"Circus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to die of malnutrition during what you are pleased to term the "long Arctic winter." I have no intention of starving, and as for the "long Arctic winter," I do not believe there is any such beast, as the farmer said when he looked at the kangaroo in the circus. ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... sense. We'll stick till they build a railroad up to us or else we'll let 'em pin a pair of soft-pine overcoats on the two of us. The idea of us calling ourselves wiseacres and doing circus stunts like this! We're suckers! We'll be working in the mines next. I bet I'll see you poulticed onto a pick-handle before ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... Molly. You would have me laughing all the time. There's a circus coming next week; will you ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... you mean, sir," resumed the Inspector, after inflating his lungs for another gust, "what in the name of all the piebald circus clowns that ever jiggered around on sawdust, do you mean by coming on parade dressed like the ringmaster of a traveling monkey-show, sir? Haven't you any more idea of the honor of wearing a United States sword—the noblest weapon on earth, sir—than to make yourself look like the drum-major ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... the mathematician, pleased with his simile, "to appease the howling rabble. But it is mostly circus, and very little bread that our emperors of the ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... force. Their cadres, the skeletons of the battalions of which they are the flesh, are waiting for them—officers, organization, equipment, all is ready. The endless trains decant them; they swing in leisurely columns through the streets to their depots, motley as a circus—foresters, moujiks in fetid sheepskins, cattlemen, and rivermen, Siberians, tow-haired Finns, the wide gamut of the races of Russia, all big or biggish, with those impassive, blunt-featured faces that mask the Russian soul, and all sober. No need ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... will be the same with your speech. A play or a novel is often robbed of much of its interest if you know the plot beforehand. We like to keep guessing as to the outcome. The ability to create suspense is part of woman's power to hold the other sex. The circus acrobat employs this principle when he fails purposely in several attempts to perform a feat, and then achieves it. Even the deliberate manner in which he arranges the preliminaries increases our expectation—we like to be kept waiting. In the last act ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... what co'se othe's may take, my dea' madam, but as faw me, give me neither poverty naw riches; give me political indispensability; the pa-apers have drawn the mantle of charity ove' 'im, till it covers him like a circus-tent." ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... He was a dark man of forty, with Oriental sadness in his eyes. To lend his face capitalistic dignity he had recently grown a pair of side-whiskers, but one day, a week or two after I met him, he saw a circus poster of "Jo Jo, the human dog," and then he hastened to ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... Unreserved—too unreserved—by nature, she was not experienced enough to be reserved by art, and after a little coaxing she answered his remarks readily. She had come to live in Melchester from a village on the Great Plain, and this was the first time that she had ever seen a steam-circus; she could not understand how such wonderful machines were made. She had come to the city on the invitation of Mrs. Harnham, who had taken her into her household to train her as a servant, if she showed any aptitude. Mrs. Harnham was a young lady who before she married had been Miss Edith White, ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... like snakes, their faces flushed by the exertion of their strength; their complexion was rose and white, their eyes flashed sparks, their limbs writhed like cords in the fire; they fell, sprang up again, and caught each other like athletes in a circus, affording their father one of those moments of happiness which would make amends for the keenest anxieties of a busy life. Two other persons, one on the second and one on the first floor, were also looking into the garden, and saying that the old madman was amusing himself ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... thought of a woman rider she had seen at a circus when she was a child. The woman stood on the bare back of one horse and drove six others, three abreast, all going very fast and ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... "I don't know what circus you escaped from, but I crave solitude and I have no time to be bothered with fairy tales," he said ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... old man almost cheerfully. He loved having his own way. He was almost insanely self-willed. It did his dark soul good to triumph over this "circus rider." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... well knew and as he was short of money and a circus was coming to town the next week, he decided to let him go. But not without one last effort to get a little more out of Mike. Now Mike had a hunting knife Tim had long coveted, though it had a rusty blade and a wobbly handle, so ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery
... in the menagerie have been displayed, they may all join in a circus parade, each retaining ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... afraid, miss," returned Friend Othniel. "You just let me run this circus, and I'll get you out all right and ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... but insidious persecution which lay in the solicitations of besieging friends, and more still of the continual temptations which haunted the irresolute Christian in the fascinations of the public amusements. The theatre, the circus, and, far beyond both, the cruel amphitheatre, constituted, for the ancient world, a passionate enjoyment, that by many authors, and especially through one period of time, is described as going to the ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... whole world for a race. The current of the Mississippi drives back that of the Ohio as far as Trinity, so that upon entering the river, the stream is in your favour. The two rivers are together four or five miles wide, and form a sort of circus, enclosed by the shores of Illinois, of Old Kentuck, and her daughter Missouri.[4] We were nearest to the Illinois side, which gave us a small advantage over our opponent, who was more on the Kentucky side, end kept coming on faster and faster, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... there's no limit to what one can imagine. I've imagined myself Joan of Arc, often—and Mrs. Horace Oliver, and Jake Martin's third—supposing he dared outlive Auntie Jinit—and a circus rider, and a pelican of the wilderness, and any other absurd thing, without seriously considering taking up any of ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... than if it were the battle of Cannae," and we learn that some grave Dons actually were thinking of driving to Camford to see the Scotch troops march past, "as though they were volunteers out for a sham-fight, or a circus procession." ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... eyes, nails, teeth, etc. Laws of recreation, Hiking, etc. Kite Making and Flying Gliding and Aeroplaning Circus Stunts Sport Carnival Corn, Apple, Clam Roasts, etc. Moonlight Trips, Rides, etc. ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... congratulate you," exclaimed the young man fervidly. "And I'll wager that you went to school at a cross-roads school-house and rode to town in a farm wagon to see a circus that had lions and elephants; and you probably chopped wood and broke colts and went swimming in an old swimmin'-hole and did all the other things you read about in American biographies and story books. I can see it in your eye; and ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... recklessness and folly?" cried he. "That autograph is one of those weapons which an athlete in the circus cannot afford to lay down. That note proves that Lousteau has no heart, no taste, no dignity; that he knows nothing of the world nor of public morality; that he insults himself when he can find no one else to insult.—None but the son of a provincial citizen imported from Sancerre to ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... man, separates him from his wife by a gross deception, lives with him for a time; and when he leaves her on finding out the fraud, blows her brains out. In the other a Spanish lady, seduced and maltreated by a creole circus-rider of the worst character, declares to a more honourable lover her incurable passion for the scoundrel and takes the veil. The rest are stories of the Italian Renaissance, grimy and gory as usual. Vittoria Accoramboni herself figures, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... This broken circus, where the rock-weeds climb, Flaunting with yellow blossoms, and defy The gods to whom its walls were piled so high, Is now a tragic theatre, where Time Acts his great fable, spreads a stage that shows Past grandeur's story and ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... door in company with several other unfortunates, our hero passed between two galleries through a passage, by which, if the place had been a circus, the horses would have entered, and found himself in a tolerably large room lighted on either side by windows, and panelled half-way up the walls. Down the centre of this room ran a large green-baize-covered table, on the one side of which were ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... followed Westminster in his tour of inspection, and then, after that amazing street of clubs, he soon found himself in the white glare, the kaleidoscopic movement, and the concentrated excitement of Piccadilly Circus. Then he sauntered through Leicester Square and began to drift northward. The gas torches outside places of entertainment had arrested his slow progress. One of the music-halls in the Square appeared to him as iniquitously gorgeous, and he gazed through the wide entrance at the ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... with them. Amongst other creditors was Mr. Wainwright. He, however, was 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 letter, ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... over 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 is carrying thus Cossack drill. ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... a turner, a compositor; I have sown and sold tobacco—the cheap Silver Makhorka kind—have sailed as a stoker on the Azov Sea, have been a fisherman on the Black—on the Dubinin fisheries; I have loaded watermelons and bricks on the Dnieper, have ridden with a circus, have been an actor—I can't even recall everything. And never did need drive me. No, only an immeasurable thirst for life and an insupportable curiosity. By God, I would like for a few days to become a horse, a plant, or a fish, or to be a woman and experience childbirth; I ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... in those parts where light and humorous narration is required. There it is bad, and seems to have been formed upon the style of the sporting newspapers and the local reporters, with now and then a hint from the witty passages of the circus, as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... effective incidents were borrowed from the Circus and the Halls. Mr. DU CALION, who had no other very obvious claims to play the part of a humorous courtier, did his famous ladder-feat—a perfectly gratuitous performance, for, though he was supposed to be rescuing Cinderella through a top-storey window, she had ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... dying at his shanty on Davis | |Street as a result of a difficulty between him and | |Isom Werner over a woman they met on their way home | |from the circus ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... Elisabeth, a few days after this, "I hear that Coulson's circus is coming to Burlingham, and I want to go and ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... minded to think he've joined the riders," declared Billy. "Theer comed a circus here last month, with braave doin's in the way of horsemanship and Merry Andrews, and such like devilries. Us all goes to see it from miles round every year; an' Will was theer. Circus folk do see the world in a way denied to most, and theer manner of life ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... think highly of Ollendorff and I believe Colenso's Arithmetic a great institution. I venerate the men who invent the impossible questions; but I own I have the humblest opinion of those who answer them. I'd as soon take a circus-horse, trained to fire a pistol and sit down like a dog, to carry me across a stiff country, as I'd select one of these fellows for an employ which required energy, activity, or ready-wittedness. There is no such inefficiency as self-sufficiency; and this is the very ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... (that turns out equestrian statues as the Stark Mills do calico-patterns) has pocketed fifty thousand dollars for making a very dead bronze horse stand on his hind-legs. For twenty-five cents I have seen a man at the circus do something more wonderful,—make a very living bay horse dance a redowa round the amphitheatre on his (it occurs to me that hind-legs is indelicate) posterior extremities to the wayward music of an out-of-town (Scotice, out-o'-toon) band. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... Passers-by looked with scorn upon young David Windom and his flaxen-haired wife as they played at the silly game before supper every evening. And they went frequently to the "opera house" at the county seat, ten miles up the river; they did not wait for summer to come with its circus, as all the other farmers were content to do; whenever there was a good "show" at the theatre in town they sent up for reserved seats and drove in for supper at the principal hotel. Altogether, young Mrs. Windom was simply ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... not hurt, I hope," said Martin, suppressing his laughter as his comrade scrambled on to the saddle. "You travel about on the back of your horse at full gallop like a circus rider." ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... like the youngster, who after exhausting all other questions, asked his dazed parent, 'Father, why is why?' Tell me all that happened," he said, seeing the slightly nettled expression on his friend's face. "You see the circus was all over ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... and on the morning set for his leaving, Mrs. Gale and the three trainers harnessed in haste to drive over to Fairfax to see the circus come in. Lydia had refused to go, because, for some reason, she felt a little dull that morning, and Eben had soberly declared his peddling would take him another way. He meant to be off before the middle of the ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... heart-breaking traditions, look out over smiling gardens in the midst of which stand the quiet, orderly, innocent homes of the present race of commonplace men and women. Her vast Colosseum is only an immense quarry. Her proud mausoleum of the Julian Caesars is an unimportant circus. ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... hunters follow the elephant at full gallop; one seizes his companion's reins and secures the horse, while the rider springs to the ground with the same agility as a trained circus-rider, and with one dexterous blow of his flashing sword he divides the back sinew of the elephant's hind leg about 16 inches above the heel. The sword cuts to the bone. The elephant that was thundering forward at a headlong speed suddenly halts; the foot dislocates when the great weight ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... who had the true flavor of Falstaff in him—"a million a minute and your expenses paid." As Burns said of himself, "The rhymes come skelpin, rank and file." Now they are as graceful and sinuous as water-nymphs, and now they come tumbling head over heels, throwing somersaults, like clowns in the circus, with a "Here we are!" I can think of nothing like it but Rabelais, who had the same extraordinary gift of getting all the go out of words. They do not merely play with words; they romp with them, tickle them, tease them, and somehow the ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... used me as well as those of Rome. Besides, the whole reputation of my gallantry is at stake. Give up such a lovely woman to that drunken boy! My character would be gone for ever. No more perfumed tablets, full of vows and raptures. No more toying with fingers at the circus. No more evening walks along the Tiber. No more hiding in chests or jumping from windows. I, the favoured suitor of half the white stoles in Rome, could never again aspire above a freed-woman. You a man of gallantry, and think of such ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... roared he, as, yawning and boring and shaking his head, Parvo dashed through the now yelping scattered pack, making straight for a stiff new gate, which he smashed through, just as a circus pony ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... action conventionally to represent words. At the close of the last century, there were many such; and the reader who may be curious to see the nature of these dumb dramas, may do so in two volumes named "Circusiana," by J.C. Cross, the author of very many that were performed at the Royal Circus, in St. George's Fields. The whole action of the drama was performed to music composed expressly to aid the expression of the performers, among the best of whom were Bologna and D'Egville. It is a class of dramatic art which has now almost entirely ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... when a churchman is killed, it should be with a different weapon than a log, especially when he has behaved like a father. If you went to Spain, would you not see the bull-fight? Well, suppose it is a bull-fight you are going to see? Recollect the ancient Romans of the Circus, and the sports where they killed three hundred lions and a hundred men. Think of the eighty thousand applauding spectators, the sage matrons who took their daughters, and the charming Vestals who made with the thumb of their white hands ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the middle of my baking," Mrs. Carroll said, when Susan was eating a late lunch from the end of the kitchen table, "and here's a special delivery letter for Billy, and Billy's not coming over here to-night! Phil's taking Jimmy and Betts to the circus—they hadn't been gone five minutes ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... Marseilles had been all this for two years while he journeyed from Liverpool for silk and scented soaps—a landmark familiar as the Giant's Causeway, a strange, motley human circus, a veil behind which hid gigantic ghosts.... Until he met La Mielleuse ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... monotonous. Even "dry shopping" 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
... look at the Circus of Gavarni, a natural amphitheatre in the Pyrenees. It is the most picturesque of stereographs, and one of the best. As for the Alhambra, we can show that in every aspect; and if you do not vote the lions in the court of the same a set of mechanical h——gs and nursery bugaboos, we have no ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... fight for the amusement of spectators was introduced; and twelve years later the capture of several elephants in the first Punic war proved the means of introducing the chase, or rather the slaughter, of wild beasts into the Roman circus. The taste for these spectacles increased of course with its indulgence, and their magnificence with the wealth of the city and the increasing facility and inducement to practice bribery which was offered ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... of kindness, I did not see why he should do it at the top of his voice. I had an inexplicable feeling that it was the duty of every one to know something about London, and although I should not have recognized Piccadilly Circus when I saw it, I was quite prepared to put that down to the fog; for if Dennison had not taken so much for granted, I should never willingly have ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... little girls in the well), and even with the younger PITT. I have heard him spoken of as a charlatan, as a chameleon, as a chatterbox, and, by a man who had hoped that the KAISER would be hanged in Piccadilly Circus, as a chouser. Almost all of these estimates are thoroughly fallacious. Let us take, for instance, MACCHIAVELLI. It was the declared opinion of MACCHIAVELLI that for the establishment and maintenance of authority all means may be resorted to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... Roejean, 'and I also noticed, a few minutes since, when I was on the other side of the circus, that she looked at ME ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... back over his shoulder at the speaker—a little, pallid, sour-faced man with the features of a sick circus clown and eyes like two holes burnt in ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... from Paris to share a life that was a dreary contrast to all her previous experience. In any case I cannot hold her blameless for the resulting shipwreck. A bride who comes down late for a most critical little dinner to her husband's family, and attires herself (see cover) like a circus-rider, simply is not giving matrimony a fair chance. Moreover I seem to observe that Mr. ANDREW SOUTAR thinks this was rather sporting in his heroine. He certainly loads the dice in her favour, for, when the inevitable had happened and Martin and Fauvette ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various
... immediately dispelled from the mind, for that the Annals was composed by such a man would have been about as incomprehensible an occurrence, as it would be impossible to conceive that an acrobat who exercises gymnastic tricks upon the backs of galloping horses in an American circus could discharge the functions of a First Lord of the Treasury or a Justice in the High Court of Judicature, or that a pantaloon in a Christmas pantomime could think out the Principia of Sir Isaac Newton or the Novum Organum of Lord Bacon. The fact was, the author ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... first could be only imputed to the just indignation of the gods; but a monopoly of corn, supported by the riches and power of the minister, was considered as the immediate cause of the second. The popular discontent, after it had long circulated in whispers, broke out in the assembled circus. The people quitted their favorite amusements for the more delicious pleasure of revenge, rushed in crowds towards a palace in the suburbs, one of the emperor's retirements, and demanded, with angry clamors, the head of the public enemy. Cleander, who commanded ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... that this jocular feature Of mine was a trick reprehensibly rude, And yet I was sold, like a commonplace creature, To work in a circus for lodgings and food. ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... is no place for laughter! We are not indulging in horse-play for your benefit. We are not trying to amuse any one. The things we are discussing here are of a deadly seriousness. This isn't a circus. ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... talker—so fast that he never stayed to pronounce his words—and of an ingenuity that ought to have been applied to some better purpose, such as the making of steam-engines or writing novels, rather than defending thieves. He reminded me on this occasion of the man in the circus who rode several horses at a time. In the case I allude to, he set up no less than seven defences to account for the unhappy duck's finding its way into his client's pocket, and the charm of them all was their variety. Inconsistency was not the word to ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... sharply to find themselves face to face with an exceedingly tall individual, whose length was almost grotesquely added to by the amazing slimness of his figure. In that respect he was not at all unlike the type of human skeleton which one generally expects to find in a travelling circus, or some show of that kind. The man, moreover, was dressed in deep black, which added to his solemnity. He had an exceedingly long, melancholy face, on both sides of which hung a mass of oily-looking black hair; his nose, too, was elongated and thin, and a long drooping ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... there!" he had informed the nuts as he tweaked his cap over one eye, and his red neckerchief into place; and had sworn a mighty and quite unprintable oath as he struck a huge fist into a horny palm at the corner of Ludgate Circus and New ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... Every time a circus come to town I'd run off and they wouldn't see me again all day. Seemed like I just couldn't help it. I wouldn't take time to git permission to go. One time to punish me for running off he tied me up by my thumbs, and I had to stay home while ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... 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 ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... environs of Castle Bunthorne. The audience hailed her with joy and relief. The dairymaid and her costume were pretty in a familiar way which it could appreciate. She was extremely young, adorably impudent, airy, tripping, and supple as a circus-rider. She had marvellous confidence. 'We are friends, are we not, you and I?' her gestures seemed to say to the audience. And with the utmost complacency she gazed at herself in the eyes of the audience as in a mirror. ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... candy. The interest of the public in that operation was inconceivable. If he had been Mr. Vanderbilt buying out Mr. Astor—if he had been a lunatic astray from the asylum, or a clown escaped from the circus—he could hardly have excited more attention. The passengers stared in amazement. Some young gentlemen, escorting certain young ladies from school, cracked excellent jokes upon the honest buyer of peanut candy; and if his daughter or any friend had chanced to pass and had seen him, ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... as steadily as usual, and they are drawing nearer and nearer to the little cove. Soon they gain a full view of those cliffs where the sea-birds sit, tier upon tier, like spectators in a circus, and the calm air is filled with strange cries. Bee claps her hands in delight; the sight is so novel, and the birds that have taken wing sweep so gracefully around their rocky haunts, that there is a charm, past ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... pavement, circus, corner, Where men their styles of print may call or choose, And there—ten times more on it than JACK HORNER— There shall you find him swathed in sheets of news. Nothing can stay the placing of his wares— Not bus, nor cab, nor dray! The very Slop, That imp of power, is powerless! ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... would not begin moral lectures at once, but seize a more opportune time to compare the relative claims of Sunday-school and circus. ...
— The Story of Patsy • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... self-advancement can be gained by modest and unassuming methods. To stand with lifted hat and solicit a hearing savors of an all too humble spirit. The easily abashed may starve in a garret, or go die on the highways. There is no chance for them in the jostle of life. The gilded circus chariot, with a full brass band and a plump goddess distributing posters, is what takes the popular heart by storm. Your silent entry into town, depending upon the merits of your wares to work up a trade, is chimerical and obsolete. We no longer sit in the shadow and play flutes; we parade ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... you are willing," he avowed, earnestly. "You can take the water with you." Visions of a tank lady in the "Greatest Circus on Earth" ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... Henry is a chief too—his chief name, Iiga (Ee-eeng-a), he has not yet "taken" because of his youth. We were in fine society, and had a pleasant meal-time, with lots of fun. Then to the Opera—I beg your pardon, I mean the Circus. We occupied the first row in the reserved seats, and there in the row behind were all our friends—Captain Foss and his Captain-Lieutenant, three of the American officers, very nice fellows, the Dr., etc., so we made a fine show of what an embittered correspondent of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... member for Madras, who cast aside all personal considerations of future advancement to enter an able and strong protest against this most iniquitous measure. I remember it was in contemplation to hold a monster meeting on the maidan in the big tent of Wilson's Circus which then happened to be in Calcutta, but in the meantime it was announced that wiser counsels had prevailed, and Lord Ripon had reluctantly climbed down, I believe, after most strenuous persuasion, and had consented to a compromise by agreeing to the introduction of a clause in the ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey
... cutting him out. This seems to have been in the last desperate stand made by the Britons during this campaign. After this, with Togodumnus slain, Caradoc probably a fugitive in hiding, and the best and bravest of the land slaughtered either in the field or in the circus at Rome, British resistance was for the moment utterly crushed out. Claudius continued his demonstrations of delight; when Plautius neared Rome he went out in person to meet him,[147] raised him when he bent the knee in homage, and warmly shook ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... just as closed as the dial of the watches which they, in the innocence of their mind, lift every minute to their eyes, not understanding the fatal meaning of the eternally moving hand, which is eternally returning to its place, and each of them feels this, even as the circus horse probably feels it, but in a state of strange blindness each one assures us that he is perfectly free and moving forward. Like the stupid bird which is beating itself to exhaustion against the transparent glass ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... I don't want to," answered Margery stretching out comfortably with her hands supporting her head. "I'm no circus performer." ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge
... will testify that, when you want to do business, there is no economy in ham and lemonade. The drummer takes his country customer to the theatre, the opera, the circus; dines him, wines him, entertains him all the day and all the night in luxurious style; and plays upon his human nature in all seductive ways. For he knows, by old experience, that this is the best way to get a profitable order out of him. He has this reward. All Governments ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... he has fallen quite low enough for that; submitting even to the last indignity of being hatched out by a common stove incubator. Now, the elephant has also been domesticated, but he has also been allowed to adopt a profession. He dances on a tub and rides a tricycle at a circus. Nothing of this sort has been attempted with the ostrich, but much might be done. He would make a first-rate bicyclist, and could get through much of the business of the "eccentric comedian." A couple of them would go to make a capital knockabout act. High kicks of the very ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... in which I ascended the Mississippi when the American Civil War was not, and when only its causes were. A fragment of mast on which the light of a lantern falls, an end of rope, and a jerking block or so become suggestive of Franconi's Circus in Paris, where I shall be this very night mayhap (for it must be morning now), and they dance to the selfsame time and tune as the trained steed, Black Raven. What may be the speciality of these waves as they come rushing on I cannot desert the pressing ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... itself, as he turned from the threshold of the house in Park Street, where he had been dining, and half unconsciously took the familiar short cut towards Turk Street. He paused for a deliberate instant when he had hailed the first passing hansom, and then told the man to drive to Piccadilly Circus. ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... the crisis that had so long threatened, was at least 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 of Theodora arrested the revolt. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... entertainment. A young man was told to think of himself as managing a side-show at a circus. When his mind had absorbed this idea he was ordered to open his exhibition. He at once mounted a table, and, in the voice of the traditional side-show fakir, began to dilate upon the fat woman and the snakes, upon the wild man ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... the Yankee Soldier, a string of them on horses, coming through Springfield, W. Va. It was like a circus parade. What made me remember that, was a colored man standing near me who had a new hat on his head. A soldier came by and saw the hat and he took it off the colored man's head, and put his old dirty one on the ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: The Ohio Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... tears are the natural expression of sad feelings," said Lady Locke. "We do not weep at a circus or at a pantomime; why should we laugh ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... excited shouts of uproarious laughter. At the BOWERY THEATRE, as well as at the CHATHAM, 'The Mysteries of Paris' has run a most successful career. The OLYMPIC has been crowded nightly by the mingled attractions of opera and travestie; while the BOWERY AMPHITHEATRE and ROCKWELL'S Circus at NIBLO'S, have shared abundantly in the favor bestowed now-a-days upon popular entertainments. . . . 'DRESS always and act to please your partner for life, as you were fain to do before the nuptial-knot was ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... foster-father Faustulus, the sacred fig-tree towards which the cradle with the twins had floated, the cornelian cherry-tree that sprang from the shaft of the spear which the founder of the city had hurled from the Aventine over the valley of the Circus into this enclosure, and other such sacred relics were pointed out to the believer. Temples in the proper sense of the term were still at this time unknown, and accordingly the Palatine has nothing of that sort to show belonging to the primitive age. The public assemblies of the community were early ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... millionnaires,—they find that their new shoes of scientific acquirements have got to be broken in just like a pair of boots or brogans. I don't know that I have put it quite strong enough. Let me try again. You've seen those fellows at the circus that get up on horseback so big that you wonder how they could climb into the saddle. But pretty soon they throw off their outside coat, and the next minute another one, and then the one under that, and so ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... exhibition of short petticoats and long-legged boots, and to the holding of conventions and speech-making in concert rooms, the people were disposed to be amused by them, as they are by the wit of the clown in the circus, or the performances of Punch and Judy on fair days, or the minstrelsy of gentlemen with blackened faces, on banjos, the tambourine, and bones. But the joke is becoming stale. People are getting cloyed with these performances, and are looking for some healthier and ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... the actors making up in public on a balcony above the crowd, so as to whet their curiosity and attract their custom. Beyond was a cinematograph, advertised by lurid paintings of murders and apparitions; and farther on there was a circus with ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... grocery store at Langley, was weighing out a pound of butter for the Widow Simpson, who was haggling with him about the price, when his brother's letter was brought to him by the boy who swept his store and did errands for him. But Frank was too busy just then to read it. There was a circus in the village that day, and it brought the country people into the town in larger numbers than usual. Naturally, many of them paid Frank a visit in the course of the morning, so that it was not until he went home to his dinner that be even thought of the letter, which was finally ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... encountered. I have never seen in a book anything to equal the Spanish wire entanglements. Barbed wire was stretched in every nook and corner, through streams, grass, and from two inches to six feet in height, and from a corkscrew to a cable in design. It takes the nerve of a circus man to get men along when they are so exhausted that every place feels alike to them, and that they would gladly give away Mr. Jim Hill's fortune if they possessed it, for ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... brother of Gil Alvarez. They were known among their few friends as Jack and Gil. They were trained athletes; their father had been a circus performer, and under peculiar circumstances the two brothers had been trained for the profession, but owing to reasons satisfactory to themselves, and as recorded in previous records of their exploits, they had decided become detectives, and had so acted upon three occasions as recorded in Nos. ...
— Two Wonderful Detectives - Jack and Gil's Marvelous Skill • Harlan Page Halsey
... 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 took into ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... tells how 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 ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... for fear they will be worse than the imaginary woman they put up for an argument. I fancy women were just about as good and just about as bad in old Turkey, in the jails they call harems, as they are in a three-ringed circus to-day. ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... left Newhaven pier for the oyster dredging in the Firth of Forth. One of the crew, a young lad, who had been at a circus in Edinburgh the previous evening, happened, while giving an account of what he had seen, to say "horse." No sooner had the hated word been uttered, than his companions assailed him in a most unmerciful manner. His disregard of the tradition of his fathers put an end to the fishing, it not being ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... Coupeau had promised to take her to the circus. It was well worth while disturbing oneself to see ladies galloping along on horses and jumping through paper hoops. Coupeau had just finished a fortnight's work, he could well spare a couple of francs; ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... see why you don't give up poetry and magazine work and get a position as poster-writer for a circus. You are only a mediocre magazinist, but in the poster business you'd be ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... Loyal Circus. A handsome boy too. A tall dark fellow like you. He is a little too proud, but I like that in ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... painted boats in the lake, to have a pointer following at his heels, and to do his shooting with a double-barrel gun that "broke in two in the middle." He wanted to take his morning's exercise on a spotted pony—a circus horse, he called it; and to wear a broadcloth suit, a Panama hat and patent leather boots, when he went to church on Sundays. Don and Bert Gordon had all these aids to happiness, and they were the jolliest fellows he had ever seen—always laughing, singing ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon
... Lo! loose, lewd trulls, and lean, luxurious liars Had brought the fair, fine face of Rome to shame, And made her one with sins beyond a name— That queenly daughter of imperial sires! The blood of elders like the blood of sheep, Was dashed across the circus. Once while din And dust and lightnings, and a draggled heap Of beast-slain men made lords with laughter leap, Night fell, with rain. The earth, so sick of sin, Had turned her face into the dark ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... Almost every day since our arrival has been engrossed by visitants. Our evenings we have devoted to company abroad; and that more generally than we should otherwise have done, as my stay is limited to so short a period. The museum, the theatres, the circus, and the assemblies ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... party, is it?" said Morris, emerging from his hiding-place. "What's she looking for a job by us for, Abe? She could make it twice as much by a circus sideshow or a ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... it be a real circus if a big, strong man had to act the same as us poor women? I mean when we're scheming to stir up a sensation in the hearts of men, and in the envy depot of other girls, when we enter the portals of a swell ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... what we must 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
... utilium introductoribus, (Gesta Dei, p. 934.) The trade of Venice to Egypt and Palestine cannot produce so old a title, unless we adopt the laughable translation of a Frenchman, who mistook the two factions of the circus (Veneti et Prasini) for ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... Romans used to enjoy—must have been a still more exciting spectacle; but who can doubt that, if the iron railing which separated the audience from the combatants had been removed, scarce one of the former would have remained in the circus ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... "We made the last mile at a pretty good clip; I kept them at it. Guess they won't start another circus if we meet a freight ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... widely yawned-over) journal. You have not been over civil to me of late, which is very ungrateful. You may say, with an attempt at wit, that the owl was a baker's child, and therefore crusty. I believe that you could win the prize for the worst conundrum in any circus ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... Gabriel, the priest attached to the foreign mission, the adopted son of Dagobert's wife. He was a priest and martyr—for, in our days, there are still martyrs, as in the time when the Caesars flung the early Christians to the lions and tigers of the circus. ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Close by in the High Street perhaps the trumpets may sound about the stroke of noon; and you see a troop of citizens in tawdry masquerade; tabard above, heather-mixture trouser below, and the men themselves trudging in the mud among unsympathetic bystanders. The grooms of a well-appointed circus tread the streets with a better presence. And yet these are the Heralds and Pursuivants of Scotland, who are about to proclaim a new law of the United Kingdom before two score boys, and thieves, and hackney-coachmen. Meanwhile every hour ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... large-brained woman and large-hearted man, Self-called George Sand! whose soul amid the lions Of thy tumultuous senses moans defiance, And answers roar for roar, as spirits can,— I would some wild, miraculous thunder ran Above the applauding circus, in appliance Of thine own nobler nature's strength and science, Drawing two pinions, white as wings of swan, From the strong shoulders, to amaze the place With holier light! That thou, to woman's claim, And man's, might join, beside, ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... enjoy life, to give back blow for blow, nor caring where she struck. She was going to press the juice from every grape. A thousand odd years gone, she would have led the cry in Rome—"Bread and the circus!" or "To the lions!" She would have disturbed Nero's complacency, and he would have played an obbligato instead of a solo at the burning. And she was malice incarnate. They came from all climes—her lovers—with ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... elephant in a circus never forgets a person who gives him a chew of tobacco or a rotten peanut, but will single him out from a crowd years afterward and bash in his head with one ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... give the blues to the funny man of a blooming circus. What would my missus say if I wasn't to turn up never at all?"—"She would get another man; there's always plenty of fools about." A quiet and mirthless chuckle was heard in the pause of shocked ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... must wait for the afternoon tide to carry us over the bar. I lingered on deck, as long as I could dodge the fiery spears that flashed through our tattered awning, and bear the bustle and the boisterous jests of some circus people, our fellow-passengers, who came by express invitation of the king to astonish and amuse the ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... "and I'm a plum-busted idjut not to have thought uv it afore; I've hearn about 'em often enough. This here backterian camel must be one of that bunch of Circus Jesse's." ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... a blue-eyed, curly black-haired, careless, popular young scamp; as good-hearted as he was careless. He could ride like a circus monkey, do all kinds of bush work, add two columns of figures at once, ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... enterprising and impulsive, he had the fortune to be served by some great men: Tibonian, who drew up the Pandects; Belisarius and Narses, who thrashed the barbarians; the architect who built Saint Sophia. Against these assets to his reign of thirty-eight years you must set the factions of the circus, at Constantinople itself; and bloody battle over the merits of the Greens, the Blues, the Whites, etc. But certainly Justinian contrived to strike into history as no other Byzantine emperor did; with his law code, and with his church. So now enough ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris |
