"Acrobat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Whist! Was that a shillin' he gave ye? That makes ten ye have now, thin. Bun like a hare an' put ut on Acrobat at the best ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 21, 1920 • Various
... the muscles of the back, the suspended insect raises itself and fixes the talons of the anterior limbs in the empty skin above it. Never did acrobat, hanging by the toes to the bar of a trapeze, raise himself with so stupendous a display of strength in the loins. This gymnastic feat accomplished, the rest ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... being so material," he went on composedly, "but I want a drink, and I'm not acrobat enough to manage that, even with your help, while we're doing thirty ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... first, the third on the shoulders of the second; and then the whole trio falls forward across the chasm, the top one grasping some bush or creeper on the other side; so that a living bridge is formed, on which the heroine (herself, it would seem, something of an acrobat) can cross the dizzy gulf and bid defiance to the baffled villain. This is clearly a dramatic crisis within our definition; but, no less clearly, it is not a piece of rational or commendable drama. To say ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... the lift had returned and ascended with another covey of fancy costumes, including a man with a nose a foot long and a girl with bright green hair, dressed as an acrobat. On its next journey the lift held Tommy and Nick's party, and it held ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... street venders, the donkey boys begging and pulling at the clothing of the visitors, the pompous drivers of camels beseeching the visitors to try their "ship of the desert;" tom-tom pounders, reed blowers, fakirs, child acrobat beggars, Mohammedans, Copts, Jews, Franks, Greeks, Armenians, Nubians, Soudanese, Arabs, Turks, and men and women from all over the Levant, all in the gorgeous apparel of the East, filling the booths or strolling about the street. They were the happiest lot of ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... in a soft monotone, while they pulled hard for the mouth of the bay. The priest and I were fairly comfortable in the stern, the steersman perched behind us on the very edge of the combing, balancing himself to the rise and fall of the boat as an acrobat on a rope. I laid my head on my bag and fell asleep before the sea had been reached. The last sound in my ears was the voice of ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... of these cases, he was "managing" the poor women's "affairs" for them.) One or two boys belonged to people living abroad. Indeed, the worst bully in the school was a half-caste, whose smile, when he showed his gleaming teeth, boded worse than any other boy's frown. He was a wonderful acrobat, and could do extraordinary tricks of all sorts. My being nimble and ready made me very useful to him as a confederate in the exhibitions which his intense vanity delighted to give on half-holidays, and kept ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... thing was to ward off the dull agony, the killing depression, and manias generally. Fortunately I was of a very active disposition, and as a pastime I took to gymnastics, even as I had at Montreux. I became a most proficient tumbler and acrobat, and could turn two or three somersaults on dashing down from the sloping roof of my pearl-shell hut; besides, I became a splendid high jumper, with and without the pole. Another thing I interested myself in was the construction ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... athlete, a musician, an acrobat, a Lothario, a grim fighter, a sport of the first water. All day long the cat loafs about the house, takes things easy, sleeps by the fire, and allows himself to be pestered by the attentions of ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... after having partially recovered from his fright, was to examine the plank from which, like an acrobat from his spring-board, he had made that ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... olive green, nor his cloak with its morocco collar, nor the striped blue cotton shirt. In this queer figure—so original that we cannot rub it out—how many divers personalities we come across! In the first place, what an acrobat, what a circus, what a battery, all in one, is the man himself, his vocation, and his tongue! Intrepid mariner, he plunges in, armed with a few phrases, to catch five or six thousand francs in the frozen seas, ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... I cry in my sleep when I dream about a muffin! I thought at first that getting out of bed before my eyes are fairly open, and turning myself into a circus acrobat by doing every kind of overhand, foot, arm and leg contortion that the mind of cruel man could invent to torture a human being with, would kill me before I had been at it a week, but when I read on page sixteen that ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... undertake what he regarded as a needlessly hazardous task. His boldest and most seemingly reckless feats were to him no more than the every-day work of a man of a strong mind, of a stout heart, and of a perfectly trained body, who had so completely mastered every detail of his profession as gymnast, acrobat, and aeronaut, that he had come to have absolute faith in himself, downright abiding certainty that within his sphere of work not only must he succeed, but that, in the very nature of things it was quite ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... eyes would brighten (but not at the print), and subsiding into the arm-chair she would suck back again the soul of the moment; or, for sometimes she was restless, would pull out book after book and swing across the whole space of her life like an acrobat from bar to bar. She had had her moments. Meanwhile, the great clock on the landing ticked and Sandra would hear time accumulating, and ask herself, "What for? ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... Bohemians, and other wandering troupes who stole the holy things from the Church of St. Martin, and in the place and exact situation of Madam the Virgin, left by way of insult and mockery to our Holy Faith, an abandoned pretty little girl, about the age of an old dog, stark naked, an acrobat, and of Moorish descent like themselves. For this almost nameless crime it was equally decided by the king, people, and the churchmen that the Mooress, to pay for all, should be burned and cooked alive in the square near the fountain where the herb market is. Then the ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... and child were already consuming their scant allowance of food. Ada Greene was standing self-poised, swaying like a slender reed with the motion of the raft, so as never to lose her balance, like a young acrobat, with her folded arms, her floating hair, and fair Aurora ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... there are often far from delectable. The singing is sometimes tolerable, and sometimes abominable. Some of the singers are mere animated beer casks, too lazy and conceited to practise the self-control and physical training that is expected as a matter of course from an acrobat, a jockey or a pugilist. The women's dresses are prudish and absurd. It is true that Kundry no longer wears an early Victorian ball dress with "ruchings," and that Fresh has been provided with a quaintly modish ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... stand it no longer. "Look here, Harry," I said, "if you must know it, she looks upon you as an acrobat—a paid performer." ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... drag the heavy mass that comes after. Their assistant, the anal finger, is remarkably strong. With no support, the larva turns over, head downwards, and remains suspended when shifting from one sprig to another. This Jack-in-the-bowl is a rope-dancer, a consummate acrobat, performing its evolutions amid the slender sprigs without ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... unconscious health which made her good to see, although her face was too broad to be pretty. She smiled easily, and her teeth were white and even. Her hand he noticed was as strong as steel and brown as leather. Her neck rose from her shoulders like that of an acrobat, and she walked with the sense of security which comes from ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... consolation for me, for I saw at last a chat baby. He was a quiet, well-behaved little fellow, with streaks on throat and breast, and dull yellow underparts. His manners were subdued, and gave no hint of the bumptious acrobat he might live ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... and most sullen-looking of all. They did not join in the general barking and uproar, but kept their heads buried in the straw. Once, as we were watching them, away off in a remote end of the building, an acrobat began his performance of walking on a rope and jumping through rings, high up in the air. Then these hounds suddenly lifted themselves erect, and, fixing their sharp eyes on that little red and blue speck of a man suspended ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... longer take any one seriously—a sad state of mind for those who write or teach! How lightly must one hold his readers and hearers to approach them in such an attitude! To him who has preserved enough honesty, nothing is more repugnant than the careless irony of an acrobat of the tongue or pen, who tries to dupe honest and ingenuous men. On one side openness, sincerity, the desire to be enlightened; on the other, chicanery making game of the public! But he knows not, the liar, how far he is misleading himself. ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... remotely observing eye upon the productions of this particular playwright through that medium for a long time. They formed a manifestation of the outer world fit enough to draw a glance of speculation from the inner; their author was an acrobat of ideas. Doubtless we are all clowns in the eyes of the angels, yet we have the habit of supposing that they sometimes look down upon us. It was thus, if the parallel is not exaggerated, that Arnold regarded the author of The Victim of Virtue. ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... Next an acrobat came somersaulting in. He did all sorts of strange things, such as balancing himself upside down on the broad shoulders of Mr. Brooks, and tying himself into a kind of knot and so entangling his limbs that it became impossible to tell the legs from ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... naughtily. She was standing up, cup in hand, but even as she spoke she subsided on to a footstool by Miss Briskett's side, with a sudden lithe collapse of the body, which made that good lady gasp in dismay. She had never seen anybody but a professional acrobat move so quickly or unexpectedly, and felt convinced that the tea must have been spilt, and crumbs scattered wholesale over the carpet. But no! not even a drop had fallen into the saucer, and there sat Cornelia nibbling at an undamaged sandwich with little, strong, white ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... glorious gallop after 'Starlight' and his gang, When they bolted from Sylvester's on the flat; How the sun-dried reed-beds crackled, how the flint-strewn ranges rang To the strokes of 'Mountaineer' and 'Acrobat'; Hard behind them in the timber, harder still across the heath, Close behind them through the tea-tree scrub we dashed; And the golden-tinted fern leaves, how they rustled underneath! And the honeysuckle osiers, ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... world is to lose!" he exclaimed as he died; and artist he was, but in the Roman sense; one that enveloped in the same contempt the musician, acrobat and actor. It was the artist that played the flute while gladiators died and lovers embraced; it was the artist that ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... wondered what he could have said to elicit that laugh. When she glanced back, the old frontiersman had Lizzie standing on his outstretched hand holding to a branch overhead peering in a deserted hawk's nest. Even as Eleanor looked, the little future acrobat went scrabbling up into the tree ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... to be overrun; he stops the roll with a sudden sure grasp applied at just the right moment to be effective. Sometimes he allows himself to be carried up bodily, clinging to the cant-hook like an acrobat to a bar, until the log has rolled once; when, his weapon loosened, he drops lightly, easily to the ground. And it is exciting to pile the logs on the sleigh, first a layer of five, say; then one of six smaller; of but three; of two; until, at the very apex, the last is dragged slowly up ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... ring' is that with them Beauty is an unconscious result not a conscious aim, the result in fact of the mathematical calculation of curves and distances, of absolute precision of eye, of the scientific knowledge of the equilibrium of forces, and of perfect physical training. A good acrobat is always graceful, though grace is never his object; he is graceful because he does what he has to do in the best way in which it can be done—graceful because he is natural. If an ancient Greek were to come ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... you've given him plenty of reason to think it. You can't bring your crate in to the base without stunting around and showing off and risking your damn neck. That's why he sent me along with you this trip. Just to see that you act like a pilot—instead of circus acrobat." ...
— Larson's Luck • Gerald Vance
... 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 entered on his ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various
... agile as a young monkey, Lydia let herself down, landing with a spring of which an acrobat might have boasted, ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... stupid but obscene vaudeville piece, and vicious topical songs were sung (a thunder of applause); an animated chansonnette-singer screeched and pulled about with her naked, excessively whitened shoulders, and winked with her exaggeratedly painted eyes; a woman acrobat, raising her legs, attired in pink tights, above her head, was dancing ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... the wants of the civilized man, and therefore he does not wait to supply them before he seeks to gratify others. When man rises in the scale of civilization, his whole nature rises. You can't mount a ladder piecemeal; your head will go up first, unless you are an acrobat, and choose to go up feet foremost; but even if you are Gabriel Ravel, your whole body must needs ascend together. The savage is comfortable, not according to your notions of comfort, but according to his own. Comfort is not positive, but relative. If, with your present habits, you could ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... hear it: I only saw it on a program. But it's clear shes an acrobat. It explains how she saved Percival. And it ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... straighten matters out; for though the flag-episode was after all no fault of Slaney's, there were a few little things which had escaped even his Napoleonic memory; and it was only by combining the feats of an acrobat with those of a juggler that I saved my reputation during ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... bumblebee booms along. Owing to his great strength, an inverted, pendent blossom, from which he must cling upside down, has no more terrors for him than a trapeze for the trained acrobat. His long tongue - if he is one of the largest of our sixty-two species of Bombus - can suck almost any flower unless it is especially adapted to night-flying sphinx moths, but can he drain this? He is the truest benefactor of ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... her arm and drew her closer to him. At the Empire they found two gallery seats and watched a Japanese acrobat balance himself upon five hoops and a ladder. A lady in far from immaculate evening dress, who sang of a flowing river which possessed eternal and immutable qualities chiefly concerned with love and locks and unswerving fidelity, appealed to little Lois' sentiment and she looked ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... of the porch A slender bind-weed springs, And climbs, like airy acrobat, The trellises, and swings And dances in the golden sun In fairy loops ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... with his palpi, or feelers, he teases the buxom gossip, who answers with curious skips and bounds. Gripping a thread with her front tarsi, or fingers, she turns, one after the other, a number of back somersaults, like those of an acrobat on the trapeze. Having done this, she presents the under-part of her paunch to the dwarf and allows him to fumble at it a little with his feelers. ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... not see any fun in the situation. Poor Petal, clinging to the high branch of the tree, and faintly mewing, touched their hearts, so Neale went up like a professional acrobat and after some difficulty brought ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... she was tardy, and Mysie fidgeted about and nearly distracted her. Thus, when she reached the nursery, Primrose was already in her little white bed-gown, and was being incited by Valetta to caper about on her cot, like a little acrobat, as her sisters said, while Mrs. Halfpenny declared that 'they were making the child that rampageous, she should not get her to sleep ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... As he looked into her face, marked with a life of transgression and already claimed by fate, he built up in his own soul a picture of inimitable chastity. He tried to see the playmate of a god. The curtain decorated with the distorted face of a harlequin, the acrobat and the dog trainer at the adjacent table, who were quarrelling over their money, the four half-grown gamblers directly behind him, the big fat woman who was lying stretched out on a bench with a red handkerchief over her face and trying ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... dancer of some repute, a circumstance which she owes entirely to me. I picked her up, a mere child in the streets of London, turning cart-wheels for a living. I took her and trained her as an acrobat. She was known on the stage as Toby the Tumbler. Everyone took her for a boy. Later, she developed a talent for dancing. It was then that I decided to marry her. She desired the marriage even more than I did." Again he smiled ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... man shot past them like a catapult, and with one bound had reached the carved cornice of the portico with his right hand. The whole structure quivered, but in another moment he had drawn himself up with the ease of a practised acrobat, and was standing on the top. It was ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... noise there,—a Norman idea, difficult to realize, for he could scarcely scrape together eight thousand francs a year; his mother still being alive and possessing a life-interest in a valuable estate in Alencon. This young man had already, during previous visits to Paris, tried his rope, like an acrobat, and had recognized the great vice of the social replastering of 1830. He meant to turn it to his own profit, following the example of the longest heads of the bourgeoisie. This requires a rapid glance on one of the effects of the new order ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... soon found out how limited is the circle of fame for even a successful writer. For one person who would read a book, there were fifty who would go to hear a famous singer or actor, and a hundred who would crowd to see a clever acrobat. As she read more she discovered that what she had fondly imagined were ideas originated by her own intellect, was, in reality, the echo only of thought long since given to mankind by other minds, in other words, often better than her own. Her own silent claim to genius was greatly modified; she ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... man trying to lift himself in his own arms, or take his head in his teeth, exploits as dangerous, as ungraceful, and as useless, except to glorify the showman and bring wages in, as the feats of an acrobat. ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... player to exhibit within a brief space the utmost possible variety of finger gymnastics. To learn to perform these feats one had to devote his whole lifetime to practising them, just like any circus acrobat; and so his mind became atrophied, and a naive and elemental vanity was all that was left ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... than fear, this lively little acrobat stops his hammering or hatcheting at your approach, and stretching himself out from the tree until it would seem he must fall off, he peers down at you, head downward, straight into your upturned opera-glasses. If there is too much snow on the upper side of a branch, watch ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... her. "Do you not know what von Bulow said: If I miss my practising for one day I notice it; if for two days my friends notice it; if I miss it for three days the public notices it. The artist is like an acrobat, juggling always, intent always on his three golden balls kept flying in the air. That is what it is like. Every atom of their strength is used. People, like my guardian, literally give ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... the ordinary mortal doesn't wish to be reminded of. Some day—if I don't turn stoker or acrobat beforehand, and give up peddling in the emotions—some day I shall write music to it. That would ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... all amount to? They would say the same of any acrobat in a circus whose joints were a bit more limber than those of the rest of his tribe. That does not remove their contempt for ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... I mean is never physical, and has nothing in common with that acute sensation experienced when the acrobat is seen to miss the rope in mid-air as he swings from bar to bar. There is no shock in it, for shock is of the nerves, arresting life; the thrill I speak of intensifies and sets it rising in a wave that flows. It is of the spirit. It wounds, yet marvellously. It is unearthly. Therein, ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... little darkey!" exclaimed Miss Leary, pointing to a diminutive lad who was walking on his hands, with his feet balanced in the air. At sight of the buggy and its occupants this sable acrobat, still retaining his inverted position, moved toward the newcomers, and, reversing himself with a sudden spring, brought up standing ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... escapes are put up so as to conform to the letter of the law; and in such manner that no one but a sailor or an acrobat would be likely to trust himself to them. In crowded city buildings, and in other places where the ordinary means of escape are not in duplicate, it is essential that fire escapes should be provided; but it is a great deal better to make a mill building ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... Crandall's Acrobat or Circus Blocks, with which hundreds of queer, fantastic figures may be formed by any child, 1.15 Table-Croquet. This can be used on any table—making a Croquet-Board, at trifling expense 1.50 Game of Bible Characters ...
— The Nursery, Volume 17, No. 101, May, 1875 • Various
... curves. Emerson was also a dignified skater, but with a shorter stroke, and stopping occasionally to take breath, or look about him, as he did in his lectures. Thoreau came sometimes and performed rare glacial exploits, interesting to watch, but rather in the line of the professional acrobat. What a transfiguration of Hawthorne, to think of him skating alone amid the reflections of ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... way to get it was to shake it down, and to our surprise, before we knew who had volunteered, we saw Doctor Bradford, in his immaculate white flannels, throw off his coat and go shinning up the tree like an acrobat in a circus. He had to shake and shake the limb before he could dislodge the coon, but at last it let go, and the dogs had it before it fairly touched the ground. We girls didn't wait to see what they ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... was having a drink in there began to swear, and cleared out with his half-pint in his hand into the bar. But when suddenly he sprang upon a table and continued to dance among the glasses, the landlord interfered. He didn't want any 'acrobat tricks in the taproom.' They laid their hands on him. Having had a glass or two, Mr. Swaffer's foreigner tried to expostulate: was ejected forcibly: got a ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad
... undertook to support himself, not without a word of thanks to the acrobat. Once more he surveyed the mystic circle of figures. He had never been so close to men and women in tights before. Somehow they were not so alluring as when viewed from the blue seats of the circus tent. The fluffy, abbreviated tarletan skirts of ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... fingers closed around the weapon, and he clutched it convulsively, leaping to his feet like an acrobat. ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... constitute a huge hippodrome, where, if you can succeed in amusing your spectators or make them gasp in amazement at your rhetorical legerdemain, they will applaud vociferously, and pet you, as they would a graceful danseuse, or a dexterous acrobat, or a daring equestrian; but if you attempt to educate or lecture them, you will either declaim to empty benches or be hissed down. They expect you to help them kill ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... was absorbed by later and equally interesting events: an acrobat broke his leg at the circus; an actress made her debut at a small theatre: and the item of the 28th was ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... dashing on to death. As she approached I was electrified. Something told me she was Bob's fiancee. A moment and I was charging the hunter under that tree. Jumping up out of the saddle, I clasped the solitary branch with both hands, and turning as an acrobat would on a trapeze, I hung by my legs, hands downwards, calling to the lady to clasp them. The fiery steeds and the oscillating carriage dashed under me—our hands met. With a superhuman effort I raised the fainting fairy form out of the vehicle as it passed like a whirlwind. The next ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... step higher. The experience of centuries shows that gymnastics exist for the soul as well as for the body. But what the soul's gymnastics are is our secret. What is it that gives to the sailor the sight of an eagle, that endows the acrobat with the skill of a monkey, and the wrestler with muscles of iron? Practice and habit. Then why should not we suppose the same possibilities in the soul of the man as well as in his body? Perhaps on the grounds of modern science—which either dispenses with the soul altogether, or does not ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... "Let God judge whether that damned acrobat shall pay for his writhing! But the other shall be my first business. So she is here—you have seen her? What do ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... perverse example of Human Nature. Did it ever strike you that the globe and the people who live on its surface, are always marching different ways? While all the restless tide of humanity moves to the West, the globe turns itself to the East. On its surface, Man is much like the acrobat we see at the theatres, who, mounted on his parti-colored ball, faces one way while it moves the other. It must be a queer spectacle to those who, from the planetary dress circle of the universe, are watching us through their ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... adj.; lustihood^, stamina, nerve, muscle, sinew, thews and sinews, physique; pith, pithiness; virtility, vitality. athletics, athleticism^; gymnastics, feats of strength. adamant, steel, iron, oak, heart of oak; iron grip; grit, bone. athlete, gymnast, acrobat; superman, Atlas, Hercules, Antaeus^, Samson, Cyclops, Goliath; tower of strength; giant refreshed. strengthening &c v.; invigoration, refreshment, refocillation^. [Science of forces] dynamics, statics. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... it was a pity the talented author had ever since allowed himself to remain under the delusion that he had not only buried the grammarian, but his grammar also. It is doubtless true that Mr. Browning has some provoking ways, and is something too much of a verbal acrobat. Also, as his witty parodist, the pet poet of six generations of Cambridge undergraduates, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... advantage of being misunderstood. Mr. Bernard Shaw is always represented by those who disagree with him, and, I fear, also (if such exist) by those who agree with him, as a capering humorist, a dazzling acrobat, a quick-change artist. It is said that he cannot be taken seriously, that he will defend anything or attack anything, that he will do anything to startle and amuse. All this is not only untrue, but it is, glaringly, the opposite ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... you had to undress, and then go down to the cellar to let on the wet.) No sooner did the kitten remark the unfamiliar sensation, than he departed thence with a willingness quite creditable in one who was not a professional acrobat, and met his mother on ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... super-physical equipment to the strenuous work of the movies. Fairbanks, in addition to being blessed with a strong, lithe body, has developed it by expert devotion to every form of athletic sport. He swims well, is a crack boxer, a good polo player, a splendid wrestler, a skilful acrobat, a fast runner, and ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... nature." When my father, for instance, who has long suspected the soundness of your doctrines, laid down one of his lurid hell-fire premises as an active reason for seeking salvation, I observed that you showed the agility of a spiritual acrobat in avoiding the conflict. ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... room and stood aghast in the doorway at the spectacle of Mr. Gunnill, with his clenched fists held tightly by his side, bounding into the air with all the grace of a trained acrobat, while Mr. Drill encouraged him from an easy-chair. Mr. Gunnill smiled broadly as he met their astonished gaze, and with a final bound kicked something along the floor and subsided into ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... just for the joy of the season that he played in the air, or was there, after all, someone besides himself to be pleased with the sport? Who knows whether the little acrobat was showing his mate what a splendid fellow he was, how strong of wing and skillful in the tricks of flight? Be that as it may, the mate of Mis was satisfied in some way or other, and went with him on a voyage of discovery one afternoon, when the ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... heard its master's voice and saw his form—for his features must have been invisible against the strong light—the scowl vanished from its little visage. With a shriek of joy it sprang like an acrobat from a spring-board and plunged into the hermit's bosom—to the alarm of the Malay, who thought this was a furious attack. We need not say that Van der Kemp received his faithful little servant kindly, and it was quite touching to observe the monkey's intense affection ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... that in the ages past men believed the body to be the individual, and they endeavored through care of the body to build up mental as well as physical power. In those days the acrobat and the sage were found working side by side in the gymnasium, the one to gain physical strength, the other to increase his mental ability, and ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... the swimmer; how was it with the agile and dexterous skater; how with the acrobat, and what but practice has just enabled WESTON to walk one hundred and twelve miles in twenty-four hours, and four ...
— A Project for Flying - In Earnest at Last! • Robert Hardley
... of course, in his element. None of the others could do nearly so well as he when it came to this sort of thing. Probably Hugh had remembered this circumstance when picking the acrobat out as one of his party, ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler
... is one type of the successful man of our day. Where thousands of better and stronger men struggle vainly for fair recognition, he and his kind are glorified. In comparison with a really energetic man, he is an acrobat. The crowd stares at him and applauds, and there is nothing he cares for so much as that ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... these sons of Hugh, was not what an observer would call puny. He weighed nearly one hundred and eighty pounds and never met his match except in his brothers. William could outlift him, David could out-run him and outleap him, but he was more, agile than either—was indeed a skilled acrobat. ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... being on the same plane does not always answer. Did you ever see an acrobat try that trick? He puts one leg on the table, then tries to lift his whole body by grasping the other leg and putting it on a level to begin with. Logically, it ought to succeed and carry the body with ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... was impossible, we offered a large reward to this member if he were proven right. We sent to the theater and found the acrobat in question. He had just finished his act and kindly consented ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... acrobat did look as if he had been sick and was not yet entirely over it. He walked slowly over to one of the ropes and grasped it in his ...
— Out with Gun and Camera • Ralph Bonehill
... neither sing nor dance; I cannot recite verse nor play upon the piano; I am no acrobat nor leaper nor high kicker; yet I wish to go upon the stage. ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... not a sardine, nor securely confined in some inhospitable vault. It was impossible to turn over without unbuttoning one side of the deck-cover and going through contortions that would have done credit to a first-class acrobat. For the first time in my life I found it necessary to get out of bed in order to turn ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... choking," the Ramblin' Kid replied without moving from where he stood, "—he's sufferin' some, but he ain't chokin'. He's got quite a lot of wind yet an' is gettin' some valuable experience. That cat's what I call a genuine acrobat!" he mused as the terrified creature leaped frantically in the air and somersaulted backward, striking and clawing desperately to free itself of the can tightly wedged ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... was impatient and at first refused to be disturbed, but when the servant at last made it plain that it was Hannibal C. Wharton, not his son Robert, calling, she leaped from her bed with the agility of an acrobat. ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... have only light gymnastics and folk dancing from this on," announced Helen. "There is to be a new gym instructor; a young man. He is a physical culture expert and an acrobat. He is to ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... thought that I was going out to eat husks with the swine as the Prodigal Son did, and told me not to take it into my mind ever again to cross the threshold of my father's house in my future capacity as acrobat or bareback rider, as he was pleased to express it. His door was not open to such scum! Well, I'll fight it down! Only I'm sorry for my poor, dear mother.—You can't imagine with what abysmal hatred a man of his kind considers the theatre ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... the yacht, permitted Tagg and Royson to accept the proffered civility. They passed a pleasant evening, and saw the female acrobat negotiate a thirty-feet jump, head downward, taken through space by the automobile. Then they elected to walk to No. 3. Basin, a distance of a mile and a half. It was about eleven o'clock and a fine night. The docks road, a thoroughfare ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... spectators, who hung over the side of the steamer. In the foreground were acrobats of every description, dressed in all the colors of the rainbow; among them was a group of five musicians of tender years, an acrobat in pink tights who was exploiting the skill of his little daughter, scarcely five years of age, and another similarly cruel father, who was compelling a little girl to go through all manner of contortions. There was also a group of little girl dancers. This picturesque but painful ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... absolute, a something that is to be imposed on the language from Greek or Latin models, but merely the language itself, running in its natural grooves, and with enough of an individual accent to allow the artist's personality to be felt as a presence, not as an acrobat. We understand more clearly now that what is effective and beautiful in one language is a vice in another. Latin and Eskimo, with their highly inflected forms, lend themselves to an elaborately periodic structure that would be boring in English. English allows, even demands, a ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... Michel the sole other diversion in a true pilgrim's round of pious devotions. Later on in this eventful day, we stumbled on a somewhat startling variation to the penitential order of the performances. In a side alley, beneath a friendly overhanging rock and two protecting roof-eaves, an acrobat was making her professional toilet. When she emerged to lay a worn strip of carpet on the rough cobbles of the street, she presented a pathetic figure in the gold of the afternoon sun. She was old ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... of the Egyptian Hall, I reminded him of the incident. He remembered it perfectly; and we fell to chatting about the wonderful success of the 'mystery,' and about his and the lady's professional career. He had begun life when a boy as a street acrobat, had become a street conjuror, had married the 'mysterious lady' out of the 'saw- dust,' as he expressed it - meaning out of a travelling circus. After that, 'things had gone 'ard' with them. They had exhausted their resources in every sense. One night, lying awake, ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... dazzled them into admiration, for he possessed all the attributes of a Crichton. Beautiful in aspect, symmetrical in proportions, graceful in carriage, capacious in intellect, erudite as a Benedictine, agile as an Acrobat, daring as Scaevola, persuasive as Alcibiades, skilled in all manly pastimes, familiar with the philosophies of the scholar and the worldling, an orator, a musician, a courtier, a linguist,—such was the celebrated Cagliostro. In his abilities, he was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... infinitely more strenuous, the breaking-in of the dances under the supervision of the famous Johnson Miller. Johnson Miller was a little man with snow-white hair and the india-rubber physique of a juvenile acrobat. Nobody knew actually how old he was, but he certainly looked much too advanced in years to be capable of the feats of endurance which he performed daily. He had the untiring enthusiasm of a fox-terrier, and had bullied and scolded ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... most of the doubles are men, even for the women stars, like Kitty Carson always carries one who used to be a circus acrobat. She couldn't hardly do one of the things you see her doing, but when old Dan gets on her blonde transformation and a few of her clothes, he's her to the life in a long shot, or even in mediums, if he ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... Nick. "I'm wasting away to a mere shadow trying to keep my balance in this wedge. If I forget to breathe with both lungs at the same time he tells me I'm upsetting the equilibrium of the blessed thing. I feel most all the time like I'm the acrobat in the circus trying to stand on one toe ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... As the acrobat who has mastered every branch of his art, from the spidery contortions of the India-rubber man to the double somersault and the flying trapeze, is to the well-developed individual of ordinary muscular habits, so is the language of Rueckert ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... so well, would be startling. This change is known as a 'complete metamorphosis.' The dragon-fly is another insect with a complete metamorphosis. How the dragon-fly moults you will see in the illustration (fig. 1): even an acrobat might envy him! ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... into the tendencies of the age, the adoption of a system, and faith in fixed principles—that is to say, a scheme of jurisprudence, a summing-up, and a verdict. The critic is then a magistrate of ideas, the censor of his time; he fulfils a sacred function; while in the former case he is but an acrobat who turns somersaults for a living so long as he had a leg to stand on. Between Claude Vignon and Lousteau lay the gulf that divides mere ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... other swords began to gleam anew. From all the quarters of that field of fight the bravos were gathering again, all there were left of them, and Lagardere was now alone. With the activity of the skilled acrobat he leaped backward to the cart, and, while he still faced his enemies and while his terrible sword glittered in ceaseless movement, he snatched the child from the sheltering hay with his left hand, and, turning, began to run at his full speed towards the bridge. There were bravos in ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... The opossum's hind foot has a genuine opposable thumb; and he also uses his tail in climbing as a supernumerary hand, almost as much as do any of the monkeys. He often suspends himself by it, like an acrobat, swings his body to and fro to get up steam, then lets go suddenly, and flies away to a distant branch, which he clutches by means of his hand-like hind feet. If the toes play him false, he can 'recover ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... (Chevalier au barillet) who endeavours for a year to fill the hermit's little cask at running streams, and endeavours in vain, finds it brimming the moment one tear of true penitence falls into the vessel. Most exquisite in its feeling is the tale of the Tombeur de Notre-Dame—a poor acrobat—a jongleur turned monk—who knows not even the Pater noster or the Credo, and can only offer before our Lady's altar his tumbler's feats; he is observed, and as he sinks worn-out and faint before the shrine, the Virgin is seen ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... standing. The man was short, long-armed, vastly broad at the shoulders, deep-chested: flashy in dress, dull and kind of feature—handsome enough, withal. He was an acrobat. Even in the dim light, he carried the impression of great muscular strength—of grace and agility. For a moment the woman's eyes ran over his stocky body: then, spasmodically clenching her hands, she turned quickly to the boy ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... slenderly built, and dressed in a queer satiny material which fitted him like an acrobat's suit. He was extremely thin as to legs, narrow as to shoulders, deep in the chest and short in the waist. All this, however, they saw after their ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... can jump along your table and sit on their hind legs, and wag their ears; toy snakes; small leaden pigs for good luck; and novelties of every description. Here one sees women with baskets of ecrivisse boiled scarlet; an acrobat tumbles on the pavement, and two men and a girl, as a marine, a soldier, and a vivandiere, in silvered faces and suits, pose in melodramatic attitudes. The vivandiere is rescued alternately from a speedy death by the marine and ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... and Magic we see a man swallowing a sword, or walking through fire, while hard by an acrobat is bending backward and drinking from ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... foot and then the other, sent his shapely legs flying seemingly in a dozen different directions at the same moment, swung his arms, bent his body, cavorted and made contortions that would have honored a professional acrobat. Not only that, but he punctuated the extravagant display by a series of whoops such as had nerved the Shawanoe warriors many a time ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... the arrested current; and so prevents laughter. An instance of this was lately furnished me by a friend who had been witnessing the feats at Franconi's. A tremendous leap had just been made by an acrobat over a number of horses. The clown, seemingly envious of this success, made ostentatious preparations for doing the like; and then, taking the preliminary run with immense energy, stopped short on reaching the first horse, and pretended to ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... to develop your ability along the line of acrobatic dancing rather than as an acrobat. There is a vast difference. As a mere acrobat one has to be a top-liner and wonderfully expert to get any kind of a salary at all, but as an acrobatic dancer you can command a place in the very best stage productions, high class musical comedies, ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... made the most of. Look at an acrobat or a boxer: there is what your limbs might have been made for strength and agility: that is the potential which is in human nature in these respects. I never witnessed a prize-fight, and assuredly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... A ledge in the front trench which enables Tommy to fire "over the top." In rainy weather you have to be an acrobat to even stand on it on ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey |
