jimmie was on his way to ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... oppose it violently, upset the government upon it, come into power upon his victory, and then take the measure up himself and carry it through. The Duc de Broglie was not a politician of this adroit and acrobatic type. His yea was yea and his nay, nay in politics as in private life. He kept aloof from the Second Empire, as his grandfather, Mr. Carlyle's 'War-god Broglie,' had kept aloof from the first. But he never fell into the Republican ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... of gloom. "So they've begun to leave Talbot Potter's company!" he said, nodding his head with bitter melancholy. "For vaudeville! I'd better go to farming at once; I often think of it. What sort of an act is it that Miss Lyston prefers to remaining with me? Acrobatic?" ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... varied his acts in the circus tent Sometimes he would omit the "vanishing lady" act, as Helen wanted to put through some extra work with Rosebud, and there was not time for both. Again he would leave out some of his acrobatic work, or perhaps not do the trick of seeming to catch fire and extinguishing the flames in Benny Turton's tank. Once in a while he would omit the ten thousand ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... opposite hers, two floors beneath this very room we're in now. He has a parrot that chatters and annoys Mrs. Berry, but the old man is honest, I'm sure. And he's too old to be agile enough to do such an acrobatic thing as ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... creator of all of these, Chesterton finds time to be a prolific if sometimes too acrobatic newspaperman, a lay preacher in disguise (witness Orthodoxy [1908], What's Wrong with the World? [1910], The Ball and the Cross [1909]), a pamphleteer, and a poet. His first volume of verse, The Wild Knight and Other Poems (1900), a collection of quaintly-flavored and affirmative ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... days of flying, when aviators attempted an acrobatic feat, they ran a far heavier risk than would be the case to-day; and for the simple reason that their machines, not having a strength sufficient to withstand any abnormal stresses, were likely to collapse in the air if they were made to dive too rapidly, or placed suddenly ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... imaginable I climbed next morning to the mountain's edge. The path often led along smooth rocks, where lianas served as ropes and roots as a foothold; and I was greatly surprised to find many fields on top, to which the women have to climb every day and carry the food down afterwards, which implies acrobatic feats of no ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... around the fire, and used for acrobatic performances—yes, I see. I'll re-cover them right away. I'd do it to-night while I wait if I had the stuff—if I could sit still long enough. I want to go all over the house—and if it wasn't raining I'd go out in the garden and through the ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... acted with admirable promptitude—which is most important at a fire—and they tell me that the header you took into the escape, with Miss Blythe in your arms, was the finest acrobatic feat that has been seen ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... by a sort of tacit consent, irrevocably damned within the force. The picture which it called up was that of the "Anzac" in London, with his shining gaiters and buttons and generally unauthorised cock's feathers in his hat, reaping the glory of the acrobatic performances which his battered countrymen, very unlovely with sweat and dust, were credited with achieving in No Man's Land. This was before the Somme fight, when first these Gallipoli troops came to Europe. The regular British war correspondents were not ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... sportive mood, performs some wonderful acrobatic feats with human nature; gives love of oriental luxury to the woman with nothing a year; appreciation of all that is beautiful and artistic, to the ploughman; an epicurian taste to the starving mechanic; while to the woman rolling in wealth is given the ...
— Wise or Otherwise • Lydia Leavitt
... all-around acrobatic exhibition. The Dodo performed on the trapeze. The Mock Turtle and the Cheshire Cat took turns on a diminutive springboard. The March Hare and the Dormouse energetically jumped over a small barrel. The Queen and the Duchess had a fencing match, the Queen using her sceptre, the Duchess ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... supper there was to be a novel kind of entertainment: a sort of vaudeville show in which were to figure a palmist, a gentleman set down in the programme with its gilt printing as the "Celebrated Professor Cheireman"; several singers; a couple of acrobatic performers; and a danseuse: ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... caused his immediate successor to stumble, and Jenks saw his opportunity. With the agility of a cat he jumped up the ladder. Once started, he had to go on. He afterwards confessed to an unpleasant sensation of pins and needles along his back during that brief acrobatic display; but he reached the ledge without further injury, save an agonizing twinge when the unprotected quick of his damaged finger was ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... vicinity of Clapham High Street or the Monument, were merely incomprehensible. She could not understand what they were doing. The comedians she found amusing, when they did not shock her—Bertie had explained to her one or two of the jokes she could not understand. The "song-scenas" and acrobatic displays filled her with rapture. She would have liked that sort of thing the whole time.... Albert said it was a dull show, he grumbled at everything, especially the turns Joanna liked. But gradually the warm, friendly, vulgar atmosphere of the place infected him—he joined in one or two of the ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... populous with a chatting, sauntering crowd of people, who enjoy the luxury of using their limbs without being called on to displays of acrobatic agility in dodging trundling shell. There are Irregulars and B.S.A.P., Baraland Rifles and Town Guardsmen. There are the Native Contingent from the stad, and a company of Zulus, and the Kaffirs and the Cape Boys with their gaspipe rifles that do good service in default of better, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... ceased. The spell was broken. We looked at one another, and then we laughed. How we laughed! Officers and men were doubled up with mirth as they watched the acrobatic antics of this ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... white, stood unheralded and unremarked close by outside among the armed attendants. There seemed no need of precaution, however, so lightly the trainer frolicked with the savage creatures. He performed wonderful acrobatic feats with them in which one hardly knew which most to admire, the agility and intrepidity of the man or the supple strength and curious intelligence of the beasts. He wrestled with them; he leaped and rolled among them; he put his head into their terrible full-fanged jaws—but before springing ...
— Una Of The Hill Country - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... Comedy Dancing, Tap and Step Dancing (Clogging), Acrobatic Dancing, Exhibition Dancing (Ball-room), ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... to it, she will come in her own time. So let it be confessed, as a secret she would be extremely annoyed to hear revealed, that she did indeed kneel five minutes since, but with no thought of religion; to try rather, over 'Dolph's grave, if she could bend her body back in the old acrobatic trick. ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
