"Shuffling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... There was the shuffling of many feet for an instant—then a pause, a pause which was full of awe—then, with a roar like thunder, six hundred throats broke into wild applause for Jesus, whom such people ever gladly heard; and straightway, for the first time in the history of organized ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... turned the horses homeward. The station agent was threading his way through his car report, and remained provokingly unconscious of Harris's presence at the ticket window. The farmer took no pains to conceal his impatience, coughing and shuffling obviously, but it was not until the last box-car had been duly recorded that the agent deigned to ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... shuffling feet, of muffled voices, of stifled sobs, reached the ears of the watchers in the corridor from another part of the house. Doctor Muir had sent a messenger to bid the men advance with their sad burden to a side door which opened into a sitting-room not very ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... orator; but thee arose a wild, plaintive sound of chanting, a song which none but those who sang it might have understood. Its savage unison rose and fell for just one bar or so, and then sank to sudden silence. There came a quick shuffling of feet in separation. The group fell apart. The store was empty! Out in the open air, under the warm summons of the sun, there passed a merry, laughing group of negroes, happy, care-free, each humming the burden of some simple song, each slouching across ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... Brotherhood in America, of which the Canadian government seemed unable to say much that was definite, however they might have apprehended mischief from this quarter. It was known at home, that but little confidence could be placed in the efficiency and honesty of a Cabinet that tolerated a shuffling inebriate at its head; so that from the contradictory official documents reaching the Castle from Canada, through the Imperial authorities, it was, I suppose, deemed advisable to send me out to learn ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... by the ship's drummer, who strikes a peculiar beat—short, broken, rolling, shuffling—like the sound made by the march into battle of iron-heeled grenadiers. It is a regular tune, with a fine song composed to it; the words of the chorus, being most artistically arranged, may give ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... the honour; the room was cleared, music struck up, and festivity was soon in progress. What a display of neat ankles and deft feet in mocassins! What a clattering of sabots and shuffling of "beefs"! The perspiration rolled off the brow of the musician, and young Lecour was whirling round like a madcap with the daughter of the ferryman of Repentigny, when the latch was again lifted, and ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... there was a sound of struggling, renewed at intervals with silent but fearful energy. It was evident, however, that the parties were approaching the door, for he heard the solid oak sound twice or thrice, as the feet of the combatants, in shuffling hither and thither over the floor, struck upon it. After a slight pause he heard the door thrown open with such violence that the leaf seemed to strike the side-wall of the hall, for it was so dark without that this could only be surmised by the sound. The struggle was ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... not much time for his meditation, for the shuffling of feet came closer. There were no more sounds of expostulation now; only the heavy breathing of three people, as if the captive had ceased to struggle and was making but a passive resistance. ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... pulled out the snake and flung it, still coiled, to the center of the room, whence with a harsh, shuffling sound it slid across the polished floor till stopped by the wall, where it lay without motion. It was a stuffed snake; its ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... house had promised to get me a teacher of the language, and after a while I heard a shuffling on the stairs, and the old dark man I had spoken to in the morning groped his ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... dropped to his marrow-bones, and then flat upon his breast, and in this attitude commenced wriggling and shuffling along like a gigantic salamander. Fortunately the grass grew a foot or more in height, and that concealed him from the view of the yaks. On he went, pushing his gun before him, and every now and then raising his eyes cautiously above the sward ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... counsellor; "I might retort your accusation, and blame the inconsiderate levity which foiled my design, and misled your own better judgment. But this is no time for recrimination. De Bracy and I will instantly go among these shuffling cowards, and convince them they have ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... lately written an article on "Provincialism in Literature," which had caused some stir by its bitter and uncompromising attacks upon certain well-known authors and journalists. I looked at the man with some interest. I saw a pale-faced, sandy-haired little creature with a shuffling, weak-kneed gait, who looked as if a touch from a moderately vigorous arm would have swept him altogether out of existence. His manner was affected and unpleasant, his conversation the most disagreeable I ever listened to. He was coarse, not with an ordinary coarseness, but with a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... from the camping-ground, Cuthbert, with blows of his stick, increased the speed of the camel to a long shuffling trot, and the fire in the distance soon ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... ready, and they sat down, leaving Jack Lesher still in the hammock. They had nearly finished when Dan Baxter came shuffling along. ...
— The Rover Boys on Land and Sea - The Crusoes of Seven Islands • Arthur M. Winfield
... Lem Gildy was shuffling along the road. He was a particularly unprepossessing man, with a reddish growth of whiskers which he never seemed to take the trouble to shave off, and they stuck out like so many ...
— The Motor Girls • Margaret Penrose
... these plays now, is like shutting your ears and looking at people dancing. What does it mean? the measures, the grimaces, the bowing, shuffling and retreating, the cavalier seul advancing upon those ladies—those ladies and men twirling round at the end in a mad galop, after which everybody bows and the quaint rite is celebrated. Without the music we can't understand that comic dance of the ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... were extremely pale, suddenly became flushed as if their color were heightened by some feverish attack, when, amid the stir caused by the curiosity of the guests, and a greeting manifested by the shuffling of feet and the murmuring of voices, Monsieur de Rosas appeared; his air was somewhat embarrassed, he offered his arm to Madame Marsy, who conducted him to the narrow stage as if to ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... watching them all with a pleasant smile. She did not frown at the unnecessary shuffling of feet nor the loud remarks of the boys as they settled into their seats. She just stood and watched them interestedly, as though her time had ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... laughed Nuala as old Turlough came shuffling up, and they gave him the sele of the day merrily enough. "You had best keep these birds, Brian, so that if there is any need you may send me messages to Gorumna. Now, shall we bide here until the Dark Master comes ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... nice distinctions between actual treason and constructive treason. He also disclaimed all participation in the law for taxing America, as he had not been consulted on the subject. The Duke of Grafton complained of both these lords, and accused Camden of meanness and shuffling, in endeavouring to screen himself by accusing others; reminding him, that at the time the act was passed, he was lord-chancellor, and had signified the royal approbation of the act in his official capacity. Lord Lyttleton seconded the blow given to the ex-chancellor ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... up the big roan's head. "Don't you hang your head with me." He eased the horse to a jerky start and they were off for Brill's at a shuffling trot. Three times in the first mile Blue bunched himself nervously and made a few stiff jumps but each time Harris held him steady. The pace was increased to a long, swinging trot and he felt the play of powerful muscles ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... wind screamed down the Dale; while the snow fell relentlessly; softly fingering the windows, blocking the doors, and piling deep against the walls. Inside the house there was a strange quiet; no sound save for hushed voices, and upstairs the shuffling of muffled feet. ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... She had her wish, too about Texas; for we found him waiting on the railroad platform, dressed in his best, to say good-bye. The friendly things she told him left him shuffling and repeating that it was a mistake to go, a big mistake; but when she said the butter was not good enough, his laugh cracked joyously up into the treble. The train's arrival brought quick sadness to her face, but she made herself bright ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... rushed to the window. There were horses in front of the house,—several of them,—and men on foot moving like shadows among them. A shuffling of feet came up to his open window; the intervening roof shut off his view of the porch and all that was transpiring. His eyes, accustomed to darkness, made out at least five horses in the now unlighted area ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... to proceed without further hindrance. She got up the porch steps without much difficulty, her supporters taking upon themselves most of the necessary exertion; but when she reached the top, she dispensed with their assistance. Shuffling to the front door, she there met Miss Harriet Corvey, who greeted the old woman with much surprise, but shook hands with ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... the lateral wall. The invaders were thus screened from Jack and Dick when they had turned the corner, and the latter were forced to move with painful caution to get the advantage of surprise to offset superior numbers. But now a new peril menaces them. A shuffling in the long corridor behind them freezes the current of their blood. They have been caught in a trap. There are two forces in the house. They both turn and halt, silent and trembling, against the south wall and wait. The steps still advance, ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... His piping voice his long crooked nose his white hair falling over the shoulders of his faded blue coat his shuffling shambling gait as he hobbled up to Carletons Grocery with his basket all this I shall remember as long as ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... well-known voices, Marcia listened through a hesitating silence, which ended in a loud laugh from without, and a cry from her husband of "Well, I swear! Why, you infamous old scoundrel, come in out of the wet!" There ensued, amidst Bartley's voluble greetings, a noise of shy shuffling about in the hall, as of a man not perfectly master of his footing under social pressure, a sound of husky, embarrassed whispering, a dispute about doffing an overcoat, and question as to the disposition of a hat, and then Bartley reappeared, driving before him the lank, long figure of a man who ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... warden sent to the hospital ward for No. 874. No. 874, that being Anse Dugmore, came shuffling in and kept himself upright by holding with one hand to the door jamb. The warden sat rotund and impressive, in a swivel chair, holding in his hands ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... other figures; one was the half-naked negro, the other the man with the plaited queue and the earrings, whom Tom had seen lifting the chest out of the boat. Now they were carrying the heavy box between them, laboring through the sand with shuffling tread ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... after her one short year of storm, was carried to the last abode of silence. Then followed an old man's voice, sounding strangely thin in the open air, the straining of cords, the sweating and hard breathing and shuffling of men, the grating of oak on a grave-bottom, the updrawing of the ropes that had lowered the coffin. Genuine grief accompanied the obsequies of Joan Tregenza, and her uncle's sorrow touched even men to visible grief and sympathy; but there was no heart to break for the ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... the young man behind the desk, and when the same freckle-faced lad, who had pointed out to Joe the manager, came shuffling up, the lad took our hero's satchel, and did a little one-step glide with ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... bookcases of walnut blackened with age to the colour of old mahogany. There were a number of massive tables in the room, upon which the light fell agreeably from high clerestory windows at each end of the apartment. Meschini himself was shuffling along in a pair of ancient leather slippers with a large volume under his arm, clad in very threadbare black clothes and wearing a dingy skullcap on his head. He was a man somewhat under the middle size, badly made, though possessing considerable ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... except between people of the same rank. It is more like some remains of the feudal system, where the retainers sat at the same table with their chief, but below the salt. The dances are monotonous, with small steps and a great deal of shuffling, but the music is rather pretty, and some of the dancers were very graceful and agile; and if it were not invidious to make distinctions, we might particularize Bernardo the Matador, the head coachman, and a handsome peasant-girl, with a short scarlet ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... shuffling up behind him and stood with his stiff leg thrust forward and his hands rolled up in his apron. Dick could see that he had something clasped tightly under ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... ordained that Andrew Daney should be spared the trouble of advising Dirty Dan, for as the latter came shuffling down the hall toward Daney's office door, The Laird emerged from his old office and ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... Mrs. Ulrica had been asleep about an hour, when she was disturbed by a singular noise which resembled the shuffling of feet near the bed. She opened one eye that she might warn her husband that one of his first duties should be not to disturb his wife's slumbers. But the warning produced no effect. This being the case, Mistress Ulrica found it necessary to open ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... to the porch and entered the hall. The light flowed undisturbed from the room on the right; and, in its thin wash, he saw that Iscah Nicholas had disappeared from the lower steps. Immediately, however, and from higher up, he heard a shuffling, and could just make out a form heaving obscurely in the gloom. Nicholas patently was making progress toward the consummation of his one fixed idea; but Woolfolk decided that at present he could best ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... in their thoughts from Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt, the saviour of his country from the Spanish yoke, as he professed himself in his defence on his trial, and Spain's determined enemy, to Sir Walter Raleigh, whose head had just fallen on the block, the victim of a perfidious foe and of a mean, shuffling king. The following is ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... construction of elaborate phrases with a half-humorous intention. A cowboy once told me of the arrival of a tramp by saying, "He SIFTED into camp." Could any verb be more expressive? Does not it convey exactly the lazy, careless, out-at-heels shuffling gait of the hobo? Another in the course of description told of a saloon scene, "They all BELLIED UP TO the bar." Again, a range cook, objecting to purposeless idling about his fire, shouted: "If you fellows come MOPING ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... second day of the new year. The mercury hovered a few degrees above zero. The winds that swept down from the North were keen and biting, and the mist-like snow fell fitfully. An old man, his once tall form bent by the burdens and sorrows of sixty odd years, his step slow and shuffling, his clothes unkempt and tattered, his long beard flowing down upon his breast, his eye still bright and in his face lingering traces of refinement, made his way along the deserted street. He was ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... Church one dim light was burning in an upper room. The marble church itself looked a part of the winter scene; its walls and pinnacles, already encrusted with ice crystals, glittered fantastically in the rays of the arc-light; beneath them, the dark, shuffling, huddling line of humanity moved uneasily in the discomfort of ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... oracle, in a very oracular manner, shuffling the cards as she spoke; "no, give up nothing, but keep all you can. That is the way to thrive, in ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... upon the bear, and saw that it had risen to its feet, and was licking itself, with its head turned away from the walrus, and then, lying down, it rolled over two or three times before beginning to lick and paw itself again for a time, but always shuffling backward a little as it attended ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... sort of shuffling gait, easy, I believe, to both horse and rider, when both are broken to it, and much followed throughout ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... At the table, idly shuffling a pack of grimy cards, sat Old Meg, a horrible old hag, wrinkled in face like a mummy, with only the stumps of teeth which had more the appearance of tusks. Her unkempt hair was matted and ugly wisps of it hung down over ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... gas-jets and mantles and in isolated instances they have served as light-sources. Doubtless, every one is familiar with the parlor stunt of igniting a gas-jet from the discharge from the finger-tips of static electricity accumulated by shuffling the feet ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... mellow in the mist and struck out shimmering golden bars on the asphalt. The song of shuffling feet and the accompaniment of the clattering hansoms rang excitedly in his ears. He felt that he was touching the points of a thousand quick romances. The flash of a smile, a quick step, were enough to make him press on eagerly in the ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... answer. He was standing in the ivy-encircled doorway of the dairy, his hands deep in his pockets, his feet shuffling to and fro, and on his face a ...
— Laugh and Play - A Collection of Original stories • Various
... his strength and stature; so that he appeared to wither into the shadow of himself, now advancing one foot, now the other, now stooping and wriggling his shoulders, now fumbling with the buttons of his waistcoat, now clasping his hands together,—in short, he was the picture of a mean-spirited shuffling rascal in the very agonies of detection. To these appearances Bertram was totally inattentive,—being dragged on as it were by the current of his own associations. Indeed, although he addressed Glossin, he was not so much thinking of him, as arguing upon the embarrassing state ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... pound. When Monsieur Deuse-Ace rattled the dice or shuffled the cards with Signor Double-Six, he looked for luck, not at a patent safety-burner, but at the stranger in the flickering candle-flame. Now sometimes M. Deuse-Ace came out of that rattling and shuffling with an empty purse, and, when called on to pay for the tallow, he swore, like a bad man as he was, that the play was not worth the candle. So I think that famous old saw must have been made by some unhappy Murad who was unlucky in turning up small numbers ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... right. In about half an hour they heard soft, shuffling noises beside the cabin, ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Sometimes it was a stream of blood, running into the eye of the setting sun, beautiful, yet weird and menacing. It broadened, deepened, and every day countless streams swelled its volume. Islands waded in it greenly. Always we heard it singing, a seething, hissing noise supposed to be the pebbles shuffling on the bottom. ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... watched with the Duke's Own, to see what she would do next. The others looked at her too, as she stood surprisingly fair and insistant among them, Ensign Sand with humble eyes and disapproving lips. As she began to speak the silence widened for her words, the ship's cook stopped shuffling his feet. "Oh come," she said, "Come and be saved." Her voice seemed to travel from her without effort, and to penetrate every corner and every consciousness. There was a sudden dip in it like the fall of water, that ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... was shuffled and divided into three piles. After this Geary made a mental calculation, selected one of these piles, shuffled it, and gave it back to her, asking her if she saw her card in it; then more shuffling and dividing until their interest and patience were quite exhausted. When Geary finally produced a jack of hearts and demanded triumphantly if that was her card, Henrietta began to laugh and declared she had forgotten what card she chose. Geary ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... was over. Flowers, favours, fuss and fluster, incense, 'The Voice that breathed o'er Eden,' suppressed nervous excitement, maddening delay, shuffling and whispers, acute long-drawn-out boredom of the men, sentimental interest of the women, tears of emotion from dressmakers in the background, disgusted resignation on the part of people who wanted to be at Kempton (and couldn't hear results as soon as ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... men came shuffling into the cabin, looking like gleaming ghosts in their chameleon-suits, which repeated the color of the walls. "Someday," growled Johnny, "there'll be a type suit where ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn
... was in great perplexity, and hardly knew where I stood; I took their part; and, when I wanted to be in peace and silence, I had to speak out, and I incurred the charge of weakness from some men, and of mysteriousness, shuffling, and ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... 'Twas a shuffling across the floor, a whirling of buxom partners by husky men, who never omitted to mark the measure with the thump of boot-heels that jumped the dust from cellar to roof. Shouting, stamping, joking, smiling, with quick breathing—such joy entirely it was, with Tim Lacy, oilskinned and jack-booted, ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... a curious figure came shuffling across the splendid hall,—that of a little old man somewhat shabbily attired, upon whose wrinkled countenance there seemed to be a fixed, malign smile, like the smile of a mocking Greek mask. He had small, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... tongs, and dragged me away. My head swam with excitement, and I can only remember that, so long as I had strength to do it, I fought with head and legs; that my nose several times collided with a pair of knees; that my teeth tore some one's coat; that all around me I could hear the shuffling of feet; and that I could smell dust and the scent of violets with which St. Jerome used to ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... bed. The shadows move about, And some one seems to overhear our talk. The fire is low; the candles flicker out; The ghosts of former tenants want to walk. Already they are shuffling through the gloom. I felt an old man touch my shoulder-blade; Once he was married here; they love this room, He and his woman and the child they made. Dead, dead, they are, yet some familiar sound, Creeping along the brink of happy ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... is buried in the cushions of her chair. She is sobbing wildly. Shuffling feet are at the door. The fracas has ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... little dancing animal that would feel soft if he ran over it; and anything soft underfoot frightens a locomotive as it does an elephant. But the men behind seemed quite calm. The wrecking-crew were climbing carelessly from the caboose to the tender—even jesting with the engineer, for he heard a shuffling of feet among the coal, and the snatch of a song, ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... as she led the way timidly to my room. As we passed into a dark hall in the wing, I noticed that it was closed by an iron gate with a grating. Three of the doors on the corridor were likewise grated. A strange noise, as of shuffling feet and the howling of infuriated animals, rang through the hall. Bidding the housekeeper good-night, and taking the candle, ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... A shaft of sunshine pierced the rosy glass windows and fell upon the hieratic figure of the bearded Christ, which glowed supernally. In the chancel the Psalms had died away and the only sound was that of sandals shuffling over marble floors. The man turned the lock. It was a return to the world as if one had participated in a ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... impatiently. 'I'm patrol-leader, and I give orders. I don't mean to go shuffling over the heath after ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... light-hearted, irrepressible, making a noise with its feet, loose hair flapping, pig-tails flopping to the beat of its march. Then the straggling, diminishing lines of the Third, a froth of white pinafores, a confusion of legs, black or tan, staggering, shifting, shuffling in a frantic ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... of the Caucasian's habit of shuffling off on God those ills for which he will not face the responsibility himself, and I am inclined to think that this is one of them. In my own experience the explanation of "God's Will" made to the mother of a little ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... beyond shuffling about a little and uttering a slight growl. The woman who held her put out an arm and drew back the child's hand reprovingly. The child paid no heed to this, but continued to stare. Then in another minute she again bent forward, and tapped ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the Mediterranean, with its pleasant, bosky islands. This is gone, and in a little while the yellow sands of the great desert stretch beneath us, and extend ahead of us, far as the eye can reach. We pass a toiling caravan, with its awkward, shuffling, patient camels, and its dark attendants. They have heard nothing, in these solitudes, of the convulsions that rend the world. They pray to Allah and Mahomet and are happy. The hot, blue, cloudless sky rises in a great dome above their heads; their food is scant and rude, ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... No word was spoken. The silence was only broken by their shuffling feet, by the startling report of each blow, by De Chauxville's ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... vermilion drawn from his own blood; he puts on emu feathers and gazes about him vacantly in stupid fashion like an emu bird; he makes a structure of boughs like the chrysalis of a Witchetty grub—his favourite food, and drags his body through it in pantomime, gliding and shuffling to promote its birth. Here, difficult and intricate though the ceremonies are, and uncertain in meaning as many of the details must probably always remain, the main emotional gist is clear. It is not that the Australian wonders at and admires ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... when they saw Ellis, with his awkward gait, shuffling out from among the crowd; and, more especially, when he announced himself, in a hesitating tone, not only as the maker, but as the designer of the Knight ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... of some men, apparently, when they have succeeded in shuffling off a load of difficulty, is a sensation of the delightful ease with which they can immediately shoulder another. As when one has just cleared a desk or drawer of rubbish, there is such a tempting opportunity made for beginning to stow away and accumulate again. ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... Then Desdemona came shuffling down the slope with reassuring little whines of response to her son's growling. And to these there came Finn, a trifle winded, and bearing traces of blood and fur about his bearded gray muzzle. So Master Black-and-Gray, whose knowledge of his fellow-inhabitants ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... will never cease in me, I hope. The unconscious in me was at last released, and I held my mad balance on the crater's edge and gazed into it. Hereafter, I was to live on dangerous ground, at least in thought. No more doubt, no more shuffling now. I must try the chords of my heart, the sympathy of my soul, in open rebellion. The iniquities of civilisation had ruined a fine barbarian in me, and almost made of me a maudlin miscreant, willing to hang upon the skirts of a false society. The Haymarket bomb ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... chant her name. Those venerable ancient song enditers Soared many a pitch above our modern writers. . . Our numbers may be more refined than those, But what we've gained in verse, we've lost in prose. Their words no shuffling double meaning knew: Their speech was homely, but their hearts were true. . . With rough, majestic force they moved the heart, And strength and ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... devotee shows sublime in a garrulous world. What a heap of mischief M. Jourdain has done by his discovery that he was talking prose all his life! Prose, indeed! Moliere has much to answer for. The rough, shuffling, slipshod, down-at-heel, clipped, frayed talk of every-day life bears as much relation to prose as a music-hall ditty to poetry. The name "prose" must be reserved for the fine art of language—that fine art whose other branch is poetry. It is a grammarians' term, "prose," and belongs ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... another, which met in the dissolute indolence of a peace of twenty years. But a more striking feature in these "Ordinaries" showed itself as soon as "the voyder had cleared the table." Then began "the shuffling and cutting on one side, and the bones rattling on the other." The "Ordinarie," in fact, was a gambling-house, like those now expressively termed "Hells," and I doubt if the present "Infernos" exceed the whole diablerie of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... York to own their own red velvet carpet and have it rolled down the steps by their own footmen, under their own awning, instead of hiring it with the supper and the ball-room chairs. They had also inaugurated the custom of letting the ladies take their cloaks off in the hall, instead of shuffling up to the hostess's bedroom and recurling their hair with the aid of the gas-burner; Beaufort was understood to have said that he supposed all his wife's friends had maids who saw to it that they were properly ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... my passage on a little sea-going steamer. Her captain was a Swede, and knowing me for a seaman, invited me on the bridge. He was a young man, lean, fair, and morose, with lanky hair and a shuffling gait. As we left the miserable little wharf, he tossed his head contemptuously at the shore. 'Been living there?' he asked. I said, 'Yes.' 'Fine lot these government chaps—are they not?' he went on, speaking English with great precision and considerable ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... always been a heavy mouth (better at all events than a mean mouth); it was coarse now, but with strange lines of gentleness breaking in upon its tendency to violence. But his carriage, though he was pre-eminently a well-made man, was the attribute most spoilt about him. He had the blustering yet shuffling bearing of a man who is fully convinced that he has gone to the dogs, and it did not alter its expression that he was making an effort to quit his canine associates. Perhaps the effort required to be confirmed before its effects could be seen; perhaps he ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... was mounted on him, and while drawing the reins tight with one hand, was belabouring the poor creature about the head most unmercifully with a heavy hunting whip. The horse not appreciating the advantages of this treatment at the hands of its intellectual owner, was resisting by a shuffling, remonstrating sort of gallop; while his rider, who was evidently a practised horseman, seemed to stick to his saddle by a kind of instinct, having little else to guide him, for his hat was completely ...
— Nearly Lost but Dearly Won • Theodore P. Wilson
... not appear that Hawker's tongue could wag to his purpose. The girl seemed in her mind to be frantically shuffling her pack of social receipts and finding none of them made to meet this situation. Finally, Hawker said that he thought Hearts at War was ...
— The Third Violet • Stephen Crane
... turning his head slowly as if following the movements of some person or thing across the room from west to east. During the night Miss Moore had heard footsteps crossing the room, as of an old or invalid man shuffling in slippers. We both heard a bang at the side of the room about 6.20, some time before any sounds of moving were heard from the servants above. The noise was muffled in quality, and had no resonance, and seemed to come from behind a small wardrobe on the east wall. The room (No. ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... out-stretched arm, withdrew silently in the direction of the lunch-room. He was a tall man with stooping shoulders, and his noiseless retreat was cautiously made, yet not quite cautiously enough, since Judson's sharp eyes marked the shuffling figure vanishing in the shadow cast by the over-hanging ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... within hearing, from oldest to youngest, would be wriggling and shuffling, as if through some magic piper's bewitchment; for even those who at first affected contemptuous indifference would be ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Our representatives in Congress have acted with such consummate unwisdom that one may say we have no future there. Mr. —— and Mr. —— (as precious a pair of rascals as ever wrought upon the ignorance of a country) have disgusted all thoughtful men of whatever party; while the shuffling of our better men on the question of public honesty, their folly in allowing such people as Blaine and Conkling to taunt them into cheap hurlings back of defiance (as the silly Southern newspapers term it), their inconceivable mistake in permitting the stalwart Republicans ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... his period of waiting proved to be but a short one. He heard the laughter and talk as the merry-makers came into the hotel from the dance hall, crowding the passage, and thronging in to where the tables were set. Then a rattle of dishes, and the steady shuffling of waiters rushing back and forth. Occasionally he could distinguish a shadow out in the hall, but never changed his motionless posture, or removed his eyes from the aperture, until she slipped noiselessly through and stood there panting slightly, her hand clasping ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... only other available member of the family, was always busy praying when he had nothing better to do. And so to-night Esther fared to the kitchen, with her red pitcher, passing in her childish eagerness numerous women shuffling along on the same errand, and bearing uncouth tin cans supplied by the institution. An individualistic instinct of cleanliness made Esther prefer the family pitcher. To-day this liberty of choice has been taken away, and the regulation can, numbered and stamped, serves as a soup-ticket. There was ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... crab, that was for ever shuffling frantically from side to side of the pool, had particularly fascinated me: there was a vacancy in its stare, and an aimless violence in its behaviour, that irresistibly recalled the Gardener who had befriended Sylvie and Bruno: and, ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... and so far thou hast not misspoken aught, nor uttered a word unprofitably. Wherefore for this night thou shalt lack neither raiment nor aught else that is the due of a hapless suppliant, when he has met them that can befriend him. But in the morning thou shalt go shuffling in thine own rags, for there are not many mantles here or changes of doublet; for each man hath but one coat. But when the dear son of Odysseus comes, he himself will give thee a mantle and doublet for raiment, and send thee whithersoever ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... a net work of railroad tracks they saw fenced-in yards that seemed filled with a living brown mass. From them came impatient bellows and a shuffling, stamping sound, that told of the movement of innumerable cows ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... after this. For the Moon has gone out. The very dogs are still, and I watch for the first light of the dawn before making my way homeward. Again the noise of shuffling feet. The morning call is about to begin, and my night watch is over. 'Allah ho Akbar! Allah ho Akbar!' The east grows gray, and presently saffron; the dawn wind comes up as though the Muezzin had summoned it; and, as one man, the City of Dreadful Night rises from its bed ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... tried to conceal it under a shuffling attempt to save his case by changing the form of it—as if changing the form while retaining the juice could deceive the expert he was trying to placate. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the river and of the bare hills and the Indians. He felt that his mother, also, had been afraid. He pictured again—and he picture was blurred and indistinct-the day when strange men had brought his father mysteriously home; men who were silent save for the shuffling of their feet, and who carried their big hats awkwardly ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... this life, to poison every domestic charity, to fetter the intellect by the power of fatal ignorance, to withhold the privileges of the gospel of love; and then, when the hollow cough comes under an inclement sky, when the shadows slant, when the hand trembles, when the gait is shuffling, when the ear is deaf, the eye dim, when desire faileth,—then to turn that human being out to die is by far the profoundest crime man can be guilty of in his dealings with mankind! And slavery had so hardened men's hearts, that the above act was found to be necessary to teach the alphabet ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... a bunch of cattle might shuffling along a dusty road. The night was so quiet you could hear things plain from a long ways off. It growed a little louder and a little nearer. And then it struck a plank bridge somewheres, and come acrost it with a clatter. Then I knowed it wasn't cattle. ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... household treasure, many some pathetically absurd family heirloom. Every kind of vehicle appeared to have been called into use, from smart carriages drawn by heavy Flemish horses to little carts harnessed to dogs. Over all reigned a stupefied silence, broken only by shuffling footfalls. Among them the absence of automobiles and light horses would indicate all such had been commandeered by the Belgian military authorities. Their cavalry was badly in need of good light-weight mounts. At crossroads passage to imagined safety was ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... Some one was approaching with uncertain footsteps and a shuffling gait, and at the sound the girl's face ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... answered, shuffling out to the car to help with the luggage and twisting and squirming as he ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... The idea is of shuffling as in making a promise with what is called a "mental reservation." "Palter with us in a double sense" is the famous expression in Macbeth, V, viii, 20, and it brings out clearly the meaning implicit ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... pictures were rushing in kaleidoscope. The remembrance of Mr. Arthur as he had left her at the door and turned away, shuffling his steps along the pathway—the sight of Janet and herself, with heads raised from the pillow, listening to the muffled, disordered sounds in the next room—the recollection of Mr. Arthur's face the next morning as she had passed him in the hall, the eyes dull—steam, ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... the bolts were drawn and an elderly man in blue blouse and wide trousers, his sabots stuffed with straw, came shuffling ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... the end. Madame Alois of France came into the church through the nuns' door, dressed all in grey, with a great grey hood on her head, and after her women in the same habit. She came hastily, with a quick shuffling motion of the feet, as if she was gliding; and by the bier she stood still, questing with her eyes from side to side, like a hunted thing. King Richard she saw, for he was standing up; but still she looked about and about. ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... report, the Commissioners, after giving an account of their efforts and the shuffling and double-dealing of the railroad companies with them upon this matter of ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... making a great dust and spattering each other with mud, but travelling by the same road to the same end. A Whig, he said, was a trimmer who dared neither to be a rogue nor an honest man, but was 'a sort of whiffling, shuffling, cunning, silly, contemptible, unmeaning negation of the two.' And the true genuine radical reformers? To them, as represented by the school of Bentham, Hazlitt entertained an aversion quite as hearty as his aversion for Whigs and Tories. If, he says, the Whigs are too finical to join heartily ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... shuffling in our direction. He was a man about fifty years of age, largely made about the shoulders and chest, but stooping a good deal, and limping heavily in one leg. He walked slowly, leaning upon a silver-headed stick, and his sober suit ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... shrill clamor against the bass thunders of the cascade. She began to fear lest madness seize her if she remained longer thus supinely crouching amid the terrors of this place. Obeying a sudden impulse, she got up, and gropingly, with shuffling, cautious steps, moved across the cavern. When she reached the opposite wall, she got down on hands and knees, and crawled until her searching fingers found the emptiness of the hole through which the men had passed. ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... streets sought shelter in the shade of the houses. Only sun-burnt street-pavers in bast shoes were sitting in the middle of the street, setting boulders into the hot sand; gloomy policemen in unstarched blouses and carrying revolvers attached to yellow cords, were lazily shuffling about, and tram-cars with drawn blinds on the sides exposed to the sun, and drawn by white-hooded horses, were running up ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... yard of the log house, a figure appeared plodding slowly along the roadway, and the girl's eyes were bent on it with a fixed anxiety. It came with such a weary lagging, with such a painful shuffling of feet and such an exhausted hanging of head that Brent at first failed to recognize Bud Sellers. The left arm hung with that limpness which denotes ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... listened silently, but for some time distinguished none other than the small sounds of night on shipboard—the indistinct orders, the dragging of ropes, the creaking of timbers, the dull, regular jar of the engine, and the shuffling noise of feet overhead. But, ere long, she seemed to catch faint, distant sounds, that seemed like cries; then came hurry and confusion on deck; then voices in the cabin, one of which said: "they never can get it under, at ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... of sharp cries from women, the hasty shuffling of feet, and the nervous tension manifest in every one, gave proof that a panic was probably imminent. I called softly to the band, "Yankee Doodle!" and the men quickly responded by playing the good old tune from memory in the darkness, quickly ...
— The Experiences of a Bandmaster • John Philip Sousa
... twenty-ninth year we find Coleridge a wreck in mind and body; shuffling, sick, disheartened, erratic, uncertain, yet occasionally brilliant. He tramped the streets, feared and shunned. His money was gone, his power of concentration had vanished. In search of bread he met an ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... that direction who went into the pulpit that day repeating the question "Who is it?" so insistently, so appealingly, with such searching glances along the rows of faces in the pews, that the congregation, shuffling and uncomfortable, looked furtively at each other with an ever growing suspicion and dislike. The vicar as he went on waxing warmer, more insistent, observed at least a dozen persons with guilt on every feature. ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... checked by an impatience to learn the cause of Lieutenant Raymond's abrupt appearance, and the officers approached the principal group. The former had now reached the shore, and, shuffling up the bank as fast as his own corpulency and the abruptness of the ascent would permit, hastened to the General, who stood at some little distance awaiting the expected ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... a great deal of trouble. M. Collot once said to me, "If he had asked me for as much money as would have built a frigate he should have had it. All I want now is to be paid, and to get rid of the business." M. Collot had reason and honour on his side; but there was nothing but shuffling ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... last Obed rose to the level of the occasion. He rapidly reloaded the emptied chambers of his revolver. Stepping to the door of the inner room he spoke some soothing words, and then hurrying back, he drew the ponderous bedstead away. Outside he heard shuffling, as of footsteps, and thought they might be dragging away those who had been wounded last. All this had been done in a moment. To unlock the door, to spring forward with leveled pistol upon his assailants, was but the work of ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... last, other feet were on the threshold, stumbling, shuffling, ill-shod feet of men bearing a burden. In that city, one may not lie in his home more than one day after he is dead. They set down what they bore, beside the couch, and waited, and the woman saw their questioning ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... close of the last verse of the psalm, when Hughie, whose eyes never wandered long from Ranald's direction, uttered a sharp "Oh, my!" There was a shuffling confusion under the gallery, and when Maimie and her aunt looked, Peter ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... stew, shuffling gait. "What is it, Mis' Elizabeth?" he inquired mildly, eyeing his mistress with ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... the title of this chapter, that I shall introduce a set of ruffians armed with missive weapons; or, having named a trump, a set of gamblers shuffling and dealing out the cards: But whatever veneration I may entertain for these two fag ends of our species, I shall certainly introduce a class of people, which, though of the lower orders, are preferable ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton |
