"Circus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fiction than fact. One man revived during the inquest, knocked the foreman of the jury through the window, kicked the coroner in the stomach, fed him a bottle of violet ink, and, with a shriek of laughter, fled. He is now traveling under an assumed name with a mammoth circus, feeding his bald head to the African lion twice a day at $9 a week ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... Eleusinia, which we have been considering in its overwhelming sorrow developed in hurried flight, and its lofty hope through triumphal pomp and the significant symbolism of resurrection,—the epos and the epic rhapsodies,—the circus and the amphitheatre,—and even the impetuous song and dance of painted savages,—all these, which at first we may pass by with a glance, have for our deeper search a meaning which we can never wholly exhaust. Let it be that they have ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... was particularly agreeable and funny that afternoon. Charlotte was really becoming very fond of her. She was a merry companion; she liked foolish things, such as soda-water and candy, and was even willing to stop and watch a circus parade. ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... and amidst such a multitude of sacrifices, sufferings, and woes, as in the case of the Vaudois. The incentives to courage which have stimulated others to brave death were wanting in their case. If they triumphed, they had no admiring circus to welcome them with shouts, and crown them with laurel; and if they fell, they knew that there awaited their ashes no marble tomb, and that no lay of poet would ever embalm their memory. They looked ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... on which this routine of work and play had to be changed were Sundays and holidays. Then my white umbrella would loom up as large as a circus tent, the usual crowd surging about its doors. As you cannot see London for the people, so you cannot see the river for boats on these days—all sorts of boats—wherries, tubs, launches, racing crafts, shells, punts—everything that can be poled, ...
— The Parthenon By Way Of Papendrecht - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... white cockatoos, clinging, flapping, screeching on gilded wands; fans spangled with tiny electric jewels; parasols of pink silk set with incandescent lights; crystal cages containing great, pale-green Luna moths alive and fluttering; circus hoops of gilt filled with white tissue paper, ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... boy kicks the cover off on circus morning, this Northland flings aside her winter wraps and stands forth in her glorious garb of summer. The brooklets murmur, the rivers sing, and by their banks and along the lakes waterfowl frolic, and overhead ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... calabozo. This citizen, generally ragged and dirty and smoking a big cigar, is provided with a drum which he beats lustily. The people flock to doors and windows, and the curious and the little boys and girls who are carrying their baby relations cross saddle on their hips, fall in behind as for a circus procession. At every corner they stop, and the middle policeman reads the announcement aloud from a paper. Then the march is taken up again by those who desire to continue, and the rest race back to their doorways to wag their tongues over the news. The ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... every non-subscriber to our service, or wholly stifle every rebel against us. On the other, we can simply saturate every subscriber with health and energy, or even—if they want it—waft them to paradise on the wings of ozone. The old Roman idea of 'bread and circus' to rule the mob, was child's play compared to this! Science has delivered the whole world into our hands. Power, man, power! Absolute, infinite power over every ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... citizens of San Francisco remember the Sabbath day to keep it jolly; and the theatres, the circus, the minstrels, and the music halls are ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... and early became a skilful rider. A story is told of him which indicates not only that he was a good horseman, but that he had "bulldog grit" as well. One day when he was at a circus, the manager offered a silver dollar to any one who could ride a certain mule around the ring. Several persons, one after the other, mounted the animal, only to be thrown over its head. Young Ulysses was among those who offered to ride, but, like the others, he failed. Then, pulling off ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... the Colombo Cricket Grounds, where the game was played, was indeed a novelty, and the crowds of Cingalese that surrounded us as we left the hotel and looked on in open-eyed wonder were by no means the least impressive part of the circus. There were no drags and carriages on this occasion and no gaily-caparisoned horses with nodding plumes, but in their places were heavy-wheeled carts drawn by humpbacked little bullocks and jinrickshas drawn by bare-legged Cingalese. About these swarmed ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... emphasising his function as a rescuer from the dangers of the sea, would have been without meaning for the old Romans who worshipped him merely as a patron of horsemen and horsemanship. The new ideas seem to have had as their centre a later temple in the Circus Flaminius and thus Hercules and Castor may again be paralleled, since they have, each of them, an old cult-centre inside the pomerium, Hercules in the Forum Boarium, Castor in the Forum, and a later cult-centre, for more advanced ideas, in each ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... another engine and threw them in parallel. Of all the circuses since Adam was born, we had the worst then! One engine would stop, and the other would run up to about a thousand revolutions, and then they would see-saw. The trouble was with the governors. When the circus commenced, the gang that was standing around ran out precipitately, and I guess some of them kept running for a block or two. I grabbed the throttle of one engine, and E. H. Johnson, who was the only one present to keep his wits, caught hold of the other, ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... not one of the hostile 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 examining the ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... was turned into a circus menagerie, and Margaret MacLean and her assistant were turned into keepers. Together they set about the duties for the day with great good-humor. Two seals, a wriggling hippopotamus, a roaring polar bear, a sea-serpent of surprising activities, two teeth-grinding alligators, ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... had been the glimpse, that his conscious feeling was but of charm, inspired by the primal strength of this wild and unconquerable thing before him. The restive swaying of the body brought to the old gentleman's mind an incident he once had seen at a circus, when an elephant, fretted by its ankle chain, rocked from foot to foot in sullen disquiet. He pictured an ankle chain on this well made youth before him now, the ankle chain of ignorance, and a wave of pity made him resolve to be ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... covered with a motley array of pasted and tacked pictures; some engraved, many colored, and ranging in comprehensiveness of designs, from Bible scenes cut from magazines, to "riots" in illustrated papers; and even the garish glory of circus ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... except the under side which is pure white. They are gregarious and very sociable in their habits. Porpoises race and play with each other and dart out of the sea, performing almost as many antics as the circus clown. They feed on mackerel and herring, devouring large quantities. Years ago the porpoise was a common and esteemed article of food in Great Britain and France, but now the skin and blubber only have a commercial value. The skins of a very large species are ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... was the list of calls still pasted on the 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 must have had ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... frequent; and at a season when he might most reasonably be presumed to be haunting it. But how now? in this zoned quest, does Ahab touch no land? does his crew drink air? Surely, he will stop for water. Nay. For a long time, now, the circus-running sun has raced within his fiery ring, and needs no sustenance but what's in himself. So Ahab. Mark this, too, in the whaler. While other hulls are loaded down with alien stuff, to be transferred ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... were shews exhibited in the Circus Maximus, and consisted of various kinds: first, chariot and horse-races, of which the Romans were extravagantly fond. The charioteers were distributed into four parties, distinguished by the colour of their dress. ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... from an Eastern camping trip up amidst the hills about fifteen miles from town. They had experienced some strange adventures while in camp, most of which hinged upon an event that had taken place in Carson one windy night, when the big round-top of a visiting circus blew down in a sudden gale, and many of the menagerie animals were ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... mean horses, if you will excuse the interruption," the man said. "There is my one failing. I used to be with a circus, and the lion and I were good friends. Perhaps some taint of the wild beast odor clings to me, which causes horses to rear up and ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker
... know what would have happened—they would have been smothered or had hay fever, I guess—if a big Circus Elephant hadn't come hurrying along ...
— Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel Brothers • David Cory
... the Sabines, Romulus took in his hand this exploit after this manner. First, he gave it out that he had found an altar of a certain god hid under ground, perhaps the equestrian Neptune, for the altar is kept covered in the Circus Maximus at all other times, and only at horse-races is exposed to public view. Upon discovery of this altar, Romulus, by proclamation, appointed a day for a splendid sacrifice, and for public games ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... being in the midst of sheep. Yet he is of friendly disposition, and it must be insisted that he is by no means so destitute of intelligence as he is often represented to be. On the contrary, he is capable of being trained into remarkable cleverness, as circus ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... to carry on receptions of different sorts; how to play interesting and original games, indoors and outdoors, in the water, as well as on land; how to promote an amateur circus or a dramatic entertainment as well as a summer campaign or outing. Considerable attention is given to the organization of clubs of all kinds, civic, ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... because you want to go To the circus, or the show; But, when all your fun is o'er, Be as good as ...
— More Goops and How Not to Be Them • Gelett Burgess
... superhuman beauty of this woman who unveiled herself before him with an immodesty which appeared to him sublime, he ended by falling on his knees before her as the early Christians did before those pure and holy martyrs whom the persecution of the emperors gave up in the circus to the sanguinary sensuality of the populace. The brand disappeared; ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... there was battle all about him.... He settled himself to write, though he had no plan in his mind, and as he wrote, he felt that the story, whatever it might grow to be, must be comic. "I feel like a clown making jokes in the circus while his wife is dying," ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... chase, and herself joined in the hunt after the pheasants and deer on her estate, proving herself a skilled Amazon in the saddle and in the management of her rifle. Then, the officers improvised a horse-race; and once they even got up a circus, ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... 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 melancholy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... remember, the case of a friend of his whose machine got entangled with a goat chain and who was dragged seven miles—like skijoring in Switzerland—so that he was never the same man again. And there was one chap who ran into an elephant, left over from a travelling circus. ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... are making of the child's instinct for play and mental diversion as a means of building up both the individual and the social life. Chicago has made the discovery of the civic value of recreation centers for the play of the people. Not since old Rome's circus maximus and the Olympic games of Greece has any city made such provision for the recreation of its people as is to be found in these great playfields, surrounding the beautifully designed and well equipped field houses, which at a cost of $12,000,000 of the tax payers' money ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... life is happier, man of pride, Than yours and that of half the world beside. When the whim leads, I saunter forth alone, Ask how are herbs, and what is flour a stone, Lounge through the Circus with its crowd of liars, Or in the Forum, when the sun retires, Talk to a soothsayer, then go home to seek My frugal meal of fritter, vetch, and leek: Three youngsters serve the food: a slab of white Contains two cups, one ladle, clean ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... Mauritius, where Captain Anson, Inspector-General of Police, kindly took charge of them and made great lions of them. A subscription was raised to give them a purse of money; they were treated with tickets to the "circus," and sent back to the Seychelles, whence they were transported by steamer to Zanzibar, and taken in charge by our lately-appointed Consul, Colonel Playfair, who appears to have taken much interest in them. Further, they volunteered to go with me again, should I attempt ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... you 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 ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum
... fish," Flossy seemed to say as she sprang three times her length in the air, and turned head over heels like the clown in a circus. ...
— Crusoes of the Frozen North • Gordon Stables
... of spirits floated out of it when a door was swung open. "I don't suppose it was like that in Shakespeare's day," he said to himself, as he turned away and gazed at the flow of people and traffic that passed without ceasing through the circus where the six great roads of South London meet and cross. It seemed to him that an accident must happen, that these streams of carts and trams and 'buses and hurrying people must become so involved that ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... the productions were spoiled by the weather. 8. The whole of the stupid boys in Germany struggle to pass this test. 9. The police are looking for the guilty parties. 10. A lot of men from the country came to town to see the circus. 11. In the shed is a mixture[44] of oars, seats, sails, rudders, booms, and gaffs. 12. They had to take the balance of his arm off. 13. Addison's essays were a great factor in improving the morals of his age. ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... wanted, it is no longer possible for them to speak above their breath. Obey. Perinde ac cadaver.... Ten millions of corpses.... The living are hardly better off, depressed as they are by four years of sham patriotism, circus-parades, tom-toms, threats, braggings, hatreds, informers, trials for treason, and summary executions. The demagogues have called in all the reserves of obscurantism to extinguish the last gleams of good sense that lingered ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... is a rather cynical personality; Shaw loves to laugh at people, he is inclined to make fun of the martyrs. They were possibly quite mistaken in their enthusiasm, but at least they were consistent. I do not feel convinced that Shaw would stand in the middle of Piccadilly Circus and keep his ideals if he knew that it would involve being eaten by lions that came up Regent Street, as the martyrs faced them centuries ago in Rome, but I have little doubt that Chesterton would remain in Piccadilly Circus if he knew that ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... seat on the deck with his back against a bitt. "One time he happened to be in a small town just outside of Dublin, Ireland. The inn was crowded and he had to take up his quarters with a family who occasionally rented out rooms. A circus and menagerie was giving exhibitions in the city, and one night the biggest monkey escaped from its cage and skipped out. They instituted a search at once, but the animal could not be found. Well, it happened that the ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... 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 or in the race. Their bodies are bright ...
— A Florentine Tragedy—A Fragment • Oscar Wilde
... newspaper writer and reporter many sorts of people, high and low, little and big, queer and commonplace, fell in my way; statesmen and politicians, artists and athletes, circus riders and prize fighters; the riffraff and the elite; the professional and dilettante of the world polite and ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... the village of Briggsville blazed out in black and red and white, every available space being covered with immense posters, which in flaming scenes and gigantic type announced the coming of "Jones's & Co.'s Great Moral Menagerie and Transcontinental Circus, on its triumphal tour through the ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... the gods that he has murdered his own 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
... 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
... bad habit of growing so tall and losing its lower leaves. They look like giraffes at the circus. But one may ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... Caligula, s. 55. Montesquieu reckons such party-divisions among the causes that wrought the 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, that they trampled on the laws. All ties of friendship, ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... circuses are of course popular. Perhaps in no other part of the world can a circus obtain so critical and appreciative an attendance. Christy Minstrels and conjurors apparently do well, considering how very poor some of the miscellaneous entertainments which visit Australia are, it is most remarkable that they should contrive ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... prevented my abetting them, however, to the extent of a trifling bribe for a repetition. For they had stopped abashed as soon as they found they had a public. Regardless of maternal consequences, I thus encouraged the sport. But after all, was it so much a bribe as an entrance fee to the circus, or better yet, a sort of subsidy from an ex-member of the fraternity? Surely, if adverse physical circumstances preclude profession in person, the next best thing is to become a noble patron ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... and soldiers of the United States army were a sorry sight, and in pointed contrast to the graceful Californians on their groomed steeds, handsomely trapped, curvetting and rearing and prancing as lightly as if on the floor of a circus. Kearney cursed his own stupidity, and Pico laughed in his face. Beale felt satisfaction and compunction in saturating the silk and silver of one fine saddle with the blood of its owner. The point of the dying man's lance pierced his face, but he noted the bleaching of Kearney's, as one ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... I never get excited. The last time I was excited was when I was seven years old, and the circus came ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... be down here; that's why it's such an interesting place to live. Still, I don't altogether like the idea of Pachuca roaming the country like a lion escaped from a circus." ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... play in semi-human style, performing marvellous acrobatic feats on the clothes-line, and lying on its back juggling with a twig as some "artists" do with a barrel in the circus. A white-eared flycatcher took up its abode near the house, and the magpie, after a decent lapse of time, admitted the stranger to its companionship. The wild, larderless bird, however, had little time to play. All its wit and energies were ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... the circus And behold the steeds bedight, And the hoops and rings and races And the clowns that make delight,— You will miss the happy touches That complete your broadest grin If you see the main performance And don't ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... 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 into the ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... see that they've had some sort of circus here lately because the showbills are still posted on the fences," Merritt observed with a chuckle, "and can you blame them for thinking that the side shows have bust up, with the freaks hiking all through the country, ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... which harries), assigned in New Zealand to Circus gouldii, Bonap. (also called Swamp-hawk), and in Australia to C. assimilis, Jard. and Selb., or C. approximans, ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... Better? That's fine. You're looking great! For the love of Mike, will you take a swift look at what's got off? I believe it's from college. They don't wear clothes like that anywhere else. Oh, yes, of course, that's why the Singers' automobile came down. Don't know what we'd do, now that the circus has passed us up, if it wasn't for Sally Singer. She imports a new specimen from the University ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... grizzly bear came from that night was long a mystery, while the people of the Springs Brothers' Circus, showing at Sausalito, searched long and vainly for "Big Ben, the Biggest Grizzly in Captivity." But Big Ben escaped, and, out of the mazes of half a thousand bungalows and country estates, selected the grounds of James J. Ward for visitation. The self ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... sensation. Here and there in the doorways we saw women with fashionable Portuguese hoods on. This hood is of thick blue cloth, attached to a cloak of the same stuff, and is a marvel of ugliness. It stands up high and spreads far abroad, and is unfathomably deep. It fits like a circus tent, and a woman's head is hidden away in it like the man's who prompts the singers from his tin shed in the stage of an opera. There is no particle of trimming about this monstrous capote, as they call it—it ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Princeton, but met a youth on the train who was going to Harvard. He took a special course at Cambridge—just what it was he can't remember—but at the end of the year it was hinted to him that circus life was more suited to his talents, particularly one with ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... sleep; the oily smell of hairs tangled in her old hair-brush; the sight of the alarm-clock which in just six hours would be flogging her off to the mill. A sudden, frightened query as to what scornful disdain Walter Babson would fling at her if he saw her glorying in this Broadway circus with the heavy Mr. Schwirtz. A ghostly night-born feeling that she still belonged to Walter, living or dead, and a wonder as to where in all the world he might be. A defiant protest that she idealized Walter, ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... here the buzz of eager nations ran, In murmured pity, or loud-roared applause, As man was slaughtered by his fellow-man. And wherefore slaughtered? wherefore, but because Such were the bloody circus' genial laws, And the imperial pleasure.—Wherefore not? What matters where we fall to fill the maws Of worms—on battle-plains or listed spot? Both are but theatres where the ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... 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 ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... anything else. How should he know—yet he ought to have done so, if he really was a philosopher—that a woman would want the cleverest man in the world to be a boy and play the fool sometimes; that she would rather, if she was a healthy woman, go to a circus than to a revelation of the mysteries of the mind from an altar of culture, if her own beloved man ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... side to side as he ran. The boy knew the path. It led to a rickety fence—a cattle guard—across the river. Jimmy's heart beat wildly, and the trees danced by him on the sloping path. But he was not "the champeen fence-walker of Willow Creek," late of "Pennington & Carpenter's Circus & Menagerie, price ten pins," without having won his proud place by prowess. He came to the water's edge with sure feet. He knew that he could cross. He had crossed the creek there a score of times. He jumped for ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... on 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 ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... which he had never heard outside a zoological garden. At first he thought he was still dreaming, and turned over to sleep again, but the noise repeated itself. This time it seemed to come from under his bed, and sounded like a lion's roar. Probably a circus had passed and a lion had got loose and was prowling about, seeking what he could devour! He thought of ringing up the house, but demurred, reflecting that whoever answered the bell would probably be the first victim. Again the roar! Fear overcame his humane impulses; ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... camera button as long as he dared. Then when it seemed that he would glide right into the frogmen, he twisted sideways and bent backward like a circus acrobat, flippers moving in powerful thrusts. It was an excellent underwater imitation of a wingover, the plane maneuver that reversed direction by diving and turning. He planed downward until he touched bottom, ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... a play at the Alexander Theatre; it was, he saw, by Andreeff, whose art he had told many people in England he admired, but now he mixed him up in his mind with Kuprin, and the play was all about a circus—very confused and gloomy. As for literature, he purchased some new poems by Balmont, some essays by Merejkowsky, and Andre Biely's St. Petersburg, but the first of these he found pretentious, the second dull, and the third quite impossibly obscure. ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... and under their horses in a dizzy way. Some had taken their saddles off and now sat on their horses' bellies, while the big dog-like animals lay on their backs, with their feet in the air. It was circus business, or what they call "short and long horse" work—some not understandable phrase. Every one does it. While I am not unaccustomed to looking at cavalry, I am being perpetually surprised by the lengths to which our cavalry ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... may have been used loosely for blue-stone, i.e. carbonate of copper, which would assume a green colour through moisture. He adds: "Nero, according to Pliny, actually used chrysocolla, the siliceous carbonate of copper, in powder, for strewing the circus, to give the course the colour of his favourite faction, the prasine (or green). There may be some analogy between this device and that of Kublai Khan." This parallel ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... an awful place Piccadilly Circus is. There's a huge bus bearing down on us. It would be too terrible if they ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... topped a rise and saw below him the handful of shacks making up the town. A look of pleased interest flickered across his face as he noticed a patched and dirty tent pitched close up to the nearest shack. "Show!" he exclaimed. "Now, ain't that luck! I'll shore take it in. If it's a circus, mebby it has a trick mule to ride—I'll never forget that one up in Kansas City," he grinned. But almost instantly a doubt arose and tempered the grin. "Huh! Mebby it's the branding chute of some gospel sharp." ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... I'll tell you one sure thing if you want a good circus you've got to train your animals. The Kaiser has been ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... seizing his brother's arm and pulling him along, for Tom had slackened his speed, as though fascinated by the sight of the strange animal. "It must be that wolf father read about, the one that got away when the circus train was passing ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster
... the desire, the need. Bread the populace had. Trank was available to all. But the need was for the circus, the vicious, sadistic circus, and bit by bit, over the years and decades, the way was found to circumvent the country's laws and ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... you believe that sort of stuff!" Phil declared, even though it did look very significant to see those twin stakes being driven into the ground, with a crowd of ragged and barefooted youngsters showing savage delight, as keen as though a circus had come to town. ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... brought against woman when she addresses a public audience, comes with a very ill-grace from those who encourage, by their attendance, her appearance on the stage, in the concert, or in feats of the circus. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the tiger, or on the rack of the torturer, this mother was suffering at the hands of her best-beloved daughter. Her beautiful pale face—her large eyes upturned to heaven, like those that artists give to the pure victims kneeling in the Roman circus—seemed to ask God whether He really had any ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... do. But with Molly arrested we shall be compelled to be very careful," said Benton, as they turned toward Piccadilly Circus. "I don't see how we dare move until Molly is either free or convicted. If she knew our game she might give us away. Remember that if we bring off the Henfrey affair Molly has to have a share in the spoils. ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... be no more Sunday music at the Zoo has been received with satisfaction by the more conservative residents, who have always complained that the presence of a band tended to reduce the place to the level of a mere circus. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 • Various
... is the habit of this bird to make a large circus, some ten or twelve feet in diameter, in the forest, which it clears of every leaf and twig and branch, till the ground is perfectly swept and garnished. On the margin of this circus there is invariably a projecting branch or high arched rest, at a few feet elevation from ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... mechanisms, to speak more scientifically) so important for the finest vocal effects, rather than be satisfied with mere power. The vocalist and speaker must indeed be athletic specialists, but they should not aim at being like the ordinary athlete, much less mere strong men of the circus. ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... lamp-lit street. Yet he rambled and dodged for a long time before he struck the main thoroughfare. When he did so, he struck it much farther up than he had fancied. He came out into what seemed the vast and void of Ludgate Circus, and saw St. Paul's ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... are the natural expression of sad feelings," said Lady Locke. "We do not weep at a circus or at a pantomime; why should we ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... lovely ambitions for your friends. What about yourself? Won't you be a circus-rider, dear? I want you to be as ambitious for you ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... smaller end swung near, Rafe leaped for it and secured a footing on the rolling, plunging log. How he kept his feet under him Nan could not imagine. A bareback rider in a circus never had such work as this. Rafe rode his ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... cruel mangling of dogs, or else put on crosses to be set on fire, and, as day declined, to be burned, being used as lights by night. Nero had thrown open his gardens for that spectacle, and gave a circus play, mingling with the people dressed in a charioteer's costume or driving in a chariot. From this arose, however, toward men who were, indeed, criminals and deserving extreme penalties, sympathy, on the ground that they were destroyed not for the public good, but to satisfy ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... of the other chauffeurs had asked him to go with him to a concert called Macbeth. When I told him what it was he said he'd had an escape. He says he sees enough of Shakespeare in this place without going to hear him. He's at the Pictures to-night, and there's a circus coming—" ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... blew. They reminded me of the lions roaring at the circus. The gang-plank went up, the hawsers went in. The snub nose of the steamer swung out with a quiet majesty. Now she feels the urge of the flood, and yields herself to it, already dwindled to half her ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... are more interesting, and at the same time they are much more familiar to every one, as they are the commonest anthropoids of the menagerie and circus. Their wonderful agility and sureness in climbing about is partly due to the perfect grasping power of the lower limb. To all intents and purposes the foot is a hand; the first toe is shorter than the others, and its free motion ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... and several ambitious spectacles like it are direct violations of the foregoing principles. True, it glorifies Rome. It is equivalent to waving the Italian above the Egyptian flag, quite slowly for two hours. From the stage standpoint, the magnificence is thoroughgoing. Viewed as a circus, the acting is elephantine in its grandeur. All that is needed is pink lemonade ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... thin visage, and unsteady eyes. For some years past this aged person had been wandering about among the hills, inquiring of all travellers whom he met for his daughter. The girl, it seemed, had gone off with a company of circus-performers, and occasionally tidings of her came to the village, and fine stories were told of her glittering appearance as she rode on horseback in the ring, or performed marvellous feats ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with dreary, unenlivening titles,—egotistic always, as recording Smith's opinions on this, and Jones's commentaries on that. There was a hand bill tacked on the wall, which at first offered hilarious suggestions of a circus or a steamboat excursion, but which turned out only to be a sheriff's sale. There were several oddly-shaped packages in newspaper wrappings, mysterious and awful in dark corners, that might have contained forgotten law papers or the previous week's washing of the eminent ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... fell to tearing the fur out of each other. Some of them walked on the ceiling, like flies, in their endeavors to get away from the dogs. One of them pounced on a dog's back and rode him around the room, as if she were a circus performer. The other dog chased a cat under the bed, and they were having it there. Oh, they didn't do a thing—not ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... long, undulating swell, as if some unseen power were trying to force them further up the mountains, while they were afraid to try it. Finally a series of low, conical peaks rose on the summit of the cloud-range, and the peaks and the upper cloud-slope resembled the upper portion of a circus-tent. There were no rough ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... 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
... needed. The beast had evidently felt the touch of a whip before, for it raised its arm and danced about as though going through some circus maneuver. ...
— The Broncho Rider Boys with Funston at Vera Cruz - Or, Upholding the Honor of the Stars and Stripes • Frank Fowler
... their Professional Career with a Road Circus, working on Canvas in the Morning, and then doing a Refined Knockabout in the Grand Concert or Afterpiece taking place in the Main Arena immediately after the big ...
— Fables in Slang • George Ade
... with a life of her own that was not Nedda's. For men she had little use just now, they had acquired a certain insignificance, not having gray-black eyes that smoked and flared, nor Harris tweed suits that smelled delicious. Only once on her journey from Oxford Circus she felt the sense of curiosity rise in her, in relation to a man, and this was when she asked a policeman at Tottenham Court Road, and he put his head down fully a foot to listen to her. So huge, so broad, so red in the face, so stolid, it seemed wonderful to her that he paid her any attention! ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... went ashore, and dispersed in different directions, to meet again at the hotel for luncheon. Then we all again separated, the children going to the circus, whilst I took a drive, with a pair of black and white Hakodadi ponies, to the foot of ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... sinuosities of cleverly turned phrases. But after the passing of the first and second days' sensations, Hiram and Ellen Ranger's daughter began to have somewhat the same feeling she remembered having as a little girl, when she went to both the afternoon and the evening performances of the circus. These people, going through always the same tricks in the same old narrow ring of class ideas, lost much of their charm after a few repetitions of their undoubtedly clever and attractive performance; she even began to see how they would become drearily monotonous. "No ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... 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 ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... and rowed by fourteen French seamen standing, clothed in spotless white, with broad crimson sashes around their waists. This equipage had such a holiday look about it, that one of our fellows irreverently asked if "Sanger's circus was coming!" ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... children. All her brothers (except one) were sent to the penitentiary for burglary, and her mother peddles clams that are stolen for her by little George, her only son that has his freedom. Isabel's sister Bianca rides an immoral spotted horse in the circus, HER husband having long since been hanged for murdering his own uncle on his mother's side. Thus we see that it is always best ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne
... her. When receiving congratulations and being interviewed was the order of the day, and therefore excited no suspicion, a stranger came to the lighthouse, who announced himself as a friend of Mr. Batty, the proprietor of an equestrian circus, which was then exhibiting at Edinburgh. Mr. Batty had given an entertainment for the benefit of Grace, and had thereby brought an overflowing audience to his theatre. The stranger who came was welcomed as usual by the Darlings, who gave him all the hospitable attentions that were in their power, ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... trees, whither they had climbed at enormous peril to themselves and innocent by-standers. Bunting, flags, streamers were everywhere; now and then a floral arch bearing words of welcome spanned the roadway; circus day in a small town was not a dot upon the atmosphere of thrilled expectancy so all-pervasive here. It was, in fact, the crowning occasion of the Confederate Reunion, and the fading remnants of Lee's armies were about to pass in annual parade ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... riding young fellow came sweeping along with his white burnous, or robe, trailing behind him in the air, and down he bent to earth like a circus rider as his eye caught a flash of sunlight. With a shout of triumph he snatched up a straight cut-and-thrust sword, which in weight and size seemed exactly made for him. This was unusual luck; for, as he said gleefully to his comrades, while Frankish swords were not uncommon ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... the comfort and instruction of the people, the baths, libraries, and regular amusements. The private munificence of emperors, great patricians, and conquerors, undertook to supply occasional shows of an extraordinary character in the theatres, amphitheatre, and the circus. ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... another matter altogether. At one time the public conscience of the island had been mightily troubled by my Jacobus. The two brothers had been partners for years in great harmony, when a wandering circus came to the island and my Jacobus became suddenly infatuated with one of the lady-riders. What made it worse was that he was married. He had not even the grace to conceal his passion. It must have been strong indeed to carry ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... Prince Albert in 1851, and the Advance with Kane, in 1853, were kept prisoners by the ice for several weeks. The odd form of the Devil's Thumb, the dreary deserts in its vicinity, the vast circus of icebergs—some of them more than three hundred feet high—the cracking of the ice, reproduced by the echo in so sinister a manner, rendered the position of the Forward horribly dreary. Shandon understood the necessity of getting out of it and going further ahead. Twenty-four ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... some time. He then gently blamed them for their conduct, and spoke kindly to them. He gave splendid presents to all the invalids, and dismissed them, writing at the same time to Antipater with orders, that in every public spectacle these men should sit in the best places in the theatre or the circus with garlands on their heads. The orphan children of those who had fallen he ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... of treachery, and the first lieutenant kept a good look out, with the broadside of the ship all ready at the first flash of a pistol, but these precautions were unnecessary; the chief took me by the hand and led me up to his house, in front of which had been erected a sort of covered circus, brilliantly lighted up with oil in cocoa-nut shells, and round which were squatted several hundred Burmahs. He took us all to the raised verandah of the house, which was fitted up for the ceremony, where we found his wife, and all his attendants, but not his daughter, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... she was in her five-and-twentieth year, and love was not only unknown to her, it was shut away from her by the lock of a key that opened on no estimable worldly advantage in exchange, but opened on a dreary, clouded round, such as she had used to fancy it must be to the beautiful creamy circus-horse of the tossing mane and flowing tail and superb step. She was admired; she was just as much doomed to a round of paces, denied the glorious fling afield, her nature's food. Hitherto she would have been shamefaced as a boy in forming the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... steel. A shriek of horror from Angela marked the climax, as Denzil fell with Fareham's sword between his ribs. There had been little of dilettante science, or graceful play of wrist in this encounter. The men had rushed at each other savagely, like beasts in a circus, and whatever of science had guided Fareham's more practised hand had been employed automatically. The spirit of the combatants was wild and fierce as the rage that moves rival stags fighting for a mate, with bent heads and tramping hoofs, and clash of locked antlers ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... urchins of an inquiring turn of mind drew near and began to make infantile comments, and asked with charming freedom if it was circus. ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... influence which, even as a child, he has always seemed to exercise over them. He succeeded in training his ponies, his dogs and other domestic pets to perform such clever tricks that on several occasions he managed, with the assistance of his brothers, to organize very creditable circus performances, usually in honor of the birthday of his father or his mother. There was one instance especially that I may recall, which took place some years ago. This particular performance began in the afternoon at three, with a prologue ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... Alexandrians had prepared to do honor to their sovereign was magnificent and costly. So many ships had never before been engaged in any Naumachia as were destroyed here in the sham sea-fight, no greater number of wild beasts had ever been seen together on any occasion even in the Roman Circus; and how bloody were the fights of the gladiators, in which black and white combatants afforded a varied excitement for both heart and senses. In the processions, the different elements which were supplied by the great central metropolis of Egyptian, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... what he says to that," said my Captain pleasantly. We waited, we watched, we listened; but there came no reply (possibly because there was no one left to make one), and my Captain turned to me, shoulders shrugged, palms outspread, a grimace of apologetic disgust on his mobile face—like a circus-master explaining that his clown has got the measles: "Nottin, see ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various
... of Milan, the impostures he practised, remembering that, face to face, he held Theodosius the Great to accountability for the massacre of seven thousand persons, whom, in a fit of vengeance, he had murdered in the circus of Thessalonica, A.D. 390, and inexorably compelled the imperial culprit, to whom he and all his party were under such obligations, to atone for his crime by such penance as may be exacted in this world, teaching his sovereign "that though he was of the Church and in the Church, ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... were, greeny yellow. And I swear, Rev'rend, when he opened them eyes I felt he was readin' my mind. I thought maybe he might be one of them circus fellers in their flying contraptions that hang at the bottom of ...
— Year of the Big Thaw • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... later on in the evening, "that she must have been a circus rider, or something of that sort. What on earth does Clara mean by the gentle blood breaking out? We nearly had a breaking out at dinner, but it certainly was not due ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... at him with an expression of pity "Oh! to be sure not. You belong to the pannyrama. I recolleck that the last circus folks that come here never talked about politics. Are ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... 'The Germans in despair are turning the theatre into a circus. Their idea of a modern Hellenic revival. Crowds, horses, clowns.... ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... quietly. "I didn't mean that. The clowns in the circus represent amusing cads. Some of them are awfully clever, too," he added, turning the subject. "Some of those fiddling fellows are extraordinary. They really play very decently. They must have a lot of talent, ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... and Oaks had not been established forty-five years, the Derby attracted some sixty subscribers, and the Oaks about forty, of fifty guineas apiece, and Epsom was full to overflowing. The watering-place has become a circus. The race week brings down all London. "At an early hour in the morning, persons of all ranks, and carriages innumerable, are seen pouring into the town at every inlet. All the accommodations and provisions that the surrounding ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... 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 still ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... less, grew and grew with the interruptions. He had on coming up to town begun to sit for his portrait to a young painter, Mr. Rumble, whose little game, as we also used to say at Mr. Pinhorn's, was to be the first to perch on the shoulders of renown. Mr. Rumble's studio was a circus in which the man of the hour, and still more the woman, leaped through the hoops of his showy frames almost as electrically as they burst into telegrams and "specials." He pranced into the exhibitions on their back; he was the reporter on canvas, the ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James
... the September in which we find at Greenhill Fair—he fell in with a travelling circus which was performing in the outskirts of a northern town. Troy introduced himself to the manager by taming a restive horse of the troupe, hitting a suspended apple with a pistol-bullet fired from the animal's back when in full gallop, ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... Englishman, who arrived at Hongkong from Manila February 11, gives in detail evidence of the conspiracy of the insurgent swarms in attacking the American army. He was at a circus where there were no natives when our soldiers were called out. They behaved nobly, disarming natives, but not killing them. There was mysterious shooting going on in the city "when an American shell struck a tree 200 yards away, and four natives dropped to the ground. The trees were found ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... earth would he groan-like?" wondered Shuey to himself. "He does that, sir," he continued aloud; "didn't Mrs. Ellis ever tell you about the time at the circus? She was there herself, with three children she borrowed and an unreasonable gyurl, with a terrible big screech in her and no sense. Yes, sir, Mr. Lossing he is mighty cliver with his hands! There come a yell of 'Lion loose! lion loose!' at that circus, just ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... speedily verified. At the end of two miles Mary stopped short and began backing, deliberately and systematically, as if to slow music in a circus. Recovering from the surprise of the halt, which had taken him wholly unawares, Lynde gathered the slackened reins firmly in his hand and pressed his spurs to the mare's flanks, with no other effect than slightly to accelerate the ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... warded off; but the rejoicings which celebrated its termination had, owing to a domestic revolution, almost proved fatal to the authority of Justinian himself. A conflict of the so-called Blue and Green factions in the circus, in 532, was but an outburst of political discontent, which went so far as to elect a rival emperor, Hypatius. Justinian himself was struck with dismay, and had made preparations for flight; but the vigor and determination ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... high-shouldered bottle of Santa Cruz rum ogles with a peculiarly knowing air a shriveled lemon on a shelf; now and then a farmer rides across country to talk crops and stock and take a friendly glass with Tobias; and now and then a circus caravan with speckled ponies, or a menagerie with a soggy elephant, halts under the swinging sign, on which there is a dim mail-coach with four phantomish horses driven by a portly gentleman whose head has been washed off by ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... curious!—when I look down everything in this wonderful ship seems to have no bottom, and when I look up, nothing appears to have any top, while, if I look backward or forward things seem to have no end! Ah! I see something now. Coming in from the light prevented me at first. Why, it's like a huge circus!" ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 actor 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
... days, as were inhuman sports in the days of their political decline. Where was the spirit of religion, as it was even in India and Egypt, when women were debased; when every man and woman held a human being in cruel bondage; when home was abandoned for the circus and the amphitheatre; when the cry of the mourner was unheard in shouts of victory; when women sold themselves as wives to those who would pay the highest price, and men abstained from marriage unless they could fatten on rich dowries; when utility was the spring of every action, and demoralizing ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... my father. "You call that stuff supper? Why, the child is getting thinner than a circus lemonade—" ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... field of these Swiss mountain falls is a high mountain valley of amphitheatrical form, known as the Diablerets, or the devil's own district. This great circus, which lies at the height of about four thousand feet above the sea, is walled around on its northern side by a precipice, above which rest, or rather once rested, a number of mountain peaks of great bulk. The region has long been valued for the excellent pasturage which the head of the ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... Ninomaru. Yesterday a circular race-track had been staked off, hurdles erected for leaping, thousands of wooden seats prepared for invited or privileged spectators, and a grand lodge built for the Governor, all before sunset. The place looked like a vast circus, with its tiers of plank seats rising one above the other, and the Governor's lodge magnificent with wreaths and flags. School children from all the villages and towns within twenty-five miles had arrived in surprising ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... and still more romantic. The fresh and lovely Rydal Mount seems merely the retirement of a gentleman, rather than the haunt of a poet. He showed his benignity of disposition in several little things, especially in his attentions to a young boy we had with us. This boy had left the circus, exhibiting its feats of horsemanship, in Ambleside, "for that day only," at his own desire to see Wordsworth; and I feared he would be dissatisfied, as I know I should have been at his age, if, when called to ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... she cried, closing her eyes. "Copernicus Droop said that side weight would be terrible if we travelled too fast. Why, I'm so heavy sideways I feel like as if I weighed 497-1/2 pounds like that fat woman in the circus down to Keene." ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... British flying corps, "The real essential strength of this arm is the organisation of its repairs. Here is one of the repair vans through which our machine guns go. It is a motor workshop on wheels. But at any time all this park, everything, can pack up and move forward like Barnum and Bailey's Circus. The machine guns come through this shop in rotation; they go out again, cleaned, repaired, made new again. Since we got all that working we have heard nothing of a machine gun jamming in any air fight ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... a circus, and there he found his vocation, rose and throve, married the prima-donna, and is part owner. He seems very respectable, and was so friendly and affectionate that I ventured to consult him; when, on hearing whom I was seeking, he became warmly interested, ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... advance the season to the westward? There are ortolans at Agen, but none at Bordeaux. The buildings on the canal and the Garonne are mostly of brick, the size of the bricks the same with that of the ancient Roman brick, as seen in the remains of their buildings in this country. In those of a circus at Bordeaux, considerable portions of which are standing, I measured the bricks, and found them nineteen or twenty inches long, eleven or twelve inches wide, and from one and a half to two inches ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... pill is on tap, and likewise the sarsaparilla, And on the fence and the barn, quite worthy of S. Botticelli, Frisk the lithe leopard and gnu, in malachite, purple, and crimson, That we may know at a glance the circus is ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... word with man or woman without this sort of reference to Canaan and, collaterally, to Miss Sally Madeira. Miss Sally, he had perceived early, excited in the hill-farm people a species of awe, as though she were on a par with the circus, thaumaturgic, almost too good to ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... I never recovered. My mind learned the comfort of association with other minds which conceived only the most elementary thoughts. The savage vulgarity of stevedores, strike-breakers, ships' waiters, circus crews, and soldiers had a charm to me of which I had never before dreamed. I entered the brotherhood of those at life's bottom and found that again I was looked upon as a man superior to my associates and perhaps more fortunate. ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child |
